New Lambs On The Homestead | BBQ Rabbit Casserole

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:01:31]We have had a very interesting spring.

[00:01:34]It's snowing today. This is our third spring snowstorm. I'm still surprised that we're getting snow this late. It's not like it's sticking really.

[00:01:43]It's just cold, so we're still using the wood stove. We actually had a lamb born on a really rough spring day. It was Easter Sunday and of course, we're having crazy freezing rain. We have puddles all over the place. We actually had a flood, like the property completely flooded.

[00:02:01]It was about 6:30 in the morning and I heard Pepper are you um I heard her in transition and if you're familiar with giving birth, like I just know from personal experience, transition is that point of where the head is about to come out, so basically it's crowning and it's extremely painful. It's just that's the worst part. The contractions are the worst.

[00:02:24]So, I knew that sound that she was making was that she was in transition.

[00:02:27]So, I yelled out to Ben, "She's in transition, we need to go. We need to go out to the barn and check on her because also I looked outside and the creek was nearly overflowing and ran outside.

[00:02:40]I was the first one to see her and I said she had her lamb and it's in a puddle.

[00:02:44]So, Ben runs over and he picks the lamb up and it's just dripping. It's soaking wet, just dripping everywhere, which is this is like the worst case scenario for a lamb to be born on a really cold day in a puddle. So, they're so wet, they can really die of hypothermia very easily. We spent 2 and 1/2 hours to 3 hours with her in the barn that morning.

[00:03:05]Basically just friction rubbing her, holding a heat lamp, just doing everything we could to warm her up. She was pretty weak that she couldn't get the caps off of Pepper's udders to nurse. So, I've milked my first sheep.

[00:03:19]Basically, I had to milk her to get those caps off and then that worked and she got the colostrum to her baby. It was just crazy. What a crazy first lambing experience. A lot of bad stuff going on.

[00:03:33]But, she's great now. She went out to pasture within 3 days and she's just so big now. She's doing very well. We are definitely going to keep her and add her into the flock. We also have another black sheep little ram that was born 2 days ago. He is doing so awesome. That was like completely unassisted. It was actually a rainy day, too and it was cold, but Coco are you um she was acting like she was ready to have a baby the day prior. She was off on her own. She was laying down, sitting up, pawing at the ground. We could tell she was in labor. So, we were pretty sure that that night she was going to lamb. Got the barn ready for her, all dry, all clean, just in case she wanted to use it, but she lambed outside. Didn't really matter because when we came out in the morning, everything was great. The lamb was walking around with her. He was dry. He was warm and it was snowing, too. So, it was just it was such a beautiful scene to see a new little lamb and his mother just walking around and he was black with the white snow. Oh, it was so pretty. Um so, he's doing really great.

[00:04:40]We actually only kept them in the barn for probably 4 hours while we were at church and that was it. After that, we came home. It was so sunny out, so we just brought them out to pasture and Coco went to eating grass and the little lamb was just experimenting with the world and it was really like a great situation, a great scenario very much unlike our first lamb. So, I hope if we have any more lambs and I'm not even sure we will. Nobody looks pregnant. But, if we have any more lambs, I hope everything goes like that because that was a wonderful lambing experience.

[00:05:14]For dinner tonight, I am going to make a barbecue rabbit casserole. This is actually a chicken recipe. When I look up recipes for rabbit, I actually never look up a rabbit recipe because it just doesn't really exist and pretty much any chicken recipe, you can just replace one to one with a rabbit. So, that's what I'm doing tonight. It's going to be really simple. I actually have to leave town tonight because my kids have some of their extracurricular activities, but we have to travel quite far for that cuz there's just nothing around here. So, because of that, I'm going to prep everything in advance in that way Ben will probably beat me home, but he can just get the wood stove going, put in the oven and everything will be ready to go within 20 minutes of getting home. I also just wanted to comment because I'm really sure that most people who watch the shorts don't actually watch the long form videos. Um but, on one of my recent shorts, I did bait this on purpose because I knew it was going to trigger some people. Um but, basically I said my husband wanted a snack, so I made it for him at night. I knew that was going to ruffle some feathers. For whatever reason, cooking and serving your family or in particular your husband is so offensive to people and I don't get it.

[00:06:31]But, I just wanted to clear the air that I love cooking for him. I love doing everything for him that I can on the wood stove, in the house, cooking, cleaning, all that. I that's how I serve my family and he serves me with getting the firewood, taking care of the property, taking care of the sheep. Like I don't have to do the really difficult things because Ben does it and then he doesn't have to cook a bunch of the meals because I do it and I like to do it.

[00:06:57]That's just how we are. We're like a puzzle piece. We always say that. We fit together very well and that's how we do things here. We work together. I find it hilarious when people are so offended that I might cook for my own husband.

[00:07:10]Isn't that weird? It's really strange. I think it's really strange.

[00:07:18]I keep thinking about how funny some of the comments are on that short.

[00:07:22]Like doesn't he have two hands? Can't he help you with it?

[00:07:26]Can you imagine if I asked Ben to bring in firewood and he said to me, "Well, don't you have two hands?"

[00:07:35]Now, that's outrageous in my opinion. If Ben were to make a short and it said my wife said we needed firewood, nobody would comment, "Doesn't she have two hands?

[00:07:46]Can't she run the saw?" That's just not how we do things here. I think we need to give men a break.

[00:08:51]Is this all the grass we need? Yeah.

[00:08:54]Wait, is it for one rabbit? No, we're going to split it between all of them.

[00:08:58]Oh, so like everyone gets a little bit?

[00:09:01]Just a little bit every day, a little bit more.

[00:09:04]But, it's just like the sheep, you can't give them too much grass at once or they get sick.

[00:09:08]So, we have to give it to them slowly.

[00:09:09]Do you feed this herb or do you feed it as grass? Hi, Dad.

[00:09:12]Um can I have a cookie? Can you give that to Dad?

[00:09:16]Is that a cookie? No, I'm only going to have two. But, I'm eating it.

[00:09:20]I'm having it on my two cookies.

[00:09:24]Yeah, can I have a cookie cookie cookie?

[00:09:27]Cookie cookie.

[00:09:30]Cookie cookie.

[00:09:31]Cookie.

[00:09:33]Can she put it on that way in here?

[00:09:36]Keep going in that way in here.

[00:09:38]And then that's That's really good.

[00:09:52]Oh, no.

[00:09:56]Ready?

[00:10:02]>> Did you just disobey your dad? No.

[00:10:05]Did you just disobey your dad?

[00:10:21]This year with the addition of sheep here, we have a new compassion and that passion is grass.

[00:10:28]Basically, we watch grass grow for fun because once the grass has grown enough, our sheep can go to those areas.

[00:10:35]And right now, we have a lot of just makeshift pastures because we don't technically have the right kind of grass growing just yet. We would like to have 6 in minimum in our big field here. Here.

[00:10:52]Once they're 6 in, we can put sheep there and start rotationally grazing.

[00:10:58]And that'll make life a lot easier because right now, we are moving these temporary fences all over the place just to get the sheep a new area that is safe for them to graze on. Basically, there's worms and eggs in the soil and when they go to graze, if the grass is too short, they will graze over top of those worms and then ingest them and then you have to treat them. And we're actually really have decided wholeheartedly that we would like to not do any chemicals unless it's a life-saving measure for the sheep. So, no vaccine and no worming unnecessarily.

[00:11:33]We are doing a lot of willow. We have researched that willow with the tannins, like I use for tanning the hides, makes an inhabitable environment in the sheep's bellies for worms.

[00:11:45]So, we've been doing a lot of that. They have this woods pasture right now as their main pasture. You'll notice when you look at it, all of the trees are eaten halfway down. All the bushes are eaten down and that is actually a really good thing that they're doing because that means their noses aren't in the ground.

[00:12:08]Their noses are up. And they can't get worms when they eat stuff like that halfway up the branch.

[00:12:16]So, you'll just see that all the branches are clear at about a sheep's head level.

[00:12:29]But, we do expect to probably start getting sheep out to the field within 1 to 2 weeks. That would be perfect world. Um it is wet. Even though it is almost 6 in out there, it's still pretty wet and that's unfortunately not a good thing either because we can't have them stamping it down and killing the grass so that they can't actually return to that spot for rotational grazing. So, timing of this is everything [music] and we're really just learning it for the first time. You know, I never really cared about grass that much. Honestly, I mowed the [music] field down to this much last fall so that it wouldn't grow so high this year.

[00:13:11]And I can tell because [music] we have farmers next door to us and their grass is tall. [music] So, ours is not tall because I mowed it down. So, I won't be doing that next year.