Wally left me a voice mail message on his way to work telling me that there was a dead deer in the road but that I didn’t want to go and get it because it was smeared all over the road.  What Wally forgot was that I was going to go to the Jersey dairy as soon as I finished milking to pick up a calf and milk to make yogurt so I’d be driving right by where the deer was.

Sure enough, the deer was pretty well busted up in the middle of the road, but I surely wasn’t going to leave meat lying in the middle of the road for the crows and buzzards to eat.  On the way back from the dairy, I pulled Yoda, the truck, over and dragged the deer on the other side of the truck so I’d be pretty well shielded from cars passing by.

First I tried to get the deer on the truck, but it was too heavy.  Whatever hit it, hit it hard because it was almost cut in half.  I tried to disengage the hindquarters, but the hide was holding them in place.  Luckily, I had Wally’s old jack knife in the truck.  It still has cut left in it!  As I started cutting the hide so I could get the back legs off, I saw the lady who lives across the street coming out of her house across her yard.

Shit!  This lady is a devote vegetarian and animal lover.  What would she think of me cutting up a deer with a jack knife, even if it was already dead.  I met her across the street and said hello.  She asked if I needed help and I told her that no, she didn’t want to help me with what I was doing.  After I told her what I was doing, she took several steps backwards and said no, I don’t think I want to see what you are doing.  Luckily I left the bloody jack knife lying near the deer.  Hopefully she didn’t notice the blood and guts smeared on my jeans.  We talked for a few minutes then I told her good bye and went back to work.  I feel sure she will make sure that her doors are locked up tight tonight for fear of that crazy lady that lives down the street.

I’ve butchered enough deer so that I am able to separate the legs from the back bone pretty easily even though I was doing the work with a tiny knife, however, whatever vehicle hit this deer did most of the work for me.  After I got the two back legs off, I was able to haul the front end up on the truck and off I went.

I pulled into the goat pasture and put the calf into the kid pen where he’ll stay for a few days.  Rose was very interested in the tasty tidbits I had in the back of the truck.  I gave her one hind quarter and then drove up to where the sheep and gave the second one to Liath.  The Border Collies and chickens are working on the front end.  I hosed out the bed of the truck (wonder if the truck has ever had blood in the bed before, probably not) and the carrier that I used to bring the calf home, then came in and hosed myself off.

I have a gallon and a half of yogurt in the oven (Jersey milk makes the absolute best yogurt) and a batch of cheese draining.  Now it’s time to lock myself in the office to work on taxes.  Agh.

Until later …

I’ve been very busy the past few days, primarily with the horses (yes, horses plural).  Remember the black Arabian gelding I’ve been so infatuated with?  I finally convinced Wally to go over with me to take him out and do some ground work with.  Wally grumbled about crazy horses all the way over there.  Well, the horse surprised both of us in that he was very open to ground work and could be handled without any difficulties.  I’ve gone over there every day since to do ground work.  We had a little bit of trouble on Monday when I took him out of his comfort zone, but not too bad.

It’s already raining today so I don’t think I’ll be able to go over today and it is supposed to rain hard tomorrow so it will be out then.

I had a good ride on Merlin on Monday.  He was a bit hot, but now too bad.

Tuesday was the meltdown day.  We finished his free-standing stall on Sunday and I caught him on Monday by putting food into the stall and then closing the gate.  Tuesday didn’t go that smoothly.  On Monday when I finished riding him I let him loose without putting his halter on.  My bad.  When I went into the stall on Tuesday with halter and lead rope in hand, Merlin lost his mind and acted like a wild mustang that had never seen a halter or lead rope.  We spent about 20 minutes going around and around and around the stall.  Every time I tried to get to his head, he presented me with his butt.  If I applied too much pressure to try to disengage his hindquarters, he pushed into the sides of the stall as if he was going to go through them.

We only covered the roof with tin.  The rest of the stall has wooden fence-like sides.  We will close it in when the weather starts to get bad again.

Finally I caught him and got the halter on him.  When I brought him up towards the house and started to work on desensitization exercises, he got even more buggered than normal and went into reverse, dragging me with him until he pulled the lead rope out of my hands.  He’s never been that agitated in the past, but the stall episode got him going.  Now I had to catch him on 15 acres.  That took me about 45 minutes.

By the time I caught him again, he was beyond working with so I just put him back in his paddock — STUPIDLY — AGAIN without a halter.  An hour later I went back down to try to catch him to put his halter on him.  That took over an hour.  I simply ran him down until he couldn’t run any more and let me catch him.  It’s a wonder he isn’t lame today.

The people who own the Arabians gave us a used round pen which we picked up and put together on Monday.  I wasn’t a fan of round pens until now.  After I caught Merlin the third time, I brought him down into the round pen and did Clinton Anderson round pen exercises.  I should of watched a round pen episode before I started doing them because I wasn’t doing them quite right.  Initially, I kept his feet moving until he stopped facing me.  That took a while.  I praised him when he faced me and let him rest.  Every time he stopped with his butt to me, I got him moving again.  This morning, I wanted a round pen episode on-line and realized what I was doing wrong.  I’ve been down there several times today doing the exercises correctly.  The last time I went down there was with the intention of bringing him back up because it was starting to rain.  I caught him without any problem.

All in all, Merlin is a very nice horse, but it’s quite obvious he hasn’t been treated kindly in the past.  The difficulties in catching him seem to be tied to his reluctance to let you touch his head.  He’s extremely head shy, especially on the right side.  It’s very, very aggravating to have a horse that turns his butt to you … essentially threatening to kick you, when you try to catch him and then there are the difficulties associated with handling a reactive, fearful horse on the ground.  Under saddle, he’s quite brave.  He travels over obstacles that a lot of horses wouldn’t attempt.  He’s wonderfully comfortable to ride and will go all day.  I’m looking forward to the next Robbie Potter clinic to work on these issues.  Hopefully I’ve resolved the catching problems, but I’m not holding my breath.

The round pen was a wonderful gift.  I know we’ll get a lot of use out of it.  It is very rusty and a few of the panels need to be repaired, which we can do.  A coat paint will make it look almost new.  We set it up in the lower part of the back field.

Back to the black Arabian.  His name is Alvin, which I hate, but so far, I can’t think of a similar-sounding name that I like.  Merlin’s name was Chief before I got him and I hated that name so I re-named him.  The name Merlin suits him just fine.  Unlike Merlin, I don’t think Alvin has ever been treated harshly.  He has wonderful ground manners.  He’s a WHOLE LOT OF HORSE.  He’s considerably larger than Merlin and I believe he was gelded late in life because he has that thick, cresty neck that stallions have.  We plan to go over Friday afternoon to see if we can get him in the trailer.  I don’t know if he’s ever been in a trailer before.  A friend of Wally’s is going to do the first ride, or two for us.  We’ve been told that he has been ridden.  Hopefully the two horses will get along okay.  I don’t think Merlin is going to be able to bully Alvin nor do I think Alvin will bully Merlin.

I figure I have nothing but time these days, I might as well use it playing with horses, dogs and the other animals.  I do daily job searches, in fact, a neat one came up yesterday that I applied for.  Fingers and toes crossed.  A job will come around when I’m ready for it.  Until then, I’ll keep busy with the farm.  I have no idea what Alvin will be like under saddle.  He is big enough for Wally to ride, but he may be more horse than Wally wants.  He may be more horse than I want.  But given what he is and the potential he may have, I can’t see him rotting away in a pasture for the rest of his life.  I believe I found a home for three more of the horses.  Hopefully that will pan out this weekend.

I believe the udder issues the goats have been having are straightening out.  Angel’s udder is still a scabby mess, but she doesn’t fuss when I milk her.  I haven’t put her babies up and probably won’t for another week or so.  I don’t want to press the issue by trying to milk her out with a full udder.  Even with the babies on them, I am getting a gallon of milk from four does.  Addie gives close to a half gallon each milking, the others contribute the rest.  I haven’t had a big need for the milk so I’ve left the babies out with their mothers at night.  I made a batch of cheese on Sunday and it came out very well.  That it didn’t turn into a science experiment tells me that there isn’t any bacteria in the milk.  The last batch I made was a science experiment.  When there’s bacteria in the milk, when it curds it blows up to look like a mushroom.  The chickens and dogs don’t seem to mind eating science experiments so it doesn’t go to waste.

We got an all time record number of eggs yesterday: 29!  I discovered that some of the chickens were laying in the smaller ShelterLogic building.  Rose (I think) found that secret cache last night and consumed them.  What eggs I don’t sell or give away go to the dogs anyway.  They are so pretty sitting on the counter top.  We have a wide range of colors: from white to light brown to medium brown to a deep chocolate brown as well as blue.  This morning, I found a duck in one of the hen nests.  When I checked the nest later on, there were no eggs visible so I believe they are getting to set and the eggs are buried in the straw.  I don’t think I’m going to let them.  Both Wally and I want to switch from the Khaki Campbell ducks to Runner ducks.  Adult runner ducks are hard to come by, so we’ll likely have to raise them from ducklings.

Tomorrow is tax day.  I am going to make myself sit in that office until I get them done.  I have been putting that off for too long now.  Since it’s going to rain hard all day, it will be a good day to do it.

Until later …

We brought Split into the poultry pasture to work the three Indian Runner ducks:

And Buster:

Poor Buster runs in fear from Split.  I don’t blame him.

As you can see, Dream is now in a lovely home.  Thanks Melissa!

I didn’t get many and what I got wasn’t very good, but it’s a start.  Split moving Water Buffalo cow and young a dairy goat and her kids.

What I did discover while I was out in the field was that Split could move the whole crew into the field and keep them moving.  What I’ll like start doing is going on walkabouts with the goats and Split.  This will give her some good work.  It brings back memories of when I started Gel on the Boar goat kids.  We walked for miles with those goats.

Okay Melissa, you’ve got me going.  Melissa is my newest (really feeling like one of my oldest) friends.  She took home Dream and two goat kids.  Angel’s baby came back, but she’s kept Addie’s baby and as you can see, he’s in training for the upcoming Goat Olympics:

Since Melissa visited, I’ve been carrying my little point and shoot camera around in my pocket, but have missed more shots than I’ve taken, but at least I’m carrying the camera with me.  I dusted off my Nikon and plan to drag out the instruction manual so I can remember how to use it.  Since I updated the puppy page on the Spellcast Border Collies web site, I need to get some good images of Split to add to the page.

It’s funny how people come into your life.

You can’t leave vehicle doors open around here because if you do, chickens climb in and in case you’ve never heard this before, chickens are terrible drivers.

Chickens love taking dust baths and then lounging in the sun.  I don’t know how many times I’ve run up to a chicken lying on her side thinking she was dead only to discover she was sun bathing.

I have a little bit of time before I have to get ready to drive to Statesville so I’m off to try to get some images of Split working.

I am not a patient person, never have been and probably never will be.  Last night I got very irritated when Gel didn’t bring the goats out in a time frame that I thought was appropriate.  I told him to grip, which he did but the goats didn’t come out any quicker or quieter than they would have if I simply let him do his job.   Dairy goats have got to be about the worst type of stock to move.  Factor in babies and you might as well be trying to move a herd of water buffalo for as stubborn and ugly as they can be.

We I get impatient Gel gets ramped up and when I tell him to bite to move the show along, it does nothing more than make the situation worst.  Unfortunately, Gel doesn’t always grip properly.  I suppose he could be taught to bite straight on, but that would entail training sessions in gripping and I don’t want to subject my stock to that.  Gel rarely needs to grip and those times that he does, he grips properly as you can see from this image.  The ewe was charging him and Gel bit straight on as he should.  If I am patient and let him do his work, he always brings the goats out.  He simply stands there in their face until they move off him.  That he can stand there, nose to nose with stock in tight quarters without loosing his head and gripping is wonderful; but when I go out there to milk, I want the goats trotting into the milk parlor not spending time in a Mexican stand-off.

I guess that is one of the reasons why most dairies take the babies off their mothers and bottle feed them.  If the mothers don’t care about their babies, well then, coming into the milk parlor is a good thing.  That isn’t reason enough to bottle feed baby goats.  The best thing for me to do is to learn to use the tools that I have and try to learn some patience.

In another hour or so I need to head off to Statesville to pick up rabbits.  I am only making one trip a month these days and come home with 80 pounds of rabbit each trip.  My truck gets just shy of 20 mpg, which is a big difference from my car that got 32-34 mpg.  That’s okay, I already love that truck which we have nicknamed Yoda.  It’s been well-used since we got it.

I am so looking forward to the weekend.  It is supposed to be in the low 60’s on Sunday.  In anticipation of almost-summertime-like temperatures, I made a batch of potato salad yesterday.  I have a package of ground venison to make burgers to put on the grill.  Add in a green salad and we’ll have a wonderful dinner tonight.  We need to move the fence this afternoon.  Hopefully this weekend we can get the rest of the windows in on the north side of my milk parlor and finish Merlin’s shelter.

Until later …

Finally I’m starting to see some progress in Split.  It’s taken a long, long time and she’s still a long way away from being a reliable working dog (i.e. one that is working with her head vs. adrenaline), but she’s getting there.  It’s simply a matter of getting time into her, which has been hard because I don’t have proper stock for her to work on.  In another week or so, Fennel’s babies will be mature enough to use for a little bit of work.  The problem is getting the babies separated from their mothers.  Because there was snow forecast, I brought the sheep down to the poultry pasture Tuesday morning and all and all, it went fine.  The mothers are not challenging Gel and the babies are keeping up quite well.  If we do not have any new babies in the next couple of days, I might be able to do a little bit of light sheep work with Split over the weekend.

As Wally has said numerous times, we’d be hard pressed to find another one as good as she is and he’s right.  All she needs is time to mature and direction.

We decided to go ahead and breed her on this heat cycle.  Yes, a planned litter this time.  I want to try one more time to get a puppy or two off Gel and I felt this would be a good cross.  I have two puppies sold from the pending litter and interest in a couple more so I’m not too concerned about finding homes for the remaining puppies.  If all goes well, the puppies will be due April 23 and Split will be spayed before her next heat cycle.  It’s actually kind of a relief to have the litter coming and to not care about what anyone says about it or feeling the need to do genetic tests, entering competitions to obtain stupid titles or anything else to make the puppies more marketable.  I’ll raise the puppies to the best of my ability, find them good homes and that’s the way it is.

Another dog who has shown great improvement is Rose.  I think we can finally say that she is a useful member of Spellcast Farm.  We’ve been leaving her loose at night to patrol and that has resulted in a lot less barking and a more settled dog.  These livestock guardians really need large areas to patrol, much larger than many of them are given, ours included.  Sort of like how Border Collies get out of hand if they are not given proper exercise and training, livestock guard dogs need to do their job or else they can get into as much trouble as a Border Collie.  Allowing Rose access to all of the property at night is helping to keep critters away from not only the goats, but the poultry and cats as well.

Liath continues to do well, but sheep are not her ideal pasture mates and she is kept in an area that is smaller than what she’d like to be able to patrol.  I’m toying with going up to the dairy to see if there are any bull calves available.  We have plenty of milk right now and the intention is to get the next cow early enough so that we can get it to butchering size before we have kids or lambs on the ground.  I know Liath would love to have another cow to chum with so it may be a good time to go ahead and get a calf.

Until later …

I haven’t written a whole lot lately about horses and riding; primarily because I haven’t been riding.  The weather has been too damned crappy.  It seemed as though on the few good days that did occur something came up that prevented me from riding.  At one point, I considered selling Merlin for the simple reason that he wasn’t paying for himself, but I’m glad I didn’t.

There was another local Robbie Potter clinic scheduled for this weekend.  I was first on the waiting list, but everyone registered sent in their deposits so I didn’t get in.  For once, the weather worked in my favor.  It seems the ground is too wet where the clinic is going to be held so it got postponed to the last weekend in March and guess what … I got in!  I’m thrilled.  I got an awful lot out of that clinic in January and expect I’ll get even more out of a two day clinic.  Given what natural horsemanship clinics run by the big names like Clinton Anderson cost, what Robbie Potter charges is downright cheap.

Over the past month and a half, I got a bit turned off by Clinton Anderson.  He was running a series on a rescued mare named Cider.  The series went on for 13 shows, which was a bit overkill in my opinion.  It got so that all of the shows were more infomercial than informative.  As a result of this, I unsubscribed from the No Worries Club in February.  Luckily, Clinton redeemed himself in the last two episodes.  I got a lot out of them.  I haven’t watched the DVDs I got as part of my membership and I need to.  Now that I’m in the clinic the end of March, I’m excited about getting into the saddle again.  The weather is supposed to improve starting tomorrow.  Yesterday, I renewed by subscription to the No Worries Club.

I believe I have figured out what is wrong with Angel’s udder.  She has an infection caused by Staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria that is quite resistant to antibiotics.  I have not been using her milk since she started to show udder issues and I milk her last so none of the other goats have become infected with it.  I did some research this morning and found that both tea tree oil and apple cider vinegar are quite effective in killing this bacteria and healing the skin.  I went to the Vitamin Shoppe this afternoon and bought some tea tree oil, tea tree oil castile soap and a gallon of organic apple cider vinegar.  The plan is to make disposable udder wipes using the castile soap, tea tree oil and apple cider vinegar.  I have been quite lazy in that I use the same wash cloth for all of the goats which is not ideal.

This is all such a learning experience.

Until later …