The Puppies Are Here!! (All 12 of them)

Yes, you read that right...all twelve of them. Wow! Koko is doing a great job as a first time Mom cleaning and feeding her brood. We had no idea that she would have this many. We are first timers at this as well. We have never had a dog that had puppies before so we read alot, but nothing compares to the real thing! And just to complicate matters a little we are going out of town tomorrow. Melissa's parents are coming in to house sit/puppy-sit while we're gone. Right now we are contemplating whether it will be better to go ahead and have their tails docked tomorrow, wait until we get back, or try to get the inlaws to take them to the vet while we are gone?!? On another note, the insurance company FINALLY contacted us about storm damage. Looks like the wait will be worth it. No major arguments about their assessment. I am looking forward to this Florida trip but it couldn't have come at a worse time. I guess the icing on the cake will be if at least one of the heifers gives birth while we are gone LOL!

The week of waiting

This week we have been waiting. Waiting for our dog, Koko to have her puppies. Waiting for our three heifers to calve. Waiting for the insurance adjuster to call. Luckily the bees have kept our minds off of all the waiting by swarming.

When bees get crowded inside a hive, they make a new queen by feeding one egg a special diet. The old queen gets the hint and takes about half the bees and leaves. They don't go far at first and if you catch them before they move on you can get another hive of bees out of the deal. That is what happened today. My daughter Savannah saw the bees forming their swarm cloud and we watched them until they settled on a tree and then I cut off the limb and put them in another hive. They are very docile when swarming (not like in the "killer bee" movies). They are full of honey for the trip and stinging is the last thing on their mind. I was able to cut that limb and carry them to their new home without even disturbing them.

The downside is that the new hive will not in all likelihood make and surplus honey for us this year, but they will be in great shape to make honey next year.

Post Tornado Clean-up

There's nothing quite like the diesel power of a Caterpillar! My good friend Jim let me borrow this machine for a couple of days and we have moved the world with it. It will pick up a whole tree and never flinch. It will even finish breaking off half broken trees for you.

Planting day

I know this post is out of sequence but it just happened that way. We actually planted our garden early good Friday morning because they were calling for rain and we thought this would work our perfect?!? We did indeed get it planted...but little did we know that a big part of it would get washed away later that night! We were so excited because not long after we finished planting a little shower came...just enough to soak the ground good. We thought we were set. Needless to say there will be some replanting to be done later this week. And then it will be on to the chainsaw work.

Tornado 2009

We had a tornado (I don't care what the National Weather Service calls it!) come through The 2811 Friday night. We were on our way home from a good Friday church service when we came into the worst hail storm I have ever been in! Then it eventually subsided and we got into Abbeville to see what looked like a war zone! Debris everywhere...houses without roofs... signs blown out. And then we finally got home and I say finally because the first several routes we tried were either blocked because of downed trees or downed power lines and we found some damage here at the farm but not near as bad as it could have been. We are thankful that our house is OK and no one was hurt.

Countdown to Puppies

Today is April 7th and Koko has 16-20 days left until the puppies come. Some sources say that it is 63 days and some say it's 67 days so we'll just have to see when they actually are born. One big variable with dogs is how many will they have and how will we know when she is done? We are considering x-raying her so we can get a head count before the action starts. I have an X-ray machine at my office and a friend of mine (thanks Heidi) who works at an animal hospital is getting me the correct factors to use to x-ray a pregnant dog for the count. The father-to-be has already sired two other liters that were 11 puppies each! Koko's whelping box is in the house (she has been an outside dog all her life) so she has been spending more and more time inside as she gets bigger and more lethargic. The idea is to get her very comfortable there so she will have her puppies in it and not under the bed or behind a bush or something. She has not had any trouble at all adapting to a more inside life. The trouble will come when she has to transition back outside! Surely the weather will be nice and warm by then and she will want to be outside. We'll see.