Every year during lambing, I end up with orphan lambs (although husband Jim claims I am just as likely to steal a lamb as to wait for one to get lost). I love having bum lambs – they are lots of work, but it’s all good. If they are ewe lambs, I keep them and …
Tag: rural life
What’s wrong with this picture?
We don’t normally start lambing until May, but last fall, our four rams broke through two fences and went underneath the highway bridge so they could pay a visit to the ewe flock south of the highway. They were only in overnight, but so far I’ve had about a dozen ewes giving birth in the …
Spring transition
We’ve had three snowstorms hit in the last week here in Wyoming, shutting down thousands of miles of roads. These spring storms mean that we have slick, snow-covered roads with no visibility one minute, and within a few hours, the roads will be dry again. Yesterday, we had to haul hay from a farm in …
The buck stops here
After a busy morning of computer work, the other day I went for a walk in the afternoon with livestock guard dogs Rena and Rant, and herding dog Abe. It was about 40 degrees and we went up on the Mesa, watching the two bald eagles sitting on our fenceposts behind the house. There are …
Bird karma
I’ll do a bigger post about this very soon, but I spent a little time this morning on a sage grouse breeding ground, which is called a “lek.” Since I live in the sagebrush sea, and love early morning photography, I have a choice of about a half-dozen leks that are located fairly close to …
Wyoming traffic jam
I had to make a run to the courthouse this morning, and met up with a traffic jam, prompting this entry. Let me provide a short etiquette lesson for cattle drive encounters. First and foremost, don’t get impatient and uptight when you see livestock being moved down a highway. Instead, get out the camera and …
Spring pronghorn
It seems like spring is a month early this year. The geese arrived the last weekend of February, and the prairie dogs are even peeking out, chattering at me and the dogs. As you can see from this photo, by last weekend, the snowcover was gone from the sagebrush, and the pronghorn were looking great …
He who rules this roost
Lest anyone be left with the mistaken impression that big dogs rule the household here (simply because they’ve taught the humans to sit elsewhere so the big dogs can nap on the comfy couches), I need to clarify something. It’s actually the little dog that rules this roost. His name is Abe.These three big dogs …
In the neighborhood …
We hauled Helga the Aziat out to a remote sheep ranch today. She joins up with her sister and one of her brothers on the ranch, in wolf country. It’s always hard to part with an animal you make a connection with, but it’s always good to think about the wild adventures they are about …
Where does a big dog sleep?
Anywhere it wants, of course.