#The Homestead Barnes

[souplover-69]

light creeping through an abandoned barn

[backroad-life]

Credit: Backroad-life

[ipromisetostaywild]

[axololtls]

[oldfarmhouse]

𝗁𝗍𝗍𝗉s://instagram.com/awalkinthewild

[cowboymeemaw]

Barn Cats

Meet Fee, our residential farm lady-

This post is going to go over the importance of barn cats to our farm. Though before I do all that let's get some facts about my barns kitties.

-All my barns cats have free access to outside, the barn, and the house whenever they like. Though they have their own cat room in the barn and prefer that area.

-All barn cats are flea treated, wormed, and spayed/neutered.

-None of my barn cats are feral.

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The Importance Of Barn Cats

When you hear of barn cats, a lot of people think of pets that aren't cared for so they're thrown outside. That is infact wrong! These cats are important to the health and safety of our animals, especially our poultry.

At my land personally we tend to deal with mice issues, horribly. Mice are cute but they carry diseases that can harm our animals. They're very good at chewing into feed bags and contaminating feed, causing money loss and unusable feed.

Mice are sneaky, unfortunately sometimes we don't notice they got into the feed until it's too late. An example of this is they got into the chick feed and their feces caused the death of multiple young chickens. They also like to eat out expensive hog feed, bit the pigs usually eat them back 🤦‍♂️

And to fight back to this issue, we have Barn Cats. These cats are machines, they can successfully kill dozens of mice and prevent them from ruining feed. Ever since getting barn cats there has been a major improvement in the amount of rodents in our barns!

Other animals the cats have successfully delt with are snakes and opossums! We don't have venomous snakes but we do have egg stealers and chick eaters. These cats have successfully made it so we haven't lost anything to a snake in two years!

Now our cats don't get rid of opposums by death. Rather they just deter them from entering the property. Opposums are lovely little creatures but they do attack poultry, and their feces (if consumed by horses) can cause the horse to have a neurological issue and die.

These cats are also incredibly smart! They will kill a mouse or a bird in the feed, but completely ignore a hen and her freshly born chicks! They're able to make a respectful relationship with our livestock! Without them we'd be flushed with rodents and snakes!

[lonestarboyfriend]

[pwurrz]

if you let your fucking cat outside unsupervised i am going to kill you. i am going to beat you to death with a hello kitty baseball bat and i am going to kill you

there is no excuse and there is nothing you could say that would make me think that just letting your cat free roam outside unsupervised is okay.

[gargelyfloof118]

Snow is deeper. Air is colder. Animals still need fed. Hubs and I bundled up and headed out.

Pro tip: if you didn't know before, please be advised that cloth masks are fantastic for keeping warm, humid air around your nose and mouth. I did not do this yesterday and was in a coughing/vomiting fit by the time I made it to the horse barn. It is SIGNIFICANTLY colder today. I put a mask on. I made it to the horses, fed them, and made it back to the house with barely any discomfort. So yeah, use a mask in cold weather.

Horses were fed and warmer blankets put on. (We add some hot water to their feed to soak it and give them some warm liquid for their bellies. They love feeding time!)

Seamus would like seconds, please.

The chickens water was frozen. Thankfully, I brought some hot water for them as well. I moved the waterer under the heat lamp and poured the hot water in the base. Hopefully, that helps for now. I'm planning on bringing a dish and some warm water later. But would like to research what would be best first.

The birds are quite happy to stay inside for the time being.

[sanguinarysanguinity]

Today is my father-in-law’s 90th Birthday (Observed). The party is supposed to be at 1pm, but in the way of my wife’s family, celebrants began arriving at 9am.

I am hiding in the basement, writing fic, while I can still get away with it.

[somethingcooltolookat]

[souplover-69]

old barn slowly falling apart

[forestduck]

[rmspeltzfarm]

Making the farm great again

Making the Farm great again

[axololtls]

[oldfarmhouse]

https://www.pinterest.com.