Family Friday - A Day Late

Just like lots of things, I'm running late. Last Family Friday was "The Boys", so this week I'll do "The Girls". At the current moment all barn animals are girls. The Hens were first. I remember loving my Great Grandpa's chickens and wanted the kids to have the same experience. I have had the hens about a yr now. I started out with 3 Columbian Wyandotte's I found on Craig's List. A month or so later I found 9 more hens on there. They are Black Star/Cochin Mix, Buff Orpingtons and mixes of both. A month or so later a customer came in to the Post Office and asked me if I wanted a few of his Rhode Islands Reds. I said yes and when I went to get them he gave me 8 of them. I love having my own farm fresh eggs to eat. One of Bradley's favorite things to do here is collect the eggs. They coop in built inside my pole barn for added warmth in the winter. They have a run built off it inside and one on the outside, so depending on their mood and the temperature they can decide if they want to be inside or outside. Here's the girls in their outside run when I went down tonight.

The other barn girls are kittens. Last year when we first got the pigs and chickens I started noticing lots of mice in the barn. I was thinking about getting a cat from Larry and one day one just showed up, so I started feeding her. I named her Flash, because when she first came here she would run so fast if you got near her. Here she is last year with the pumpkins I bought for the pigs and chickens. 

Shortly after Flash showed up another cat showed up too. She was very round in the belly area and I was sure she was going to have kittens, so I named her Mama T (not sure why I picked T) Time would tell me she was just a well rounded girl, she never did have kittens. She was a love bug and wanted to be on you, particularly your shoulders. Here she is curled up on my shoulder.  

Spring came and so did a boy cat :( I started calling him Friend of Flash after I caught them in the act. He didn't stay around, mostly just for feeding time. It wasn't long and Flash was a new Mommy to 2 little kittens. Unfortunately one didn't make it. The little girl left was named Dolly. Flash was very protective of her with Mama T and Fof (we shortened Friend of Flash) and they both disappeared before too long. Here's Dolly today hanging out with me while I hung laundry up.

 

About a month later I went down to the barn in the am to do chores before work and found 5 little kittens locked in the chicken's inside run. I had no idea how they got there and just shooed them out since I was in a hurry to get to work. Later when I got home I could only find 4 of them. It was a few days later and I found out they were the neighbors kittens, she came and got them which they were none too pleased with. The very next morning 2 of them were back. I decided if they didn't really like it there they could stay here, also reasoning Dolly needed other kittens to play with. Flash was reluctant at first, but it wasn't long and she took them in as her own. Once the kittens were all old enough to be completely on their own Flash started disappearing days at a time. Now she may just show up once a month. Here is Milo and Zippy playing under foot today. Bradley asks Alyssa all the time why they have boy names, and she just says they could be girl names too.