Welcome to Tammy Sue’s Critters

Hello, we are a small farm in rural Arkansas. We have been living the farm life for about five and a half years. It is such a process, we learn all the time. It started with just five chickens while we still lived in the city.When we got the sixth chicken and he accidentally turned out to be a rooster, we knew it was time to move on. We now have thirty five layers, a couple of roosters and thirty peeps. The peeps flew in a couple of weeks ago, (on a plane,from a hatchery), and seem to double in size daily. Our chocolate lab, Joe, has really taken to them and crawls in the cage with them at cleaning time. I haven’t broken the news to the older girls yet that a new flock has arrived. They have taken up residence in the goat house for now.  We are looking forward to the new girls eggs starting late this summer.

At present we have fourteen dairy goats,two born last week, three angora goats, and a llama to protect them all. About a year after we bought the farm, our son decided we needed goats. We had thought and talked about it, but our son is a man of action, so we got goats. He called us from the freeway, said he was on the way home, we could hear a strange noise in the background. When we asked him, he said he had a couple of kids with him. What a surprise for us. He arrived with two very small kids and a gallon of goat’s milk. No housing, no fences, no knowledge of dairy goats! He had, however purchased high quality registered dairy goats to get us started. We spent the next couple of months taking shifts in the feeding routine. We bought books, fencing, made homes for them and found out that French Alpine Dairy Goats are the clowns of the goat world. They love to climb and jump are very inquisitive and will try to chew about anything. Our first goats, Bonnie and Clyde have done very well, they are the foundation of our herd. In spite of the mistakes we made, they have served and produced well.

As our herd has grown, we realized we needed a guard animal for the goats.  We started to do some  research of the choices, herding dog, donkey, or a llama. I would not be good at leaving a  dog outside when our other dogs get to come in at night. Donkey, hmmm, well too much noise and not the best personalities. A llama seemed to be the choice. So we started looking. Again our son, a man of action stepped up. We received a call he found a young llama. It was the end of January and we had just had a snow storm, but he would not be available for long, so off we went. It was cold, the roads were bad, and we had to haul a trailer to get him. Once we arrived at our destination, it was one look for love at first sight. We absolutely were drawn into those huge eyes. I caved and my husbanded smiled and said “Nothing says love like a llama. Happy Valentine’s Day.” His name is Hershey.

 

Loving the life I have 

Who's your daddy!

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