Meet Rose Shadow’s Cinnamon!

She’s a beautiful girl with beautiful fleece!  Just look at those eye lashes!  Have you ever seen eye lashes that long?  Also notice the grey on her ears and nose.  With her sire being a grey, our guess is she would produce a grey cria (pronounced CREE-AH) when bred to a grey!

Cinnamon is now weaned and up for sale.  Special weaning price of $1200.  Price will go up so get her while you can at her special price!  She would make a lovely addition to your herd.

Cinnamon

Cinnamon

Cherokee wins an AKC Major Event.

Great news for Buhund Lovers and for Rose Shadow Ranch!!  “Cherokee” has passed her hip (OFA) and eye (CERF) tests and is good to go with breeding!!

Cherokee has champion bloodlines and beautifully correct conformation.  She is the sweetest dog and great with the kids and helping on the farm!  We are very excited to see what this two time AKC Major winner can produce!!  This will be her first litter!

Pedigrees for both dogs available upon request.  Sire to be announced soon!

Puppies expected mid June 2013!

Reservations for puppies now being accepted!

Don’t miss your chance to have one of these beautiful and rare puppies!!

Email us for more information – [email protected]

Here at the ranch, we have lots of feathered and furry friends, my favorites are the chickens!  I just love the chickens and I love hatching eggs and raising up chicks!  I’ve successfully hatched out hundreds of cute little fluffy butts and I have to say, it never gets old!

This last hatch was my smallest yet most successful to date!  Out of 9 eggs, 8 hatched!! I have 5 lovely Plymouth Barred Rocks and 3 beautiful Olive Eggers!  I am trying to master the skill of feather sexing, which is supposed to be effective with certain breeds only.  If I’m right, I have 4 pullets and 1 cockerel in the PBRs and 1 pullet and 2 cockerels in the OEs.  We shall see.  Do you know how to feather sex day old chicks? Are you successful at it?

The picture to the left is from the “Chicken Encyclopedia” it shows how to tell the difference in wing feathers in chicks 1-3 days old.  You’ll notice they both have 2 layers of feather “quills.”  Pullets have a shorter second layer whereas a cockerel has a longer second layer.  As a matter of fact, cockerels 2 layers are almost even.

This first picture is of one of my Olive Egger chicks.  At 3 days old, I believe this is a cockerel.  It was difficult to fan the wings out so you could clearly see the difference in lengths, they were quite even!

The second picture is of one of my Plymouth Barred Rock chicks.  At 3 days old, I believe this is a pullet.  Notice you can clearly see the difference in the 2 lengths.

What do you think?

It is almost spring here on the ranch and you know what that means…..chick season!!  This is one of my favorite times of the year!  This year, on top of our usual hatchings, we will be raising for the first time ever, meat birds!  In our quest to live a more self sufficient lifestyle, raising meat birds was a no brainer.  We will be trying 2 breeds, Red Rangers and Plymouth Rocks.  My hope is that after this season, I will never have to buy chicks or meat bird hatching eggs ever again.  My plan is to keep 2 hens and 1 rooster from each breed to keep the cycle going.

In the meantime, we are busy working on yet another coop and run area for them.  For the most part they will be free ranging, but for those times when no one is home they need their own run area.  The coop is yet another recycled fruit/vegetable stand that a local grocery store gave me when they replaced them with new ones.  It measures 5 feet by 5 feet and 4 feet tall, perfect for a chicken coop after a few modifications!

We’ll keep you posted on our journey with meat birds.  Until then, Happy Hatching!

Hi Friends!

Nothing in particular to post about today, so I thought I’d catch you all up on what we’ve been up to lately.

First and foremost, we are farm shopping!  It’s time for us to move onto bigger and better, so we’ll be listing our current house in the very near future.  I’m really excited about this, but it will be bittersweet.  The house we own and currently live in, has been in my family since it was built in 1952.  3 generations have now been raised in this house.  I have so many memories here, I will be sad to see it go, but the reality is, it is just a house and the memories will live on in me forever.  Brings me to tears just typing this out to you, but in order for me to live out my dreams, this is what we have to do.  Holding back because of sentimental reasons will only result in regrets later in life.  I already have enough of those, I don’t want anymore!  I also don’t want to look back and say I never got to do what I always wanted to do with my life.  Pursuing your dreams, is where you’ll find happiness.

Homesteading

When we’re not shopping for a new farm, I am focusing on learning new homesteading skills in addition to the canning skills I learned back in the fall.  In the last month or so, we have not bought bread from the store, I have been making it using organic ingredients!  Now that a very close friend of mine has moved to an Amish community, I am able to get supplies from really great sources and at really good prices!  I have also taken to making our own butter!  I have been buying organic cream from the store, but with any luck, I will soon be getting it by the gallon from the Amish for a fraction of the cost of buying it in stores!  I’m so excited for this!  Maybe, just maybe, once we move, I’ll get a milk cow! I have been making our own laundry soap, body wash, dishwasher detergent and body lotion bars too!  We have also made the move to stop using so much paper towel.  This has been one of the most challenging for me, because I love the thought of throwing away the germs and not putting them in my washing machine! We also just bought a quarter beef from a USDA certified organic Amish farm!  Not only will my family be eating healthier, but I will be rendering the fat/suet from that to make my own oil! I am also going to be getting supplies this weekend to attempt making my own cheese! I am AMAZED at the amount of money we have already saved!

The Norwegian Buhunds

Our newest dog “Storm” continues to do well with us.  She and Cherokee are best buddies now and have so much fun playing “wolf wars.”  Cherokee is due to go in heat this spring and we plan on breeding her for the first time!  This will be very exciting!  If you’re interested in a puppy, get your reservations in now!

The Alpacas

Not really too much to report with them.  We have high hopes that “Buffy” is expecting again, but she has not been ultrasounded yet so we’ll keep you posted on that!

The Poultry

It’s been a cold winter this year, a far cry from the extremely mild winter we had last year.  with that said, I have had NO eggs from the Serama Bantams, I hope that changes when the weather warms up.  The rest of the ladies have been doing well with laying except our Easter Egger, who is around 9 months old and still has never laid an egg!  She’s definitely a hen so I’m not sure why this is happening.  My hope is she will start laying this spring.

That about sums it up folks.  Spring is right around the corner and gardening plans are under way, differently this year due to moving but still with produce nonetheless.  I hope you’ve enjoyed catching up with us!

It is with great sadness that I report to you that we have suffered yet another loss here on the ranch, this time due to unfortunate circumstances resulting in a great tragedy.

Our rose grey herdsire “Fire-N-Ice Storm” (not to be confused with out new dog Storm) whom we sold to another farm in WI at 4 months old, was tragically killed in a bear attack last spring. We have just learned of this accident recently when we contacted his new owner wondering if he had any cria on the ground yet.  When we sold Storm, we sold him with a clause in the contract that we would still get to breed our unrelated Dams with him.  He has such beautiful color, it is a shame that he never passed on those genes.  Apparently the bear pulled him over a fence and dragged him away.  An adult male alpaca can weigh upwards of 250 lbs. this must of been a rather large bear.  As that young cria, Storm was probably our most lovable and curious.  Any time we were out in the pasture he would come running up to greet us.  We will miss him.

In my quest to rid my family of harsh and dangerously toxic chemicals, I am finding that with a little research and perhaps a little experimenting, I can make all my own bathroom necessities too!  You all saw my post on homemade laundry soap, which I absolutely LOVE!  Last week I made homemade body wash which I also LOVE!  It’s simple too!

Here’s what you need:

Ingredients

~1 Tbsp. steel cut oats

~1 sprig of lavender or other herb of choice (optional)

~1 cup distilled water

~1 Tsp. citric acid (this prevents bacterial growth in the body wash)

~2 Tbsp. coconut oil (or other organic oil of choice, i.e. almond, olive, etc.)

~1Tbsp. honey (I use organic raw honey)

~1.5 cups liquid castile soap (I used Dr. Bronners mild baby)

~1Tsp. guar gum (a natural thickening agent)

~20-30 drops of essential oils (optional and your preference, I used tea tree and lavender)

Directions:

1.  Boil water and pour over the oats and lavender or whatever you choose to infuse, cover and let sit for an hour, then strain to remove oats and lavender from your infusion.

2. In a bowl, whisk together your oil, honey (you may want to heat both slightly to make it easier to mix) infusion and citric acid.

3.  Sprinkle in the guar gum, whisk to combine and then immediately add and whisk in the castile soap (if you wait too long it will begin to thicken and you will have clumps) continue to whisk until well blended and smooth.

4.  Add your essential oils and mix well.

5.  Store in a clean empty bottle out of direct sunlight and shake before each use. ***Note: this mixture contains raw food ingredients with only a mild preservative (citric acid) to avoid any bacterial growth, you may want to break it down into smaller bottles, enough for about a week’s worth, and store the rest in the fridge.  I have not refridgerated mine and have not had any problems.  This is just precautionary.  Enjoy!

**the internet is filled with similar recipes for this, that’s where I found this.  I modified it slightly to make it my own.**

Young Freya

It is with a sad and heavy heart that we had to say good-bye to our old girl Freya last night.   Freya was our Norwegian import (Norwegian Buhund) who came to us one feisty little pup!  Norvagus Prinsesse Freya born 1/31/99 had to be put to rest just a couple weeks shy of her 14th birthday on 1/7/13 @ 8:00pm.  She didn’t go outside with the other dogs that morning, I thought nothing of it, this is typical of her so I let her be.  I came home from work over 3 hours later to find her in the exact same spot she was when I left and she didn’t greet me when I came in.  I knew something was wrong!  We learned when she turned 2 at her OFA exam that she had “shallow sockets” in short, hip dysplasia, so, as she got older, getting up was more challenging for her.  I gave her a nudge as I usually do to get her up and that’s when I noticed that her right rear leg was folded under her and she couldn’t get up.  I physically lifted her and saw that she had no use of her right rear or right front legs.  Freya had suffered a stroke 🙁 We spend the afternoon trying to work with her and help her in hopes of her regaining use.  I called our vet who is also a personal friend, and he said at her age, she wouldn’t recover.  I had a decision to make.

We had 13 good years with her.  She was a good dog and a great friend, we will miss her dearly!  We love you Freya girl and we will never forget you.  You’re memory will live on in our hearts forever!

Freya with baby Cherokee

Freya and Thor

Freya’s last day

I would like to introduce you to our newest addition to our family, this is “Vision Acres Storm” we call her “Stormie.”  She came to us from a farm in West Virginia.  She is 1 year old, and even though she looks different from our other Buhunds, she is indeed still a Norwegian Buhund!  Did you know they also come in black!  They do!  Black is a rarer color and we are thrilled we now have one!  Cherokee is happy she now has a friend to run and romp around with.  Thor and Freya are just too old to play “wolf wars” anymore.

Lineage~

Vision Acres Storm’s parents are: Sire~Cascilius Hugo Boss and Dam~Trollheimen’s Reba Rocks.

Prior to coming to live with us, Storm was just a farm dog who ran with her dog Mom outside in a kennel.  She has never had any training or learned any house manners (as luck would have it, she came crate trained at least).  I really thought we were going to have our work cut out for us with her.  Her first week here went really well!  I was shocked!  We never even heard her bark (a rarity for Buhunds!)  Her second week here, she started to show more of her true colors!  She had a couple of accidents in the house and even chewed a couple minor things!  She barks more now too (I knew the no barking thing was too good to be true!)

Today, “Storm is still learning the rules of the house and yard, but overall is doing quite well in her new home.  We still need to keep an eye on her while she’s outside.  I’m also continuing to teach her not to chase the chickens (she is a herding breed after all, but I trained Cherokee so I have hope) or chew up things that don’t belong to her.  Have I mentioned that Buhunds are extremely smart!  She hasn’t had any more accidents in the house and she seems to be getting more confident and less skiddish.  We hope with a little more effort, we can get her in the show ring and a lot less shy.

She has become a nice addition to our family, she just adores the kids (no surprise there, as Buhunds love children, they are wonderful family dogs), and we look forward to seeing her offspring! 

She’s so black that she’s hard to get a good picture of, she has the most beautiful dark eyes that blend right in with her color!  We believe she is perfect according to breed standards!