Meet my babies
Whisper
Whisper is my OG. She wasn’t my first ever bottle calf, but she is the first of my herd. All my other bottle calves are long gone, as they were from when I was a kid and had become part of my grandfather’s and my brother’s herds once they were too big for my backyard.
Fancy
Fancy was my second bottle baby. We got her as a friend for Whisper so they’re the same age. The reason I purchased these two…is a long story I won’t get into. In fact, there was a third bottle calf, a red one, named Jolene. However, she got very sick during her first autumn and did not survive.
Buzz
Buzz is Whisper’s first baby. He was born on my birthday this year! He’s grown so fast, such a handsome boy!
New Baby!
Fancy just had her first baby last week! She is adorable. Best I can tell, her father must be the highland bull. Unlike her mother, however, she won’t let me near enough to touch her. My goal is to get her to trust me enough for nose pats, or at the very least, some good pictures of her face without her running away.
Fun fact: According to my vet (brother) she should have black fur like her mother and father, because her nose and hooves are black. The red appearance of her fur is due to a mineral deficiency which will be rectified in a week or so when we do fall branding and vaccinations. Apparently, all light colored cows have light/pink skin, and black nosed cows should always be black. I admit, I find that a little disappointing, because I LOVE the color she is right now.
Loki
Loki is my livestock guardian dog. He is an Akbash, which is kind of like a Great Pyrenees but less fluffy. He is the goodest boy ever, but though he’s only just turned 4, he does have a condition called cruciate ligament disease in both his back legs which makes it painful for him to run around too much so he’s been forcibly retired by being locked in the back yard with my elderly border collie. He still thinks he’s guarding though, as he waits until my bedroom light goes out in the evening and he decides that since I’ve clearly gone to bed, he needs to howl outside my window until dawn to keep the predators away!
Bella
Bella is my sweet old girl. She is supposedly a pure bred Border Collie, but considering I got her for free in the parking lot of a Tractor Supply the week before my senior year of high school started, I’d say that’s doubtful. She’s too old to help with livestock, even if she wasn’t terrified of…everything. All she wants to do is to play ball, all day, every day. But her coordination isn’t what it used to be and the poor girl trips in all the holes my brother’s dogs dug in the backyard before they moved out. So she’s spent most of this year taking naps in the sun, which sounds like a good time to me!
Grace
Grace is Loki’s mother, and is technically not mine. She came with the house. She’s getting up there in years and my brother didn’t want to make her leave her home and potentially get hurt by the large predators on his new ranch, which is bigger and further into the hills. Here on my ranch she’s mostly fighting coyotes, foxes, raccoons and skunks. Out at the new place she’d have had to contend with wild pigs, bears, and mountain lions in addition to coyotes and all the rest of it. She’s the sweetest girl ever, and I was so pleased she got to stay with me.
Poppy
Poppy is Loki’s kid sister from Grace’s only other litter. They have the same father too, who lives out at my brother’s new ranch with her other brother who was her litter-mate. Poppy got left behind with Grace because when she was a young pup she got hit by a car and has very messed up back legs, and the new property would be too dangerous for her too. You’d think getting hit by a car and having to spend 6 months in a kennel at the vet clinic would make her a little more hesitant to sneak through the fence onto the neighbor’s property to get out onto the road, but when she sees bicyclists, all bets are off.
P.S. She’s a spaz who doesn’t ever sit still, this is the best picture I have of her.
Salem
These three kittens are all litter mates. There are also barn cats on the property and these three are not the first group of kittens I’ve brought home this year, but unfortunately the other’s didn’t survive. I brought these kittens (and the previous ones) home to catch the mice in my house because Orkin isn’t doing anything about them when I call them out because I’ve already put steel wool in the usual places and they say there’s nothing more they can do about the mice that I’ve seen inside my house.
Salem is an adorable little brat. He’s a protective big brother to his sisters, protecting them against all perceived threats…like Bella and Loki, both of whom are afraid of kittens. Salem follows Bella around doing the arched back, fluffed tail, sideways aggressive walk and makes her nervous so she runs into walls and trips down stairs and stuff. He follows her from room to room, unprovoked. Won’t leave her alone. The stinker.
Peaches
These three kittens were semi feral when I brought them home, it took a couple weeks for me to make them fairly friendly. Peaches is the most standoffish of the bunch, though none of them like to cuddle overmuch. They like to be held for a few minutes, they start purring pretty much as soon as you touch them. So much so that when I took them in for their vaccines and a health check, we couldn’t check their heart or lungs because they wouldn’t stop purring for us to hear!
Posey
Posey has a foot fetish. Seriously, you can’t have your toes out unprotected around her. If she’s in the room, you can’t let your guard down. She’ll come out of nowhere and bite your toes for absolutely no reason. And screams of pain only seem to please her even more, as she only bites harder.
So far, she’s the only one I’ve seen actually catch a mouse…but catching it surprised her and she didn’t seem to know what to do with it….so she let it go.