Life is Never Dull on A Farm

Life on a farm is never dull. This morning I went to feed the sheep and one of the first time moms was down. I got her up and she was shaky. I noticed that her udders were pretty swollen while all the other ewes had bags that were shrinking. I grabbed one of the kids and we moved her into a stall by herself. I didn't notice any lumps or any discoloration but I did call the vet and he said to give her 8-10 adult aspirin 2 times a day to relieve the inflammation, and 9 cc's of injectable penicillin 2 times a day also in case of mastitis. I am hoping she I didn't know about giving aspirin.
I had been thinking recently how smoothly lambing and it's aftermath had been this year. I was thinking too soon. But the prognosis is good so I am hopeful she will be just fine.


Last week we put the mowing deck on the Kubota. You should have seen us try this for the very first time a few years ago when we first got the tractor. It was hilarious. Of course now we are old pros but back then we couldn't figure out how to get the tractor up high enough and it would keep sinking down to the ground. You see what we do is take a 4x4, and lay the tractor bucket on it. Then we lift the tractor's front wheels off the ground by pushing the bucket down. When the wheels lift up, we have access to the underside of the tractor. The boys then push and manoeuvre the mowing deck underneath which can be tricky because of the wheels. Then we attach the various attachments and lower the tractor. Then the bucket gets removed and the tractor becomes much lighter and easier to drive! Let the mowing begin. I am tempted to let the sheep do the whole thing with the price of diesel and gas these days.

The tractor with it's bucket, back blade and very wide mowing deck is an expensive piece of equipment and rather than take out a policy just on the tractor, similar to car insurance, we have a farm policy that covers not only the tractor but the other farm equipment, the truck, the livestock and the barn. Believe it or not the rates we pay for the farm insurance are better than any of the other major carriers in the state. Our cars actually cost less as well as they are with the same company.