Spotted Fawn Farm

Weeelllll, the post I’m hesitant to post.
I am still on the inactive list for wildlife. I keep muttering it to myself, setting the phrase to music and doodling it in different fonts.
The reality is, I have one fawn with a pelvic break and a hip that was dislocated when someone ran over him with a Toyota Tacoma and he lived to tell about it! (The fawn. The man and his passenger were never in question.)
I kept this little trooper over the holiday weekend and showed up at my favorite vet’s office bright and early Tuesday morning with the rest of the county, feeling doom and dreading the prognosis. I recognized that cloud that comes over one’s heart when dealing with rehab animals, be they wildlife or farm animals. There’s a whole lotta doom in animal hospice and my heart is already a little bruised up over the last few years. I shy away from sadness like I’m in a video game. Nope! Zonk! Parkour!
I will confess, I get a sort of zing from maggots, enjoy a good suture, and I could watch surgery and eat popcorn. When Dr. Hitchcock and Dr. Mac manhandled this little fawn’s hip back into joint, with help from two assistants and set to the cries of a mostly anesthetized, but not totally anesthetized, fawn, I felt bees in my head. They are such badass heros to so many animals it was nothing to them but will mean a good strong life for this little buck. I love to learn but will never be the one to put a dislocated joint back into place. Gives me the wi***es!
In addition, I have a sassy little doe who refuses to eat and is still on a tube feed, which is just aggravating for us both. I’m waiting her out and I’m reminded of raising toddlers. It’s about the same sort of stubbornness. I’ve waited out a two year old with green peas on her plate, I can get this fawn on a bottle.
There is a sweetness and rhythm to fawns that feels familiar and good. 24 years of raising them is ingrained in my soul yet I learn something new about them all the time.
Our lives are not back in the groove all the way but it’s good enough. I told a friend that I’ve spent the last two years circling the wagons, cutting off that and those that don’t support us, and putting all our energy on healing our own. It’s time to wade gently back into service while maintaining a balance.
To keep things in perspective, my husband had some friends over yesterday and I kept thinking “What smells so bad?”. It was me. Fawn p**p.
They say 2026 is the year to return to glamour so I’m well on my way.

Oh all right. I’ll confess. My belligerent tortoise made a hasty escape yesterday after all the shearing hubbub. To be fair, his door was left open so it wasn’t much of an escape. Once, several years ago, he burst through a wire horse fence like the kool-aid man, leaving an exact, tortoise-shaped hole. That was a jerk move.
I posted on my little town’s page and alerted the neighbors and he was discovered on the side of the road, heading who knows where.
I always like to say, when talking about tortoises, that they do not make good pets and it’s a really unfair life for them. I so wish they weren’t legal to sell, willy-nilly, to any and everybody with a little aquarium. Because, THEY GROW LIKE CRAZY!
If you’ve followed us for a while you know what it takes to keep a giant behemoth thriving. They eat certain foods, need the right temperatures (mine has two heaters and a heated floor in the winter) and, embarrassingly, the proper fencing. They climb. They tear out walls. They go through glass doors. They move furniture and open random paint cans and spread paint through entire barns, or so I’m told.
They are intelligent and curious. In the wild, they walk miles a day. Tortoises aren’t slow.
My Tortellini came to me through a DNR call 25 years ago. He has been both a joy and a struggle and my kids have no love left for him due to picking him up and fighting his big clawed feet so many times.
But he should be in Africa, walking and meeting lady shells, digging and sunning. It’s not his fault and I do love the stuffin’ out of him.
I encourage everyone wanting an easy indoor pet to research and adopt a house rabbit instead. Loving, easily litter trained sweethearts that don’t mind being left behind when you’re at work or school. Tortoises are often “set free” and they do not survive.

The boy in the picture is now turning 30. That’s how long we’ve dealt with his antics (both the boy and the tortoise) and the picture with me is this morning, on the side of the road where he was sashaying out into the unknown.

Ah, the day that strikes fear in my heart is successfully off the list for a year!
Four woolies went easily into the barn but one stupid girl, Anna Beth, caused a rodeo. My back will be wonky for a week!
Everyone is sleek and beautiful now thanks to the wonderful Nicole and Hartwell, the grooviest and most excellent shearers on earth. They make the whole process seem easy and fun.
All my naked ruminants are nervously enjoying a cool breeze and giggling at each other.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers of two-footed and four-footed children. Even you mothers of snakes!
I read a blurb today that said motherhood is just a long term relationship of letting go, little by little. It sure is hard but it’s the sweetest and most bittersweet job on earth. Even those of us who rehab feel the tug at release but we know it’s for the best. I still text my two-footed children or talk to them on the phone 1000 times a day so I might be failing at that release but, eh, life is for learning. I do better with the fawns. (Perhaps the difference is the sharp little hooves that kick my shins.)
So, for all of you who have shared this well over a million times, let’s help those orphaned fawns and ESPECIALLY those who ARE FINE!
Please share the actual post by clicking on it below (so no one has to read all this blithering) and let’s get the word out, again, about when a baby needs help and when you can just enjoy the sweet view from your window of a fawn sleeping in your yard. Babies are on the ground right now. ‘Tiz the season.
Every year you blow me away by how far this travels. I love you caring people, especially you sweet mothers, with giant hearts that hold everything for everyone. 💚
Share, make your friends share, your kids, your parents. No kidnapped babies this year!

I beg each of you to share this PLEASE!
Well well well….
Guess what time it is?
We got our first fawn a week ago and he’s a pip! Finder did everything right. The mother was killed and they brought it right to me, didn’t try to feed it or take it home to play with it.
Second one, same sad scenario but the finder again did just great and even brought us some goat milk!
We received a third today that was a straight up kidnapping situation, finder has had it for over a week and fed it something that could kill it. Grrrrr!
We expect another tomorrow and two more transfers over the next few days.
Let’s go over that info ONE MO TIME for those people living under a rock!

Criteria for removing a fawn:

Is it
A. Walking and crying simultaneously?
B. Lying with neck outstretched?
C. Visible injuries?
D. Mother found dead
If not, fawn is perfectly fine. Mothers see their babies 5 times a day for less than 5 minutes. They do not stay with them. They hide them in people's yards, on porches, under trampolines, weird places. Sometimes for days in a row. It’s OKAY! Let nature do its thing and keep dogs inside or away from it while it’s there.
Never feed any milk products, formula found at tractor supply, ANYTHING, without speaking to a licensed rehabilitator. Removing a fawn because the mom hasn’t been seen or because it’s in an area that seems dangerous is kidnapping. We do not remove due to location.
To find a local rehabilitator, check your state’s DNR website or call a vet.
It is illegal to keep wildlife for more than 24 hours. When fawns are discovered being raised as pets they are euthanized.

Spread the word!

LEAVE THE BABY ALONE

Slytherin. The hat has spoken.
(Also, I don’t hold snakes with their weight dangling except for a quick, one second pic.)
These snakes have left their honeymoon spot, with full egg buffet under my sweet hens, and moved to the feed barn where they are being forced to work. Get a dang job, ye serpents of sloth.

Hide your children’s eyes, frog p**n.
As our thoughts turn collectively towards spring I’ve gotten several messages asking about my frogs. Catherine Graham, I feel you are unnaturally focused on them. (😂😂😂😂😂😂)
Let me tell you that I have moved my overwintered starter plants out of the greenhouse and into all my ponds where they will expand and cover, within weeks, every surface my geese can’t reach. Plants will cover the tubes and hoses and things will be a lush amphibian playground.
My giant frogs are sitting, singing and sunning on the rocks and on the surface of the water like fat men in a hot tub.
This morning, I interrupted this obscene moment, in broad daylight, at 11:51 am, as if these two don’t even have jobs. They will become more deadbeat parents adding dozens of offspring to the cacophony that is my garden.
As with most sneaky suspects, they never shut up unless I pull out my phone. They keep up the party all night.
It’s everyone’s duty to support these frogs. I can’t do it alone. Everyone can easily get a bucket, a $9 pump, and buy a couple of juicy frogs from an Asian grocery. (Be prepared to argue that you don’t need them cut up and take your own bucket with a lid. The grocers will not be pleased!). Frogs have been the easiest and most enjoyable clowns I’ve ever added to my garden. There’s a short but sweet clip of the sound they sing all day long until they know I’m filming. I hid behind my bedroom door to catch one big ribit! It’s in the comments because technology is just too much to figure out.

Oh, and I found a snake in my henhouse, just packed with eggs. Y’all can safely put out your ferns. Nothing says safe planting like an egg-filled snake and some offended hens.