Our micro farm has quite the assortment of animals, especially after the last few years.
In our home, we have 3 cats and a dog. We have our cat "owl" Jetta whom is a torti female and wants nothing to do with anyone, except for Brad. We adopted her my first year here in IA, in 2007, from the humane society for my birthday. In 2008, for my birthday we adopted a 4 month old black lab puppy. India, is just now learning that she's not a puppy anymore, but loves being a farm dog. She loves playing fetch, and attempting to help us herd the barnyard animals back in:) In 2010 we adopted Sugar, our playful calico cat, whom still thinks she's a kitten, and Alice our "black panther." Alice is our quiet cat, being all black, and only is out in the early morning light, sunbathing time or when she's hungry.
In the barnyard, we still have horses, as that was the main purpose of this farm, until we decided to try living as much as possible off of our farm. So December of 2010 we added milking goats. In the fall of 2011 we added laying hens with a chicken tractor. We also added alpaca's in the summer of 2011. They were in need of a good home, so why not:)
We currently have our horses and ponies. Annie is our mini mare, and Patches is a Shetland pony. We have our BLM mustangs, Harley, Apache and Tenacity. We have Chance, whom is our new paint horse this past year and Molly, our so dependable, anybody can ride horse. And whom can forget our eldest, our red roan Clydesdale Meg. This is her retirement home:)
We have 18 milking goats, mostly saanens. We do have 1 lamancha, 1 toggenburg, and 1 alpine mix. This year we were able to get ourselves a good alpine registered buck. Hopefully this will add to a great mix. Our goats are breed and baby's are due at the end of April.
We have 15 white leg horn laying hens, which do their job very well. It's not the breed I wanted, but it works for now. They were young, and a great price, and provide our family with plenty of eggs:)
To add to the mix we have our 2 white alpaca's left. We lost our eldest one late in 2011, a grayish colored male. They are fun to be around and I can see why people really enjoy them.
Who knows what will be added next.... Will it be sheep, or maybe a pig or two? Maybe even some cows? What about Turkeys? Haven't decided yet, but we have room to play with, and room that could be put to use:)
