Posts from — April 2010

Since the puppies were born on Earth Day.  I wanted to give them Earth-related names.  I’ve settled on the following names:

Mica which is derived from the Latin word micare, meaning “to glitter”;

Delphin is of Greek origin, and its meaning is “dolphin.” The Greeks believed that Delphi was the earth’s womb; the dolphin’s shape resembles that of a pregnant woman.

Kai meaning “keeper of the keys; earth”. Also possibly (South African) “beautiful.” Kai is also a Hawaiian name meaning “the sea”.

Gaea pronounced GAY-ah. It is of Greek origin, and its meaning is “the earth.” Mythology: the womanly personification of the earth; mother of the Titans.

Kishi, pronounced kee-shee. It is of Japanese origin, and its meaning is “happiness to the earth.”

Zola is of Italian origin, and its meaning is “lump of earth.”

Now to match up puppies with their names …

I’m finally getting the hang of it and I think I now know where we are going to set up a milking area for Gwen.  Until we get the area covered (which shouldn’t be too big a deal [yea, right!]), I can use it when the weather is good, but if it’s raining, I’ll need to bring her into the hitching area which is completely covered.  For the life of me, I can’t recall why I decided that milking her in the hitching area wasn’t going to be ideal, perhaps it was due to her toilet habits.  Manure pellets are not as hard to walk through as green slime (cow manure).

There is an alleyway between the hitching area and the fence for the poultry pasture.  For a long time, we have been talking about what to do with that area.  We keep it blocked off so the goats can’t go through the alley and play ring around the rosy.  I think if we set up a stanchion or other means to tie her in place, I think this will make an excellent area to milk her.  We were not sure that she would be able to turn around in the alleyway, but this morning, I discovered that she could.  It was no problem for her and she’s learning the routine.  I’ve almost given up on leading her.  Instead, I use Gel to move her along.

Now, the only thing to deal with is what to do with the goats when I’m moving Gwen to and from her milking area.  This morning I put them in the poultry pasture and that seemed to work okay.  Thank goodness for Gel!

I need to start getting up earlier to milk so I can send Gwen out into the front field when it’s cool.  At the dairy, they started milking at 3 AM.  That’s a bit too early for me.

And, once the bag of Bartlett’s sweet goat food is gone, we are going to go corn and soy free.  The goats and Gwen are eating the grain mixture that I had made up at the local mill.  The only change I’ll make to it when I have it made up again is not using beet pulp (did you know all sugar beets [which is what beet pulp is made from] are GMO?) and adding more molasses (for energy).  Of course, the molasses are probably from GMO sources too. {sigh}

If all goes well, Wally and I will ride horses tonight!  Finally, we are going to be able to do something that is fun for us!

Until later …

I came across this Chinese Proverb today:

“An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet regardless of time, place or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle but it will never break.”

How true … Wally and I often speak of the people we’ve met over the years: how we met them; how happy we were to have many of them in our lives now; and how happy we are to not have some of them in our lives.

We’ve met the best people while on this journey towards self-substance.

It hasn’t been a terribly productive day; well, I suppose pulling a wagon-load of old brick out of the woods could be considered productive.  I am not going to plant too many flowers this year.  I went crazy doing it last year.  It’s expensive, especially if you buy annuals that don’t come back.  I’m going to use the bricks in the area where I have the Russian Sage, Rosemary, Sage and other perennial herbs planted.  In the same woods where I pulled out the bricks is a huge pile of terracotta pipes.  I’ve pulled a lot of those out, crushed them and put them on the ground around the plants.  This prohibits some weed growth, but mainly it keeps the chickens from scratching around the plants.  I’m going to mingle the bricks with the crushed terracotta.  Hopefully this weekend we’ll be able to get to Lowes and pick up a lattice panel to put up on the fence for the goat pasture to keep the goats from sticking their heads through and munching on the herbs.  Right now, I have bits and pieces of welded wire in place.  It looks like crap and if I’m going to put this much effort into beautifying the area, it’s time the bits and pieces of wire get retired.

That patch of woods has been a great source of “stuff” that we’ve used and re-used such as wooden fence posts and the plastic tubes that we’ve used to protect the pine trees, for baby goat shelters, chicken shelters, etc.  It apparently was a dumping ground for when the horse farm that was originally on this property was operating.  Hopefully we can get out a few more fence posts to finish our fencing project over the next few weeks.  Why buy new posts when you can dig perfectly usable ones out of the woods?

Gwen has spent most of the day up in the goat shelter eating hay, but as the day cooled down, she’s headed out to the front pasture with the goats.  I’ll go out around 7:30 to milk and do the rest of the evening chores.

Glad Spot has another cow to love on.

Until later …

Yesterday, I picked up a tube of Fastrack Jump Start gel to try to get Gwen eating better. Jump Start is a source of live (viable) naturally-occurring microorganisms; a source of protease which can hydrolyze proteins and a source of amylase which can hydrolyze starch. The ingredients are:

Vegetable oil, egg product, dried chicory root, silicon dioxide, dl-alpha tocopheryl acetate (source of vitamin E activity), dextrose, vitamin B12 supplement, active dry yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), vitamin A acetate, calcium pantothenate, riboflavin supplement, niacin, thiamine hydrochloride, D-activated animal sterol (source of vitamin D3), dried Enterococcus faecium fermentation product, dried Lactobacillus acidophilus fermentation product, dried Aspergillus oryzae fermentation extract and dried Bacillus subtilis fermentation extract.

I also picked up Fastrack’s Probiotic Pack which contains:

Yeast culture, processed grain by-products, calcium carbonate, dried chicory root, dried Enterococcus faecium fermentation product, dried Lactobacillus acidophilus fermentation product, dried Aspergillus oryzae fermentation extract, dried Bacillus subtilis fermentation extract.

I gave her a dose of the Jump Start gel in the afternoon.  When she came into milk (Gel brought her in from the front pasture, which was a wonderful thing) she ate better than she has for several days now.  I picked up some fresh cut alfalfa hay which she loves!  I got over a gallon of milk last night.  This morning, while I was milking the goats, she was at the gate mooing to be let in to milk.  Yea!  I got another gallon from her this morning.  I would have thought she would have given more, but that’s okay.  Whats more important to me is that she is eating better.

I was so glad to not have to walk out into the field with her halter and drag her back in!  She’s leading better, but she still has a long way to go.

I’ll give her the Jump Start gel for two more days.  I’ve been adding the Probiotic Pack to the goats’ food and will add it to hers when she’s through with the Jump Start.  Of course the goats got some of the alfalfa, but they waste so darned much of it.  I picked up the leaves that they dropped from their hay racks and fed it to Gwen.  Otherwise, it would have been wasted.  Goats waste an incredible amount of food.

Chicory is known for its toxicity to internal parasites so using the Probiotic Pack could help keep the worm count down.  I am still using herbal wormer for the goats and will use it for the horses and Gwen.

Split had a better day yesterday too (or more like I had a better day so Split did as well).  She’s more settled which means that the puppies are quieter (thank goodness!).  They are growing like weeds; Split has a ton of milk!  Looking forward to seeing what they look like with their eyes open.  Once the puppies are several weeks old, I’ll have to be careful to keep Split under control.  I don’t want the puppies picking up on her “highness” (for lack of a better word).  To have to be under control when she’s around the puppies will be a good lesson for Split.

A woman from Alaska contacted me a while back about a puppy.  I decided yesterday to tell her that I didn’t think the puppies from this litter would be a good fit for her.  Primarily it’s because I don’t want to go through the rigmarole of shipping a puppy to Alaska, nor did I want the woman to go through the expense of getting a puppy to her and then being disappointed with the puppy.  I’d rather keep them local so that if someone isn’t happy with or for some reason cannot keep the puppy, it can come back to me.  No more long distance puppy deals for me.  This will likely be the last litter I breed.

I made a gallon of yogurt from Jersey milk yesterday.  It finished today and I’m looking forward to eating it tomorrow morning.  I had to use store-bought yogurt this morning and gosh, that’s awful stuff!  The last batch I made was from goat milk and it just didn’t cut it.  Yogurt from goat milk is usually very thin.  I love the texture of yogurt from whole cow milk.  Today I started a large batch of goat cheese.  These days, milk is flowing all over the farm!

Until later …

I hate not knowing if I’m doing the right thing or not.  I hate the learning curve involved with learning how to take care of a different animal.

I think I might have overfed Gwen two days ago and now she’s not interested in eating much grain.  I’ve tried several different types of grain mixtures, but she’s not going for much.  Of course, this means her milk production is going down in a hurry.  At the dairy, she was giving about two gallons per milking.  This morning, she didn’t even give a gallon.

I’ve thought about just letting her go dry until she calves, but I’d like to get her into a routine here, learn to lead (Gel is helping with that) and so I can learn to milk her better than I am.  It’s gotten much better, but we are still a long way from having it down to a routine.  It saddens me to think of how many cows like Gwen who end up at the processing plant because they were lame, or were not producing enough to meet the needs of a commercial diary.  She is incredibly sweet and patient.

As I write this, she’s out in the front pasture grazing.  I put her out there for the first time last night.  Just as we went out to milk the goats, it started pouring, then hailing!  Gwen went the wrong way to come back into the goat pasture so I went out with Gel to turn her around.  Good dog that he is, he turned her and brought her back into the pasture.  Gel is helping with the halter breaking.  Maybe this will help him to learn to hit heels as I won’t let him come around to her sides or head.  He isn’t much of a gripper anyway; only when he is getting run down by an angry goat or sheep or if I tell him to bite.

Oddly, Gel has been wanting to go out in the middle of the night.  I think he might feel a bit out of sorts with the puppies in the house.  While Wally will disagree with me, I’m not so sure Split is being a banner mother.  She takes care of them well enough, but if the puppies get too far away from her in the whelping box and start screaming, she tends to lie there and ignore them.  Maybe that isn’t a problem.  It’s been so long since I’ve had a litter of puppies.  As I write this, everyone is quietly either nursing or up against her belly.  The problem is that I need to keep her shut into the whelping box.  She comes back and feeds the puppies as she should, but if something exciting should happen, and to Split most everything is exciting, she comes flying out of the box like a rocket, strewing puppies every which way.  She often goes back in the same way.  Maybe one day Split will slow down.  I hope Rosemoon’s daughters are ready to step up their activities!

The horses are settling into the back pasture pretty well.  I was a bit concerned when I let them out this morning.  It was quite cool so they were fresh.  When I opened the gate, the three of them galloped into the pasture and headed down towards the back.  As I walked out so I could see them, I said to myself, please Al Bin, don’t jump the fence again.  He didn’t and soon they came galloping back up into the paddock, then turned around and headed back out.

Yes, three horses.  We have a red mare named Cherry who is here on a free lease for Wally to ride.  It was an offer we couldn’t refuse.  She came with a saddle and bridle and she’s here for as long as we want her.  I’ve ridden her, but Wally hasn’t yet, but hopefully this weekend we’ll be able to ride.  We were going to run another line of field fence this weekend, but I think the ElectroNet is doing the job for now so we can take a break from fencing.  Fencing is incredibly hard work!

Between the cow, the puppies, the horses (worrying about them running through the fence again), my work situation and who knows what else, I’ve been very stressed.  On Monday and Tuesday I woke up at 3:30 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep.  The cold I had is trying like heck to go into my chest.  Little things like the floor of the goat shelter has been wet and no matter how much straw we put down, I couldn’t get it dried out bother me.  I think I fixed that situation yesterday with 15 bags of sawdust (from a local cabinet maker) and we’ll stop and get another 10-15 bags this weekend to put down.  The sawdust has done a good job in the area in front of the goat shelter.  It was a mud pit, but it’s quite dry now.  Of course, having the sheep up here for about a week not too long ago didn’t help keep the shelter floor dry.

Until later …

When I picked up Gwen, the owner of the dairy told me that I should be feeding her about 25 pounds of grain a day.  Wally had to pick my jaw up from the ground when he said that.  I suppose if I want six or seven gallons of milk from her a day (which is what they’d be looking for); I could feed her that much grain, but I won’t.  Two to three gallons a day is more than enough for me!

Early in April, I had a local feed mill mix up a custom mixture for the dairy goats (originally I was planning on feeding this to the horses as well, but I changed my mind) consisting of: 100 pounds of oats; 50 pounds of barley; 50 pounds of sunflower seeds; 50 pounds of alfalfa pellets; 50 pounds of milo; 80 pounds of beet pulp and as much molasses as they needed to keep it from being too dusty.  It ended up being a relatively pricey mixture.  The most expensive ingredient is the beet pulp, which I plan discontinue.  I just found out that all beet pulp is now genetically modified and I surely don’t want to feed GMO foods to my animals.  The sunflower seeds cost $17.50 for 50 pounds, but sunflower seeds are quite beneficial in a dairy ration so I’ll probably leave them in.

The horses are eating a mixture of oats, barley and beet pulp.  When the grain I have mixed up for them is gone, I’ll stop feeding them beet pulp as well.

From what I’ve observed, cows like to lick their food.  When the mixture that I had made up for the goats is gone, I’ll have a batch made up for Gwen that is more powdery and have a separate batch made for the goats that is not crushed.

I have been feeding Bartlett sweet goat food, but I’m going to phase that out (primarily because it contains corn and soy) and feed just the grain mixture, but they are not going to get as much grain as they have been.  If their bellies are full, they are not inclined to go out and forage.  I want them to forage!

Of course the goats and cow will have access to all the good hay they can eat.  I found a source for organic alfalfa/timothy/orchard grass hay that I need to explore further.  It comes in those huge, 800 pounds bales which I hate to deal with, but I may try a bale and see if I can cut back even more on the grain if I feed such high quality hay.  We have a hay rack fixed that pretty much prevents the goats from wasting hay.

One of the more difficult things about keeping a cow is the manure.  They are manure machines!  I was hoping she’d be a bit cleaner here, but that hasn’t quite happened.

The other thing I need to deal with is minerals …

Until later …

is a whole lot harder than milking a goat!  Our cow, Guinevere, has been nothing but patient.  It’s a good thing.  It only took me about a hour to milk her Sunday morning.  Sunday evening was much better.  This morning was a mixed bag.  I think she’s already put on weight.

Pictures later today.

We got the horses into the back pasture yesterday afternoon.  It didn’t go so well.  Al Bin jumped the ElectroNet and headed off to parts unknown.  Merlin went through the ElectroNet in hot pursuit.  We caught them and got them settled down and tried again.  So far, so good.  I can’t tell you how nice it is to not have horses in the yard.  I’d be perfectly happy leaving Al Bin in the yard, and I think he’d love to live there, but Merlin, nope, he’s a pain in the ass.

Off to make cheese, from Jersey milk this time.

Until later …