Beginning Our Menagerie

When we moved into our house in 2003, I had such plans for self-sufficiency. Back-to-the-land and all that fun. We were bringing our cats and a feral mama and babies, from the apartment we'd been in, and had found 2 acres and a brick house for $116,000 when a cheap wood and siding one with no yard hardly, in a  subdivision was running around $150,000. We were so excited.

The back field is about an acre, and had a pole barn in one corner. The neighbours at the end of the road, owned the field next to us, and there was a beautiful young black stallion in there, and he and I soon became friends. I'd stand at the fence and click my tongue, and he'd come galloping from way down the other end. The neighbour the other way was on the other side of his field, and his was full of goats. I was so happy.

That Summer, we got our first goat. He was a couple of months old, and I named him Rammy.

I bottle fed him and he slept in a dog crate in the laundry room, among the kittens we fostered for a local rescue. He was just like a puppy, hopping and skipping around us outside as we did our chores. 

I was still working back then, and my workmates loved when I would bring Rammy up to my job, on a leash. They thought I was crazy. Yes, that label has always fitted me well!

We set about finding him a companion, and bought a second Nubian, and named her Cleo.

At that time, hubby built 2 stalls inside the pole barn, and we moved them into it for overnights, and with the back field to munch through at leisure, n top of their grain mix.

I also set up a dog crate on the table in the laundry room, with a heat lamp, and we got 25 heavy-layer day old chicks. When they feathered up, we added a perch, and by 3 weeks, we had moved them outside into a chicken run that Mark had fenced off and built a shed area in.

I had the beginnings of my backyard barnyard.

Our menagerie grew when a friend offered me a couple of male guinea fowl, they were an odd pair. They'd waddle around the field chattering away like 2 old women, which always made us smile. We got 3 female babies, and raised them for a few weeks in a dog crate with a heat lamp, then had them outside in the cage so that the older 2 could see them and get to know them before they all got to hang out together.

That Christmas, our gift was that we'd save a life ... and we went to the local pound and brought home Angel. 2 weeks later, we went back and adopted her a "sissy" and Princess aka Boo and Boo Bear, came home with us.

We used to take them out on weekends and walk around the old runways out at the Donaldson Center, where hubby works. 

They grew to be 2 brats, our 4-legged daughters.

Angel 

Boo

They are now 12 going on 13. 2 spoiled old ladies who just do "their own thing" when they don't want to come indoors, and just ignore me calling them. 

2003 began our menagerie, "my backyard barnyard" as I used to say, but it didn't finish it!