Other Working Animals on the Farm

With cows and goats and chickens on the property, one needs a little help.  I kind of talked about the help that we have on our little homestead farm a while back.  This weekend I was able to take some photos of our laborers that live in housing that we provide as remuneration for their hard work to ensure that our animals were safe.  These hardworking individuals are tasked with a multitude of duties that keep them busy, night and day, with rarely a day off. 

I thought I could reintroduce you to our... ahem... interns or working staff.  First there is Big Boy, our Great Pyrenees.  While technically a livestock guardian dog, his idea of guarding and protecting chickens proved to be not exactly what we were looking for.  One day we encountered him guarding our flock.  Sounds good, but the hen he was guarding was bleeding and flapping her broken wings as he was eating her.

Big Boy was banished from the pasture and now is a "watch dog."  He is posted outside the garage and barks his head off relentlessly at passersby and wandering dogs, cats, possums and squirrels.  Here is a photo of our busy animals in action - Big Boy and Ginger.

Ginger is our barn cat.  The idea is that she would live in our barn and hunt rats - except she doesn't reside in the barn.  She lives in our garage and hunts Cat Chow that's poured in her bowl.  She's gotten a little fat and instead of stealthily creeping up on rodents, her primary instinctual craving is for naps in the sun.

Sometimes, if particularly motivated, she'll roll over and change positions.  Due to Ginger's lack of relentless and energetic pursuit of pesky rodents that inhabit our barn, rats have multiplied faster than rabbits and we've resorted to allowing snakes, rat traps, poison and buckets of water do the job of dispatching the rodents in our barn.  Which works out quite nicely for Ginger, giving her more time for napping in the sun.

But she occasionally catches and kills and eats small birds.  A couple of weeks ago, we found remnants of a squirrel that she devoured.  Only a tail and a foot remained.  It must have been a very slow squirrel.

While Big Boy and Ginger might not be perfectly suited to do their appointed tasks, they're part of our family, and we accept them, warts and all.