Picky eaters

The sheep don’t have a chance to be picky eaters. They graze on grass in the summer, on alfalfa hay in the winter and are supplemented with a little bit of corn the six weeks before lambing. Not much variety in their diet.

Newton the dog has even less variety. He gets one particular type of dog food. If we change the food, he gets diarrhea. So we try never to change his food. Interestingly, he never gets diarrhea from snacks.

Simon my youngest grandson, at 9 months, eats everything that comes within reach, including that one particular type of dog food. He is always hungry and squawks if we slow down while spoon feeding him. He’s a lot like his older cousin Jasper who also eats voraciously, but would just as soon not eat tomatoes or cucumbers and some other vegetable type foods. My oldest grandson, Kieran, is the original picky eater. He doesn’t like much of anything except fish, snacks and dessert, certainly not vegetables. In fact, he knows before you even tell him what we’re having for dinner that he won’t like it. Presumably they’ll all grow out of these phases.

The chickens are also picky eaters, but for them, it comes naturally. They wander through the barn and barnyard, pecking at the bedding, picking up bugs, grains and bits of sheep poop. In comparison to the chickens, I don’t mind my oldest picky eater so much; at least we don’t have to supply him with sheep poop.