Farmlife Revisited

Well. It has been a loooooooooong time since I've posted on here. This is mostly intentional. I find it just too painful to deal with anything regarding the old farm, chickens, and especially goats. Honestly, I never intended to post again or probably even look at my blog, and probably wouldn't have if I didn't finally have something to say. I have had a surprising number of supportive emails and comments from devoted readers of my blog, which to this day I am still in awe that such things even exist. I am incredibly flattered, comforted, and heartened to know that so many people out there really give a crap about what went down on my farm. I have had classmates come to me who stumbled upon my blog from my myspace status, and one girl even said she sat down and read the whole thing in one go and cried for half an hour. I couldn't believe it. It all seems so distant to me now that I sometimes think it could have been a dream, or more appropriately, a nightmare. Don't get me wrong, the first 10 months were probably some of the happiest of my life, but the final few after the dog attack negated any good feelings from the previous.

My brother, Eric, lives there now with his wife and two adolescent boys, William and Kyle. They still have the remaining goats and chickens that I did not sell, namely Tierra, Mumble, and Sable, broken neck and all. I have only seen her once since moving, and she was still small, thin, and with patches of hair falling out. Needless to say it didn't quell the bad mental picture I had of her. Since then, though, my mom reports that she is still the same size she was just after the attack, at about 4-5 months old, but now downright fat and glossy, which does my heart good. I think the trauma of the attack and her broken neck were just too much for her growing body and permanantly stunted her growth. Tierra is doing well, and this is the first year of her life that she has not been bred, which is a welcome change, I'm sure. There is a slight chance that Mumble, the Nigerian Dwarf buck, might have found a way to get at her, but as of yet she's still showing no signs of pregnancy. Mumble is doing well, too, and is the tiniest little buck I have ever seen. He'd probably be worth a fortune with his small size if it weren't for the horn scur he has. But hey, he was my very first disbudding and by all accounts bucks are very difficult to keep from scurring due to their extreme levels of testosterone. Every single girl I disbudded turned out beautifully. Eric has since gotten a pig and a horse, if you can believe that, and though I have yet to meet the horse, I guess she is gargantuan. Eric, a carpenter by trade, has redone the barn and I hear it is quite nice now. My mom tells me the horse goes right into the barn with the goats and Tierra, who is no tiny animal herself, walks right under the horse's belly without even ducking her head. Wow! I didn't know what to be more shocked by, the fact that Tierra is ABLE to walk under the horse's belly or the fact that she WANTS to.

So a couple of people have told me that I should turn my farm blog into a book. While extremely flattered, at the time I laughed it off. But recently I have gotten the writing bug, and I would love to write a book, but unfortunately I have absolutely no imagination, so fiction is out of the question. So that has left me brainstorming for anything in my life interesting enough to even talk about, let alone write about. My escapade as a farmer is one of the stranger things I have done, and now that I am thoroughly submerged in a "normal" city life, every so often, such as while sitting outside my Microbiology classroom at college, somebody will mention that they grew up on a farm and I'll blurt out, "I used to have a farm in Walterboro. I raised milk goats." Inevitably all mouths stop and all eyes turn to me. Here I am, a young woman with what has been recently dubbed "funky red hair", tattoos, and sporting more than my fair share of facial piecings, claiming to have been-there-done-that-goat-farming. I understand their confusion. So I'm thinking about writing a book about it. Or at least attempting to write a book about it. My father wrote five books, something that was brought to my attention only a few years ago, so it could even technically be said that it is in my blood. ;) I know when I was starting out as a farmer, I would have loved to read something like it.

I started it today. I am as of this minute on page TWO, mind you! That would be exactly 845 words into it, and if wikipedia can be trusted, it only takes about 25,000 words to be considered a book. But honestly, if I incorporate the actual blog posts, it puts me at over 51,000 words... suddenly seems a lot more feasible, doesn't it? And that doesn't even include pictures.

Here are a couple of updated family photos, just to keep you all informed that we are still alive and kicking. I recently got accepted to the Medical University of South Carolina (kind of a big deal, apparenlty, who knew Charleston had it's own little Harvard? haha!) and I start nursing school August 17th. I'm thrilled, scared s***less, and overwhelmed at the prospect of juggling 32 hours a week of school, plus a reported 15-20 hours of study time each week, a husband and a kindergartener all at once. Thank goodness the program is only 16 months, so I'll be graduating with a Bachelors Degree next Christmas (2010). The plan is to get my Masters in Midwifery.

I know, he's beautiful! Every time I see this picture all I can say is, yea, that came outta me!

Here's the aforementioned "funky red hair," including new tattoo. Yes, I've gone completely to the dark side and covered my upper back in tattoo ink, dyed my hair an unnatural shade of red, and even got my lip pierced. Blame city livin'! Or finally being old enough to do the things I've always wanted to do and a boss who will let me. (I'm currently working part time as a bookkeeper/assistant to a woman who arranged continuing education for teachers.)

Pictures!!

Well, the new digital camera finally came so I can post some belated pictures of the aftereffects of what the goats suffered.

Here is a picture of Sable, bent neck and all. Her neck is permanently bent in this position. Its still pretty scabby and scaly looking. She was doing much better until a couple weeks ago when all of a sudden she couldn't walk again. I suspect Lucy head butted her and screwed up her broken neck even more. She's back to walking now, actually more stumbling about like a drunk from a now pinched spinal nerve (thank you, Lucy), but I usually have to help her to her feet. As of last night when I saw Lucy haul off and butt her for no reason as she trying to hide up against the side of the barn, I've decided that when the goats are out when I'm home Lucy will either have to stay shut up in the barn or locked back in the back pasture. Sable needs to be out in the sunshine and fresh air, and Lucy can be the one to pay the consequences.Lucy's face has healed so incredibly that I still just can't believe that's the same goat who's eye we thought was missing and her whole face was covered in blood! Her eye has healed so well that you can barely see the scar on the inside corner anymore.She also had a huge half dollar size hole in her opposite cheek, and that scab just finally fell off last week. You can kinda see it in this shot.When I went out to take pictures of the goats just now and let them out for some fresh air, something sort of strange happened. I was greeted with this just inside the barn door:What on earth?! Then when Louie, who was still half shaved from our last shearing attempt, came walking out of the barn, I didn't even recognize him! All of his remaining long hair has fallen off...TODAY! So now there's half a goat in a pile on the barn floor and another half a goat, namely Louie, walking around looking much smaller and scrawnier. I'm sure its terribly embarrassing for him at the moment, but even his beard is in the process of abandoning him and is currently dangling from his chin. I did no think that Angoras naturally shed their hair... maybe it's from the stress of the attack? Or maybe it's just this first glimpse of South Carolina summer heat that we're feeling and his body was like, "Yea, not gonna be needing THIS anymore!"

Louie shows his battle scars off to full effect. Thats because whole pieces of his ears are missing.Tierra is doing extremely well, and is still in milk for me. Here's a picture of her beautiful udder, scars and all. The dark splotch is a scar from a decent size tear she had from the dog attack. Feel free to take a moment and admire those teats, though, so uniform... so perfectly sized for a human hand...And what blog post would be complete without a picture of my big helper, Jell-O face and all?

The Verdict

First let me just say that I am so touched by the outpouring of love and encouragement in response to my last post. Wow. You guys are amazing!

As to the suggestion to get a livestock guardian dog, llama, or donkey: that will not be necessary. Because we are giving up the goat business. But don't freak out yet! I love my goats, as is pretty obvious to anybody who has eyes. They're a blast to have. But. The workload of tending to 11+ goats has definitely been wearing on me over the last few months. I am just one person, and have been drowning in animal related chores. I've realized that FAMILIES farm, not individuals. The workload fell pretty much on me alone, as Dustin is gone until late in the evening after his horrendous commute. Ayden, as helpful as he is, tends to be more of a chore hindrance than a help, as I imagine any 4 year old underfoot would be. Anyway... the new plan right now is that we are going to turn over this farm to my older brother, Eric. He and his family are moving here in the middle of July, and originally had planned to put a house on the lot that we own next door. The plan now is that they will just move into our house, which I have to say, is pretty stinking awesome. They have dreamed of farming probably even longer than I have, and they have boys who can help out, not to mention a stay-at-home parent who can hold down the fort and shoot to kill raiding dogs and predators.

After the massacre happened, the next morning when I opened my eyes, the first thought to cross my mind was, "Maybe we should just move back to town." I was shocked. I mulled over it in silence all day, and when I asked Dustin if he thought that was a good idea he admitted that he did and had actually been fantasizing about it for a couple of months. He did stipulate, though, that he will never be happy living in a city again and would want to find something just outside of town with an acre or two. I was shocked to hear this, since I had pretty much admitted total defeat in my head and had visions of moving back to Charleston and living in an apartment again. Gag! When he went on to tell me that he would like to find a place that we could have "at LEAST 50 chickens" you could have knocked me over with a feather. How the tides have changed! Here I was the one dragging him into the country to run a farm, and he's the one who refuses to give it all up. He said he'd even like to have a couple goats as pets if he could ever manage to talk me into it. What?!!!!

So. I know this probably sounds like me "giving up on our dream" but as Dustin and my mom keep telling me, it's just evolving into something more suitable for our situation. I will probably end up going back to college in Charleston in the fall, and am seriously considering/exploring a career in agriculture, something that I could do to perhaps train/support small local organic agriculture. I am so passionate about all of this that I don't want to lose it as a part of my life. As it is, my brother and his wife plan to grow fruits and veggies, along with chickens and keeping my existing milk goats (I will soon be down to Tierra, Sable, and Mumble, as I have sold Gypsy, Tiny, and soon Louie and Lucy). They agreed to take the milking goats, but the Angoras are understandably a whole other creature and venture. They are very interested in building a commercial-grade kitchen and making and selling canned goods. I have been brainstorming about what I can do to stay involved, and I really enjoy the marketing and processing aspect of farming, so maybe I'll be a creative/marketing genius for them and the smiling face at the farmers market selling their products. Maybe I'll organize a farmer's co-op and get involved in some sort of CSA movement. Maybe I'll find a chicken farm to take over as my day job. Who knows?

As for an update on the surviving goats, well, its good and bad. Everybody is still alive and kicking, which is good. Lucy's scab next to her eye has fallen off after getting huge and infected, and underneath is beautiful clean pink skin, and her eye has been open again for a few days now. Its so strange to see her peering at me with both eyes now! It's even stranger that that has become a strange thing...

Tierra's puncture wounds, udder, and ear are healing nicely, although I notice that she's not giving quite as much milk on the wounded side as the healthy side. That could just be because I was not milking her heavily at first on that side, though, because it was so painful for her. I am down to milking her once a day now, which I will *try* to maintain until July so my Eric can inherit a doe in milk.

Louie had me worried there for a while because he was so depressed. He would not even stand up when I went out to the barn, let alone come outside for some supervised fresh air and sunshine. Neither was he eating very well. This went on for about 2 weeks, then this last weekend I dragged him by his horns up to a standing position and out of the barn and parked him in the sunshine, then closed the barn door after him so he wouldn't simply go back inside. I did this two days in a row, and when Monday morning rolled around and I went out to feed them, he was up and perky and wanting OUT of the barn. So. Never underestimate the power of fresh air and a little sunshine. I try to keep Sable outdoors as much as possible for the same reason, and because the sunshine is so wonderfully antibacterial.

Sable. Sable. Sable. What can I say about her? She's my miracle baby and I am thankful every day that she is even here. Her neck started out so swollen from the puncture wounds that it was bowed, and it has remained that way. These last couple of days I could swear it has gotten worse, since now when I give her a bottle her head is tilted completely to the side, with the side of her face parallel to the ground. She looks a bit like Frankenstein, and the skin on her neck is shaved and lacerated and as of last night, oozing copious amounts of pus. I draped her across my lap and squeezed a tremendous amount out (for those of you, like me, who enjoy popping a good zit feel free to be a little disgustedly jealous here; I'll understand). Today I took her to the vet in Summerville (I called the one vet here in town who treats goats and she hummed and hawed about if she wanted to see her, then finally conceeded that she'd "work her in" next Wednesday, a week from now). I told the wonderful Summerville vet that I've begun to suspect that perhaps her neck is actually broken, and when I got there he winced at the sight of her, as did all his vet techs milling around. He said he wanted to do an x-ray to determine if it was broken or perhaps just a very severe cyst that we could drain. Well, after one look at the first x-ray he confirmed my worst suspicion, her neck is indeed broken. Shattered is really a better description. He took me in and showed me the films and you can see shards of bone protruding along the length of it, with a huge piece floating in the distended lump. It's broken in so many places its really hard to count, let alone figure out how on earth she is alive and fully functional. He even gave me the x-rays on CDd when I asked, and here they are. I've marked it so you can tell what you're looking at, although it's pretty apparent that something is horribly horribly wrong.

You can see from this first one, a side view, how the entire middle of her neck is bowed away from you. I wish I had my digital camera so I can show you what she looks like on the outside, it would make your skin crawl.

This next one is a view from the top.He said that the worst problem at this point are the bone shards, which can cause no end of problems. They have no blood flow, and therefore bacteria can build up and fester and create chronic infections. Or they can protrude and slowly leave her body, or they can even fuse back against her spine, which I believe wold be the safest option. He said arthritis has already set in, which is actually a good thing because it will over time fuse all these broken bits back together and stabilize the break, albeit in a pretty misshapen way. The only thing we could do for her at this point would be surgery to remove the bone fragments, but that is really not an option, nor did he particularly suggest it. As for the infected puncture wounds, I can only hope the infection does not reach down to the bone and will soon clear up on its own. So, only time will tell what fate holds in store for my sweet sweet Sable. I am OK with her being disfigured for life as long as it will not be permanently painful for her, which the vet said it shouldn't be once everything is fused together. The biggest problem will be that her neck does not come close to allowing her to reach the ground to eat, but thankfully goats prefer to browse on bushes and leaves anyway. I am comforted to know that her deformity will not be held against her, though, because Eric knows what she's been through and can appreciate the miracle that she is just for surviving.

Devastation.

Heres the thing: my farm got massacred by dogs two weeks ago while I was at work. They killed and mauled the goats, killed one of my chickens (the rest must have hid in the coop or something), they even killed our cat Ambrose! I came home to a battlefield scattered with bleeding and dying animals, with the occasional corpse to add flair. It was horrible. It completely devastated me. The worst part was calling every vet in town, only to be told that they only treat cats and dogs. So I'm standing over my 2 month old Sable who's neck is ravaged and she's just lying on her side crying and crying, and I can hear air escaping through a hole in her throat, and they wont come do basic first aid because she's not a dog. I screamed and cried and yelled and sobbed, but nobody would help me. So I called the sheriff and animal control, who showed up and looked around and the animal control officer said, "Wow. This is horrible. Let me go get my camera." I said, "Can't we help the ones that are still alive?!!" So she called in and checked and they told her "we don't treat goats" and that the best thing I could do was get a neighbor to put them down for me. After seeing this was not gonna fly, she gave me the names of some vets in neighboring towns, and to make a long story short, I finally found a vet who'd come from Summerville, an hour away. He showed up at about 8 pm, 5 hours after I got home and discovered what had happened. In the meantime, my mom and Dustin had left work and drove an hour from Charleston to come help, and Dustin's parents came to collect Ayden (who was having a grand time finding new dead animals and poking them with a stick- he's the one who found Ambrose). My goat mentor, Casey, drove 45 minutes to come help and showed up with a cooler full of medicines and supplies. Other goat people I'd met showed up, too, families in tow. They helped carry mauled goats from various corners of the property (even Tierra who weighs about 140 lbs!!) into the barn. After it was all said and done, I had 7 remaining goats with various degrees of damage, ranging from Tiny who was the only one completely unscathed, to Lucy who's eye we thought was gone along with a good part of her face, and Sable with the wheezing hole in her neck. Mumble had a bum leg, Tierra's one ear was completely detached from her head on the underside, multiple puncture wounds on her ears and neck, one front leg, and a few good tears on her side and udder. Louie, who I swear was dead when I first found him but must have merely been unconscious, had his ears in shreds with most of the skin just gone and huge chunks missing. He has so much hair it was hard to find wounds under it all, but that also probably protected him to some degree. Lucy's right eye was swollen shut and about a 2 inch diameter chunk of flesh missing around the eye, another hole on the bridge of her nose so that you could see into her sinus cavity, and another hole the size of a silver dollar on her opposite cheek. A dog had obviously been dragging her around by her face. Gypsy, who was missing for the first couple hours, was eventually found under the bushes by my front door, relatively unscathed but for a 2 inch hole on one of her back legs so that you could see the exposed tendon, and one front elbow a raw bloody mess. When the vet finally arrived, he took a look around and said, "Where do I start?" He'd brought his wife, also a vet, and a vet tech to assist, and together they worked on the goats for almost 3 hours, flushing wounds, giving steroids to fight shock, pushing fluids. We all did what we could to help, even getting down and giving injections for them. Amazingly, all the goats were still alive when I went out the next morning. I had to give antibiotic and pain medicine by injection twice a day for 7 days, which for 6 goats comes to a whole lotta injections! Sable had air under her skin from all the puncture wounds, and her entire torso was crinkly to the touch.

So the casualties were all of my Nigerian Dwarves except for Mumble. That means Harmony, Puck, and my sweet sweet silly Poe are all no longer with us. Sahara was still alive when I got home, but by the time the vet got here we all agreed we could not let her suffer any more and let him put her down. I think in the end their size worked against them. I still don't know how Mumble and Tiny were spared, but Mumble obviously got hurt somehow in the process. Perhaps they were hiding in the barn. Who knows?

One of the worst parts about this for me is thinking how the dogs were here until they simply got tired. Nobody stopped them or chased them off. They were here wreaking havoc and killing until they got bored. It makes me want to scream.

I realize now that I simply cannot keep them safe, so I have to get rid of them. The dogs jumped 3 separate fences to get to them, two chain link, and one electric netting. Since it happened I've had to resort to keeping them locked in the barn with the door closed, which goes against everything I believe in. Animals should be free to live as God intended. But, until a couple days ago they would not venture out even if I was sitting outside the barn door to babysit. Most of them did not even get up on their feet for 3 days, and Sable stood on her own after 6. She's my miracle baby. Her neck swelled to 3 times its normal size, but the whole time she ate and drank like a champ. That first day after the attack I tried to give her some milk in a bottle but stopped when I saw it dripping out the hole in her neck. :( Now she's up and venturing outside, although her neck is still curved and very swollen. I've even begun to think that it could possibly be broken. I've already found a new owner for Gypsy, who's coming to get her next weekend. She's going to breed mini-Nubians with her (she raises Nigerian Dwarves- the woman I bought all of mine from). I have a lead on new homes for Tiny and Louie and Lucy, also. My brother will be moving here in July and would like to take Tierra, Sable, and Mumble. So I just have to try to keep them alive and safe until then.

I've had many suggestions from people for ways to trap and kill my neighbors dogs (who I'm sure did this), ranging from hanging fish heads on industrial size treble hooks from a tree, pans of antifreeze, and simply shooting them. I am proud to say that thanks to my other brother, Mike, I now have a shotgun and riffle, and am just itching to use them.

So now we just don't know what our vision for the farm is, and I'm so hurt and disillusioned that I don't even know if this is a direction I want to go in anymore. Ironically, Dustin is the one who says no matter what happens, he wants to own at least 50 chickens and maybe even a couple goats if he could ever talk me into it again. The irony kills me.

But to experience first hand the fact that an entire dream/business venture can be wiped out in 5 hours while you're at work, from something you never could have prevented... it's just too much for me. We were supposed to pick up a livestock guardian dog puppy this month, but honestly, even with one guardian dog against a pack of what was very probably pit bulls (every manly wanna-be in Walterboro owns a pit bull), I most likely would have come home to a dead dog in addition to goats.

So now I'm a-dog-huntin.

I Know, I Know...

It's been a LONG time since I've posted. I have good reasons, I assure you. I've been in a bit of a slump, which according to Dr. Seuss is not a nice place to be. And I'll vouch for that. Sad things have happened and I just really don't even want to discuss them. For the first time I've experienced how a farm blog could be a negative thing, when you just really don't feel like sharing bad things that happen on your farm. Every other farmer I know of is not obligated to regurgitate the sad and heartbreaking things that happen on his farm to his customers and friends. So, I'm deciding here and now to go on like none of it ever happened and go back to reporting things as normal.

Does this blog look a little plain to you? Well, to give you a perfect example of how wonderfully crappy my last few weeks have been, I dropped our digital camera into a BLOODY SWAMP. So, no more pictures until tax rebate time when we can buy another one. Which I hopefully will not drop into another BLOODY SWAMP next time. Speaking of which, since when do digital cameras bounce?! Thats what I want to know!

On a happier note, I have 10 brand new chicks in my guest room and at least a few more on the way. I started a new batch of eggs in the incubator 24 days ago, and only 10 have hatched in the last 36 hours. First of all, they're only supposed to take 21 days. So, even though I bought an automatic egg turner and they were all developing beautifully and I was looking forward to a successful hatch rate this time, something has gone a bit awry toward the end and everything's all screwy. I keep forcing myself to concentrate on the healthy happy chicks I have and not dwelling on the 25 other eggs in there that mostly seem to be doing nothing. Reading over this paragraph I'm noticing that maybe this is not much of a happier note afterall. Perhaps I was not ready to post a new blog afterall.

Let me try again: On a truly happy note, the chicks from the last batch are doing wonderfully. I built them an outside miniature chicken tractor (which of course I took many informative and attractive pictures of, only to be lost at the bottom of a BLOODY SWAMP) and they are now outside on grass as God intended. They are HUGE. At six weeks old, I'm already looking for clever ways of integrating them into my existing flock. Especially now that I have at least a *few* new chicks that I would love not to have to build another home for.

Speaking of my flock of chickens, we're down from 16 to a mere 15. Ironically, this is not one of the "bad" happenings, but we did it on purpose. How, you ask? WE ATE THE BAD ROOSTER! My husband's cousin, Jesse, was spending the weekend and woke up early Saturday morning with murder in his eyes and determined to dispatch the bad rooster for me, something I'd been trying to get somebody to do for months. He never outgrew his adolescent hostile antics (the rooster, not Jesse...), and daily pursued his mission to terrorize my 3 year old. Wanna know a good way to get eaten on a farm? Pick on the farmer's baby. Roar! So, we caught him before he left the coop that morning and locked him in a dog crate while we headed off to Wal-mart to get a sharp fillet knife for my part of the proceedings, the lovely eviscerating and what-have-you. Jesse and Dustin sequestered themselves in the chicken coop and quietly and (supposedly) humanely broke his neck like my homesteading book said to do. This is supposed to instantly kill them. So Jesse did it that way. Five times, for good measure. Believing him to be sleeping with the fishes, we took him out to a tree where we had rigged up some twine with a slip knot to hang him from while we plucked him and he bled out. The biggest mistake of this whole fiasco was that we did not have a hatchet, so Jesse spent the next 10 minutes trying to hack his head off with a machete, to little avail. There was a lot of flapping, and we're going to go ahead and believe that was just the nerves firing. I mean, how can a chicken survive being dispatched five times? Needless to say, next time we WILL have a sharp hatchet and a stump and remove the head from the body in one quick go, no question as to how long the suffering went on. Every single blog I've read about people's first time butchering a chicken is a horrible bloody gruesome experience, and ours did not disappoint. We dipped him in boiling water for a few seconds and then proceeded to pluck him, which was the easiest part of the whole thing. He never did bleed out properly, though, probably because the neck was so mangled from Jesse's attempts to remove the head. During the "cleaning," I followed the directions from my homesteading book step by step and that was probably the best executed part of the whole ordeal. We roasted him with Greek potatoes, and the meat was stringy, leathery, and overall quite a challenge to chew properly. I made chicken stock out of what was left and the next day we had a rather yummy meal out of it with home-made egg noodles and carrots. Yummm! I was very surprised to find that butchering a chicken was not nearly as traumatic and horrible as I thought it would be. So I'm thinking that next time with a better means of dispatching, it should be a piece of cake! And yes, we took lots of pictures every step of the way intended for one mother of a blog post, but alas... they too sleep with the fishes.

Playing With Dirty Nasty Things

Ayden and I did something a little different yesterday. We made a house for our new bumper crop of home-grown chicken food: mealworms! Dirty nasty little creatures whom I refuse to pick up with my bare hands. Yes, the pretense of farmer is probably blown with that one unfortunate admission. Good thing she didn't put THAT in the newspaper article! As you can see, I even made my child hold the mealworm for the picture.Anyway, I am experimenting with ways to supplement my chickens' feed in a sustainable manner. It is hardly sustainable to pay Joe Blow to grow chicken food for me at outrageous prices, outrageous gas usage, and outrageous use of anti-sustainability farming methods. Some of you might be wondering what on earth I am talking about when I say "sustainable." Wikipedia defines it as,

"Sustainable agriculture refers to the ability of a farm to produce food indefinitely, without causing irreversible damage to ecosystem health. Two key issues are biophysical (the long-term effects of various practices on soil properties and processes essential for crop productivity) and socio-economic (the long-term ability of farmers to obtain inputs and manage resources such as labor)."

Make sense? A truly sustainable farm makes a perfectly circular cycle: it grows the food to feed the animals, who in turn plow the earth and fertilize the fields as they do so, so the farmer can plant the crops to feed his family and the animals... and the cycle continues. Thats how you truly turn a profit, because when you remove one of those elements, you leave a hole that then needs to be filled, either with commercial animal feed or by adding fertilizer and expending the crude oil to till the land by hand.

So back to the mealworms. If I can offset even 25% of my chickens feed by growing it myself in a very labor INexpensive manner, such as mealworms, then thats a wonderful thing. Just be glad I'm not doing maggots (...yet?). Yea, I said it: maggots. I can't move on here without giving a rundown of how easy THAT is! You take any container with a lid, drill holes in the top, sides, and bottom, place any ol' rotting animal carcass you might have lying around (roadkill, anyone? anyone?), hang it a few feet above the ground, and the flies come and "blow" it with eggs. That means they pump that sucker full as a tick with fly eggs. Then a few days later the eggs hatch, feed on the carcass, then escape through the holes in the bottom in an attempt to go to ground where they will turn into flies and go on to perpetuate their species. Well, when they fall through those holes there is not a soft earthy landing pad, but a sheet of, oh, lets say tin roofing. They fall onto this and get gobbled up by the chickens, who consider this fine dining at its best. Free nutritious chicken food, and you get the added benefit of wiping out an entire generation of flies. Now if I could just talk my husband into letting me pepper our land with rotting animal carcasses...

Now that everybody is sufficiently grossed out by maggots, I can move on to the mealworms and you'll probably like the idea of them so much better that you would not object to curling up on the couch with a mealworm and watching a good chick flick. I raised a small coffee can of mealworms for my iguana when I was in highschool, so I'm not overly riddled by anxiety at the undertaking. I took one of these nifty plastic gray boxes we found behind our favorite gas station, and Ayden and I drilled ventilation holes in the top and sides. I even let Ayden use the drill. Shhhh... don't tell Daddy! Then we poured about 1/2 inch of chicken feed in the bottom for worm food, 2 old potatoes cut in half for food and to add moisture, and then topped the whole concoction with two containers of mealworms purchased at the pet store.
I bought 500 regular mealworms and 100 giant mealworms for $12, roughly the cost of a bag of chicken feed. Unlike chicken feed, though, these little boogers will rapidly multiply. They will go from being these nasty little yellow segmented worms, to nasty little white alien looking cocoon things, to slightly less nasty looking beetles that will lay 500+ eggs which will then turn into 500+ nasty little yellow segmented worms. You get the picture. And what do I have to do? Make sure they have chicken feed, a piece of vegetable or fruit, and thats about it! I'll probably divide them up into a few different bins so that I have various generations ready for consumption.And the best part about it? When it comes time to feed the chickens I don't have to sort or handle the worms at all, just dump it all out and let the hens eat it all, worms, beetles, feed, and potato. Life is sweet. And yes, this is my sweet child posing with a mealworm. *full body shiver*

Famous Shmamous

So the newspaper article came out. She misspelled my name, but what are you going to do. Everybody does. Even when I ask them 3 times if they for sure wrote it down correctly. Oh, well. I scanned it and here it is below (click to enlarge).Everybody at the library was abuzz with the news, and word even managed to reach Dustin's work in Charleston. Apparently one lady he works with lives in Jacksonboro, about 15 miles away, and brought the article to work where it made the rounds, finally being pinned up on the company bulletin board. He he. Dustin is slightly disturbed... he has this whole thing about keeping his private life private. I guess thats what you get when a young man works in an office setting full of middle aged gossipy women. I've tried to get him to sell some eggs there but he just looks at me in horror. ???

On another subject, I think one of my hens might be growing broody. What do you think?

That would be really great if a few would go broody on me because then I can let them raise their own stinkin' babies rather than have to stink up my guest room with them and pay to run an 85 watt red light 24/7.

The biddies I incubated are doing well and we have only lost one, surprisingly not the deformed one with the gimp leg, either. It was an Ameracauna one (wah!) and for some reason it was just not growing. It was a week old and by then was 1/2 the size of its siblings and just got wimpy and expired the next day. It particularly stinks that it was one of the Easter egg layers, but such is life. The gimp chick is not growing much and has not feathered out half as much as the others, but seems pretty vigorous and whatever it is hanging from its bottom must not have been vital! The picture below was taken when the chicks were not quite a week old. You can already see it's wing feathers coming in. You can see that this one is at least 1/2 Ameracauna because it has green legs.These guys don't waste any time! Here's a group picture of one of the brooders of chicks taken about a week ago. I'll try to post some more recent pictures tomorrow, I promise.

Apparently I'm Gonna Be Famous

Well, as famous as one can get from being featured in the Walterboro newspaper, The Press & Standard.

It all started when I attended a Growing New Farmer's meeting yesterday sponsored by Clemson University. They had an unbelievable turnout, having to scrounge up extra tables and chairs for the latecomers. The first thing on the agenda was to go around the room and introduce ourselves and say what we do and why we were there. There were people from all different walks of life, from old-time farmers looking for a way to get a better price for their product to people who work for conservation programs. When it was my turn, I introduced myself and said that we had bought 12 acres of land in Walterboro 8 months ago and since then have built up a dairy goat herd of 11 and a bunch of chickens, and that everybody thought we were crazy to do this because I swear I'm the only person of my generation that WANTS to be a farmer. Understanding nods and snickers all around. And that now I have more people wanting to buy eggs and milk and cheese from me than I can supply. One of the speakers that I was particularly excited to listen to was a girl my age named Rita, who is not only cool enough to also sport a nose ring, but... SHE'S A FARMER! She has partnered with an older conventional farmer and is revitalizing his farm by teaching him how to grow sustainably and organically, and has succeeded in convincing him that there is a fair priced market for organic produce. They now run a thriving CSA program in which people buy shares of the farm at the beginning of the growing season, then receive a box of vegetables worth $25 every week for 14 weeks. So every week you go to a designated drop location and get your box of veggies, containing whatever happened to be harvested that week.

When I saw Rita walk in the building I was instantly intrigued, as up until then I was at least 20 years younger than anybody else there. Then to hear her get up and speak about her experiences and the fact that she is not only able to farm, but being quite successful at it... well, it just did my heart good. We hooked up after the meeting and swapped phone numbers, and I told her she's going to be my new best friend. She sells a lot of her produce to local restaurants in Charleston, and she said that she could sell as many eggs as I could provide to area restaurants. !!! Up until then I had always assumed that a restaurant would not touch you unless you could consistently provide massive quantities year-round. So now I am even more excited and inspired to go big time with this farming thing. One of the speakers is the head of a pilot program in Charleston called Fresh on the Menu said that he has chefs calling him everyday looking for fresh local meat, dairy, and produce and that he simply cannot find enough local farmers to fill their needs. He flat out said that he could sell anything that any of us could produce to restaurants for a fair price. Meat especially is a rarity, and he said there is a 5 month back order for pork alone.

Anyway, when we took a quick break for refreshments a reporter who was there to cover the meeting came over and said she'd like to interview me "because you're what this is all about. New young farmers!" So this afternoon she came out with her photographer husband and took 2 cameras full of pictures of us and the critters and I told her all about my goals for the farm and how we've gotten as far as we have. Ayden, of course, was being a total terror and was pretty much a brat for the duration because he's started a new school and has yet to take a nap there. Not good. But they were here for about an hour and at one point I made her put her notepad away and hold Tiny, who, unlike Ayden, succeeded in being oh-so-sweet-and-cuddly and well behaved. Typical. I fretted about what a young farmer should wear for an interview, but finally just dressed like myself in a halter top, jeans, and brown rubber boots. Always a winning combination. I don't look like your typical farmer and I don't think I should have to to be credible. Lord knows I make a scene whenever I go into the feed store in full funky young person regalia, but it simply cannot be helped.

She said the article will probably be coming out this Tuesday "unless something exciting happens." :) Maybe I can scan it and post it on here or something. Who knows, maybe I'll finally out-do my little brother who made the front page of the Torrington, Wyoming, newspaper with a huge picture (above the fold!) of him and my dog, Cujo, and their lemonade stand. You can tell lot's goes on in Torrington.

I can't bear to post a blog without a picture, so here's a nice picture of the three of us on a picnic in the woods the other day. As you can see, my child's head is not spinning around nor is he levitating or spewing green vomit, so he had obviously gotten a nap that day. Unlike today. When he did not. And is making us all pay.

Final Head Count

Sorry it took me so long to post, but I have a final head count for my first incubation hatch: 27. Thats out of 40 fertile eggs, which gives me a 67.5% hatch rate, and 70% is considered successful. One one hand the low hatch rate bothers me, makes me feel like a little bit of a failure, but on the other hand, considering what these poor eggs went through during our first incubation attempt, I'm rather pleased than ANY hatched. As my mother so helpfully pointed out, I am only one chick away from a successful hatch rate and the egg that I cracked with the beating heart may have been the one that made it. Greeeeeeeeat.
All but 6 of the eggs hatched within 24 hours of the first one mid-day Saturday, and there was one straggler that hatched late Sunday, but I've since noticed that that one has some problems and probably will not make it. It seems like when the yolk was being absorbed into its abdominal cavity it didn't quite all make it in and it has this weird dried lump thing hanging from where it's umbilical cord should be, and one of its legs is a bit malformed. I'm encouraged by the fact that it was strong enough to go through the ordeal of hatching, so I'm watching it and giving it the benefit of the doubt, although this evening it seems like maybe it is going downhill a little. It would be so easy to let this break my heart but I simply cannot allow that and am looking at the greater scheme of things and keeping in mind that I really don't want sickly animals in my flock, let alone deformed ones. I chipped off a tiny piece of the six eggs that didn't hatch just to make sure there was nothing in there that simply needed a little help, but there was no movement in five of them and the other one expired soon after I helped it hatch. That one also looked like it had the same issues as my little gimp chicken. I have decided in the future that if an egg does not hatch on its own, then I will simply leave the incubator on a couple days to give it a good chance and then discard the eggs sight unseen. I could have lived the rest of my life without seeing a failed chick.

On to more positive things, though, I have 26 very healthy and very active little biddies. They are an interesting mix of colors, with a few looking like purebred Wyandottes (black and white), a few looking just like my Ameracaunas did (tan and dark brown) when they were little, and a healthy smattering of ones that are an interesting mix of the two. For example, there is one pretty little chick that is black but with a bit of chocolate brown right on the top of its head and green legs. :) Ameracuanas have green legs, for any of you who don't know, while Wyandottes, and I imagine most chickens, have orange legs. I have casually spotted at least 5 chicks of all different color mixtures with green legs, so it looks like my Ameracauna rooster has had some play with the ladies after all. The Wyandotte (or as Ayden calls him, "bad") rooster is more dominant and generally rapes and pillages while the white Ameracauna rooster stands back and looks frustrated then jumps on top of the hen as soon as the bad rooster has finished and gives her a little attention of his own. Its quite disturbing. My poor hens.

The chicks have settled into their new brooders and seem very content. I will never brood in a cardboard box with straw ever again. These totes are ingenious. I have them lined with paper towels, and once a day I put a clean layer down, which takes me all of 30 seconds and voila! Clean chick house. The above picture was taken I swear 5 minutes after changing their paper, so don't go thinking I let my babies live in filth even though it may look like it in the picture. White definitely shows everything. I have since divided the chicks equally among the two totes, so they are much less crowded and it does not get dirty quite as quickly. Everybody is eating and drinking like champs, with the exception of my gimp chick. I was just watching one of them eat out of its feeder a few minutes ago and it would peck peck peck in the little feeder hole then scratch at the paper towel under its feet furiously in the typical chicken fashion (left foot left foot right foot right foot) then peck a little more then scratch a little more. It was cracking me up. Its amazing to see their little instincts kick in, and you can just see that chicks little though bubble... "Mmmm.... thats tasty! But for some reason I feel that a quick left left right right scratch is in order..."

They're A-Hatchin!

When I woke up this morning and saw no chicks wandering around the incubator I was a bit surprised given the amount of chirping we were hearing all last night. Upon closer inspection, though, it was plain to see that there were little tiny pips (cracked holes) in about 5 of the eggs, and bit of chirping was still happening. I got online to try to find out how long it takes a chick to hatch, and it said that the chick pecks the inside of the shell THOUSANDS of times to make that first little pip hole! Wow. Then they rest for 3-8 hours and regain their strength before maneuvering their head to the fat end of the shell and pushing against it with their head until they finally break the egg in two pieces and pop free. It reminds me of that scene in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective when he's wearing the tutu snooping in the mental institution and attempts to hide in a box when he hears somebody coming, and once they're gone he splays out flat on his back with all his limbs sticking straight out and explodes out of the box. Anyway... here's a picture of the eggs this morning with pips.About 2 pm our first chick hatched from one of the brown eggs, of course one back in the far back corner and almost impossible to get a decent shot of. But here's a short video showing just after it has broken the shell and was attempting to free itself.

Here's a picture of it just hatched for any of you who maybe can't get the video to work for some reason. Right after that one hatched the other eggs must have felt inspired because about three of them nearby started rocking, which is especially strange to see from an egg that hasn't even piped yet. Here's a video of that. ITS ALIIIIIIIIVE!!!!!
You can see in that video the egg with the good sized hole in it, and that chick hatched about 15 minutes after the first one. It just so happened to hatch just when my father-in-law and sister-in-law walked in the door so they got to witness their first chick hatching. :) Here's Summer, Jesse, and Jerry crowded around the incubator with bated breath.We're currently up to 9 chicks hatched and taking a much deserved rest in the brooder under their red heat lamp, and two more over in the incubator getting ready to break through. There are a half dozen others in there that have pipped, but I worry that all the thrashing around of the new chicks has perhaps messed them up somehow. You're not supposed to turn them 3 days before they hatch so the chicks can get into position. So how does their siblings thrashing and rolling them all over the incubator not hurt them? So I'm now snatching the newly hatched chicks and putting them directly under the heat lamp in the brooder instead of letting them fuzz out in the incubator like the directions say. I had 7 chicks thrashing around in there earlier and it was hours later and they still had not fuzzed out. A little while under the cozy heat lamp, though, and they start looking like real chicks in no time. There were 33 eggs in there this morning, and only about 11 chicks accounted for so far. Hmm. I keep telling myself that I was not expecting them to hatch until tomorrow, so maybe everybody else is still doing OK.
Just so the chickens don't get too cocky thinking this post is all about them, I have to post this cute picture of my sister-in-law, Summer, with Sable the lap goat. Who would have gone on sitting on her lap indefinitely if she had not had to go run off and do an Easter egg hunt with Ayden.

Silly Birdies

I was sitting here playing on the computer and talking to Dustin about something when we both heard a little birdie chirping. I'd been hearing it off and on for the last hour or so but attributed it to a bird outside the window next to me. Looking at it now I see that the window is not even open. Ha ha!

Anyway, Dustin and I heard it again and it seemed really strange since it was dark outside by then, and what bird in its right mind is outside our window chirping in the dark? We both looked at each other and realization dawned at the same time and our eyes got huge and we both looked over in the corner of the room at the incubator. I happened to be sitting on the computer chair backwards and literally knocked it over I got up so fast. Dustin ran for the flashlight so we could get a good look, and I fully expected to see a wet little chick. But there wasn't! All we saw were 33 perfect little brown and green eggs lying on their sides. Then one of them moved a little and we heard it again, a strong little peep! WOW! I've been sitting here being serenaded by a vigorous little chicken embryo still in its shell for the last hour. Amazing. I just looked it up online and it says that peeping can happen anywhere from a few hours to 24 hours before hatching, so we'll be on pins and needles! I half expect to be greeted by a baby chicken or two when I wake up in the morning! I can't wait to see what they look like. I literally feel like I have created life. I gathered the eggs, handling them oh-so-gently with sterile fingers, pampering and codling them for 5 days while I gathered all the soon-to-be sibling eggs from my girls, swore profusely as I alternately cooked and froze them in the incubator the next 20 days, gingerly candling and turning them twice daily, adding water when the humidity reservoirs get low... and now I hear a living breathing creature in there! Amazing. :)

I've Been Holding Out

So something really pretty fantastic has been going on for 18 days and I have yet to breathe a word about it on my farm blog. I have been remiss in reporting our farmy activities and for that I am sorry. But, on the other hand I spared everyone 18 days of waiting on pins and needles (because I just know you are consumed by things we do here). You see, I bought an incubator and put 45 of my girls' eggs on to incubate and they'll be hatching in only THREE days! I can't believe it. It's been a lifelong dream of mine since I was in kindergarten and my parents set up a small incubator in my classroom at school and we got to watch the baby chickens hatch. I had seen it once before at home, and I remember being very grown up and humble about the whole thing and not pushing my way to the front, thus blocking some poor kids only opportunity to witness such a miracle, even though I was MISSING OUT ON THE MOST FANTASTIC THING IN THE WORLD. Thats some serious self control for a 5 year old, if I do say so myself. Anyway, its something that I've been known to lie in bed at night and fantasizing about doing again some day, only this time having my face pressed up against the glass, even fogging it up I'd be so close. I have got so many people wanting eggs from me that I can't keep up, so I have the perfect excuse to hatch out some more chickens. I'm really excited to see what they will look like, let alone what color eggs they will lay being a mix of Silver Laced Wyandotte and Ameracauna, or purebreds of each. It's like Forrest's box of chocolates, you just don't know what you're gonna get!
It's been a bit of a frustrating journey with this incubator, as the temperature has been all over the place. Dustin says if anything does survive all this, it'll probably have a beak growing out of its back. ;) Chicken eggs are supposed to be incubated at a steady 99.5 degrees, but 12 hours after putting them on, lets just say through a series of unfortunate events, they got cooked at a whopping 104 degrees for a full 9 hours while I was at work. Ahhhh! The book said they are particularly sensitive the first 24 hours because it will literally cook the egg. Obviously, I was very upset, particularly because I had been pampering and gathering and meticulously storing those eggs up for almost a week before putting them on to incubate, keeping them at a steady 50 degrees and turning them twice a day to keep the yolk from settling. I wanted them to hatch on a weekend, so I had to start them on a weekend. So here it is Monday and I don't know if every single one of these 45 eggs is ruined or not, but I could not start another batch for 6 days anyway, so I decided to err on the side of caution and give it until the next weekend to see if anything was still viable. They only incubate for 3 weeks, so within just a few days there is significant growth that can be seen by candling them in a dark room (looking through them with a bright flashlight). This is what it looks like after only 6 days, and you can already see the peep and the network of veins that have formed. So, on about day 4 I tried candling them with little success using a shoe box with a hole in it and a regular 60 watt bulb. It was just enough to illuminate the egg without showing me any details. I was almost certain that the eggs had been ruined anyway, so I thought I'd crack one open and see what was going on in there. I figured I'd know immediately if it was cooked, and even on the off chance it was alive, it's not like it would be ALIVE after only 4 days in the incubator; worst case scenario there would be some little spidery veins. Dustin just happened to be out of town that night, so it was 11 o'clock at night and I was home alone, headed into the kitchen, egg in hand. I broke it into a small bowl, and sure enough, there were the faintest little red lines emanating from the bright orange yolk. I looked closer, and there was a little white mass in the center of the yolk. It was about the size of a pinto bean, and it was slightly curled into a C shape, with the top part of the C being a big thicker than the bottom and it had a little gray dot that I thought must be the beginnings of an eye forming. It only took a second for me to notice something odd in the middle part of the C, and... IT WAS A BEATING HEART!!! OH DEAR GOD!!! I could see it just a pumping away, the tiniest bit of red blood filling its little chambers. I immediately tore my gaze away and covered my mouth with my hand to suppress a gasp. I panicked, my only thought being that I could not bare to watch that little heart stop beating, so I did the first thing that came to mind and ran to the bathroom and flushed it. So here I am, it's almost midnight, and I'm home alone with the newfound knowledge that I am a murderer. A tiny little baby chicken murderer. Short of calling the police or PETA, I just did not know what to do. So I called Dustin and let him comfort me for the next 20 minutes. He assured me it was nothing to feel guilty about, and that better to sacrifice one viable egg than to throw the whole batch out thinking none of them were still viable. Here is a very short video from Purdue University showing what is going on inside the egg on day 3 and that is pretty much exactly what I saw.

So, anyway, life has thankfully moved on since then and I have successfully been candling them with my new awesome-possum super bright LED flashlight that I got from Walmart for $5. I've been tracking their development and most have been coming along just fine. There were about 5 that did not seem to be doing anything, just a large round yolk floating around inside the illuminated egg, but I thought I'd give them as much time as possible before culling them, just in case. It is important to get the non-viable eggs out of there, though, because gases can build up inside of them and they'll explode all over your good eggs, soaking them in deadly bacteria that can penetrate the porous shell and kill the living embryos. It's important to wash you hands before handling the eggs for the same reason. Two nights ago I decided to go ahead and remove the eggs that were obviously not doing anything, along with one egg that had dark lumpy spots where something had obviously been growing and then stopped. When we broke these open (I made Dustin do it with me this time) the first 3 were just normal looking egg yolks, one had a pinprick of red in it, and the 5th one with the dark lumpy spots was a tiny gray curled embryo with large black eyes and looked pretty much just like this. It had obviously quit developing all on its own (I had no hand in this one, I swear!) at least a week ago. I thought it was really fascinating to see what goes on inside the eggs, although Dustin would probably disagree with that statement.

So now they're at 18 days and probably look about like this. I've been turning the eggs twice a day every day to keep the embryo from sticking on one side of the shell and to ensure they get proper exercise, but as of today I can stop turning them because the chicks are getting themselves in position for hatching. Yay! I started with 44 eggs, and after cracking the first one open and the 11 I have had to subsequently cull, I am down to what looks like 33 developing eggs. Thats about a 75% hatch rate so far, and we'll see how many actually successfully make it out of their shells. Keep your fingers crossed! They're due to hatch Sunday.

Ayden and I went to the hardware store yesterday to get all the materials needed to build some state of the art brooders out of $10 Rubbermaid totes from the dollar store. These will be kept in our guest room and the chicks will live here their first few weeks until they feather out, when they'll probably be moved outside to the chicken coop unless I can successfully build them a chicken tractor by then. I'd like to do that so that they can go directly onto the grass and start foraging right way, but still protected from the elements and predators until they're bigger. The totes are lined with paper towels at first so that the chicks can easily determine what is food and what is bedding, and I will later probably switch them over to shredded paper that I get from various offices. Its free and a heck of a way to recycle! They have red heat lamps on them to keep the biddies warm and the red light keeps them from wanting to peck at each other out of boredom. Each tote is reported to be able to hold 25 chicks, but I'll probably divide them up depending on how many hatch. The more room the better, I think. The directions for how to build these nifty little brooders can be found here.

Speaking of chickens, this picture is exactly what it looks like.
A chicken in my laundry room. *this me rolling my eyes*

Segregation, Silly Kids, and Tierra's Testosterone

We finally got around to building the buck pen this week. Finally. I've literally been losing sleep about it, lying in bed at night with my heart racing thinking about how I've been dropping the ball on separating the boys from the girls. I got away with it for a long time because all the girls were pregnant, but as we all know, thats no longer the case. Right before Harmony kidded (almost 6 weeks ago) I had set 22 t-posts in preparation for putting up permanent fencing. I have posts set to separate off a good sized portion of the goat pen for the bucks to live in (I have to say, one of the roomiest buck pens I've seen yet), a large quarantine pen completely separate from the goat pen, and enough posts set to replace the electric goat netting currently surrounding the goat pen with permanent field fencing. Well, when I set the posts I also talked to my neighbor who said he'd come over and show me how to use his come-along to put the fence up nice and tight. And then he never came. I went over and tried to procure his help more than once, but he was always off fishing or something. Meanwhile, I'm losing sleep envisioning rampant pregnancies and illegitimate kids and single moms having to file for goat-welfare while awaiting their court date to go after goat-child support pending results of a goat-paternity test. After my mother told me she'd read that a goat can go back into heat as early as 3 days after kidding, we knew we had to take matters into our own hands. Sunday Dustin and I went out as soon as Ayden went down for his nap and put the fencing up as tight as we could on our own. I probably would have gone and bought my own come-along and figured it out by myself, but Ace Hardware is closed on Sundays and I would not have Dustin's help until the next weekend and I just couldn't wait any longer. It didn't turn out as badly as I thought it would, and we can always go back and tighten it at a later date. It took us two hours to put up about 65 feet of fencing, and that's with the posts already set. The goats, of course, were a big help.
As you can probably see. Poe, in particular, took the opportunity to avail herself of Dustin's high points. At one point she actually laid down on his back.

Here's a short video I took of her trying to fluff his back like a pillow.

As you can probably see in the background of these photos, many of the goats eagerly entered the "new" area and commenced trying it out. Tierra's girls quickly decided it was prime real estate for sunbathing and settled down for a leisurely nap.When it was all said and done, Louie, Puck, and Lucy were sequestered in their new pen. Lucy, admittedly not a buck, will live with the boys because a) I cannot bare to separate her from her bosom buddy, Louie and b) Because she's a total turd and a kid butter. Angora's breed seasonally and her season is over, and besides, there's always the slight possibility that she's already pregnant, and it wouldn't be a total disaster if Puck managed to breed her anyway. I'd just have a Nigora. :) So here they are, thrilled to be locked off in what you would think is their dungeon. Puck, especially, is broken hearted to leave Sahara's side, whom he cannot decide if she is his mother or his girlfriend. He alternates between trying to nurse from her and mounting her. And I mean, he tries these two avenues of behavior within seconds of each other. Its quite disturbing. So now he stands at the fence and cries and cries for his "mama." I got these two big dog houses for a steal at Petco, on sale for $50 and with a $10 rebate. Woo hoo! It sprinkled last night and Louie and Lucy refused to go in the houses to get out of the rain. I think this is their attempt to be as stoic as Ghandi, showing their displeasure at being kicked out of the spacious barn. This morning they were both distinctly damp, but I'm not going to feel sorry for them. I refuse. Mostly because when I first brought the dog houses into the goat pen, Louie crawled inside before I'd even finished putting it together and laid down and refused to budge for the next half hour. I felt bad that they didn't have any toys in their area yet (*sigh* the picnic table was Louie and Lucy's special place), so I put a pallet in there for them to stand on. As you can see Puck is doing. They also have their own water buck and box for hay, which I'm going to have to continue buying since they won't have free access to the pasture. Although, I left the girls locked in the pen this morning and let the "bucks" out for a turn about the pasture.

Tierra's had an interesting development. She's continued to work on her beard, which I'm proud to say is coming along nicely. She's got quite the Jerry Curl going on. But... I'm afraid all this manliness is taking a tole on her, as she is also begining to display a distinct case of male pattern baldness. Don't believe me? Look for yourself. Go ahead, click on the picture and blow it up for a closer look. Its this dry crusty spot and all of her hair is falling out. I put some bag balm on it the other day for lack of anything better, and now its a soft supple bald spot. Really, though, I wonder if maybe she has ringworm? Anybody got any ideas? Dustin's had ringworm before and we dosed it with tea tree oil and it cleared right up.

My Goats Are Prejudice

And I can prove it. I went out to give Tiny her mid-day bottle just now and found everybody passed out in the barn. I had taken them for a field-trip to our empty lot next door full of bushes and green stuff and it must have taken more out of them then I thought. By the way, I'm proud to announce that Tiny, Sable, and Gypsy, the youngest of the bunch, were happily eating newly sprouted green leaves! Thats the first time I've seen them actually do more than thoroughly sniff plant matter. When I found them all asleep in the barn, though, what struck me is how every single breed slept separately. Here's Harmony, her mother Sahara, and soon-to-be herd sire Puck, all curled up together in one of the stalls. Here are the babies (save for Sable who had spotted me and came over begging to be picked up while I took this picture), and you can see that even they keep themselves separate, although I will give them the fact that they're all cuddling with their siblings and that is to be expected.Here's a typical picture of Louie and Lucy cuddling in the yard.Seeing them all like this today got me thinking and I realized I have NEVER seen cuddling between any of the breeds we have. Never. For heaven's sake, Lucy has just now stopped head butting all the Nigerians, some of whom have been here since like December.

Har Har Har

Ok, my husband found this cartoon and it just cracks me up and I had to put it on here for all my fellow bloggers to read. (One of the characters is even a goat!) Click on it to blow it up to full size.

Leftover Night

Well, it's been a while since I've posted and all these interesting photos are just piling up on me so I'm going to blog the equivalent of a "leftover's night" when you go through your fridge and everybody has to eat leftovers for dinner. ;)

First. I noticed Sahara was shedding cashmere (yes, the oober expensive stuff sweaters are made out of) like mad so I went and bought her a brush and commenced to brush her to try to salvage some of it. At first when she saw me coming with the brush she looked at me in horror and ran away. I kept telling her this is going to rock her world but she refused to even entertain the notion. So I ended up locking her in one of the stalls and physically cornering her while holding her collar and commenced brushing. After about 30 seconds she settled down and you could see her little brain working (in the voice of the shark from Finding Nemo) "Ooooooooh.... thats gooooooooooood." Pretty soon I saw her eyes closing and she looked quite dazed by the good feelings flooding her body. I must have brushed her 15 minutes, and she even let me do her belly and tender bits without a bat of her eyelashes. This is a picture of my reward, a nice bit of dirty goat hair. He he. In all fairness, it IS the softest thing I think I have ever felt in my life. Its currently in a ziplock baggie somewhere in the vicinity of the bucket of Lucy's dirty mohair in the chicken coop. Hair does not have a glamorous afterlife here at Gypsy's Dream Farm as of yet. I've been looking into learning to spin my own yarn, but have yet to cross that threshold.

Second. The goats are happy and wonderful, as always. This pretty much goes without saying, but worth mentioning all the same. Here's a picture of the happy little boogers eating their hay outside the other morning. It was just too beautiful a day to let them gorge themselves in the dark barn, so I dragged out some boxes and put a couple pats of hay outside in the sunshine, which everybody appreciated. You can see that Gypsy, only a few weeks old, is already getting interested in the hay. I have yet to see her actually ingest any, but I've seen her gnaw on a huge dry leaf for 10 minutes before giving it up as a hopeless cause. This is Mumble's idea of how one eats hay. Step one: Get as many body parts as possible in the container where the hay resides. Step two: Get in as many goats' way as possible. Step three: Be sure to stink it up with your scent while you're there because goats are VERY particular about their hay. Heaven forbid we should conserve perfectly good hay. Step four: Enjoy.

Third. Speaking of the goats being happy and wonderful, I have totally forgotten to blog about the fact that Tierra decided all on her own to resume nursing her kids. !!!!! When they were about 2 weeks old, I had gone out to milk Tierra one evening so I could turn around and pour the milk in a bottle for her girls, but when I went to milk her her teats were all small and shriveled up. I pretty much panicked and thought she had something horrible like mastitis and what on God's green earth am I going to feed these three hungry kids?! Well, I milked her as best I could and got enough for one bottle from her, less than half what I had gotten that morning. When we let her out of the stanchion and let her babies free from the stall they had been in (you haven't lived until you've tried to milk a cranky goat while three goat babies are on and off and on and off the stanchion, running under her feet, knocking the milk over, sucking on your fingers, your nose, your chin, eating your hair... generally wreaking havoc) we watched Sable and Gypsy, the two bigger babies, run directly over to Tierra, drop to their elbows, and nurse. And Tierra? She just stood there like she'd been nursing her babies all along! So. Mystery solved as to why her udder was empty. Sneaky little boogers. This is a picture showing Gypsy getting her munch on. Tiny, on the other hand, never did get the idea and I am still giving her a bottle of milk replacer formula three times a day, but since I'm no longer having to milk Tierra I really don't mind. I tried for a week straight, twice a day, locking Tierra in the stanchion and forcing Tiny to nurse from her, but she was more interested in my fingers than anything. I swear she thinks the milk comes from me because as long as I was holding the teat to guide it to her mouth she would suck, but the minute I'd let go she stop and follow my hand. *sigh* I finally just gave up.

Fourth. My Grandma Brosius came to visit and got herself a lapful of goat kids, specifically Poe. She is such a little spitfire (Poe, not Grandma, although she's pretty darn spunky for 87!) I cannot describe to you the energy this one little goat has. We gave Grandma a book, a blanket, and plopped her in the middle of the goat pen where she spent the next few hours watching us attempt to give Louie a hair cut. Fifth. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Never shave an Angora if you can humanly afford to pay a professional to do it, that's all I can say. This time I actually bought some decent dog grooming clippers, but even they got so dull after doing one side of him that they pretty well pooped out on us. After a while we ended up putting Louie up in the milking stanchion to keep him still while we worked; we must have been at it 2 hours and you can see what we accomplished. Not a lot. Dustin and I took turns whacking away at it, but its tediously slow going. What a good sport. I mean, just look at this face! And the thing of it is he's actually as sweet natured as he looks. He's Dustin's special boy.The (un)finished product. We're still working up the stamina and emotional strength to keep going on the rest of him. Who knew that Louie had elbows?Dustin and a bag of dirty Louie hair. 'Nuff said.
Sixth. I have an update on Tierra's fourth baby, the little buckling! As you know, my friend Lynn took him off my hands and gave him the TLC he required to make a complete recovery from his rough birth experience. I went to her house last week to see him and I cannot believe how big he is! He's almost as big as Sable and Gypsy, who dwarfed both him and Tiny when they were born! He was only slightly bigger than Tiny and now he's twice her size. When I exclaimed over this Lynn told me she feeds him 4 times a day still (I had cut Tiny back to two by then!). So, I believe she's backed off to three a day and I've upped Tiny back up to three because she could stand to be growing faster. She's happy and healthy and spunky, but her brother has just put her to shame. Lynn has named him Chewy, which I think is adorable. She said it was touch and go with him for a while, and she was getting up every two hours through the night for the first week and force feeding him a bottle. It took him almost a week to stand let alone walk, so we even thought he might have some sort of neurological problem. But, he's definitely rallied and my first glimpse of him he was running full tilt around their goat pen kicking his little back legs out to the side, a flashy move all goat kids seem to master. Here's some pictures of the handsome fella. He's got the sweetest little white moons spots and striking facial markings.
Seventh. Tiny has airplane ears. Well, not all the time, just when she looks up at me adoringly, as if to say, "Wonderful Lady From Whom All Milk Flows, could I perchance bother you for another bottle? Or two? Perhaps some cuddles?"Eighth. What blog post would be complete without some random cute photos of my babies, I ask you?

City Girl Survives Farm Weekend

My friend Alicia brought her two girls, ages 3 1/2 and 18 months, down to stay with us this weekend to have the whole "farm" experience. She was a trooper about the chicken poop on the back porch (I still don't understand the evening appeal for all 16 chickens convalescing there), her 18 month old eating a goat berry, and even the Bad Rooster attacking the girls. Did I ever mention that he does that? Yea, he's getting eaten. Soon. Her first impression of the goats left something to be desired Saturday morning, as it had rained all night before and the goat pen was a soggy mess. Then she got to see me feed them, never a pretty sight. Goats go feral when grain is involved. Then the unfortunate goat berry incident ensued, and pretty soon she was like, "Ok, I'm done with the goats and ready to go back inside." I could hardly blame her.

We gathered eggs after that, though, and she did seem to enjoy that. Hence the ridiculously adorable picture of her holding an egg. Yes, I know, I know: look at those dimples. *sigh* And her girls inherited them too. Sometimes life just ain't fair.

That evening after we put all the kids down, though, she followed me and Dustin out to do chores. This picture she took of me headed out to feed the masses (baby bottle included, of course) kills me. You can see how glamorous farm life is.













We sequestered Harmony and her babies in a stall so they could eat their larger portion of grain undisturbed, locked Tierra in the stanchion, and put down my new mega-sized pan of grain for the rest of the goats to fight over outside. I'm tired of distributing 11 dishes of grain and they're slowly but surely learning to eat together or go hungry. When I get the buck pen finished it will only be the three boys fighting over a dish and a few does over another, which should even things up a little more. Anyway, I digress.
As soon as I got Tierra up in the stand Alicia says, "OH! Can I milk her?!" How refreshing. I've made 2 other people do it who happened to be present at milking time, because I think if you're going to visit a goat farm you should at least be able to say you milked a goat. A squirt or two is all I ask, and they are always glad they did it afterwards. At least I assume they are.... ;) Alicia figured it out pretty quickly and thought it was rather cool how she could feel the milk escaping back up into the udder if she didn't squeeze the escape route off tight enough with her thumb and first finger. Here's a picture of her finally getting a stream of milk out, all over the stanchion, of course.After that the real fun began. I discovered something fun the other night. I had gone out to the goat barn to feed and milk the goats, but while there it started raining a deluge, so I decided to kick back and play with the babies for a while until the rain let up. As soon as I sat down I had 5 little goats all up in my business. On my head, my shoulders, my lap, fighting over who got to be king of my right thigh. Oh my! They especially liked it when I crossed my outstretched legs because then it made for more precarious footing. So, I found an old bath mat for Alicia to sit on and plopped her in one of the stalls with all 5 babies. Within seconds she was veritably boiling with baby goats, much to her delight. Each one has quite their own personality when it comes to mauling humans: Poe goes for the highest point, generally one's head; Mumble grudgingly has to do whatever Poe does so he generally follows, but makes it clear he's not nearly as excited about humans as his sister; Gypsy goes straight for something to nibble on, an ear or a collar sufficing nicely; Tiny prances up and down and up and down any body part available, never really with any agenda in mind; and Sable... well, Sable is a draper. She drapes herself over a nice warm fleshy part and expects to be coddled like a cat. She also likes to be picked up and goes totally limp and cuddly on you.

Think I'm exaggerating?

Sable settled in for a good cuddle:Gypsy giving Alicia's sweater the taste-testing of a lifetime:Tiny tap dancing the length of Alicia's thighs:And as for Mumble and Poe, I think this video expresses what they do much better than anything I can type. Not to mention it has the added benefit of capturing a charming story about Louie's attempt to ingest my "do." (Ok, so I just watched it again and I'm going to go ahead and admit something: I snort. I had no idea, but apparently I do.)

Some lose touch. I lose goats.

When I was told I was allowed to leave a personal story on the Gypsy's Dream blog, I was first stunned and then frightened at the prospect of appearing before so many of her fans. She has led you through the journey she and I take on a day to day basis without one iota removed, and it is not often that a story exists without her presence. But, here I am with a short tale that happened while Venus* was away. She was so tickled by its content, that she graciously gave up her seat as host to you all to allow me to share it from my first person perspective, and I am honored.

OK, enough thanks. Let's get to it. So yesterday (Monday) I was home alone with Ayden. I happen to have Monday's off now and spend my time with Ayden while Venus* is at the library. I do what I can in her absence. I let the chickens out, feed and water them, and then move to the goats for the same...typical things that need to be done, and things, I am finding out, that are becoming more and more enjoyable to do.

The babies have gotten to be a decent size to where we felt that it was time for them to venture out with the rest of the pack (I mean herd) into the wide open range of the back pasture. This past Saturday was the first day we let them out, and they did quite well. We laid out a blanket and had the joy and bruises of little baby goat hoofs bounding all over our backs, legs, shoulders, heads, etc...fun fun. Everyone stayed pretty close to everyone else.

So, yesterday when I let them out, I wasn't as skeptical as I had been about them getting lost, or dropping into an unknown well, or finding yet another mystery hole in the fence to which a goat could escape. I flew the gate open and watched as the newbies once again ventured into the wide world and then proceeded with the rest of my chores for the day (Mon. is my cleaning day). I kept peeking out at them just to make sure that none of my prior concerns had taken hold of our little ones. All was well, until...

I was in the middle of cleaning...what room I forget...when all of a sudden I here this blood curdling scream from the outside. It was the agonizing wail of a baby in trouble. No. BABIES in trouble! I rushed out of the house leaving Ayden behind in a trail of juice boxes and fruit cups to see what terror had enveloped my little ones. I couldn't see anybody as I bolted across the yard expecting the worst. As I leaped the fence I was greeted with an unforgettable sight.

On one side of a small ditch that occupies a part of the back pasture were Tiny and Sable wailing their heads off. On the other side of the ditch were all nine other goats wailing in response to the wailing of the "lost" two. Now, let me explain...this ditch is about a foot across and only about two feet deep. To walk around to the other side via the thirty foot gap at its beginning would take a person...ten steps tops. But by the way these creatures were carrying on, you would have thought that Hell itself stood between them and these poor helpless kids.

It only took Tiny and Sable a few seconds to notice me, but when they did it was as if someone had just pardoned their death sentences. They ran over to me (ten steps and they were already on the other side, mind you) licking and rubbing and crying and needing to be held and comforted. Everyone else bounded over making the same gestures while adding a butt sniff here and there (mostly Tierra) to the saved souls. I could hear and see Louie tug on his suspenders, lean back and guffaw, "Hot dog! Didn't think you were gonna make it!" as Sahara and Lucy harmonized in a sweet rendition of "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder".

Within seconds, everyone returned to their normal grazing schedule, only after realizing their miscalculations of the ditch and the slight humiliation that inevitably followed.

Toddlers Learning About Goaty Birds & Bees

It's been a while since I've posted a blog. There are a few reasons for this. One is that I have been freakishly busy with all my new goat responsibilities. You would not believe how much longer my chores take me now that I have bottle babies! It went from taking 10 minutes in the mornings before work to feed and water the goats to 45 minutes to an hour by the time I wash all my milking stuff and get it around (heaven forbid I should do this before hand), gather all the feed dishes, segregate Harmony and her babies in one stall, Tierra's girls in the other, and lock Tierra in the main part of the barn while I feed the other lunatics and then go in and milk Tierra, pour the milk directly into bottles, then go feed the warm milk to her babies. Because Tierra does many things, but nursing her own children is not one of them. As we all know. Then of course I still have to feed and water the chickens and let them out for the day. So now I'm setting my alarm for 6 a.m. so I can have the privilege of getting my chores done before I have to run off to work. And then I get to do it all over again just before I go to bed and am tired and just want to curl up in bed with a good book. Am I complaining? Maybe a little. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I were swimming in goat milk and able to get a little cheese action going on up in this place. But as it is, not only are the babies drinking it all but I'm having to supplement with milk replacer because she's only giving me enough for 2 and I have 3 hungry mouths to feed. The time has come that I could start separating Harmony's babies from her at night and milking her once a day in the mornings, but honestly... I cannot bear to sign up for one more responsibility right now that might further lengthen my chores.

I said I haven't posted lately for a few reasons, didn't I? Well, I received an email recently from somebody I know saying that they would like me to remove them from the blog update because they "cannot keep up" and to have a nice life. !!! So then of course I was left wondering if I'm driving people nuts with my blogging and have felt a little weird about posting since then. But honestly, if she didn't want to read them she could have done many things, including a) not read them or b) block the update emails and nobody would have ever been the wiser. Oh, well.

On a happier note, all the babies are doing fabulously and I've been letting them spend as much supervised time outside as possible. I'm not comfortable letting them come and go as they please yet for fear a hawk will try to snatch them. Here are some pictures of all my little ones (Ayden included) running amok outside.
Yes, Tierra is indeed wearing a blue rubber boot on her left leg. She's got a nasty spot on one of her hooves and I've trimmed it back and medicated it with Hoof n' Heel and she was still marinating when this picture was taken. She was not at ALL happy about the arrangement, but I'm tired of seeing her limp about. We'll see if that clears it up. Her belly is still rather low and floppy, but at least her teats are swinging clear of the ground now, which makes milking much less interesting. This other picture is a pretty typical attempt at getting a decent picture of Poe and Mumble. They are so bloody fast that I could fill and entire web page with blurry action shots that don't turn out because they're moving at warp speed. In this one you can see Poe has just gone airborne.

Some exciting stuff has happened recently. For one, I have decided to go into the egg business in a big way. I've been selling my eggs for $3/dozen and have had more people wanting to buy them than I've been able to provide for. We've been getting anywhere from 10-13 eggs per day, and thats from only 14 hens so I've been very happy with their production. Today I found the type of chicks I'm going to order to get started producing mass amounts of free range brown eggs. Here is a link to what our new chickens will be, Red Star Sex Link. I'm thinking of getting about 50 to start out with. They're called sex link because when they hatch the boys are yellow and the girls red so you can easily sex them. I also bought an incubator today to hatch out some chicks from my current chickens so I can continue the blue and green eggs also. It should be interesting as to what those will look like because I have both a Silver Laced Wyandotte rooster and an Ameracauna, so the eggs will produce either purebred Wyandottes, purebred Ameracaunas, or a funky hybrid of the two. Maybe the eggs from that hybrid will be brown and green swirled. ;) We're going to start our first batch of eggs to incubate this Sunday so that they will hatch on a Saturday three weeks from then so all three of us can be home to witness it. I'm going to try to time the arrival of my Red Star chicks with the hatching so I can house all the babies together. Unfortunately, any way you slice it these baby chicks will not be producing any eggs for 5 months, though. *sigh*

Today I took baby goats to Ayden's preschool, and you can imagine the hit that was. I took Mumble and Poe because I thought they'd be fun to watch bounce around, and Gypsy so they could see the size difference and those adorable floppy ears. Hindsight being 20/20, next time I will only take bottle babies if I have the choice. When I let Mumble and Poe out, they ran off to the side and cried for their mother the whole time. Gypsy, on the other hand, came stumbling out of the box and ambled directly over to the 40 some-odd toddlers lined up in anticipation. She was like, "Oh! People! I LOVE people!" The above picture was taken about 5 seconds after I opened the door to the carrier (You can see Ayden on the far right). I was able to catch Poe who was then more than happy to let little hands fondle her and stroke her, but Mumble protested and hollered for the duration, even after one of the teachers scooped him up for his rounds of merry-making.

I think the kids' favorite part was when Poe decided to show them her latest trick, mounting her brother. I guess she got tired of him doing it to her all the time and she's decided to give him a piece of his own medicine. Yes, he's been humping his sister since they were about 24 hours old. Crazy goats. Here's a picture of Poe doing her impersonation of Mumble. She doesn't care that she doesn't have the correct equipment.

Babies Underfoot

I finally got to spend some time with the babies this afternoon. I got off work a little early so after eating some lunch and warming some bottles, I headed out to the goat barn. The three girls managed to drink two full 20 oz bottles! Wow. At this point they are already drinking every drop that Tierra is giving me each milking, and the milk I stockpiled the first two days is rapidly disappearing. In one feeding they are drinking all the milk from the morning milking, and again that evening, leaving me nothing to give them in the middle of the day. I guess if this keeps up I may just have to supplement with cows milk. I let all the babies out to mingle for a while, and while Harmony's twins are still running circles around everybody, including me, Tierra's girls are starting to play a little. They're just adorable with their big ol' ears flapping about. Here's a video of their first time stepping foot outside.

And here's some footage of Mumble and Poe stretching their legs. I think Harmony is getting tired of being locked up with those two bundles of energy, she's just got that frazzled mother look going on. I keep telling her that its only until they reach 10 lbs and are safe from birds of prey, but she doesn't seem to find solace in that.

Here's a short video of me being mauled by Tierra's girls the second I sit down. Little piggies.


I was finally able to get some decent pictures of Mumble and Poe post-disbudding. As you can see, they are doing just fine. :)

Parenting Fifth Avenue Style

So. Tierra has decided to up and take an interest. I didn't know if maybe it was a fluke this morning when she did it, but when she again came into the stall while I was bottle feeding her girls tonight, I paid attention. She came right in like she had every right in the world, and was licking their butts and fussing over them like she'd never purposefully forgotten their existence. I mean, she has never so much as even looked through the slats of their stall until now. Now all of a sudden she thinks she's a soccer mom and oh-aren't-my-babies-wonderful-and-cute. That is, she is fussing all over them as a certain somebody ELSE (ah-hem!) is feeding them HER milk from a bottle. Her milk that this certain somebody just spent the last 15 minutes wringing from her body. When she came into the stall this morning I saw Gypsy down on her knees just about to get a teat in her mouth, and Tierra just stood there and let her. !!!!!! I had already milked her at that point so her teats were a do-able size and at a better height for nursing, and Gypsy was soooooooo close. She was licking and sucking all over it, but just couldn't quite figure out how to get the darn thing in her mouth. I waited for as long as I could for her to find it, because I would love for even just one of them to figure out how to nurse from her, but the clock was ticking and I had to get to work, so when Gypsy gave up I went ahead and gave her the bottle. So this is what I'm thinking. I am going to continue to let Tierra come in and spend as much time as possible with the girls while I'm there to make sure nobody passes out in the middle of the floor and gets stepped on. You think I'm paranoid, don't you? Well, this is what gets strewn all about the stall:Its like a mine-field in there, they just fall where they stand. And Tierra is less than graceful. The last thing I need to be thinking about lying in bed at night is a 175 lb. goat blundering around ontop of my sweet babies. Besides, this parenting from a distance thing seems to be suiting both Tierra and I, and as soon as Tiny is big enough and spry enough I will turn them all three out to be with Tierra. I think it'll be great for them to grow up with a "mom" (Let me get this straight, moms do generally FEED their children, right? I mean, isn't that one of the basic rules of if you're going to have children, its your responsibility to feed them? Am I wrong here?). She can teach them the mysterious tenets of goat wisdom, such as how to properly head-butt Puck and the most inconvenient places to poop.

Ok, so I am feeling more than a little guilty about my lack of attention paid to Harmony's sweet babies, Mumble and Poe. With the thrilling and goo-filled arrival of Tierra's babies, and then the subsequent storm of bad parenting and rage on my part, I have not even stepped foot in their stall! Everybody is fed and watered, of course, but I have not spent even one moment with the little boogers or Mother of the Year, Harmony. I guess its the age old predicament, that the way to get the most attention is to be horrible. Seriously, though. I haven't even mentioned in my blog that I DISBUDDED THEM! This is how neglectful I have been. I mean, that was one of the most traumatic things I have ever had to do, and its been 4 days and I haven't even breathed a word of it. What it boils down to, is that I had planned to do it Saturday, but then Tierra finally decided to have her babies and it was postponed until that evening. So, exhausted and still quite stinky from playing midwife, Mom, Dustin, and I undertook our first disbudding. You're probably wondering why on earth we would choose such a time to do this, but all I can say is that you're really supposed to do it when they're 5 days old, and by Saturday they were 8. I just couldn't bring myself to do it until they were a little bigger! Mumble's horn buds had just started to come in good, and Poe's were definitely on their way. First we shaved the top of their heads, which I think is just adding insult to injury, literally. Then we wrapped them in a towel and Mom and Dustin held them down one-by-one on the picnic table with a folded towel under their chin. I put my inner-ear headphones deep down into my ears and cranked up some angry girl music, and commenced to burn a ring around each horn bud for a quick count of 10 with my disbudding iron, turning it in a circular motion the whole time. You want a nice copper ring around the circumfrence of the horn bud, and then you also sear the circle in the middle with the edge of the iron. This is not a photo of one of my goats, but just a photo I found online showing what I am talking about. Disbudding is one of the few farm-related things I have ever NOT wanted to capture for my readers. I felt bad enough about it, the last thing I felt like doing was running for a camera. I know some of you out there think I am a monster right now, and those of you can read this and at least make an informed decision. It was really not as bad as my shaking hands led me to believe it would be. The second we were done they were fine and went in and nursed. Thirty minutes later they were up and playing harder than ever, if anything. I'll try to get a picture of them tomorrow. They're having a little adventure tonight. It's raining cats and dogs out there, and all the goats were hanging out in the barn anyway, so I went ahead and opened up Harmony and her babies' stall so they could mingle with the rest of the herd for the night, then I locked the door to the barn. I don't trust Mumble and Poe outside by themselves yet because they're so tiny I'm afraid a hawk will fly off with them. I saw a hawk attempt that with my chickens last week and it scared the bejezzes out of me. They're so fast now, though, that I think they'll handle themselves just fine with Tierra, Lucy, Louie, Harmony, Sahara, and Puck. Wow, it's getting crowded in there!

Apparently I Just Adopted Quadruplets

Its been a rocky few days here at Gypsy's Dream Farm. Within and hour after Tierra gave birth on Saturday, I was able to get three of her four babies, the girls, to nurse from her at least a little bit. They were not great at it, but neither were Mumble and Poe (by the way, that is Harmony's doeling's new name) so I didn't worry about it too much. Tierra's little buckling would not nurse and refused to even suck when I tried to get him to take some colostrum from a bottle. We ended up squirting it in his mouth with a tiny syringe, but even with that it's hard to say how much you're getting down him. We brought him into the house, and my mom, God bless her soul, got up with him every 2 hours that night and tried to force some more colostrum down him. He was totally lethargic, and did not even try to stand up like his sisters. The ironic thing is that his sister who looks exactly like him is considerably smaller, yet she is just as vigorous as her huge sisters.

Meanwhile, trying to get the girls to nurse from Tierra was proving less than fun. Tierra was running away from me as I chased her with a baby in my hands trying to get in the general vicinity of her teats. It was horrible and I ended up pretty much wigging out on her and tying her in a corner and pinning her with my body all the while trying to get a baby to suckle. She would stomp and carry on as if I was torturing her, and even managed to step on the tiny little brown doeling's foot. Ahhhh! At this point I was at my wits end and called my goat mentor, whom I bought Tierra from. She said that Tierra's first owner raised her as a show goat and on that farm they did not dam raise, but immediately took the babies from their mothers and bottle fed them. Last year was the first time that she was allowed to raise her own babies, and Casey said that she also had to tie her up and pin her against a wall to let the babies nurse. That went on for a few DAYS before her mothering instincts kicked in and she realized that feeding her babies was an acceptable thing to do. Well, I don't have the time, energy, or patience to force her to be a good mother, and the responsibility of that was bringing me to the edge of my sanity. So, I made the only rational decision available, I decided to make them bottle babies. That meant I had to bottle feed them 4 times a day the first couple of days, and now thank goodness we're down to only 3 times a day. Working 2 jobs, raising my own child, and taking care of my own family does not leave much room, but you do what you have to do. Its ironic, but the minute I decided to bottle feed them my stress level greatly diminished. I had felt so worried about them starving or being stepped on with Tierra, and all that was gone. Instead I had three healthy little girls locked in their warm, dry stall, and the peace of mind that they would neither be stepped on or starve. How is that a bad thing?

And Tierra? Well, when I locked her out of the stall she just walked away and went off grazing with the other goats in the back pasture. She never even looked back. She was like, "Yeah, that was fun and all being a mom, but I'm done now." Heavens.

Tierra's first born, the little buckling, I simply did not have enough time to give the attention he needed if he was to make it. This is a picture of him the morning after he was born, and I'd actually gotten him to stand up for a minute. My friend Lynn had mentioned to me that if Tierra had a boy to give her first option at him, so the morning after he was born I immediately called her. I told her that he had made it though the night, and my mom and I had finally gotten him to suck at a bottle for the first time since he was born and he'd taken about 2-3 ounces. I made her the proposition that if she would like to take him and nurse him, she could have him for free. I normally would have sold him for at least $250 when he was older, but I am happy to have him go to a good home with people who can give him a fighting chance. Here's a picture of her husband, Joe, holding him. The last I heard, Lynn had gotten 1 ounce down him every two hours for the next 24 hours. I haven't heard any more since then, but I've been praying that he'll pull through. But if he does not pull through with such devoted care as that, then he simply was not meant to.

Since then things have steadily gotten better, as I'm getting back into the swing of milking Tierra twice a day and the girls and I figure out this whole bottle feeding thing. Dustin has discovered that he actually rather enjoys bottle feeding the girls, and for their part they are getting much better at it. This afternoon Ayden helped me feed them and even gave them a bottle himself for a minute. It would have lasted longer, but the two big girls were fighting over the nipple and it was stressing him out. ;) The two big girls have gotten so good with the nipple that they can actually be fed standing up now instead of draped over our laps. What a mess! We're talking warm sticky colostrum all over everybody.
We've finally come up with names for the new girls, which was no easy feat! I found out last night that we will be able use our new registered herd name with them, so that is really exciting. So let me introduce you.
This is Gypsy's Dream Twilight, but she will go by Gypsy.
This is Gypsy's Dream Sable Afterhours, or Sable for short.
And last but not least, this is Gypsy's Dream Tiny Dancer, Tiny for short. (My mom came up with this one!) She is so itty bitty that she can wear the little sweaters I made for the Nigerian Dwarf babies the night they were born! This picture gives you an idea how much smaller than her bruiser sisters she is.

Tierra The Baby Machine Exploded

It finally happened! Tierra did finally decide to have herself some babies, and even at a time when not only I could be there to help, but my mom also, and Dustin to act as photographer for the grand event. I was correct yesterday when I thought she was in early labor, because at about 1:20 when Mom went to check on her, she shouted from the goat barn, "I think a baby's about to come!" I grabbed my birthing stuff and went running. Tierra was lying down in her stall and the anxiously-awaited amber colored goo had made its appearance. Within about 15 minutes, things got serious and she started pushing in earnest. I could see her vulva start to bulge, and the next thing I knew a bubble had popped out with two little white hooves presented, picture perfect!You can see the nose sitting on top of the front feet and it's little tongue sticking out. I popped the bubble with my fingers and pulled one of his feet forward a little since its elbows were obviously back. As soon as I did that, it popped right out! I'm telling you, she made this stuff look easy. This is a picture of Tierra with her first baby, a little buckling that looks just like her except he has a few white moon spots on his back and one on the back of his head. After she'd licked him off good mom wrapped him up in a bed pad since he was shivering a little and held him in her lap for a while where he looked quite content. About 5 minutes later Tierra started to push again, which was no surprise for us since she obviously had a belly FULL of babies in there. This one came out tail first with it's back legs folded up against it's belly, but it was so tiny it came out in one good push. In this picture you can see she was half out and I quickly pulled her the rest of the way so she could take her first breath of air. Here is a picture of Tierra with her second baby, a little doeling. Yippee! I was obviously hoping for as many girls as possible, as they will be the only ones I get to keep forever to be a part of my milking herd. This little doeling is so TINY! She's about 2/3 the size of her brother, and even though I have never seen a newborn Nubian, I suspected he was pretty tiny himself. I'm going to do better than tell you what happened next, because Dustin caught the next birth on video! This behemoth of a baby is way way bigger than its brother and sister! And guess what? ITS ANOTHER DOELING! YAY!! She looks solid black, although in the light you can see she's actually more of a deep dark chocolate brown. Gorgeous! At this point I was just ecstatic to have two doelings out of Tierra that the whole thing could have stopped there and I would have left a very happy woman. But apparently Tierra was still not done because before we could even finish wiping baby number three off, she started pushing and another pair of hooves came out! The legs were almost completely out and I still did not see a head and I began to get a little worried. I was afraid this one's neck could be turned and I'd have to go in and find it, one of the most difficult presentations to correct. So I stuck two fingers inside (WOW! I did not even think twice about it, either!) right on top of the legs and I could feel teeth and an open mouth about 2 inches inside the birth canal. So, the head was properly placed but had just not come out yet. Thank goodness! So with her next push I grabbed the legs and pulled. Out popped the most BEAUTIFUL little goat I have ever seen with my own two eyes. It was as big as the previous black one but with with silver and white spots all over its body! And you wanna hear something else? It was ANOTHER DOELING!!!! This is incredible! Here is a video of me cleaning her off and dubbing her with the special name I've been reserving in hopes that one of Tierra's babies would turn out to be a girl. Tierra had four babies in all, three of them girls. Absolutely unbelievable. Her whole pregnancy I tried hard not to get my hopes set on any girls for fear I would be disappointed. No worries there!Next we tied off all of their umbilical cords, dipped them in iodine, and gave them each a shot of Nutri-Drench. I got each of the girls to nurse for at lest a few seconds, but the little boy was so lethargic that we had to squirt the colostrum into his mouth with a syringe. Then Tierra got a pan of grain and some warm molasses water. After that I took a must needed break. As you can see, birthing is a messy business!Here's a close-up shot of all the babies after they had dried off a little bit.

Could Today Be the Day?!

So you guys have probably been expecting a post from me for days now announcing the arrival of Tierra's little ones. Well, lets just say that a whole lot of "expecting" has been going on here since her due date came and went FIVE days ago, but so far not a single thing to show for it. My mother stayed the night here last night to be on goat watch duty for me (God bless her, I haven't had a full night's sleep in two weeks for checking on goats!). I have never been so disgusted to not be woken at 4 a.m. in my life. I keep telling myself that they have to come out sometime. They simply cannot stay in there forever. The laws of physics are against it. I received one particularly insightful suggestion by one of my readers that perhaps she is keeping them in there until they are weaned and everything, just skipping all the middle business.

But... I do believe today is the day. When I half heartedly went to check her tail ligaments this morning I recoiled in horror. I cannot sufficiently describe it, but to perhaps say that where yesterday there was normal bony goat flesh, today there is something the consistency of warm pudding. It feels absolutely unnatural, and even Dustin said "Ugh!" when I had him feel it. There have been no discernible ligaments for weeks, but this is another whole thing entirely. That combined with the way her udder looks this morning, (GINORMOUS!) and the fact that her udder feels like stretched leather leads me to believe that it will finally happen today. Not to mention the fact that her vulva is finally a bit swollen.

Here are two pictures of Tierra's udder, the first taken 2 months ago in December, and the second taken 5 minutes ago.
















Quite the difference, huh? When I went out to check on her she'd gone into her stall and is standing in her favorite corner, and had obviously been pawing at the ground making herself a nice nest because I actually had to move a bunch of bedding away from her udder in order to get the picture. Her teats are literally dangling about 2.5 inches off the ground. Lets just hope that her belly rises back to a normal height right when the babies are born otherwise they'll be having to find a teat thats down by their ankles!

Here's a picture of her standing in her stall getting ready for her babies to come. Take a moment and really LOOK at that belly. I mean.... geesh. And you know what I love about her? She's not worried about stretch marks. Or her saggy boobs. Or if a man goat will every find her attractive again.
I'm suspect that a small part of her fortitude and strength of spirit might be due to the fact that she's growing not only healthy babies, but A BEARD! (This one goes out to you, Marigold!)

Adventures in the Sunshine

Today is Tierra's due date and still no babies. At this point I am still sleeping with the monitor on and now getting up in the middle of the night and traipsing out to the barn to check on her. Lets hope it will happen tonight so I can be put out of my misery!

I have not had much time to spend with Harmony's new babies, as Ayden has been sick all weekend and now of course Dustin and I have it. Between my 3 year old walking petri dish bringing every germ in the county to our doorstep and lack of sleep from watching Tierra, it was inevitable. But, here are some pictures and videos I took of the babies this afternoon when I had a little time between coughing/sneezing fits.

As you can probably see, Mumble has perked up just about as much as his sister, and his new favorite thing is to stand on his mom. She let them play king of the mountain on her for a good 5 minutes before she got tired of it and got up. Her and the babies had their fill of sunshine today because had the entire goat pen to themselves today with nobody but slow-moving Tierra to bother them. She left them alone unless they got too close then would swipe half heartedly at them with her head.

Mighty Mouse Has Nothing On Dustin

We had some excitement today with Louie. My theory is that he was tired of all the fuss over Harmony and the babies and was not going to be outdone. So he went and got himself entangled in some blackberry brambles. And when I say entangled, I mean ENTANGLED. I was headed out the back door to take some scraps to the chickens and I heard an ungodly crying coming from the back pasture and could barely see Louie through the weeds. I noticed that he seemed to be lunging but not getting anywhere. I hollered for Dustin and he went sprinting back there, even jumping over the fence to get to him. I noticed Dustin hurdling the fence was a much smother operation than the time I tried to hoist myself over it to chase That Chicken, but I am coming to terms with that. When Dustin got back there this is what he was greeted with:

As bad as his chest looked in this photo, both of his sides were nearly as bad. Heavens. It took the two of us, 15 minutes, a pair of scissors, and some leather gloves to free Louie of his bonds. Dustin said when he first got back there that the brambles were all over his face and soft little ears, but thankfully he was able to get those free by the time I arrived, camera in tow.

After he freed Louie, Dustin scooped him up in his arms and carried him all the way back to the goat pen, about a hundred feet, which included jumping over a 2 foot wide ditch! Mom and I were suitably impressed. I don't know how much Louie weighs, but I feel nervous jumping that ditch myself and my 61 year old mother wouldn't even attempt it. I kept thinking of the line at the beginning of The Incredibles when Mr. Incredible says, "Sometimes I just want the world to stay saved. I mean, I feel like the maid, 'Didn't I just clean this place up?!" Anyway, Dustin carried him all the way back home and locked him in the pen to ensure there would not be a sequel. Now if that isn't the sexist sight you've ever seen I just don't know what is.

Romping with Babies

These are a couple video's I took of the kids playing with mom this morning. It was the first time they've been out of the kidding stall, and Harmony was looking a little restless so I thought I'd let her out for a bit while everybody else was locked back in the pasture. Both my mom and I stood sentinel to keep them away from the water trough and the electric fencing. Even though its pretty warm out I kept their sweaters on anyway. It was a little windy. And I am a big advocate for overdressing babies, including my own.

The buckling has perked up nicely and was be-bopping all about the kidding stall this morning, just like his sister is in these videos. They're on opposite nap schedules, and he was falling asleep on his feet through most of these videos. I've come up with a name for him. He will be named Laurel Haven Mumble Britches, or Mumble for short. *giggle* When a baby is conceived while owned by somebody else, as in Harmony and Tierra's case, then the baby retains the previous owner's herd name. I have registered the name Gypsy's Dream with both the American Dairy Goat Association and the American Goat Society, so any future kids conceived and born on my farm with have my herd name as their prefix. You know it's killing me not to get to name my new babies with my herd name now. As for the doeling, I think I will wait to name her until Tierra has kidded, because I have a special name picked out for a girl, but I want to meet everybody before assigning it to somebody.

I had my mom take a picture of me and the little doeling to give some perspective to their size. Can you believe how tiny they are?!So now the countdown is on for Tierra. I get to do all of this over again! Only this time they will have huge droopy floppy ears! YAY!

Styling & Profiling

I thought the babies might be cold tonight so I made them sweaters. :)

Babies!!!

Yay!

So. This morning at 5 a.m. I woke up to Dustin saying, "Kayte! What is that?" I took the cotton balls out of my ears and heard very distinctive sqeals that sounded like they came from the itty bittiest babies in the world coming from the baby monitor. I said, "OH MY GOODNESS! DID SHE HAVE THEM?!!" I flew out of bed and took just enough time to pull on my sasquatch suit over my underwear, scoop up my birthing kit, and head for the barn. When I entered the barn I could hear then squalling, and it was totally surreal when I shined the flashlight into Harmony's stall and saw her standing there in the dark with two wet little black and white BABIES infront of her!! I said, "Harmony, what'd you DO?!" This is what I saw:
They were both already up on their feet but still covered in birthing fluid and goo. I wiped them down a bit with the bed pads I bought just for that purpose, but Harmony was already industriously licking them off. She is the best little mama I've ever seen! Any worries I had about her being a first time mom and not knowing what to do have since flown out the window. She is absolutely intoxicated with her babies. If they so much as make a sound she is right on top of them licking them and comforting them.
It's hard to show how truly tiny they are. Here is a picture next to Ayden, who is only 3 1/2.
In all the excitement I did not even think to see what sex they were for a while. The little black one with the white belt is.... A GIRL!!!! And the white one with black spots is a little buckling. ALSO YAY!!! Since I am trying to build up a milking herd, obviously I was hoping for girls, but I knew if Harmony were to have a boy who is conformationally sound, I could keep him as a breeding buck to alternate with Puck. I don't have any Nigerian Dwarf bucks available for stud service within driving distance, so it makes sense to own my own.

So here is a close up of the doeling after she'd dried off a little bit. Come to find out she's not black and white afterall, but her back end is the most interesting shade of black and brown, it almost looks copper. Gorgeous! Mom's favorite thing about her is her one black eye patch. This is a picture of the buckling, who is not quite as vigorous as his twin sister. She is so perky that she was already acting spastic and trying to bounce around within an hour of birth. He mostly stood around looking tired, and was much more difficult to get to nurse the first time. The doeling got right down to business, dropped to her elbows, and butted Harmony's uddder until she found a teat to fit in her mouth.
He never did really figure out how to nurse, and I ended up milking some milk into a syringe (minus the needle, of course) and giving it to him that way, which he did not appreciate. I also gave both babies and mom a couple squirts of Nutri-Drench, a supplement to give them all a little boost after their ordeal. A few minutes after getting some colostrum down him, he perked up a little and I got him to latch on a couple times on his own before I had to go to work. He's been a little groggy all day, but this evening as I sat in there with them (no doubt sitting in something awful) he seems to have perked up quite a bit and I saw him go find a teat twice on his own and grab some munchie.

Harmony is just the best. I got some birthing fluid all over my hands when I was helping to clean them off this morning and she got so distracted licking ME that at one point I finally had to tell her, "Honey, this is really nice and all, but it's time to lick your babies, not me." I ended up picking a baby up and putting it in her face to help her re-prioritize. But, I have to say, after all that she just stood there letting me milk her tiny little teats into that syringe, even lifted her leg so I could get at it better. WOW! I'm used to Tierra who will not let me within a cubic foot of her udder without a proper grain bribe. I suspect I may now be dubbed one of Harmony's babies and am therefore allowed equal access to "the goods."

After everything had calmed down and both babies demonstrated that they could nurse a little, I came back to the house and prepared a big bowl of warm water with molasses in it for Harmony, which goats are said to appreciate. As I was mixing this brown water, I thought there was no way she was going to actually drink this. My goats don't do anything typical goats do, such as eat peanuts or vegetables, so I felt gooey stinky water would definitely be out. But when I showed up with it and a bowl of grain, she went for the warm molasses water first and sucked it all down! The grain followed quickly, though. By that time she was passing the afterbirth, which I think is actually quite pretty in it's own way. What other thing in nature can you say is that color? And yes, it is safe to assume at this point that I am going to post a picture. So brace yourself.
For those of you who think this picture is gross, all I can say is that I feel sorry for you. This is life, and that thing grew two perfect little goat babies out of nothing in 5 months flat. Wow. In some cultures they bury a woman's placenta and have a ceremony for it, which I can really understand. Harmony's ended up wrapped in a bed pad and stuffed in a dirty yellow 5 gallon bucket, not quite the beautiful send off, but at least I took a picture!

After that I tied off the doeling's long umbilical cord (you can see it in her photos) with some dental floss and trimmed it up a bit. Then I dipped both babies' umbilical cords in iodine, which they did not enjoy one bit. You submerge it in a small cap full, then tip them over on their back to completely saturate the entire thing. Harmony didn't appreciate me making her babies scream, but it took all of 3 seconds to do and I'm pretty sure she's since forgiven me.

So, all in all it was a fabulous day. Everything I said about Harmony having poor timing I take back. She let me get a whole night's sleep, didn't even need me to assist as she'd gone and done everything herself, and I didn't have to miss a minute of work. She even had them early enough that I could play for a couple hours and help get nursing underway with time left for a shower and to get Ayden off to school. I am a little disappointed to not have witnessed the birth, but this way there was no anxiety or stress, just, voila! Babies! Besides, I still have Tierra's to look forward to, and if she has as many babies as we suspect, that birthing counts for two in and of itself!

Thus concludes the first birthing on our farm, which by the way is officially named Gypsy's Dream Farm. :)

7 Things

Well, apparently I've been tagged, and now I have to post 7 things my readers may not know about me. Hmmm. Here goes.

1. For those of you who've seen the movie Tombstone, you know the villain who in the opening scene kills the bride and groom as they leave the chapel? His name is Curly Bill Brosius. And I am related to him. My mother's maiden name is actually Brosius. My husband is tickled by this fact to no end, and was astounded the first time he made me watch that movie when I jumped up and paused it and said, "Holy crap! I'm related to that guy!" All I'd known was that there was some shady western guy in my family tree by the ridiculous name of Curly Bill. I had no idea I was descended from such legendary stock! That movie has a veritable cult following, and I am therefore to be worshiped. A little.

2. I am double jointed in my knees. I thought everybody's knees made nasty grinding noises when they bent their knees backwards a little. Apparently they don't, because they can't. Oh.

3. I grew up traveling the US and Mexico, and attended public school in Sonora, Mexico for a few years when I was about 9. I spoke fluent Spanish, which has since seeped out of my ears in my sleep, apparently. I can still understand about 70% of what I hear, but can only regurgitate about 20% when I have to speak it.

4. I used to have my nipples pierced. And yes, it did hurt. Worse than natural childbirth.

5. I lost my virginity in kindergarten. My boyfriend (who I "dated" straight through 2nd grade) told me at recess one day that he saw his parents "do it" and would I like to try. I thought about it, and said, "Sure!" So we met at the bottom of the playground where there was a small grassy slope. By this time a whole crowd of 5 year olds had gathered to see exactly how "it" was done. Brandon (my bf) told me that we were going to lie down and wrap our arms around each other and roll down the hill, in other words, "doing it." We rolled down that hill in front of the entire kindergarten class, and I have to say, when I got up amidst reverent whispers of, "Wow...they just did it!" and brushed the grass clippings from myself I felt quite the woman.

6. I LOVE to bellydance. I was taking a class in Charleston before we moved out here to the farm, and was actually taking private tutoring lessons from the Bellydance Troupe leader practicing my audition piece for the troupe tryouts in July. I would have made it, too, and gone on to shake my mommy belly for half of Charleston, but instead I set aside that dream to move an hour away to the sticks and be a farmer. But I've never regretted it for a minute. There will be another opportunity for bellydance, I know.

7. I enjoy doing mildly shocking/obscene things to inanimate objects. Hence this picture taken on our honeymoon in Canada.

I now tag the following sites for 7 Things we don't know about them!

• Life Beyond the Sidewalks
  
• Hodge Podge Farm
  
• A Homesteading Neophyte
  
• This Goats Life
  
• Goat Philosophy 101
  

And a special thanks to the person who was kind enough to put us on this list in the first place!
Nature's Harmony Farm

• Once you are tagged, link back to the person who tagged you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Post 7 random or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
• Tag 7 people and link to them.
• Comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.

Sharing the Discomfort

If I have to listen to this all night, then you guys can at least hear it once so you can properly sympathize. This is a video I took 5 minutes ago of the baby monitor I've been sleeping with for 5 nights now awaiting notification of some goat babies. The rhythmic crunching is Tierra chewing her cud in the OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE BARN! It is punctuated with miserable little moans, also coming from Tierra, which indicates that she has indeed tried to lie down and is so miserable she moans with each inhalation. Then you hear the neighbors dogs barking as if they are right here in my living room. Oh, and the bit in the middle with all the knocking about and all the red lights light up? Yea, that would be Puck clambering around on top of his dog kennel he likes to sleep in. It's a veritable wonderland of awkward nighttime noises in there, and I get to sleep to it!

My Ticking Time Bombs

Goat Thy Name Is Bad Timing

This is Jacqui. Jacqui is my mother-in-law. There is a decent chance that I may hate her by the end of the week.

You see, Harmony's due date came and went yesterday, to no avail. No goo, no vanishing of the ligaments, no pawing at the ground, no baby talking; in other words, no babies. :( Today I had to work in Summerville, about an hour away, doing massage at a chiropractor's office. I was so worried that I would be gone all day and miss the birth, so I sweet talked my mother-in-law, the aforementioned Jacqui, into coming up to goat-sit just in case the grand event were to transpire in my absence. She even drove up last night for a one-on-one crash course in goat labor. By the end of the night her head was swimming with visions of little white hooves emerging, umbilical cords in iodine, copious amounts of colorful goo everywhere, and best of all, her hand buried in the business end of a goat. I think I managed to pretty well freak her out, basically. But she's a trooper and still game for the assignment. Luckily, I only had a few massages in the morning today so I was able to get home myself to keep an eye on Harmony by noon, so Jacqui was spared. For now. I'm hoping the offer still stands for tomorrow when I have to again work in Summerville. *This is me batting my eyes at you compellingly, Jacqui!* Its an acknowledged fact by all parties, though, that if Jacqui gets to witness the first birth on my farm I will hate her a little bit.

When I got home today, Harmony was still looking as perky as ever, with nothing to show for the passing of her due date but a little swelling in her vulva. As the afternoon progressed, and I was out there taking a peek at her bottom about every hour, I noticed that her little udder is not quite as little as it used to be! It's downright bulging out from between her back legs now, which I think is a good sign. For a first freshener (a goat pregnant for the very first time) she's got quite an udder on her, I think anyway.

This is a picture of me checking her ligaments. Goats have a ligament on either side of their spine right above their tails, and when they "disappear" that indicates that they have softened sufficiently to allow the kid to pass through the birth canal, therefore birth is impending. I've been practicing feeling everybody's ligaments for months now, so I'm fairly confident when I say that Harmony's are definitely still there, although slightly softer than they used to be.

So I've been out there all afternoon looking for all these signs in Harmony, then I looked over at Tierra. I realized that everything I've been looking for in Harmony, Tierra has already done. Her udder is as tight as a tick, I swear she couldn't get another ounce of milk in there if she had to. Her ligaments have been almost non-existent for weeks. I never did even find them today. She has huge shallow depressions on either side of her spine just above her tail, another sign. No goo or anything, though. I swear, I'm not going to be able to watch for any of the classic signs with her, because she's already done them all. I was able to feel the babies kicking this afternoon, though, so that means they're probably not in position and serious about coming out yet. She is due Tuesday, 6 days from now. I don't know how she's going to accommodate her babies growing in there even another day. It's hard to express with pictures just how large her stomach really is. It's hard to show her pendulous walk as she tries to navigate with this huge thing hanging from her middle. These pictures were taken from some different angles this afternoon to try to give an idea. Look at the size of her chest compared to her belly. Even with a beautifully attached udder, her milk-filled teats are mere inches from the ground. Every time I look at her I say, "Poor Tierra." Even people who have never seen goats before come here and say, "Wow! Look at that goat's belly!"

When I was complaining to Ayden this evening over dinner that Harmony still hasn't had her babies, he told me very matter-of-factly, "Because they're not done cooking, Mommy." Oh. My bad.

So. Since Harmony insists on going over her due date, she's just gonna have to keep those babies in there until I can be home tomorrow afternoon. Because nobody WANTS to hate their mother-in-law. Especially not one as cool as Jacqui.

Pregnant Beauties

Poor Tierra. So pregnant she's taken to leaning on trees, and she still has a week and a half to go! She's so big she's even putting my huge pregnant belly with Ayden to shame! I guess I was only carrying a 7 lb baby boy, not twins, triplets, or even quadruplets! Anybody care to make a stab at how many kids she's got in there?
I'll post a before and after picture of her to give you the full effect.
Tierra when I got her:














Tierra today:
Notice I did not post a before picture of myself. Nobody wants the masses to compare them to their pre-baby states. There'd be too much crying and gnashing of teeth. We'll leave the comparisons for the livestock!

Getting Ready for Babies! (Not Mine, Thank Goodness!)

Well, lots of exciting stuff is happening here on the farm. First and foremost, of course, I have the two does that are due to kid soon. Harmony is most likely going to kid sometime in the next few days *me biting my nails*, and Tierra is due on February 5th, only about a week and a half from now. I got my husband to pick me up a used baby monitor at the consignment shop in Charleston 3 days ago, and we've been sleeping with it on in our bedroom, just in case. And yes, our bedrooms walls are orange, and it is awesome. You can even see the gold glitter in the paint in this picture. ;) Thank goodness the goats bed down and keep it quiet at night or I'm not sure I could be quite as vigilant a goatmother! As it is, I already sleep with cotton balls in my ears (picture this: a loving husband mouth breathing in your ear all night.... guhhhhh... guhhhh... guhhhh... you'd sleep with cotton balls, too).

I'm so nervous and excited about the impending goat births that I just about don't know what to do with myself. I try to remember life before pregnant goats and I just can't quite fathom it. I know I did it for 27 years, but I don't think I could have enjoyed it very much. I've compiled all the things I need for my girls' kiddings:
1. Iodine- to dip the kid's navels
2. Bed pads- to wipe the gooey kids down with
3. Gloves- in case I gotta go in!
4. Industrial size tube of KY Jelly- so my goat doesn't hate me if I have to go in!
5. Dental floss- to tie the umbilical cords if needed
6. Nutri-Drench- electrolyte supplement for weak kids/moms
7. 2 kid nipples and one clean ginger ale bottle thanks to Jacqui and Jerry- in case I end up needing to bottle feed somebody
8. Flashlight- obvious reasons
9. Molasses- to give to mom in warm water to help her recover from the stress of kidding
10. Camera- oh, yeah, you guys are gonna have some interesting pictures!
11. Vet phone number- just in case...

There's more, I know there is, but thats all my sleepy brain can regurgitate for now. I've watched so many kidding videos on youtube and read so much about it that I feel like an expert minus the hands-on experience. Not the best place to be, but certainly not the worst.

I've been keeping busy while waiting for all these babies to start raining down on us. I pounded 22 t-posts into the ground by myself yesterday, and man am I feeling it today! For those of you who don't know, a t-post is the metal posts that you see holding up fencing, field fencing in our case. You stick this really heavy metal tube thingy with handles on it over the end of the 6 foot high post and proceed to pound it into the ground about a foot. Yippee. Yeah, so, now that you know what that is I'll just let you digest the fact that I did 22 yesterday. I set all the posts for the very large existing goat pen fence, a buck pen, and even a separate quarantine pen to be used as needed, but especially if/when we get a new goat and need to keep it separate from the others for a while. I've decided to take the electric goat netting down that encloses their pen and replace it with more permanent field fencing, because I'm tired of the electric fence always shorting out from 6" of weeds or drifts of dry leaves bogging it down. I'll reserve the electric fence for rotational grazing in the back pasture in the spring. The guy from my local feed store delivered the fencing and posts on Monday, and when I finished setting the posts yesterday I had to go there to pick up some vaccines and other things they'd ordered for me. He recognized me and asked about the fence, so I told him I was exhausted because I'd just finished setting all of the posts. Oh, you should have seen his face! He actually sputtered a little and his eyes got big. I guess he doesn't come across many women who tackle these jobs. When he was here to deliver the fencing he told my father-in-law that he'd have to take my husband out to show him this really great way to build a chicken coop, and my father-in-law said, we'll you'd want to take her. And the guy said, "No, him because he'd be the one building it." My father-in-law laughed and said, "No, she built that" and pointed at the barn. :) How satisfying. So now he probably thinks I'm this manly he-woman who does fencing and builds stuff. So be it. I'm just home more than my husband, more motivated, and capable. So why not me?!

On a side note, I have to tell what Ayden and I found a couple days ago. We've been getting eggs very consistently of late, at the rate of about 7 a day, which isn't too shabby for 14 hens just starting to lay in wintertime. Unfortunately, they've been pretty consistent in their mission to lay eggs all about the property. Ayden of course loves this, and said, "Mommy, its fun to have Easter egg hunt every day!" But when gathering the eggs consists of scoping out the entire goat barn (even found one in the middle of the floor with 6 goats milling all about it!), crawling on my hands and knees under the back porch steps, and fishing through the bushes, I knew enough was enough. On our last egg gathering operation, we finally discovered the mother load. Sixteen eggs under the guest bedroom window. Sixteen. Thank goodness it's been cold out and they were just as fresh as if they'd been in my refrigerator. I've float tested all of them and every single one of them was less than 3 days old. After that episode, I decided it's time to teach my chickens where chickens are supposed to lay eggs. In the chicken coop. So far only one Wyandotte hen would lay in the nest box, and she'd leave it for me in the same box every morning. So now I'm having to keep the chickens locked in their run for a week or so until they get used to laying in their boxes. I feel bad for them, but its just gonna have to be that way. Between them and having Harmony shut in the kidding stall at night and while I'm at work, I'm beginning to feel like a jailer! I'll be happy when everybody can be out running amok as God intended.

Two Thumbs Up: Goats Gone Wild

Here's a couple movies I've taken of the goats over the last month or so and forgot to post. This first one you can see Lucy hauling butt around the goat pen just because she can. I've never seen a goat move that fast! (That's me talking on the phone to my mother that you hear. I have not lost my mind.)


This one is really funny, it was taken 2 days ago when all my goats lost their minds. Well, except for Tierra who is so hugely pregnant that all she did was scowl from the door of the goat barn. I was home with Ayden and happened to look out the window and see Sahara and Louie slamming heads. Really weird considering Louie has expressed not even the slightest interest in the two new Nigerians, not even so much as a Hi-how-are-ya. Sahara was rearing up on her hind legs and beating Louie back, who I began to realize was chasing Sahara. And then trying to mount her. On her face. *sigh* Sahara was running full-tilt around the pen to get away from him, and then I saw her go over to Harmony (her daughter, mind you!) and mount HER! What?! I ran for the camera and was just in time to capture Louie advancing on Sahara, her butting him off, and then Louie doing a feisty little triple axle move in mid-air. Whoa! Did I mention that the whole time Louie was chasing Sahara, Lucy was chasing him? It was mayhem.


Unfortunately, all these signs point to Sahara not being pregnant after all and that she may have just gone back into heat. But apparently she's always been hormonal during her pregnancies and it is not unusual for her to mount other does at that time. She also had a healthy bit of goo swinging from her bottom, which can also be a sign of heat, but that, too, is normal for her during pregnancy. So we'll just have to watch and see if this all happens again in 18-22 days. If it does, and she is truly not bred, then Puck will get to show his stuff sooner rather than later! Bucklings are actually virile from as early as 7 weeks old and at that point need to be separated from not only their mother but their sisters. Heavens!

Why Did The Chicken Go In The Goat Barn?

Well, we have been quite the farmers today! I woke up excited to go check in the chicken coop to see if anybody else was gonna leave us some eggs, and I was not disappointed! I found one brown egg in one of my nest boxes (oh you have NO idea how satisfying that is!).

We did eat our first green egg yesterday morning when I did not have enough eggs to make omelettes. Can you figure out which one it is? I'll give you the hint: its the really yummy dark orange chock full of vitamin E from all that healthy sunlight perfectly spherically yolked egg!

Next on the agenda was a road trip... to pick up another goat! I got an email from Laurel Haven saying that they had a buckling available at a reduced price because through a series of unfortunate events, they were unable to have him disbudded as a baby and now he has horns, which is a big no-no in the dairy goat world. She was planning on weathering (castrating) him and selling him as a pet, but she said he's so conformationally sound that it just killed her to do it. He's her first kid from a flashy boy by the name of Sharpie, who's a whole kettle of fish and then some. I was planning on buying a buckling from her in the spring, and I really wanted one of Sharpie's, so... its a match made in heaven! Louie has reached the point in his life here on the farm that he's finally gotta be separated from the girls since they'll be starting to give birth in a week and I don't want him messing with them or possibly re-breeding them. He's got horns (almost all Angoras do, apparently, I'm not sure why they aren't disbudded, too), so a little Nigerian Dwarf buck with horns would make an ideal pen-mate for him. I'm not sure what to do with Lucy... the whole reason for Louie to be here is to breed Lucy, and they're best friend's so I hate to separate them. But on the other hand, if I put her in the buck pen with Louie and the new Nigerian buckling, there's always the chance that the wrong buck will breed her and I'll end up with a Nigora baby. That's not so bad, but completely defeats the whole purpose of having Louie here. So we'll see. I guess I'll just have to consent to taking her on dates with Louie when she's feeling amorous.

Anyway, we packed up the family and made the 2 hour trip to Laurel Haven and picked up my little guy, and on the way there finalized his name. He had not been registered yet, so we got to pick the last part of his name. The first part is of course Laurel Haven because that's the herd name he was born into, so his full name is now Laurel Haven's Lucky Puck. It was a tossup between Puck and Bugaboo, and Puck won. I suspect Bugaboo will resurface as a buckling or weather name in the near future, though. :)He's a cute little fella and is handling the move like a champ. This is his first time away from his mom (I feel so wrong taking a baby from it's mother you have no idea), so he's inevitably going to cry for a few days. He's already let us hear what he's got this evening, as he's locked in one of the new stalls in the goat barn while everybody gets to know each other through the slats. I also want to give him some time to adjust before I set him loose out in the pen to discover electric fencing. It's been quite an experience for them all that first day, as everybody but Tierra had never experienced it. Tierra took one look at it and said, "No, I'm good."

In all the excitement of installing Puck in the goat barn, I stumbled upon a really fun surprise. I had placed a large dog carrier in the corner of the other stall last week just incase Harmony or Sahara would want a place to hide. When I grabbed it to move into Puck's stall, I saw this behind it. It was a perfect little hollowed out nest in the corner of the stall with eggs in it! (Notice how dark green that one egg is...fascinating!) Apparently some chickens have been sneaking in here and laying for heaven's only knows how long! I burst out laughing and ran to get Dustin and Ayden. Just then a brown hen came in and plopped herself down ontop of them. I told Dustin that he should take a peek inside the carrier to see if anybody had been in there, and he found 6 green eggs in there, too! So apparently my chickens have been quite busy and just failed to alert me to that fact. The brown chicken then got off the clutch of eggs in the corner and parked herself on the eggs in the crate, and here's her picture doing just that. As a mother myself, it feels so wrong to take a chicken's egg when she obviously wants to sit on it and make some babies. But, considering the fact that she's left them each night to go roost in the cozy chicken coop, I know there are not any babies in those things. I did finally take her eggs when she left the carrier, and I even placed the smaller cat carrier in the corner of the coop with some nice leaves in it for any chickens who'd prefer to lay in that. I don't care where they lay them, as long as I can find them. Right before we left to go get Puck today we noticed that one of the black hens was copping a squat in one of the nest baskets in the coop, and sure enough there was a perfect little brown egg when we got home! So, in one day we were able to gather... are you ready for this?

A DOZEN EGGS!

The Not-Quite-But-Possibly-Truly-First-Egg

Today while I was stuck at home babysitting Ayden again, I decided I am at least going to have something to show for this day other than a paycheck. So when he went down for his nap (thankfully feeling much better) I bundled up and headed out to the chicken coop to build my now-egg-producing-poultry something nice to lay their eggs in. I had bought some white baskets from the dollar store about 4 months ago to use as nest boxes, but so far they'd just been stuck up on a high shelf in the chicken coop waiting for me to install them. Recently one of the black hens has taken to roosting at night way up there perched on this precarious stack of baskets. Often I have looked at those baskets and idly wondered, "Could there be an egg in there? Nah." Well today when I took it down lo and behold, there was one filthy brown egg nestled in 4 months worth of chicken droppings. Ewwww. But it still brought a smile to my face seeing something so precious that my chicken had left for me. It gave me warm fuzzies thinking about her jumping up about 8 feet to get on that shelf and then thinking that basket would be the perfect thing to lay an egg in (yea me for thinking like a chicken!) and then crawling inside that stack of baskets and laying her egg. Granted, in filth, but an egg nevertheless. I have no idea how old this egg is, and I may do the egg-in-water test to determine how old it is. What you do is pour a bowl full of cold water and gently place the egg in it. If it sinks to the bottom and stays there, it is about three to six days old. If it sinks, but floats at an angle, it's more than a week old. If it sinks, but then stands on end, it's about two weeks old. If it floats, it's too old and should be discarded. Go ahead and try that with your store bought eggs and you might never eat them again!

I was able to accomplish an unholy amount of remodeling while Ayden took his nap. I took down 3 shelves that were previously installed high on one wall of the coop, and re-purposed them as shelves to screw the nest boxes onto. Since they love to sleep in naughty places, such as up on one of the shelves in the shed-side of the coop, I went ahead and put a couple nest boxes up there. If they're gonna be pooping all over my side of the shed they can at least lay me some eggs while they're at it. I filled their nest boxes with dry leaves (which were very hard to find considering it's been raining for 2 days... devotion is me out there picking leaves one by one from the top layer of leaves strewn about my lawn). My mother suggested I make the nest boxes more tempting by putting a hard-boiled egg in it to get their little eggy motors running (note the large brown egg in the nest. That thing looks so tempting even I would like to lay an egg in it). Porcelain eggs are ideal because they cannot accidentally break the egg out of curiosity with a well placed peck and then discover its wonderful yummy contents and thus become egg eating monsters. Alas I have no porcelain eggs. I riffled through Ayden's toy box looking for last years Easter eggs and managed to find the fake plastic egg that came with his kitchenette set from 2 years ago along with a fake strawberry and a hard red ball. Chickens are not that smart... so why not?

Fake plastic egg.

Fake plastic strawberry.
;)

And Then The Chicken Said, "What the Heck Was That?!"

Well, yesterday I got a call from Ayden's school saying he was running a fever of 101 and complaining of stomach pains, so I had to go pick him up early. The rest of the afternoon and evening were spent watching my sweet child listless and puking. I had to cancel my massages for today so I could stay home with him, and I am really glad I did because he's even hotter this morning, though thankfully no more puking. We lounged in bed until almost 9:30 this morning, dozing and cuddling together. Eventually I knew I'd have to get up and go do my chores, especially since the chickens were locked in their coop. I made it out there at about a quarter till 10, and I had some pretty restless chickens glaring at me through the chicken wire divider in our coop. As I bent over to scoop some feed, one of the roosters crowed right in my ear and I swear I could feel my ear drums rattle. Wonderful. When I opened the door they came flooding out over my feet in a great poultry escape move. After they'd gone boiling out the door, the coop was eerily silent. I headed toward their little door in the corner, but something caught my eye. Something distinctly round and pale green nestled in the paper shreds.....

IT'S OUR FIRST EGG!!!!

According to my figures, over the last 7 months we have spent roughly $88 on chicken feed, $8 on a brooder lamp, lets say $40 on electricity to keep their heat lamp on 24/7 while they were chicks, $50 for them as day-old chicks, $50 for their feeder and waterer's (small chick sized ones and large 1 gallon ones for when they got older), $80 for chicken wire and hardware to enclose their run and separate off half of our shed to function as their coop... am I forgetting anything? Probably, but lets just run with that figure. So that means that this egg cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $316. I'll let you know if it is made of solid gold when we eat it.I know he looks feverish, but heavens his little rosy cheeks are adorable.You can see the difference in size to these awful store bought eggs. They will get bigger as their little eggy organs further develop.

Dropping The Ball

My mother just pointed out to me that I have yet to post only the most adorable picture of my child EVER. I remember saving it for a very special blog, because it's just so cute, but apparently that never materialized and I failed to post it altogether. Oops! Well, here's to rectifying that. :)
It really shows how truly tiny my two new Nigerian Dwarf goats are. Keep in mind that Ayden is only 3 years old!

Wide Loads Taking Over

I thought my pregnant girls deserved a blog all to themselves, seeing as how they're just bursting with baby flavor. Tierra and Harmony are due on the same day, February 5th. What are the chances of that? Especially considering I bought them both pregnant from different farms. Harmony has been very obviously pregnant since the first time I saw her. Her little belly bulges on both sides, and she's definitely carrying her babies high up, compared to Tierra who has never really gained and inch side-to-side, but who's belly just gets closer and closer to the ground each day.
About two weeks ago I caught Harmony standing up on the picnic table, and I thought I'd see if I could feel any movement in her belly. As soon as I placed my hand on her I felt a very distinct little pop against my palm. Whoa! A few days later as I was sitting outside in a lawnchair watching her and Sahara cuddling in a patch of sunlight, I could see Harmony's little bulging belly just jumping and bopping all over the place. The moment was so beautiful it almost gave me goosebumps. I think she must have some seriously active babies in there, and I can really sympathize after having been pregnant with Ayden. In my 9th month when I would do my kick counts (you're supposed to feel the baby kick at least 12 times in one hour) I would literally count 12 kicks in the space of less than a minute. The whole thing was absurd for me. I never minded until that space of about 12 hours when he was positioned just right to be kicking me right in the cervix. Ahhh! It felt like being shocked with a cattle prod, and I would have absolutely NO warning. Terrible. I'm sure Dustin and my mom remember that episode with me screaming every few minutes...

Moving on. Tierra, unlike Harmony, has not felt the need to stand still long enough for me to feel her babies. Every time I'd try to reach under her, she'd immediately walk away. I guess it probably has something to do with the fact that she's used to being milked and has decided not to let me get anywhere near her udder without the requisite grain ration. She knows I'm green at this and she takes advantage of me, I just know it. Thats ok, though, because this evening I gave her the scratching of her life and surreptitiously snuck my palm down to her stomach. I was almost immediately rewarded with a very distinct flutter against my hand, and after a few moments a few hardy kicks to my hand. YEA! It was the highlight of my day. I stood there stooped over her, frantically rubbing and scratching with my other hand until my poor back just could not take another moment. When I straightened up and took a step back, she looked at me with a "hey-where-the-heck-do-you-think-you're-going stare" and walked over and leaned against my thighs wanting more. So of course I sacrificed my own comfort and partook in a little more goat-lovin'.

Something interesting about Tierra, I've found, is that she seems to be carrying her babies way down low. I had my doubts that she was even pregnant because she is not an inch wider than when I first got her, but about a month ago I noticed that she's getting to be a definite wedge shape. Skinny neck to moderate sized chest and a steady slope downhill from there, ending with her ever-increasing udder. Another interesting thing happening with her is that all of a sudden it feels like I can touch my fingers under her spine right above her tail. You're supposed to feel for ligaments there, because when they seem to disappear, that means the birth is imminent. I've been practicing since I got her, but there for a while she was so fat that she had fat pads bulging on either side of her spine. So, I cut back on her grain and now she's slimmed down. I was reading on the Internet the other day that her spine popping up like that is a normal thing that can happen a few weeks before kidding. Two weeks ago I noticed that overnight her vulva went from being a perky 2-3 inches long to about 5. I'll spare you the pictures I took. I of course flipped out and thought she was going into premature labor and even had my mom come up and babysit her while I was at work just in case. The next morning everything was back to its normal size, and then three days ago I noticed that she had a small bit of orange goo coming out, which is another sign of labor, only its usually a very large amount. Nothing has happened since, and I am assuming that her body is just gearing up for the big event. Maybe it means that she'll have a very easy kidding since her body has been getting used to the idea this whole time. :)

Her udder is even starting to change. Even though she was in milk when I bought her, her udder was never much to look at size-wise. Lately, though, it has plumped up so big that it's even starting to bulge out the back. You can really see it in this picture. Pretty soon it'll be time to give her a shave on her udder and backside in preparation for the birth. I'm sure she's gonna love that. It can't be any worse than attempting to give Louie a pizzle trim (its what you think it is). *full body shiver*

A Week Of Pictures

I've taken so many pictures over this past week, but none of them are blog-worthy in and of themselves, so I thought I'd post them all. Just cause. :)

Louie, Lucy, and Tierra enjoying their new hay rack. Especially now that it doesn't fall off the wall whenever you turn your back.
















Ambrose sleeping on an o-so-cozy pat of hay on the front porch. What a farm cat.
















Sahara, Harmony, Tierra, and believe it or not, Louie, up to their eyeballs in forage in the back pasture. The two new Nigerians are finally settling in and becoming part of the herd, even following Tierra and the others out on their browse circuit. Chickens standing sentry on the back porch on a cold day.



















Louie, me, and Lucy on that same cold day. Louie came of for air for a moment from chewing on the button on my mitten long enough for Dustin to take his picture.

Lucy Auditions for Part in Exorcist Movie

Due to the fact that we were constantly hauling lumber in while working on the goat barn yesterday, the goats managed to find their way through the open gate into our yard more than once. We were tired of chasing them back in, and they were just milling around on the grass, so we didn't see it as overly pressing to corral them for the umpteenth time. Not until Lucy got brave and ventured up toward the house, where she apparently found the very last leaf on something that looks suspiciously like a day lilly. For you goat owners, you probably see where this is going. After that, we got them all back into their pen and then locked them in the back pasture to get them out of our hair for a bit while we were still coming and going so often.
Last night when Dustin went out to feed the goats, he said that Lucy, Harmony, and Sahara all refused to touch their grain. Hmm. He said everybody was acting normal other than that, and Tierra gobbled hers up like normal. I didn't think much of it, because lately they've decided something is off about their grain. I'd tend to agree with them if I didn't know for a fact that it's locked in an airtight plastic trash can and has not gotten wet or contaminated by any rodents or anything. Tierra pulled the same thing on me one day last week, sniffing agitatedly at her grain and looking overall pretty disgusted by it, but then went on to eat it anyway. The rest of them ate it like normal, but then today every single one of them acted disgusted by it, but still very hungry. Anybody have any ideas why they would do this? It's the same grain I normally feed them, Purina Goat Chow, and I just bought two 50 lb. bags, so I'm loathe to throw it out and start fresh. The only thing I can think of is that they started doing this about the same time everything froze a few days ago. ???
Back to my story, though. So this morning when I went out to feed them, and got a whole slew of glares from my apparently-connoisseur-livestock, Lucy was nowhere to be seen. When I walked around the side of the goat barn, I was greeted with something that made me stop dead in my tracks. Lucy was standing there with her entire chin and chest stained brown, frothing at the mouth and slinging orange vomit all over herself and her surroundings. Ahhhh! I ran to get Dustin and had him come watch her while I ran inside to see what the Internet had to say. Fias Co Farm was naturally my first stop. They had a recipe for rhododendron poisoning, so I ran to the store for Milk of Magnesia and rennet (which despite what all the websites say, grocery stores do NOT carry). I mixed up some Mylanta, olive oil, ground ginger, and baking soda, then Dustin held Lucy by the horns while I drenched her (squirted it into her mouth with a large syringe). After that we kept an eye on her, and it was heartbreaking to see her standing off by herself moaning softly, grinding her teeth, and looking just about as pathetic as a soiled little fluffy white goat can. Every so often she would scream (!) out a bleat, like she was having a stomach cramp or something. It was awful! After about an hour, though, she seemed to get better and stopped frothing and I even caught her coming over for a drink of water a few times. I cannot tell you how good it feels to know that I was able to help her and I now know for certain that that mixture did indeed sooth her stomach and help her get over what I can only assume is poisoning from the day lilly or whatever it was she found in our yard. My next mission is to eradicate anything in our yard that could even possibly be poisonous to my goats, just in case they were to ever get out again.

It's Just A Chin. And A Barn.

It's done! Well, mostly done. I spent all day yesterday working with Dustin and Jesse on the barn, and our efforts finally paid off. First, I feel that I should point out that my slave labor force managed to stay up till 5 a.m. playing some newfangled skateboarding video game, and therefore did not get out of bed until about 11, whereas I had been knocking around the house since 8:30. Even sausage biscuits could not coax them out of bed, which is just about unheard of. So, tired of waiting, Ayden and I went out and used the circular saw to shorten the remaining outside posts and installed the rafter boards. I cut, hauled the lumber, hoisted it over my head to sit ontop of the posts, and hammered. Ayden handed me nails. As you can imagine I was pretty well fuming, with such thoughts as, "Boy, its a sad day when a 3 year old is more help than a husband" running laps through my head. Ayden and I worked for about 2 hours before the boys stirred and Dustin came out to help. I will say in his defense, though, that he and Jesse more than made up for their slow start, and we did indeed finish the blasted thing the same day. I finished hanging the door this afternoon, and have already applied sealer to about half of it. I still have to install some sort of latch for the door, figure out some way to separate the stalls, and paint it brown. Then it will be a bona fide, if not fancy, barn! My goal this whole time has been to finish it before Tierra and Harmony are due to kid, which is only about 4 weeks from now. *whew!* The goats seem to like it and each one made a point to take a turn about the room to inspect it, promptly hopping up on the stanchion and fighting over who got to be king-of-the-stanchion.
Here are some pictures of the inside. They now have a waterproof 15x15 area to hang out in.













This is a view of where the two stalls will be. You can see that we've brought in some dry leaves for bedding, mixed with some shredded paper that I scavenge from various offices to use for free animal bedding. It will find it's way to the compost heap for use on the garden when it's soiled.
This is a picture of the oposite corner where their hayrack is, which I've now bolted into the wall. That sucker ain't going nowhere! You can also see their pan of minerals, some old buckets that have yet to find a new home, and the step stool mentioned in a previous blog, which was the only form of a ladder used in this project. I can't tell you how many times I heard Jesse say, "Man, you guys really gotta get a ladder!"













So, at this point you might have asked yourself what on earth the title of this blog is about. Well, no goats were harmed in the making of this barn, but my chin was. While hammering one of the wall pannels on, the nail went flying right into my face and caught me on the chin. I screamed OUUUUUUUUCH! After I finished successfully getting the nail in, I asked Jesse if I was bleeding and his eyes got big and said, "Yes. A lot." Oh, dear. It did win some serious honey-I-don't-like-to-see-you-bleeding faces from Dustin and I got to hear him cluck over me like a mother hen, so it was not a complete waste.

The Running of the Goats

This is quite possibly the funniest thing I have ever done.



My bellydance instructor would probably yell at me if she saw me walking like a rhino, but it's hard to be graceful in rubber boots. ;)

Still Not Missing Any Fingers

The goat barn is still a work in progress, but it's slowly but surely coming along. Jesse helped me put half of the roof up last Saturday morning (kill me now). It took a few hours and quite a bit of screaming and even a little blood on Jesse's part, but we got it up, with only one sheet that does not lay flush against the other. It was the last sheet of metal roofing, and by that point I just did not care anymore. I'll figure out a way to plug it later.
A few days ago (Wednesday) Dustin helped me tack up the OSB along one wall while Ayden was sleeping. I got a chance to show off my circular saw skills for him, but I still can't tell if he's impressed or not. He seems more leery than anything. Then last night he helped me hang up the new hay rack I'd just purchased at our local feed store. As always, we did it by flashlight because the only chance we have to do such things is after Ayden goes to bed at 8 p.m. The thing is huge and as soon as we put some hay in it, Tierra and Louie started chowing down, and would not let anybody else near it. Lucy stood close by waiting her turn, giving a running head-butt to Sahara and Harmony if they dared think of entering the goat barn. You know you've got it bad when Lucy's picking on you. I think I've figured out the herd hierarchy. Tierra, Louie, Lucy, then Harmony and Sahara somewhere about the same level as pond scum. Anyway, I sat out there with them for a little while after finishing with the hay rack and just watched them be. (Yes, I was wearing the aforementioned Sasquatch Onesie, and was therefore warm and toasty and probably could have happily spent all night out there.) When I closed the gate as I left, I heard a scuffle coming from behind me and turned just in time to see Sahara running full tilt at Lucy and finally standing up for herself a little. Good for her, I say. She's got a good 10-20 lbs on Lucy; she could take her.

Well. I just went out to take a picture of our nifty new hay rack and feed the goats, and guess what? I shoved a big flake of hay into it and it fell down. *sigh* I knew it was too heavy for those little screws. So much for a picture of my shoddy handywork. Instead, Dustin took a picture of me and Louie hanging out on the picnic table (he says it looks like we're having a lover's quarrel). I also rigged up a light out in the goat-barn-becoming, and man, let me tell you, its glorious to finally be able to SEE! I was able to get a picture of it all pretty and illuminated. You can see all the leaves my mom raked in there today when she came to babysit Tierra. This morning when I was feeding everybody I noticed her vagina was really looooong. Like, 5 inches or so, and looking really stretched out and droopy. And I even caught her pawing at the ground, and it had me all panicked that she was going into early labor or something. Of course I would have to go into work all day today at the library, so I called my mom first thing this morning and she volunteered to come keep an eye out since she had the day off anyway. That's devotion, ladies and gentlemen. To make a long story short, by this afternoon everything looks normal again and maybe Tierra is just deliberately trying to freak me out. While I was sitting out there with them a few minutes ago, I put my hand on her belly and I felt the tiniest little poke against my palm. It's possible that I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I just felt my first goat baby move. :)

Whoa. Fall.

I am struck by how oblivious of certain things I was when I was still a city girl. Especially the seasons. But if you really think about it, what evidence of fall do you really see in the city? Your tree looks a bit bare and you have to rake your yard or suffer your neighbor's wrath. But living here, when fall came it came with a vengeance. Yes, the leaves fell off the trees. All 20 or so in our yard. One day it was like an entire forest molted right on top of us. I've never seen drifts of leaves like we've experienced here. But the most striking difference of all, is looking out our back windows over the back pasture. When we moved here it was so green and ALIVE that I told my husband I had a certain degree of irrational panic in my chest that we were at war with nature and it was about to win and swallow us up. Everything was so BIG and so GREEN and so many many MANY BUGS. You've never seen bugs like we had when we moved here in August. All the normal stuff, mosquitoes and the like, but also copious amounts of wolf spiders, crickets, and these huge terrifying orange and black striped centipedes everywhere you stepped in the yard. (Here's a picture of those nasty things. Ayden made me go "bug hunting" with him our first day here....ewwwww!) You could not walk 5 feet without seeing one of those things. Really. The chickens went mad for it when I first turned them out. Here are some before and after pictures of the back pasture. It's amazing to me how different they look.

August 2007


December 2007

Fried Chicken, Anyone? Anyone?

Christmas morning we were greeted with a grim sight. The night before, we had been missing a chicken but figured she was just out in the brush and would show up the next morning, as often happens. But on Christmas morning, just after opening presents, I went to look at the goats through the window and saw a black lump up against the electric goat netting. I said, "Oh, no! Is that a CHICKEN?!" Dustin hurried and got dressed and went out to investigate, and reported that she was indeed dead and had apparently somehow gotten a talon stuck in the electric twine in the netting. When he moved her it actually smoked a little. Ahhh! What a horrible way to die! I can't decide if she died of electrocution or stress. What I don't understand is first of all, how on EARTH does one get one's talon stuck in a piece of twine? Second of all, in her thrashing about she should have been able to free herself. The chickens figured out months ago not to try to squeeze through the electric netting anymore. That first couple of weeks you'd see them try to hop through it and take off squacking. They quit doing that at least 2 months ago, and any who care to enter the goat pen now walk directly to the pallet gate and enter through the slats. On one hand, I keep telling myself that in following with the survival of the fitest, I don't want to pass on genes of a chicken too stupid to figure out not to walk through an electric fence after 3 months of practice, but on the other hand, I surely don't mind eating eggs from a stupid chicken or eating a stupid chicken itself! What a waste.

Louie Finds His Mojo

Today a little excitement was thrown into my morning routine. Normally just after waking up, I slip on my pink fuzzy robe and head out to the big picture window in the computer room to look out at the dawning day and see what the goats are up to. Today, this is what I was greeted with.

When I first looked out at them, I noticed Lucy had her bottom up in Louies face flagging her tail back and forth on his nose, and he was enjoying it as much as she was. He'd get so excited that he'd tip his head down and put his forehead against her bottom and give her a good push. I thought, great, my buck is so confused that he thinks he's gonna knock her up by giving her a good headbutting to her privates. But then, to my great surprise, he gave a little hop like he was thinking about mounting her. I naturally ran for the camera. Here's what I saw.

*Ok, so I'm gonna go ahead and issue a warning here for those of you with delicate sensibilities. You know who you are.*



Ladies and Gentlemen, Louie has just found his mojo. I do believe he has finally figured out what to do with a girly goat who's feeling frisky. When Dustin saw the video, he said, "It looks like someone fluffing a couple of pillows." He he. I'm not sure if Louie made full contact, and I did not see Lucy arch her back (the equivalent of a goaty orgasm), but he's got unlimited access to her so with practice he may just get it perfect. Lucy seems pretty happy with all the attention, and I saw her just after this video was taken actually walking backwards flagging her tail all about. Guess she's decided to lead with her business end. :)

Could we possibly have baby Angoras on the horizon?

It Has Begun

The day has finally come. I have begun construction of the goat barn. My lumber was delivered 3 days ago, and has been sitting in my yard taunting me ever since. I started 2 days ago when I got off work a little early. I arrived home at about 1:30 pm and did not have to pick Ayden up for a few hours, so I thought I'd try out my new power hand saw. I'll admit that I'm more than a little afraid of that thing. As I was screwing the circular blade on, visions of decapitation and missing digits swam before my eyes. It even says in the instruction manual (yes, I read it. I'm not a complete idiot) to stand to either side of the blade as you're cutting...just in case. Wonderful.
Before I could even begin my quest of self-mutilation, I had to knock the existing boards off the goat barn, which was no easy task, especially when you're having to hammer out 4" nails from each one. I'll spare you the details. My plan was to cut 3 inches off the outside posts to create an incline so the water will run off the barn instead of puddling. Here is a picture of the goat barn "before" Kayte came at it with power tools.

The first time I fired that hand saw up (after pushing lots of buttons in an attempt to release the safety switch, that is) I almost peed myself. Know when you're near a construction site and you hear that unearthly screeching sound of some manly man wielding some sort of power tool? Yea. Thats what I had in my hands. Oh dear Lord. So I'm standing on a step stool because we don't own a ladder, and I turn on this electrified homicidal banshee, put it up against the line I'd drawn on the post, close my eyes, and push. I felt friction, but still no feelings of amputation or the like. After I shut it down and did a finger count, I noticed that Robert, my good ol' boy neighbor, had come out on his porch to see what on earth that crazy city girl is doing. Just what I needed, and audience. Anyway, the posts were so thick I had to cut from both sides, but other than that, the whole thing was rather uneventful. If you consider a face full of saw dust uneventful, that is. After the first post I ditched the step stool and just wielded that thing above my head. Every time I'd tuck my chin down to my chest, close my eyes, and hope for the best. Even with goggles on I could not convince my eyes to remain open, so I figured I might as well protect my face if I can't see what I'm doing anyway. I kept telling myself, well, at least I'm doing one better than standing to one side of the blade, I'm on another whole plan than it is. If it comes off it's gonna go whizzing right over my head like a Frisbee. After cutting all the posts on the right down to size, I hauled the boards for the roof one at a time across the yard and chucked them over the goat's fence. Did I mention that Sahara and Harmony were underfoot the whole time, Sahara maintaining a constant stream of invectives for the duration? (They've been confined in the goat pen since I discovered that they were escaping over to the pond by way of crawling under the gate. Will remedy that as soon as possible.) I had to knock down the privacy fencing along the side of the barn in order to get to the outside posts to shorten them. After all that nonsense, I then lifted those 8 foot boards, by myself, mind you, above my head and balanced them across the posts then hammered them into place. I cannot believe I got that much done in 2 short hours. This is a picture of what it looked like when I walked away. When I went to pick Ayden up I had a good half-cup of sawdust in my hair, and another cup or so on my person, which was quite exciting/distressing for him. Try explaining what saw dust is to a 3 year old with out inciting him to want to use said power tool. When we got home and I showed him what a mess I'd made of the goat pen, he gave me a stern talking to and said, "Mommy, you gotta CLEAN THAT UP! We gonna have Christmas party and you made mess! You gotta clean that up or you get in TROUBLE!" This is the look he gave me:

Beating the Cold Sasquatch Style

The day after the new goats arrived the weather finally cleared up enough that I could go sit with them in the back pasture. It had finally stopped raining, but was VERY windy and cold out. At this point the Nigerians were still keeping themselves segregated, even though the gate to the goat pen where Tierra and the angoras were was open. When I put my chair out there, they came right over to me as I stood surrounded by the rest of the group. Here's a couple videos I took one right after the other as soon as I sat down. As you can see, as soon as the Nigerians came close, Tierra hustled over to me and was in almost a frenzy to mark me as her territory.


As you can probably hear, Sahara is still almost unbearably noisy, but I'm hoping she'll calm down and quiet down as she gets used to the rest of us. I sat out there with all of them for almost an hour, and she literally did not shut up the entire time. Even as she's browsing and eating, she's still keeping up a steady stream of belch-sounding bleats. Between her constant chatter and the freezing cold, I finally had to get away from them and go back inside. But, I am very happy to report that Tierra did not head butt the new girls a single time. She did later on that evening, but that's mostly because they had gotten brave enough to enter the goat pen and investigate her lean-to, which she has yet to even let Louie and Lucy near. Oops!

One interesting thing did happen, though, when I got home from my new job at the library yesterday afternoon. Harmony and Sahara had gotten out of the back pasture and were milling around over by the pond! Oh, dear! It's my first case of escaped goat. My others have simply never wanted to escape, but the new girls do not see this place as home yet and also have a bad taste in their mouth about being terrorized by a huge Nubian. I'm thinking that they probably climbed up on the dog crate we had back there as their shelter, and jumped the fence. Stupidly, we had put it up against the fence as a perfect step for them. There was a single strand of barbed wire atop the fence from the previous owners, so that means the goats had to clear that on their way over. Ahhhh! We were out there in the dark cutting that evil stuff down by flashlight last night, along with putting some new hinges on the gate going from the goat pen into the back pasture, which had broken about a week ago. All of this in the dark, freezing cold. I, though, planned ahead for such instances. After being so miserably cold trying to spend some quality time with my goats, I knew something had to be done. I refuse to be miserable while doing chores and I also refuse to give up spending time with them all winter long. So, I bought a one-piece zip up thingy from the hunting and fishing department at Walmart. Ha! It's great, because now that I'm having to get up really early to do my chores before taking Ayden to school then going straight to work, now I can do my chores in my work clothes because I just zip the darn thing right up over my clothes! It's awesome. But not pretty. I plan to spiff it up a bit, maybe silkscreen some polka dots all over it or something. ;) I'm hesitant to even post a picture, but in the interest of full disclosure and the ability to laugh at one's self, here you go. Honestly, though, I really don't care how stupid I look as long as I'm warm. I really don't. You see, I spent about 5 of my young formative years in Mexico, and my little body did not get under about 50 degrees the whole time. I swear it's broken something inside me thats supposed to keep me at a decent temperature. So my husband can laugh all he wants, but as I was holding the flashlight for him last night as he was screwing the new hinges on the gate, and shivering and miserable, I stood there toasty warm in my Sasquatch Suit. So there!

Riding in Cars With Goats

Today my mother and I drove about two and a half hours to go pick up my two new Nigerian Dwarf does, Sahara and Harmony. We rolled on up out of here at 6:30 a.m., so that aptly expresses my excitement. I don't get up that early for just anything. When we arrived at Laurel Haven their breeder, Tina, had already separated the girls from the rest of the herd. They came right up to the fence and stuck their noses through to sniff us and were very friendly. This is a picture of Sahara looking adorably up at me. Tina gave us a tour of her operation and we got to meet all of her other goats, even a little 4 week old baby that was just about the cutest little thing I've ever seen in person. The amazing thing is, he was already about twice as big as when he was born! They are only about 2 lbs at birth. I took a video of him nursing, but its hard to get perspective on how truly tiny he is.


When it came time to leave, we put my two new goats in the back of my little brother, Geno's, Jeep he was so kind to let me borrow. Mom assures me he had full disclosure of our plans to transport goats in it, so I'm going to go with that. When we first put them in the Jeep and started moving, all hell broke loose. Harmony and Sahara both started bleating at the top of their lungs. Harmony has a bit of a hysterical screechy bleat, while Sahara....what can I really say about Sahara's sound other than it is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever heard? The first time you hear it you're a little shocked and more than a little embarrassed for her. Here's a video taken 30 seconds after we started rolling away from Laurel Haven. You can barely hear me and mom giggling in the background over the screams.


By the time we got on the interstate they had settled down and Harmony even spent a good part of the trip lying down. Although goat pellets made an appearance almost immediately, they both held their bladders as long as they could and didn't actually pee until we'd been on the road a little over an hour and a half. I had never realized how much a Jeep Cherokee is like driving a glass box: the entire thing is nothing but windows. There is no blind spot in a Jeep, and this made it fun to gauge people's reaction in traffic. More than once a car would pass us and we'd be greeted with the sight of a car full of happy smiling faces beaming back at us. Apparently seeing goats in unexpected places can really brighten a person's day. Then again, we had a few people who'd drive by us with a completely confused look on their face, more often then not slowly shaking their head from side to side. At one point we stopped at a gas station to get some lunch and gas up. While Mom was in getting our sandwiches, and I was pumping the gas, the woman getting gas behind us came up and wanted to pet my goats. She crawled up in the front seat and was oohing and ahhing over them and asking what one owns a goat for. Give me one reason NOT to own a goat, I say!

As were were eating our Subway sandwiches, my mother discovered that they like Fritos. After that, eating our lunch in peace proved interesting! She'll probably kill me for posting these pictures, but I love the progression.




























When we got home Dustin's cousin, Jesse, a fairly regular installment here at the farm, carried Harmony to the goat pen and put her down. She immediately took off running in the back pasture looking for her mom, Sahara, who had meanwhile escaped Dustin's clutches and was running around inside our thankfully fenced-in yard. Here's a video of that.

When we were finally able to get both of them into the goat pen, it was complete chaos. Ayden, who was overdue for a nap and a bit over excited by the whole thing, was as hysterical as the new goats and being equally loud. Sahara and Harmony are bleating as loudly as possible, and apparently the electric fence was out so Sahara kept trying to go back through the pallet we're currently using for a make-shift gate and getting her head stuck in it. Once we got her away from that, I turned around to see Sahara being head-butted by Tierra right in her belly. Ahhhh! I pushed Tierra away and gave her a stern NO, just to see her rear up on her hind legs toward Sahara like you see on the Nature of Omaha video's of 500 lb ram's who run at each other on their hind legs then slam their heads together. Picture it in your mind as something like this picture, but with an evil glint in her eye and a huge pregnant belly. He he. I thought to myself, "I don't think so!" and pushed her off to the side, thus thwarting her mighty butting action. After that we locked the new goats out in the back pasture so they could all get to know each other through the fence for a while. Live and learn. Of course at this point Ayden would decide to reduce himself to screaming hysterics on the ground because Dustin was trying to take him back to the house for a nap. Then, for extra fun, it started raining. Could this possibly get any worse? So now my two new pregnant does are stuck out in the back pasture with no shelter. This is not the warm home-coming I had imagined for them. Mom, Jesse, and I comenced running about scavenging materials to throw up some impromptu shelter for the new girls. We were able rig up an an old dog crate back there with a shower curtain and old drop clothes draped over it to keep it airtight, with folded up lawn chairs on top to keep it from blowing away. Thankfully the girls eventually decided to take shelter in there. For the rest of the evening I was posted at the window keeping an eye on them, with frequent trips out there in the rain to try to make them more comfortable. Tierra meanwhile stood sentry just inside the goat barn with nothing but her neck and head hooked around the side to keep an eye on her new adversaries. Louie and Lucy were mildly interested in the new goats, but thats about as far as their investment in the situation went. I knew they'd be fine with them, but Tierra, who has never had an aggressive bone in her body, was pretty thrilled about being herd queen here for the last few months, even if she only became so out of default cause her only minions were a couple of 50 lb sheep-goat things. So she's had a little time to grow some cojones, and wanted to make a lasting impression on Harmony and Sahara that she had no plans on giving up her title.

A few hours later the gate separating the goat pen from the back pasture blew open, and when Dustin rushed out to shut it, the two new girls had already come into the pen where Tierra and the angoras were. Dustin was right there to referee if needed, but the only thing that happened was he succumbed to a serious head rubbing from Tierra along his hips and thighs. She's been doing this nonstop since the new girls got here, I guess she's marking her territory, so to speak. It actually feels quite nice, she's got a head as hard as a rock and the muscles to go behind it. She could be after MY title as the massage therapist on the farm. She can have it. Anyway, she was quite civil and although she stared them down pretty good, she has not tried to head butt them since, and after that we went ahead and left the gate between them open. Harmony and Sahara have pretty much set up camp down at the far end of the pasture where the dog kennel is, so I'll just leave it there for a couple days and let them adjust at their own rate. More on their assimilation as it progresses.

Ballad of a Picnic Table

Dustin finally gave up the custody battle with the chickens over the picnic table in our back yard. I've been trying to convince him to give it to the goats for months, but he said he liked having it for eating on. Well, he couldn't keep the chickens off of it, though. So it was pretty much always covered in chicken poop, which made it less than appealing to eat upon, as you can imagine. So about a week ago he got his cousin, Jesse, to help him move it into the goat pen. It's had high traffic since then!




Here's a pretty picture I took of Louie on the table last night, although it was too dark to see where he was. He looked like such a superstar I might have altered the photo a bit. ;)

Poor Tierra, though. She's too fat to get up on it properly, so she gets her front two feet on the bench and calls it good enough. She'll stay there forever, just like that, her big ol' back end still on the ground. Louie and Lucy will deftly scamper all over the thing, even turning around on the narrow benches, while Tierra is just parked there with her nether regions still grounded.

























I, too, have been fat and pregnant so I could really identify with her. So I gave her a wee hug.

Just Some Silliness

First order of business: I JUST MADE THE CUTEST SHIRT EVER! Yea, so I'm a little proud of myself. I just learned to silkscreen 2 weeks ago and this is only the 3rd thing I've done so far. I came up with this cute goat over a week ago and have been sitting on it until I could find something goat-worthy to say about it. I've already had 2 requests for one just like it, and I just made it 20 minutes ago! Depending on the interest I receive, I may just buy some blank t-shirts and sell these boogers. Maybe some day it'll be so fashionable that people will be wearing it across the butt of their sweatpants! You really know you've arrived then. *rolling my eyes*

Second order of business: I caught the white rooster crowing on video the other day and am finally getting around to putting in on here. Notice the pretty trill in the "doodle" part of his crow? I like it. Its a far cry from hearing err-err-ERRRRRRR! a hundred times a day.


Here's another video of the goats eating. I know its not that interesting, but I love my goats and think they're fascinating and funny, therefore I will continue to force feed my blog readers goat footage. End of story. ;) In this one I have pulled down a vine from a tree so Tierra and Lucy could reach it.


Be glad I decided to upload that video instead of the one of them eating dry leaves, even less interesting. But they make this divine crunchy sound and I swear they make me want to eat leaves, too. Know what? I'm gonna go ahead and put that video on here, too.

*muah ha ha ha ha ha!* (evil laughter)

It's Raining Goats!

Oh happy day! Laurel Haven has made me an offer I simply can't refuse: that I could buy Harmony's mother, Sahara, at a very discounted price. You see, Harmony and Sahara still have a very special bond and spend just about every waking moment together. Their breeder says they browse side-by-side and she even finds them sleeping together in an old dog carrier on a regular basis. How cute! Besides, who can resist a goat with a BEARD?! Marigold, you know what I'm talking about. I feel very happy knowing my two new girls will have each other for comfort and emotional support coming to their new home. I'm very close with my mother, too, so I kinda get it. ;)
I'm so excited to pick up not one, but TWO Nigerian Dwarf does this coming Saturday! And to make it even better, Sahara is also pregnant! She's been bred to a buck by the name of Sharpie, who is apparently ALL THAT and a wheel of cheese. See for yourself.
Sharpie is actually the buck I was hoping would be the sire of my buckling-to-be in the spring. At first thought, it would make sense to keep a buckling from Sahara and Sharpie to be my herd sire, but Sahara's pedigree is not nearly as "milky" as a few of Laurel Haven's other does whose pedigrees are laced with stars and +'s and all sorts of fancy stuff that I really don't know what it means, just that its good! Seeing as how I want the best possible buck to sire my herd, I think it would still be a good idea to get a buckling from one of those superb does. In that case, the only goats on my farm that he'd be related to would be the kids that Sahara is currently pregnant with, because he'd be their half-brother. Although frowned upon by humans, it is perfectly safe to breed half-siblings in the goat world, its called line breeding and has produced some of the best quality goats available today. Generally speaking, the only combinations that are not a good idea are mother-son, father-daughter, brother-sister. The dilemma I face is that I cannot afford to replace my buck each generation. In other words, after my buck has been utilized his first year, that next generation will be his, and I would not want to breed him back to his own kids when they came of age. My thoughts at this time are that if Harmony were to be pregnant right now with a buckling from Charles, I could keep him intact and use him as my pinch-hitter every other generation as needed. Charles' pedigree is not quite as impressive as Shapie's, though, so I'd want to take a closer look at that and make sure I'm not breeding flawed traits into my herd. I'll definitely be talking to someone who knows what they're doing first. What it comes down to, is Nigerians are small, friendly, don't eat much, and rare in this area, so it would not be a bad thing to have two unrelated bucks on the premises. Besides, they'd keep each other company. This could all be conjecture, of course, as Harmony and Sahara could both have bellies full of doelings.... *sigh*... I can only hope!

More Chicken Fiascos

Monday morning when I took Ayden out to the car to load him up and off to school, we heard the customary crowing issuing from the chicken coop. I've heard it so much at this point I can even accurately spell it: err-err-ERRRRRRRRR! Strangest crow I've ever heard. He's completely missing the "doodle" portion. Anyway, this particular morning we hear the err-err-ERRRRRRRR directly followed by a slightly softer scratchy sounding crow. So apparently our white Ameraucana rooster has finally started crowing. I happened to finally see him do it in person this afternoon, and let me tell you, despite his deficit of practice, he is considerably better than the black rooster. First of all, his voice is husky and sorta sexy sounding (can I say that about my rooster?), and he has a distinct trill in the middle of his crow. It's actually quite pretty. I'll try to video it sometime.

The next morning I decided to let the chickens out before taking Ayden to school, as he loves to help me with chicken chores. Upon my return, I was greeted with one of my black hens OUTSIDE the gate in the driveway. So I parked the car out in the street as to not scare her away from the gate. I open the gate, in she goes. As I'm headed back to my car, I hear a rustling in the dry leaves down the street. There I spy two MORE black hens, on the wrong side of the fence. Grrr. So I reopen the gate and huff it down the street a little ways and chase them into the yard. Of course, one of them darts into the yard and the other runs to the far side of the street and hides in the neighbor's ditch. Wonderful. Of course now a car is coming, and I know for certain my chicken is going to choose that very minute to run back across the street to our yard and get hit. So I'm waving at the guy who kindly stopped for us and I'm putting myself between her and the street, hoping to hold her there until the car goes. He's laughing and yelling out his window, "She get away from you?" Ha. Ha. So he starts to pull forward, and off she goes, darting out in front of him. I motion him to stop, and she escapes unscathed. Thinking I'm finally done hearding wayward chickens, I take one last look around. Way down the street, maybe 250-300 yards away, I see my neighbors chickens out in the street. I thought to myself, "Boy, one of his scrawny chickens sure got fat!" I squint my eyes and look closer. ITS THAT CHICKEN! The White Devil Chicken! Gone-a-visiting.
As I'm headed down there (keep in mind my car is still idling in the street behind me) here comes another vehicle, this time a good-ol'-boy in his pickup. He stops and introduces himself as the man who lives behind us. Who knew? He gives me a bit of a hard time about my wandering chickens, and I'm off to reclaim my Devil Chicken. Thankfully she was open to the idea of returning home.
So now almost every day I find chickens out in the street, scattered from my driveway all the way down to my neighbor's driveway. I've given you a picture here to show really how far they're wandering. Today there were 6 out there. I suspect a certain Game Rooster is the major attraction down there. I'm going to have some funny looking babies from these girls if they keep it up. Maybe they're embarrassed by their harem-masters' crows and choose to go to a bird who really knows what he's doing. Saturday my mother and I found 10 on the wrong side of the fence, thankfully that time in the lot next door, though. Thats more than half my flock! You'd think they didn't have a huge yard to run in.

Are You Kidding Me?

I'm gonna go ahead and give you a minute to really look at that picture. Really. Go ahead and click on it and see if you can figure out what's happening in that picture. Take your time.

Finished? What would you say this is a picture of?

Here, let me give you a hint:

Yes. That is Louie. In my lap. I'm just sitting there minding my own business reading my book about Henry beheading his wives, when Louie comes up to me and wants a scratch. I'm thrilled that he's warming up to people so much, so I give him some lovin'. Then I try to go back to reading my book and next thing I know there's a buck in my lap. I happened to have the composure to take a picture with my free hand.

Unbelievable.

Big Things on the Horizon

Well, something terribly thrilling has just transpired. I have arranged to buy my very first Nigerian Dwarf goat! Her name is Laurel Haven's Harmony, and she will be coming to me as a registered bred doe. Here is both her baby picture and her current picture, courtesy of Laurel Haven's website.

She was born September 7, 2006, just a day before Dustin's birthday. She will be pretty tiny, Nigerian Dwarfs are usually between 19-21" at the shoulder. She may possibly be even smaller than Lucy! It makes me very thankful that all my goats are super sweet and I won't have to worry about anybody being nasty to her. She is bred to a handsome fella by the name of Laurel Haven's Yes Charleston, or Charles for short. Here's his picture.

With a little imagination you can just see how adorable their babies will be. Harmony's breeder said she envisions that they will be white with spots. Yea! I have been eye-balling the Nigerian Dwarf goats from Laurel's Haven for over a year now, and not only are they beautiful and well bred, but you can really tell that the breeder knows what she's doing and is faithful about updating her website (laurelhaven.net). I have been lucky enough to find quite a few ND breeders here in South Carolina, but honestly, I prefer to find one I like to work with and trust and then stick with them. So, with that in mind, I have also reserved a Nigerian Dwarf buckling from their 2008 Spring kids! This will be my first and only buck -unless Lucy's breeder continues to not send me her registration papers, in which case I am going to keep Louie as collateral! Actually, at this point that would work out just fine because then I would have a pen-mate for my little buckling in the spring. My new buckling will come from one of my top three choices of their breeding schedule. Obviously, there is no way to determine how many babies or what sex a doe will have, so you put in your top 3 or so choices and hope for the best. In any case, I feel confident that he will have the superior milking genetics that I want to establish in my herd. He'll be a little fella just like Harmony, and no relation to her, so their future generations will be purebred Nigerian Dwarf. I will also use him to breed the other full-sized goats I plan to get, to make miniature milkers that eat less and have creamier milk. Good cheese making milk.

We will be going to pick Harmony up December 15th, and she lives about 2.5 hours away. We will be able to transport her in a medium sized dog carrier, which just makes my life so much easier. It is the bane of my existence as a goat farmer that I do not own a pick-up.

Some other pretty exciting news is that I am on the brink of beginning construction on the goat barn. It is no longer to be a ratty lean-to. It will be a bonafide building with a milking area, grain storage, and two kidding stalls. It will look something like this diagram, although I may rethink the location of the milking stanchion. The black squares are the posts that are already set into the 15x15 concrete pad. I am going to use shipping pallets to separate the stalls, so that I can move them as desired to create bigger or smaller stalls. Honestly, I could probably get away will dividing the left half into 4 smaller stalls if I needed to, with each stall being about 7.5'x4'. If any of you building whizzes or goat aficionados see something that I am missing or a better idea of how to do it, I am all ears! I am very excited to have a sheltered place with electricity and a spigot to do my milking and chores in! No more milking by flashlight while my back is getting rained on! Not to mention a safe and cozy place for all these babies on their way!

See For Yourself

Oh it's so bad.

Goats on the Prowl

I have to post some pretty pictures I took with the goats this morning. After running errands and eating breakfast this morning, I decided, as I often do, to take the goats for a stroll. It was such a beautiful morning and the breeze was blowing just hard enough that it steadily rained down crispy yellow leaves upon the 4 of us.





Here's a nice chest shot of Tierra. I had just set the camera down and started the timer when she decided she had to go see what the big deal was with the shiny little box making all the noise.




This is a picture of Lucy standing against the fence polishing off the rest of the leaves still clinging to survival.

I LOVE my goats. They are everything I ever thought they would be.

Louie Moves in for the Kill

I was talking to my mother (FarmMama) on the telephone this morning and happened to look out the window to see what the goats were up to. Let me tell you: Louie was partaking of a deep and soulful sniff of Lucy's bottom. I mean, the boy was completely engrossed for a full minute or so. As he came up for air, I saw him flehm. This is quite a sight. The buck lifts his upper lip and looks for all intents and purposes just like he's smiling. A buck does this to help smell the pheromones wafting from his girlfriends butt. :) If you look very closely in the picture you can kinda see him doing it. Notice that Lucy is quite the willing participant in all of this. She was more than willing to let him go on sniffing and smiling all afternoon if he'd like. After he finished, she turned around and was sniffing and licking all over his face, her little tail wagging a million miles a minute the whole time. I do believe we might see some action soon! I should have known something was amiss when the two of them did not touch their grain that morning.

Mystery Solved

Caught him! I was standing along side of the chicken coop, as I'm sure you can tell. Right after taking this video, I opened the chicken coop door and saw all of the chickens pressed up against the door of their partition. Of course he would immediately stop crowing as soon as I opened the door. I stood there for a minute looking at my two roosters, who in turn stood and looked back at me. Nada. So I stepped to the side, just out of sight. CROOOOOOOOOO-A-a-a-ark! I thrust my head back in the doorway just in time to see.......... drum roll please.......... the black rooster crowing.

I was right!

A Real Who-Dunnit

Last night while I was on the phone with a lady about a goat (oh, I am SUCH a farmer!) Dustin came tearing into the house yelling my name over and over. My first thought was that the Copperhead has made another appearance and has perhaps succeeded in eating our firstborn. As I threw down the phone, he said, "Our rooster is crowing!" This is a big deal. We have been waiting for one of our roosters to figure out he can crow for quite some time now. Apparently, Dustin and Ayden had been playing soccer near the chicken coop when all of a sudden they heard a creature being murdered within the dark confines of the coop. It sounded something like "crOOOOOOOAArk-k-k". It took Dustin a minute to figure out what it was, but he soon decided it must be an attempt at the fabled Cock-a-doodle-doo that Ayden has told us roosters do. We were not convinced, until now. The real question is, which one is it? The big beautiful black Wyandotte rooster or my gorgeous white Ameracauna rooster?

Obviously, my first order of business this morning was to capture the blessed event on video. I did not think this would be hard, as I must have heard it 20 times if I heard it once in the time it took to load Ayden in the car this morning before taking him to school. When I got home I ran inside for the camera and posted myself just outside the window of the coop. Not a peep. Nada. Nothin. So, camera in hand, I went to milk the goats and decided this is as good a time as any to capture that on video.

The chicken antics I mentioned are as follows. I set my milking tote down while I stepped inside the goat pen to give Lucy and Louie their grain then lock them out in the back pasture. No sooner had I done this, than a chicken had jumped up and was in the process of pecking at the coffee filter on my milking jar. Ahhh! Here's a picture to prove it. You can see her friend in the background sitting on top of the fence, which is their new favorite thing to do. I shoo that chicken away, and as I grab my milk tote and head into the goat pen to milk Tierra, who is waiting ever so patiently for me, I spy a black chicken who has locked herself out in the pasture with Lucy and Louie, and is successfully stealing their grain. That is one brave chicken. As any of you who own goats know, they are serious when it comes to their grain.

After milking, I decided to stalk the chickens for a while and try to capture the elusive crowing rooster. While entirely and disgustingly unsuccessful at that, I did manage to capture some rather incriminating evidence all the same.

I told you! What did I say? That brown chicken has it in for my feet. Thank goodness I have a solid layer of rubber between my tasty soft tootsies and her. While observing the chickens I also witnessed a near chicken-rape. I was staking out the large black rooster when he noticed that one of the hens had laid down for a moment for a rest. He went running full tilt across the yard and pounced. I saw him coming, and I saw the lustful glint in his eye, so I scrambled to turn the camera on in time, but alas, he was too quick for me. He pounced, she screamed, he fell off of her, she ran a few feet away, and then they both partook in a bit of feather ruffling. They shook it off, so to speak.

With this episode in mind, I cast a fearful eye on Ambrose lounging amongst the chickens. I tried to explain to him what had just happened to this poor unsuspecting hen when she mistakenly chose to lie down on the job, but he would not listen. He rolled over and exposed his soft underbelly to me, taunting the chickens. Here's what happened.

Ok, so its not as exciting as it could have been if the rooster would have been feeling trans-species-amorous, but nonetheless, it goes to show that I was not lying when I said he loves the chickens.

To conclude, I am accepting bets on which rooster possesses the death-rattle crow. I am giving 4:1 odds that it is the larger black Wyandotte rooster. I hope to catch the "crow" if it can be called that, on video this evening when they all go to bed. We'll see.

Reflecting on THE PLAN

Well, I just found an old blog that I did on Myspace back in June about the prospect of moving out here to the country. I have just posted that blog here on blogger, so if you scroll down to the very first entry, you will see it.

As you can see, I outlined the basic plan for the farm, and it is interesting to me to see how closely we've followed The Plan, and some things that we've decided to do differently.

For one thing, we were not able to start out with the Nigerian Dwarf goat breed, as they are prohibitively expensive and hard to come by in this area. It was much easier for us to start with a goat breed that is abundant in our area, which turned out to be the Nubian, which I had thought my least favorite. I had heard that they are very noisy and make themselves quite a bother. Living with Marek at the time, I could not handle the thought of having yet another animal contributing to the cacophony. But, Tierra was the first goat I found and am I ever so glad I did not trust unidentified voices on the Internet telling me that Nubians are terrible to own. She's a joy.

I still plan on breeding Nigerian Dwarf into my heard, and I would not even mind having crosses of all the full size dairy goat breeds mixed with the miniature stature of the Nigerian Dwarf. The NG breed is also known for its high butterfat content, which means you can make more cheese per gallon than you can from regular goat's milk. I would like the first buck I invest in to be a Nigerian Dwarf with good dairy characteristics. Here's what Tierra's offspring would possibly look like if I bred her to a NG. They'd be called Mini Nubians!



I also ended up with an Angora goat, which was not even mentioned in The Plan. I had thought that it would be fun some day to experiment with the Angora breed and see if you truly can make money from them. Well, now I get to experiment sooner rather than later! The way I have figured it, if I can get even a modest sum for her mohair, it should cover the cost of her yearly feed and maintenance, with a little left over. Add to that the profit if/when she kids each year (with a break here and there, of course), and she should turn a profit. In any case, she's the only animal here (other than Ambrose) who is a pet and gets to stay just cause. I would like to learn how to card mohair, dye it, and spin it. If I did those things it would be worth much much more.

Chickens. Check. Pretty much on track with The Plan when it comes to them. I've lost 5 in the past few months, and one of my Wyandotte hens ended up being a rooster. Oh, well.

Ducks. Oooooh I want ducks. I want them now. I'd like to convert the underside of our back porch into a duck house- still working on Dustin for that one. In my opinion, its just wasted space. All I'd have to do is enclosed the underside with some tastefully done (ha ha ha ha!) chicken wire, and then close in the section under the stairs as a waterproof nesting area. I think it'd make a bang-up duck shelter, someplace safe for them to call home at night. I'd also like to devise some sort of pet door in the chain link fence going to the pond so they'd be able to free range the yard and pond area during the day.

We're still on track with the bees, as we plan to get them in the spring. Not sure where we're gonna put them, but we'll find a place.

Another thing we've added to The Plan is gardening and possibly a pig (or two). I know what you're thinking, what on earth do you want a pig for? Well, we want to eventually grow all of our own produce and fruit, and gardening on that scale requires quite a bit of muscle. A pig can be a farmer's best friend when put to work effectively. You can temporarily pen them on an area to be rototilled, and they will methodically eat all the vegetation, root around in the soil and remove all existing roots, all the while working their own natural fertilizer into the soil. By the time they're done with it, its ready to plant! A single sow can produce about 20 piglets a year, which could be sold off as weaner pigs or raised out for pork. Throughout history the pig has been known as "The Irishman Who Pays the Rent" because they are ridiculously profitable even in times of depression. We don't eat much pork, but its never hard to find people willing to pay for fresh, organic pork fresh from the farm. Couple that with the gardening benefits and their labor-saving ways, they make a perfect addition to any homestead. All that being said, I am a little intimidated at the thought of owning a pig. I've spent the last year researching chickens and goats, and pigs are like an alien creature to me. We'll see what happens.

We also plan to start raising turkeys in the spring. I'd like to secure advance orders for heritage-breed organic Thanksgiving turkeys, and raise out enough to sell come November, plus enough for our own consumption, and also enough to start some breeding stock for future generations. Unfortunately, almost all turkey breeds have lost the ability to reproduce naturally due to genetic modifications, such as breeding them with breasts so large that they are physically incapable of doing the deed. Therefore, if you want any chance of turkeys that know how to be turkeys, you have to look at the rare old-fashioned breeds. I am passionate about supporting and maintaining the populations of heritage breed livestock, and would like to incorporate them in the future. Barbara Kingsolver, my favorite female author, says that the heritage breed turkey she raises, the Royal Palm, tastes unbelievable and is almost reminiscent of lobster. Yummmm!

I Get NO Respect From the Chickens!

I can already tell it's going to be one of those days. It all started last night. For the second night in a row, Dustin told me we were missing a chicken when he locked them in the coop. This is because they've discovered that they can get into the back pasture via the goat pen, but then they're on the wrong side of the chain link fence, peering in at all their little chicken buddies. So, they commence to walk the fence line, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.... you get the picture. Unfortunately, there's a gate next to said fence that leads into the empty lot we own next door, and there's a large gap under this fence. So, in all their pacings, they inevitably squeeze under this gate and then further compound their delimma by then trapping themselves in the lot next door, which has absolutely no entrance back into our yard. So from there they resume their pacing, half the time finding themselves out in the street and trying to get in our gated driveway. Well, the first time we were missing a chicken, I figured she was locked out of the yard and would show up in the morning, which she did. Same thing happened this morning, only, things went steadily downhill from there.

Here's what happened.
Phase I: I saw her on the wrong side of the fence, so I opened the gate at the corner of the property by the pond, ran back to where she was, grabbed a tree branch and walked behind her encouraging her to walk toward the open gate. I do this almost every day for wayward chickens. Only, this chicken walked the entire length of the fence, coming within 5 feet of the open gate, then would panic and turn around and run the way we had come. I would whack at her side of the fence with the stick, trying to cut off her retreat. So what did she do? She'd leave the fence line and run off into the woods, making a large detour around the angry woman yelling wielding a stick. So then I'd have to run along my side of the fence and try to get on the far side of her to start the whole process again. We did this 4, maybe 5 times. At this point I'm starting to get angry, as it is 46 degrees out and I am just trying to help this chicken get back inside so she can eat some breakfast. After about the 5th time of having her within feet of the gate, only to watch her backtrack the entire length of the fence (about 250 feet!), I tried jumping over the fence. Yea, so I have not done that since I was a kid, and my center of gravity has...shall we say, shifted. After attempt 4 of getting my bulk over the fence, I drag a cinderblock up as a step. I catapult myself over the gate, land wrong, and twist my ankle. So now I'm near tears, swearing, and watching the retreating back of this blasted chicken, of course headed in the wrong direction. I'm so angry at this point I ignore my ankle and go plunging through the woods in hot pursuit. At this point I don't care that I'm chasing her away from the gate, I just want to grab her or at least give her a good scare. I'm so immature. Branches are crashing, thorns are tearing at my flesh, spiderwebs engulf my face, and all I care about is grabbing That Chicken. I cornered her a half dozen times, flailing out at her, my fingers like talons, only to feel her slip through my grasp. This went on much longer than any sane person would have allowed. Back and forth we went, until finally she ran away from the fence altogether and ran into the woods. I pursued. I finally gave up when she ran into a massive briar patch, and I screamed, "FINE! You can live out here for all I care!" I stormed back to the house seeing red, and feeling as if I was burning alive from the inside out. I went and milked the goats, my sweet sweet goats that follow me wherever I care to lead them, and still no sign of That Chicken.

Phase II: After having cooled off somewhat, I decided to lure her back with her flock-mates. I took their goody pan (where their scraps go. I call "here biddies!" and they come running) with a handful of chicken feed in it, call the chickens, and head out the open gate by the pond looking like the Pied Piper with 16 chickens at my heels. I set the pan just outside the gate, and watch as a few chickens run out to it, and sure enough, here comes That Chicken. She joins in and eats heartily. If you look closely in this picture you can see the silver pan just outside the open gate with chickens surrounding it. That Chicken is the white one standing to the right of the pan. I figure she'll just come right back in with the other chickens. Of course not! They finish eating, the other slightly smarter chickens come back in through the gate, she follows them, then at the last minute veers off to the right and walks along, yes, you guessed it, THE WRONG SIDE OF THE FENCE! I'm nearly blowing a gasket at this point. I do everything to encourage her to walk back toward the gate, ensuing a long and drawn out repeat of Phase I. I storm back to the house. I hate this chicken. I'm already imagining life without her, and am slightly saddened that my future generations of chickens will not have her unique white coloring, because I AM GOING TO KILL THIS CHICKEN!

Phase III: Time goes by. She still does not come in on her own. I am storming around the chicken coop looking for Ayden's bug net, with visions of netting That Chicken. I find the net, but there's no way a chicken will a) fit in the net and b) be stupid enough to run into a neon orange net with a large caterpillar head on it. So, I walk back to the fence one more time, kick the fence a couple times to move her toward the gate, and watch with bated breath as she inches closer and closer to the open gate.... she faked right a few times like she would head back into the woods, and at this point I am praying to God above, please just make this chicken come through the gate. So she does. Comes walking in like its the most logical thing in the world.

Ugh. As I wearily walk back toward the house, still exasperated from the whole operation, a single brown chicken runs full speed at me and starts pecking my boots. She's taken a shining to my purple toenail polish, and for the last couple weeks every time I come outside she runs up to me looking quite confrontational, and takes a peck at my toes, which does not particularly feel nice. Here's a picture of her having a go at my boots this morning. I've been trying to tell Dustin how the chickens no longer respect me, they try to eat my toes, and in the mornings I have to put my purse on my exposed flip-flop clad toes as I physically push them aside to open their small door in the coop. They used to part like the Red Sea when they saw me coming. Not so anymore! Now I get bum rushed by this brown chicken each time I walk outside, and confronted with an unmovable wall-o-chicken if I dare to tresspass.

Things Only I Would Find Interesting

This video was about attempt 7 of trying to get the goats on video making their respective noises. The problem is, they only holler at me when they want me to come hang out with them. Once I'm close by, they just stand there and stare at me. It makes for titillating video footage, let me tell you. I was trying to capture the range of sounds they make. Tierra has this unholy moanish-groanish-wailing sort of noise. Sounds sorta like a mmmmmGUAHHHHHHHHHHhhhh or a variation thereof. It sounds absolutely painful. The Angoras, on the other hand, make a neat little maaaa sound. As I've said before, the poor darlings look and sound just like sheep, the only difference being that sheep don't have half their personality and sheep go Baa while goats go Maa. It's all very technical. ;)

Here's another video, taken this morning, where you can at least hear the Angoras talking. I've actually gotten to the point that I can tell Lucy and Louie's maa's apart. Louie's is actually louder and higher pitched than Lucy's. Ironic. This was taken as I walked outside for our morning milking. I have a confession: I also took a video of me milking Tierra, but I had failed to take into consideration how absolutely horrible I looked. I really do not dress up much for the goats. Come to find out, pink corduroys, a green and white fuzzy sweater, polka dot rubber boots, and a slept upon French braid did not make me camera-ready. Will possibly try again tomorrow after a little more attention paid to personal hygiene.

Lucy Oozing and I Can’t Be Happier!

Ok, I know that’s gross, but real farmers don’t let a little goo dampen their spirits. I’ve been watching Lucy like a hawk for signs of going into heat, and I think it might have finally paid off. I had her locked up on the stanchion giving her hooves their second trimming (it will probably take a few to get them in any kind of decent shape after the neglect she suffered), when I smelled something, well, a little funky. I turned my head to the right to scope out her bottom a mere 10 inches from my face, fearing the worst. When Tierra was sick her butt stunk horribly from having diarrhea. But, lo and behold, no diarrhea smears, but a nice line of dirty goo hanging from her vulva. I’m super paranoid about seeing tapeworms hanging out of an animals butt, so that was understandably my first thought. Yes, of course, I have a picture!

Now aren’t you glad I’m thorough? ;) You can see that the underside of her tail is a little dirty, too, which is another sign of having discharge. Her vulva also seems a bit swollen, which are all signs of being in heat. I’ve been watching Louie for any signs of interest, but so far nothing. This could stem from a few things.

1. Lucy is not really in heat and I have no idea what I’m talking about. Very probable.

2. Louie does not have any idea what to do with a doe in heat.

3. Louie is gay.

4. Louie and Lucy have already satisfied their carnal little goaty needs unbeknownst to me, and now feel glowy and satiated and in need of a cigarette and have resumed life as usual. I don’t know if it works this way in the goat world. How do horny goats act after they’ve done the deed? Surely they don’t keep at it the whole 12-36 hours that she can be in heat, do they?

Guess I’ll just have to wait and see if she goes back in heat 18-21 days from now before I have any definite answers. If Louie continues to not do his job, I may try to find somebody local with a Pygmy buck to service her. Their babies would be what’s known as a Pygora. Here’s a picture of one.

Ambrose Cheats on the Chickens

Ambrose's new obsession: the goats. He is out there every time I milk now, although, being the Non-Cat that he is, he won't even touch the wasted milk in the strip cup. He has a particular fascination with Lucy. Now that we have the back pasture available, I like to take a lawn chair out there and read. The goats will not go out there unless I "shepherd" them. Today Ambrose of course saw it as his responsibility to be my co-shepherd, and posted himself under a nearby bush. Soon all three goats are surrounding him eating the bush over his head, and he was just lying there with his eyes at half mast. At one point Lucy, by far the more curious of the bunch, gave him a good sniff, to which he replied with a half-hearted hiss and resumed his catnap. After such a strenuous morning he decided to spend the afternoon lounging in the goat pen with the goats.

Tierra Better!

Thank goodness. I saw her eating some fallen leaves in her pen yesterday morning and she actually ate a few cups of grain for Dustin when he got home from work last night, which we both took as a very good sign. Unfortunately, she had diarrhea again last night when I went out to milk her, but this time I think it might be because her rumen was not prepared to digest grain after going a couple days without any. Their rumen uses bacteria to digest their food, and any sudden changes in feed can send it into an uproar. This morning I only let her eat about a cup of grain, and so far so good. She seems to be over the worst of it, and has even started giving almost her normal amount of milk. I’ve continued to milk her while she’s sick, but she was only giving about and ounce at a time. I gave this milk to the chickens, as I do not feel right drinking raw milk from a sick goat.

Tierra Sick!

When I went out to milk Tierra last night she was not interested in her grain. This instantly alarmed me. Grain is like crack for goats. They’d slit your throat in a second for if it meant more grain. She only gave me a few ounces of milk (her usual is about .5-.75 cup), and she had signs of diarrhea all over her bottom. Freaked me out! I made sure she had some baking soda if she wanted some, but she was not interested. I felt I had to do something, so I squirted some warm water and baking soda in her mouth. Dustin was sick and asleep, so I chased her around the pen until I had her in a headlock and drenched her. This morning she was still not interested in eating, and just laid there on the ground. I brought her a bowl of grain and some fresh water, and she took a good swig of water. Still wouldn’t touch her grain. I am royally freaked at and a part of me is already bracing myself…… just in case. The only thing I can think of is that she ate something that did not agree with her out in the new pasture. We’ll see how things go.

Froggy Business

Every night when I go out to milk, I turn on the back porch light so I don’t kill myself going down the stairs. As everyone around knows, this place is crawling with little green Anole lizards and bright green sticky tree frogs. Each night I am careful not to step on or squash the odd tree frog hanging on the screen door or resting on a pair of shoes outside. I had started to notice, though, that the frogs liked to go stake out the back porch light and gobble up the bugs that flew around it. This amazed me, but not half as much as when I started going out at night, flipping on the light, and seeing a little frog perched WAITING for me to turn on the light. Whoa. So I took this smart little guy’s picture.

Land Ahoy!

Up until now, the goats have been limited to the area of our yard I’ve fenced off for them, which is no small portion (about 5,000 square feet). Bigger than our house, certainly! We knew that the back portion of our property was partially fenced, but were under the impression that the entire back section was incomplete. WE WERE WRONG! After traipsing back there to take a look at exactly what it would take to finish fencing it in, we discovered that instead of about a 300 foot gap in need of fencing, it was already fenced in, but with two 10 foot gaps where somebody had apparently cut away to allow a 4 wheeler or something through. One side still had the flap of fencing attached, so we simply closed it up and tied it back together with some wire we had on hand. We would have been able to do the same with the other gap, had it not been for the fact that a tree had fallen on that flap of fencing. Feeling a bit cheated at having come so close to having a useable pasture for the goats but having the prospect snatched from me at the last minute, we dejectedly walked back to the house, which is no small feat in and of itself. It’s a veritable jungle back there. As we approached our yard, we discovered a stack of old lumber the previous owner must have secreted away in the bushes, and what do you think we found there? A roll of field fencing!!!! We could not believe our good fortune. So, we grabbed it and turned back around to go patch up the remaining hole in the back fence. Twenty minutes later we had a pasture. WHOA! At this point it was getting dark, but we still opened the gate for the goats and told them to run and be free! Which, of course they did not. They moseyed at best. But within minutes they were gobbling up anything in sight. Tierra was particularly happy to have some new bushes to practice her acrobatics on. She spends a good portion of her time standing with her front legs on a tree stretching her long neck out to eat the good stuff on top. Here’s some pictures of their grazing ground. The back fence line is somewhere in the general vicinity of the farthest line of trees in this picture. This is taken standing in the goat pen, looking toward the back of our property.

Here’s a picture showing some of Tierra’s common acrobatic moves to get to the choice leaves that everyone knows reside at the top.

And the best part about the addition of the new pasture? I CAN LOCK LUCY AND LOUIE OUT WHILE I MILK! Those two have been a constant pain in the butt while I milk Tierra. I’ve had to pour them each a bowl of grain outside of the milking area, then run over and milk Tierra before they finish eating. This worked for about two days, until Louie decided he didn’t want his food, he wanted Lucy’s. So, he’d stop eating his and go chase Lucy off hers. She is too intimidated to go eat his, almost like he’s marked it. So, she comes and bugs Tierra for hers. I don’t know how 50 lb Louie is more intimidating than 125 lb Tierra, but he seems to be in Lucy’s eyes. So, then I started pouring Louie his bowl, and putting Lucy’s grain between my knees while I milked. This worked for about 2 minutes each time, then Louie would come over and I’d have to play offense over Lucy with my legs, milking Tierra at the same time. NO LONGER! Now I lock those two rapscallions out in the pasture with one bowl of grain for Louie, milk Tierra at my leisure, and then go hand feed Lucy her ration. *Whew*

There’s A Goat In There!

Now that the initial shock and joy of the goats’ arrivals has worn off a little, I’ve had some time to adjust and have a good look at them. Tierra is in fabulous condition, despite having a sore hoof from when Casey trimmed her before bringing her to me. Apparently she got a little over-zealous and nicked her a little, which happens from time to time. Lucy, on the other hand, is a mess! On closer inspection, I discovered her hooves are HORRIBLY overgrown and her mohair is not in nice little ringlets like Louie’s, but huge chunky dreadlocks. She’d put any Rastafarian to shame. I’ve decided to shear her, and after hacking away at her with a pair of scissors (and giving her a nice cut and having nightmares about it for 2 nights afterwards!), I decided that is just not gonna cut it. No pun intended. Instead I used Dustin’s hair trimmers (sorry honey!), which had to recharge a few hours after about 5 minutes of cutting at Lucy’s oober-thick coat. What a mess. She was a good sport about it for the first 2….DAYS! I had no idea what kind of project this would turn out to be. After 2 days of me coming at her with loud hair-pulling clippers, she learned to avoid me. That’s saying a lot, considering she’s the sweetest friendliest little thing you’ll ever meet. On about day 6 I managed to clip off the last of it from between her back legs. You wouldn’t believe what I found as I went. Whole pine needles embedded in her coat. Leaves. Stickers. She had a huge sore on her side from God knows what. Her entire underside from her chest to her bottom was a solid sheet of orange matted hair 4 inches thick in some places. In essence, her legs were pinned to her body from so much matting. You can imagine how much she enjoyed me poking around in her privates with the clippers, but it all had to go. Her bottom was a wasteland of nasty hair. Here are some pictures of the process.

In this picture you can really see how nasty her bottom was. She’s the one on the right.

If you look closely in this picture you can see that Lucy is a little more than half-sheared. This was taken on about day 4 of the shearing process. She was bright white under all that filth.


This was actually taken a few weeks after I finished shearing her, and it’s already grown back quite a bit. It was shaved all the way down to just some white fuzz over pink skin. Unfortunately I did not think to take a picture until after she’d managed to dirty herself up nicely. Oh, well.

I was able to salvage a bucket of Lucy's mohair. The rest I just threw away it was so disgusting. I plan to experiment with this batch, learn how to wash it and whatnot. Better to practice on this mess than on the quality mohair I hope to harvest from her in the spring. The washing process is fairly involved, requiring multiple washings with very hot water to remove the waxy build up. After that, it can be carded for spinners or sold as is for doll-makers. I've seen it online anywhere from $9/lb to $36/oz. Pretty big difference. It all depends on the quality of the mohair. Unfortunately, I would not know good mohair if it bit me on the butt. I still have much to learn when it comes to the Angora breed.

Adventures in Milking

Ok. So, as far as my milking experience thus far, I have squeezed one squirt out of one of Tierra’s teats a couple months ago when I first went out to Casey’s farm to see if I wanted to buy Tierra, and one other experience milking her infront of half a dozen people the day she arrived, with Casey looking over my shoulder to see that I was doing it correctly. Now the true test comes… time to do it on our own. I was lucky that Tierra arrived on a Saturday, so I had the Saturday night, and both Sunday milkings with Dustin to help me. The first real milking all on our own Saturday night was a bit hairy, as Tierra was not thrilled at having a new person (especially one who obviously did not know what she was doing down there!) groping her in the dark. She’d stomp and swat at me with her back hoof, but I was tenacious and clung to that teat till I got the last drop out. Or so I thought. You see, goats are infamous for their conscious control of their milk letdown. You milk a little, massage the udder a little, and in theory, she should let down some more milk. This was not what Tierra had in mind. As soon as I’d let her off the stanchion I would look and her teats would plump back up full of milk. Oh, well. She can keep her stupid milk.

Things got markedly more interesting the next evening milking after Lucy and Louie had arrived. You see, the milking stanchion is in the goat pen where Lucy and Louie can be in the middle of things. I had not anticipated their interest in the process. To further complicate matters, I had not devised a lock for the stanchion head gate yet, so Dustin had to stand there and hold it closed so Tierra would not escape (she was still not thrilled about my overtures to milk her). So. I’m trying to milk a cranky goat, all the while trying to finish up before she finishes eating her grain ration or all hell will really break loose, and Dustin is holding the headgate closed with all his might, as Tierra is trying to get away the whole time. Now, remember, this is happening at 8 o’clock at night and it is pitch dark out here in the country, and we are doing this by flashlight. I can hear Lucy and Louie over in the corner behind Dustin, and it was particularly chaotic over there. Tierra was acting particularly agitated and stomping and trying to break the stanchion. Dustin is constantly moving about and muttering to himse