July Heat and Beauty

This July remains hot, hot, hot!  That means it’s been a rough month on the farm.  I’m trying to wean kids as soon as I can because it’s hard on the girls to raise babies with the heat, poor browse, and growing kids.  I sold two of Kizzy’s triplets last week leaving her with only little Mary.  Poor little girl couldn’t fight those big brothers off, and she was starting to get thin.

Mary and Kizzy

Mary looks much better!  Kizzy is still below weight and anemic, but she is starting to get a bit of pink to her eyelids.

Mary

Myson is growing and sweet, but after being banded six weeks ago, we’re still waiting for the testicles to fall off.  Poor boy.  Of course he’s milking his condition to get hay and sweet feed and lots of attention.  He’s even managed to get the remainder of a bottle here and there.

Myson

Victoria’s eye injury became infected, so she’s getting lots of antibiotics.

Hopefully, the eye will heal well and she won’t lose the vision in it.  Poor girl.  I must say she is still awfully sassy and spunky and getting very hard for me to catch to put the antibiotic salve in her eye three or four times per day.

Victoria

With the heat and poor quality of the pasture, the goats are starting to think the stuff on the other side of the fence is better.  They discovered a way to push through my gates and get into the cornfield.  I spent two night in a row running after them, yelling to get out, chasing them with the Ranger and thinking I was going to have a heart attack doing all this in the horrible heat.  I did an overnight fix by putting a wooden post in there, and the next day I put the small metal post there to link the chain over.  Then I decided I wasn’t going to risk it and added the wire on the bottom to keep the little ones from slipping through.  So far it’s worked!

Those silly geese are still hatching babies!  I feel so badly for their babies.  The parents are just not very good sometimes, and we lose a lot of little ones.  So far we have two of the older ones left, and there are now four new little babies.

The little yellow one was the last one hatched and horribly runty.  Everyone was off with the other three and little yellow was all by himself until one gander came over and stood guard over him.  I love that both the girls and ganders raise their babies.  They really are devoted family members, even if they don’t do a very good job of keeping them alive.

Other than taking care of animals, I’ve just been watching the corn turn brown.

We do have a chance for rain tonight, so hopefully we’ll get a bit of relief.  Most of the flowers have just given up the idea of blooming, but I did dig through the weeds in the herb garden and find some black-eyed Susans.  How can those weeds keep growing?

The sedum is also blooming.

There is still plenty of beauty around if you know where to look.  I found several butterflies the other day.

In the evening, all you have to do is look west, and you’re sure to see a beautiful July sunset.

July has certainly been hot, and I’ll be glad to see August.

Linking to Jenny Matlock’s Alphabe-Thursday where the letter of the week is J.

Linking to Rural Thursday.

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