Animals leaving the farm

We recently sold two of our dairy cows to our neighbors - the light tan one in this pic had a bull calf this afternoon. We also sold two dairy cross-bred steers to customers for their meat - both are hanging at the butcher's along with a ram for our freezer. We are down to the final two dairy girls on the farm, which I am keeping for milk. I am happy to get back to focusing predominately on building our Dexter cattle herd and our St Croix sheep flock.

We also sold our young turkey tom. He was beginning to fight with his father over the hens. The hens are all sitting on nests, and Mom is also incubating more eggs, so we should have a good number of turkeys this year. I want to build the flock and start selling more on a regular basis.

A ground hog also departed our farm, and this earth. You can see her as a tiny brown spot across the paddock near the fence...just before K7 shot it. You can't do this in the city or burbs! Why shoot it? Because this large pesky rodent digs very large burrow holes. While clearing the stream bank last month, I accidentally stepped into a hole covered with leaves, and my leg went down 3 feet. Luckily, I didn't end up with a broken leg, which would happen to our cattle if they step in one. On our farm, this critter gets an automatic death sentence, along with digging armadillos, hungry coyotes, poisonous snakes, any rabid mammal, and predatory stray dogs or other mammals that are threatening our herd or flocks. We gave this ground hog a Viking funeral on top of one of our burn piles.