... so you must really like animals?

When we were working at our architects we were chatting away (in French) to one of the guys we were working with. We were telling him about our current list of animals

2 horses
2 cows (one on loan but another coming when it goes)
1 dog
1 cat
5 chickens
12 baby chickens
10 sheep
9 baby sheep
3 rabbits
Total - 45

He said - 'Wow you must really love animals!!'

I thought about it, one the whole I can't say I do!
I like horses.
Dogs I kind of like, but they smell and shed hair everywhere. Of course I love ours - I don't notice the smell any more, but she surely does cover everything in hair. Some other people's dogs are lovely, some not so much.
Cats I always thought I liked and wanted one (there was a period when I was perhaps 8 where I plagued my poor parents day and night for one) but having one I am less sure. She is quite cute and all (despite trying to take your hand off from time to time) but she is a shit machine and keeps digging up the flower pots to use as a toilet. She is useful for keeping the rodent population down though so she can stay.
The rest are food animals and can be quite cute sometimes, but I wouldn't say I exactly like them or that we have them because we like animals. We like what we can do with the products from them and we do very much enjoy learning about them and interacting with them. But I don't think we are 'animal lovers' like you might think we must be to have so many. I guess we might have problems killing and eating them if we were.
The cows I generally like, but at the moment actively dislike after 2 escape episodes (the second I think I did not blog but we spent half a day with a hangover trailing around in the beaming sunshine following sightings of them from various neighbors before eventually finding them behind a cowshed with about 30 cows and a bull between them and home - the neighbor very kindly rounded them all up in to his shed so we could get past easily. Frustratingly he said hup hup at them a couple of times and they all went where they were he wanted them leaving us dragging our stroppy two along in an embarrassingly uncooperative fashion aaaargh). They are now in with the sheep and need taking water twice a day - which is hard work down and up the steep slope.

Cows in the sheep field with horses outside in the larger field

When we were originally looking to buy cows I chanced on this blog, she has a lovely outlook on life - and obviously does love all animals and struggle when one has to be slaughtered or dies! I laughed a little at her woes trying to keep cows in a field - but only in a gentle and nice way because I now understand all to well the trauma of trying to keep animals where they are meant to be. Don't they understand we are just trying to keep them safe and give them nice grass and water??
The sheep also go walkabout occasionally (the ones in the orchard where the fence is a bit rickity in places - but they always go to the same place so they are not so annoying to get back (touch wood). They always go in to one of the neighbors fields, we can't understand why they prefer to to our ones that they pass through to get there, but sure they have their reasons - the first time it happened we were glad we had a bell on one of them as it let us locate them. We are thinking about a bell for the cows too - although you have to be reasonably close to them for it to help...
This entry started off as a quick thought triggered by a conversation (we have similar confusion about how 'green' we are deep down - despite living quite a green life at the moment) but became a rant about escaping animals!

I hope I haven't come across as too negative about our livestock! I don't think we are traditional 'animal lovers' as the guy we were talking to meant, but we get a great deal of entertainment and satisfaction from having all the animals and really enjoy caring for them, learning about them and interacting with them. Once we have managed to implement our fencing master plan (in approx 10 years time) I will love some of them a lot more!