Connections

I received an invite on Facebook from a farm friend. It is the farm where Bella was born. I am always intrigued by photos and went bopping around the site checking out their amazing donkey herd. This is the Feaver Farm. As I was looking at their beautiful place a little black donkey caught my eye. Wow – same body language in so many ways as Bella! I commented on the photos in that vein … and low and behold … it was Bella! Neat how you can tell her body language almost four years ago! She was (and still is) such a beautiful little thing. And as you can see in the first picture with Caroline … she has always been a great cuddly little thing! Having spent time with the Tryon farm critters I can see the difference in animals that people spend time with. It does make a difference. Animals that are well socialized feel safe around people – and count them as friends. Thank you Caroline for spending the time with Bella when she was so little to encourage her to be the amazing little creature she is now!

In other creature news … we started off with a great cool wind out of the northwest. Perfect morning for hanging out in the back paddock or grazing on the hillside in the woods. The jennies took full advantage of that! So did we humans. By noon hour the winds died down and the donkeys retreated for their afternoon snooze.

As you can see … my vow to keep the Guineas in their run for the weekend lasted all of zero days! 😉 The traffic was much less today and Miss Charlie was yelling at the top of her lungs to get out. So we decided it would be a good day for practice. We took down the old tattered tarps from the northern fence line. Thinking perhaps the Guineas would like to check out the back field instead of the traffic! They were pleased and did a great job of sticking to this side of the road. I have also decided I am not going to shut them into their coop each night. I will close down the run – so the farthest they can go is there – but no more forced indoor sleeping. Last night I went out after dark to close their coop door. I stopped at the screened in window first. I accidentally bumped into the wire and Hssssss! SNAP! Whichever poor Guinea was closest (they perch up against that window) had been sleeping and when suddenly awakened had a great ‘fight’ response. Wow! I was impressed! Wouldn’t want to take that bird on in a dark alley!