We’ve been hoping for another barn kitten or two for a while, and the other day I spontaneously called on some listed on Craigslist. Sometimes things just work out so nicely, and it’s just a blessing; the lady who was giving away the pair of barn kittens also had a little farm, and after we settled where to meet, she asked if we’d like a few silky chickens as well because they had too many! I couldn’t turn down chickens, obviously, so we headed home with two kittens, a bag of their food, and five silky chicks, all free!
I thought it would be nice to do an introduction of the animals of our little “farm”. Some have creative names to fit their quirky personalities, and some have special stories of how they came to be ours!
As you read through, try to guess who’s been around here the longest, and I’ll share at the end!
CATS
Seal and Min– these are the new kittens, named from the Sarah, Plain and Tall books. Seal is a little more feisty, and Min is a cuddle bug.
Fluffy– Lyla’s birthday kitten from a couple years ago, she came from our friend’s litter.
Robert– our big classic orange cat. Rather grumpy.
CHICKENS
The five new silky chicks– they don’t have names yet, but I presume the white one will be Della, because we used to have a white silky with that name and tend to recycle the names of dearly loved animals.
Three newly hatched white chicks and their mother hen, Black Bitter.
Three older white chicks hatched in the spring and their mother, Friendly Orange Nipper (she was a tame chick but would peck us when we held her!)
The rest of our chickens (mostly given boring names to describe their looks)
Roadrunner
Fast speckle
Blond speckle
Old speckle
Black speckle
Jenny
Rooster
Pengy
White rooster
Templeton the Guinea– We found guineas one day at tractor supply and promptly (impulsively) took home 15. I had heard that “guineas love to die” and found this nearly immediately to be true as they found a hole in their big fence and basically walked into our old dog’s mouth. But templeton survived. His best friend is the rooster, though he will also associate with the duck.
Which brings me to Louis, the duck. Named after the swan in EB White’s The Trumpet of the Swan. Kind of a loner, he doesn’t really know if he’s a chicken or a goat. He will either be going to a home with some other ducks or will be getting some female friends when we can find some, because this spring his, um- instincts- made us have to separate him from our hens.
GOATS
Dolly came to us after she had babies in the middle of winter that didn’t survive. My mother-in-law knew I was wanting to have dairy goats eventually and gave her to us. The kids and I learned how to milk that night, in the dark, watching a YouTube instruction video.
Scarlet is related to Dolly somehow, the people who gave them to my MIL gave her as well, and since she was in milk they passed her along to us. She has a new baby, lamby, born August 1st. She is our absolutely best milker (giving over half a gallon in one milking!), and also the meanest goat we have. She will bite my hair, clothes, and back while I milk her if she runs out of food. I once saw her bite our cat’s tail. The other goats are all scared of her. Even her baby seems to prefer to spend most of the day with aunt Dolly!
Moon and her babies, Cow and Blue Eyes.
Socks– the friendliest goat we have and the first animal ever born on our little farm! He’ll let you pet him like a dog (or if you’re a toddler, let you sit on his back!)
Nat. Or when he’s bad, “Nathaniel”
Lisa– unofficial champion jumper. We have never constructed a fence capable of keeping Lisa in.
DOGS
Both of our dogs were adopted; we got Dolce from a local person who posted her on Facebook because their neighbor couldn’t take care of her. Then a couple years ago we got Sheila from the animal shelter as a companion for Dolce since we had lost our old girl, Lady. Sheila, a Corgi-Aussie mix, wasn’t socialized as a puppy so she’s very skeptical of strangers and will nip them if given the chance, but she’s as sweet as can be with those she knows.
PIGS
When we moved out to “the country”, we were offered a potbelly pig who had outgrown her indoor home. Though we didn’t intend on having a pig, we figured no big deal. Ha. Turns out pigs are escape artists (almost as much so as goats) and can be aggressive and territorial. We got another pot belly female to be Annie May’s companion- Piglet August (both middle-named for their birth months). We’ve had more than one problem with Annie May being aggressive, but we have them securely fenced now and just kind of let them live their life and eat all our food scraps. Someday I’ll get around to using their manure for fertilizer, because it’s supposedly some of the best! The pigs like to roll in the mud, move rocks and sticks into their house, and receive nice scratches on the backs.
I think that’s everyone! It’s kind of an ever changing lineup.
So did you guess who’s been around the longest? It’s… Old Speckle! She’s from our first ever batch of chicks we got in the spring of 2016. Robert, the big orange cat, is the runner up; he was a Christmas gift that same year!
Who’s your favorite 😍 ?
Jennifer Blacklock 
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