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?