First topic message reminder :

Very excited today as our sheep Penka gave birth to twins! One male one female.
Both black with a little white patch on their heads. So cute.
However, do we name them or not? One will be destined to breed from, the other for the pot!
Why do baby animals look so sweet?! This is going to be very hard.

Be practical you live in Bulgaria be Bulgarian . They are lovely as lambs but life is about survival ::

We have now named them. Aggie and Petchka Pete!!
But can we actually kill and eat him when the time comes?

Ah diddles!! how lovely

Just an update on the lambs.

Petchka Pete is now in the freezer! The deed was done this morning. Apparently he was killed very quickly so I'm grateful for that.
Little point in having the animals if we're not prepared to eat them. Although he was very tame, he was not a pet.

At least you know he had a good life. I would suggest you keep the prime cuts for when you are used to the idea that this is not your named lamb, just a well reared meal!

We are planning to rear chickens for the table, but as I am a veggie this will not affect me. (I am a cook ,and do cook meat) But I like chickens and was very fond of mine, so there will be two lots. Mr Eq's pure bred project flock of dual purpose birds, and my (hopefully) local egg layers who will probably die of old age. We are, long term, wanting a couple of goats, which will mean progeny for the freezer. This will depend on whether the local shepherd/goatherd is reliable.....I have heard a few horror stories about their "
care"
of their charges in other areas!

Interestingly, Mr Eq does not eat supermarket lamb any more, since being stuck behind wagon of sheep who were very stressed as the temperature was high and the sheep were reaching through the slats for air. We shall see.

Mrs Eq

Equinus wrote:

We are, long term, wanting a couple of goats, which will mean progeny for the freezer. This will depend on whether the local shepherd/goatherd is reliable.....I have heard a few horror stories about their "
care"
of their charges in other areas! Mrs Eq

I see the goat person/shepherd wandering around our village every day, two sisters are the goat people and they take good care of them. They usually take around 15 together and they are all loose except for the big fella that has a head collar and rope attached to him. I assume this is to form some prevention from attacking and nutting anything that is reach of his big horns, especially me when I am walking my big dogs!!! Ouch . . . what was that!!

Our sheep and goat go out with the shepherd every day, except in the snow and torrential rain.
He is very good with them, but is now in his 70's, so not sure what will happen when he retires!
He takes out approx 100 sheep and goats daily. Not bad at all!
4 leva per animal monthly.

One hobby my wife enjoys is incubating and raising chickens..does it fairly small time with usually 60 or 70 results which either end up being swapped around the village or in the freezer. The upside is that we always have plenty of real, free range eggs for our table..she has a market stall owner in the city who almost begs her for eggs and that lady ends up with the surplus. And it is kind of nice to be able to make a 12 egg omelete to be eaten with a fresh, homegrown green salad for brunch on Sundays.