Posts from — May 2010

Rosemoon and her wonderful family came to pick up Split and two puppies yesterday.  We had a lovely visit.  I love Rosemoon and her family and so wish they were closer.  Rosemoon has already posted an entry in her Blog about how useful Split has become.

Yea for Split!!!!!!

The four puppies spent the evening in the house last night.  They trashed their sleeping area and we need to figure out a way to keep that a bit cleaner, but I was glad to have them in the house.  Wally and I are torn between two of the puppies.  One is the smaller of the males (Rosemoon took the larger male) and the other is the female with the solid white muzzle.  They are both bright and lively.  The small male is extremely precocious.

We have a family coming to look at the puppies this afternoon.  They are looking for a ranch dog and from talking to them over the telephone, it may be a good home, but I wouldn’t hesitate to turn them away.  I’ve turned more people away via telephone than I’ve talked to.  That would only leave three and there’s a pretty good chance the family that took Monty (Fern’s brother) may take one of these puppies.  I would have no problem, for the time being, keeping two of the puppies.  The two left (besides the two we like) are the female with the zig-zag pattern on her face and the black-faced male (the one I’ve ear marked for the family coming this afternoon).

Wally is trying to finish up mowing and weed whacking before it rains so I need to cut this short to go out and help him, but there is a lot of other neat things going on that I need to write about.

Until later …

I rode Merlin yesterday.  It almost didn’t happen.  It took me about an hour to catch and saddle him.  The first time I tried to catch him, it took about 20 minutes.  I brought him up and tied him to the trailer to saddle him, but he spooked and I didn’t have the rope halter tied properly (I’m rope challenged) and it came off him and I had to catch him a second time.  This took longer, but I persisted.  It would have been easier to just give up, but that would have been letting Merlin win.  Finally, I got the saddle on him and off we went.

He’s forgotten everything he learned in the Robbie Potter clinics, but that’s my fault, not his.  I’m still getting used to the new saddle so I didn’t press him much.

I won’t ride today, it’s much too hot.  Not too long after I finished milking, I had to drive out to the meat processor to pick up another load of organ meat, bones and bone shavings.  I did a few more errands and by the time I got back, it was already almost 90 degrees out.  Tonight is my night to do all of the chores so I’m going to conserve my energy.

One of this weekend’s projects is going to be fixing the open stall so I can close the horses up in it.  Luckily, horses are stupid enough to go into a stall to eat and that’s where I’ll catch him.  I’ll feed him in the morning in the stall and close him up until I am ready to ride.  It’s unfortunate, Al Bin is very easy to catch, yet I can’t ride him … yet.

The saddle is causing me some knee pain due to fender torque.  When I’m not using the saddle, I have a broomstick through the stirrups twisting them so they are parallel.  The saddle leather is very soft and supple so hopefully that will make a difference.  I spent yesterday evening with an ice pack on the knee.

You may recall last year it was a war against ticks.  Ticks are still a bit of a problem, but not anywhere near as bad as they were last year.  This year, it’s flies.  The damned things.  The other evening Wally and I went down and put chemical fly spray on the horses.  They hated it and started drooling.  Not good.  I won’t use that fly spray on an animal again.  I think that incident is what contributed to Merlin being so hard to catch yesterday.  While we are out this weekend, I’ll pick up some apple cider vinegar and a couple of different essential oils and make up an herbal fly spray.

Poor Gwen is covered with flies.  I do spray her when I bring her into the milk parlor with a commercial herbal fly spray (when I use it up, I’ll go to my homemade variety).  I also spray the goats before I take them down into the woods for the day.  I purchased some fly predators: little bugs that feed on fly larva.  I’ve heard good things about them, but they’ll only take care of the flies around the goat shelter, milk parlor and the horses’ open stall.  I bought fly masks for the horses, which do help, as long as they stay on.  When the horses came up this morning, neither had their masks on.  Luckily I found them at the gateway to the pasture and put them back on tighter this morning.  They do help.  The horses look like alien creatures with them on.  I wasn’t giving the horses any grain, but I started up again to get some garlic into them to see if that helps.

Yesterday morning, a family came out to pick up eggs and milk.  The children had a ball with the puppies and the other animals.  I intended to go back into the house and get my camera, but I didn’t.  It’s unfortunate because there were some wonderful shots to be had.  The puppies were absolutely delightful with the children.  Several of them are now spoken for, but they’ll stay here for another two or three weeks.  They are five weeks old today.

Until later …

I don’t know what happened either this morning or last night, but the mother to the two ducklings is missing.  That leaves two screaming ducklings wandering around looking for their mother.  Great.  For now, I put them up in the chick pen (the chicks have been allowed out during the day to forage) and I’ll figure out what to do with them later.  Hopefully, their mother will turn up, but I’m not holding my breath.

The second duck that was sitting came off her nest and a hen took over.  I removed the hen and tried to put the duck back on her nest, but she didn’t stay there.  Later on, I discovered the duck came back to her nest, but the hen wouldn’t let her have the nest back.  I removed the hen again and hopefully the duck will stay on the nest.  Her eggs should be close to hatching.  I tried to put the broody hen into a separate cage where we have one hen sitting, but so far, she’s eluded me.

There’s another duck nesting near the dog run where I have Split and the puppies stationed.  Probably not the best place for her given Split’s recent duck killing exploits, but I don’t think Split can get at the duck where she’s setting and we haven’t been letting her loose without close supervision.  The puppies can get to the duck, but she can defend herself from the puppies.

The puppies are a ton of fun!  I find it hard to get much done because I keep wandering out there to play with them.  They are a delightful bunch.

A third duck is sitting in the second hen house.  She’s sharing her nest with a hen, which turned out to be a good thing because the night before last, she got shut out of the house.  The hen kept the eggs covered.  It ought to be interesting to see what happens if those eggs hatch.  At least this time, if chicks hatch from this nest, the hen can take care of them, leaving the ducklings for the duck.  I still wish that I had taken that single chick and fostered it instead of leaving it with the duck.

Next year, we need to set up a separate maternity ward for the broody ducks and hens.  I surely won’t be buying any chicks next year.  I shouldn’t have bought any this year.

Both yesterday and today, I brought the goats and cows down into the back pasture and left them there.  They can graze and browse to their hearts’ content in the shade.  Of course, the goats are not happy with this arrangement.  The lazy beasts would rather lounge in their shelter all day.

Maybe it’s my imagination, but Gwen’s limp seems better.  As I was walking back and forth with them both this morning and yesterday, she was almost running when before she moved along slowly and seemingly painfully.  She’s put on a good amount of weight, her hair coat looks better and she’s starting to show signs of pregnancy.  She’s officially adopted Spot as her baby and defends him against Gel.  I put Spot up in the poultry pasture at night so I can have her milk in the morning.  Then Spot has access to the milk bar all day.  He very much likes that arrangement.  Unfortunately, it isn’t going to last for him too much longer and I’ll have to keep them permanently separated.  I am pleased to say that I’ve finally mastered milking her.  It’s about time!  As I write this, I’m enjoying a big glass of goat milk.

Later this afternoon, I need to go to a local meat processor and pick up beef hearts, kidneys and bone shavings, all for free!  The dogs love, love, love the bone shavings and I love getting free meat.

Yesterday I managed to get the back half of the house very clean.  I did deep cleaning this time.  Today I hope to get the front half done.

Lately, Wally and I have been watching a lot of fantasy shows and movies.  I think it’s because we are both trying to escape reality.  Our lives are not bad, not by any means, but the clouds that hang over our respective heads tend to dampen our moods on a regular basis.  These are really difficult times, but the economy is getting better, right? I don’t think so.  At least we have our health, a beautiful place to live, good food, much of which we have raised and of course our good relationship.

Until later …

We watched Avatar Saturday night.  If you haven’t seen it, do so.  It’s a fabulous movie, dark and depressing at times, but all in all, it was wonderful.  This is the first movie I’d consider buying so I could watch it again and again.  The correlations between the annihilation of the Indians and their lands and the destruction of the rain forest are hard to ignore.

I need to grow my hair longer so I can braid it and then hook it into Merlin or Al Bin’s ear in order to communicate with them.

Until later …

I haven’t written much about the horses lately.  Quite frankly, there have been days that I didn’t even go down and look at the horses, much less do anything with them.

I love my farrier (usually).  She is good at getting me to get my butt in gear and do something with the beasts.  After she finished trimming him, she played around with Al Bin and a bareback pad.  He was a bit spooky about it, but all in all, not bad at all.  Then we took a buggy whip with a plastic bag tied to it and desensitized him.  He wasn’t overly concerned about that either.

After we finished with Al Bin, I went down to catch Merlin.  I haven’t been leaving a halter on him and the first time I tried to catch him, he spooked away from me so I brought Al Bin up first for trimming.  The second time I went down, he spooked again, but I practiced my joining up exercises and within minutes, I was able to walk up to his right side (which is his bad side) and slip the rope around his neck.  Whoo Hoo!!!!  That was a huge accomplishment.  When I first bought Merlin, catching was extremely difficult.  He’d turn his butt to me whenever I tried.  I did some round pen work work with him and that seems to have made a huge difference.  It’s nice to see accomplishments

I believe I’m getting into these larger animals (horses and cows) for a reason.  You can’t man-handle a cow or a horse into doing what you want; well, maybe you can, but you are apt to get hurt in the process.  You need to figure out a way to ask, in their language.  Back when I was taking Gel to ASCA shows to get his WTCH, cattle gave me a horrible time.  I simply didn’t understand them.  I still don’t, but I’m learning.

When milking Gwen this morning, I noticed she had teeth marks on her rear nipples.  I decided to go ahead and separate Spot from her then and there to prevent injury.  That’s all Gwen needs is sore nipples.  The mistake was letting Gwen into the pasture before pulling Spot out.  As soon as I opened up the goat shelter to let Spot and the goat kids out, Spot bee-lined to the milk bar.  I tried to use Gel to separate them, but got protective of Spot.  Interesting.  I’ll need to get Spot out of the goat pasture and into the poultry pasture when Gwen is otherwise occupied.

I need to take the time to take pictures of the hanging stall that we made for Gwen.  It’s actually quite ingenious and seems to work very well.

Pictures, it would be nice to take pictures of the puppies …  They are growing like weeds and doing well.  Where to keep them at night has become a problem.  Split never really cleaned up after them and now six puppies in a swimming pool lined with newspapers = a HUGE MESS in the morning.  I can’t use shavings or straw in the house.  Until some of the puppies leave for their new homes, I might put them down in the hay house at night and use straw in the pool.  This will be the last litter I produce.

Until later …

On Sunday, Wally and I brought the mare we had leased back to her original owner.  He simply didn’t have it in him to ride again.  There was no sense in keeping a horse that wasn’t going to get ridden.  Not that my horses are getting ridden much, but I’m hoping to change that this week.

We got over four inches of rain Sunday and Monday with more to come today.  Why can’t we get it in smaller batches?

When we returned the mare, we dropped off two goats that I had sold to a woman in South Carolina.  The one adult doe that we sold was the one I bought when we went up to the mountains a few months ago.  This doe was a horrible irritation and a danger to Gel.  I’m so, so, so glad she’s gone.

I am no longer bottle feeding Spot.  He gets his milk directly from the source.  That’s okay throughout May, but beginning June 1, he’ll need to live in the chicken pasture until Gwen is dried off.  Hopefully by the time she freshens again, he’ll have forgotten about nursing, but I’m not holding my breath.  We’ll see how it goes.

It frequently seems like you get one thing in order and then several more things fall apart.  Sometimes it feels like running this farm is a constant struggle.  One of the ducks that was sitting hatched out a chick.  That may not seem to be such a big deal, but chicks hatch seven days sooner than ducklings.  The chick was too small to go in with the batch that I had in the brooder so I had to figure out a way to feed and water the chick without loosing a limb to the mother duck.  Two ducklings hatched out yesterday and I had planned to keep them up until the ducklings were a bit bigger, but the mother duck got out of the pen and who knows where they are now.  Most likely they won’t survive.

Keeping the chickens that are in the brooder from getting washed away in the heavy rain has been difficult.

Split has killed two ducks in two days.  Her days here are numbered.

The goat shelter has turned into a muddy, shitty mess thanks to Gwen.  I went and bought four bales of straw to lay down in there and we put a chain link panel with a gate on the front of it.  The gate is too narrow for Gwen to come into the shelter so it is now a cow-free zone.  There are other shelters available for Gwen and she’s thriving here.

Gel has been nothing short of magnificent every morning by search for Gwen and bringing her up for milking.  On Sunday Wally and I made a drop-down milking stall for Gwen.  It seems to be working relatively well.

The last goat to kid is due in 13 days.  I’ll be glad to start milking her again.  She’s such a nice goat.  Hopefully we won’t have any problems getting her to conceive this year.

Well, I guess that’s about it for now.

Until later …

When I finished milking this morning, I fed the babies.  Gwen was still hanging near the gate and when he finished drinking his bottle, Spot went over and started nursing on Gwen.  He was tentative at first and she turned around a few times threateningly, but not enough to discourage him.  When Gwen moved on towards the hay rack, Spot followed and when she stopped to eat, he continued nursing.  Interesting.  I wonder if this is the first time he’s done it.  That is going to be problematic when it comes time to dry Gwen off.  I’ll have to separate them.

One of my goats, Kersey, is going on to a new home on Sunday and Sunday cannot come soon enough.  She’s a good milking goat, but I’m getting bloody tired of her ramming Gel.  She’s been here for over a month now and she hasn’t stopped fighting him.  I have to carry a stock stick with me to keep her from charging him.  She’s a sneaky bitch and frequently hits him when he’s coming in through the gate.  This morning, she rammed him into the gate post.  I wasn’t carrying the stock stick at the time so I felt really bad that I allowed Gel to be hurt.  She seems impervious to pain because it doesn’t matter how much Gel bites her, she keeps on fighting him.  Gel is worth 25 Kerseys and I’m not going to risk him by keeping her.

Champagne, a Nubian goat that I sold last year to a veterinarian friend of mine is back for a week.  The veterinarian is away at a conference and her husband won’t milk in her absence.  I haven’t missed her Nubian screaming and I can’t wait for her to go back home.

Yesterday morning, I was stressing about not having enough meat to feed the dogs and cats.  There is a chance my rabbit supply is going to dry up.  The couple that I was buying them from broke up this weekend.  The husband is keeping the rabbits, but I’m not sure he’s going to be able to keep up with that many rabbits.  Hopefully his new girlfriend is into rabbits as well.  I don’t want to take up raising rabbits so the cats may have to settle on chicken if the rabbit supply dries up.

Around noontime I drove out to pick up a load of my special mixture feed.  I changed it a bit from the last time by removing the beet pulp and increasing the molasses and it ended up costing me about the same amount of money as a back of commercial goat sweet feed.  The goats have been corn and soy free for over a week now and their milk production hasn’t decreased.  I’m limiting the amount of hay they have access to during the day in order to force them to go out and forage.  When it’s too hot for the horses to be in the back pasture, I put the goats down in the woods that are adjacent to the pasture.  They moan and complain the whole time, well, they moan and complain in between mouthfuls of browse.

After I got the feed, I stopped at a small grocery store that has a nice meat selection.  I asked the owner what was the best price he could give me on a case of chickens.  He told me that he could give me chicken drumsticks for $.85/pound or split breasts for $1.35/pound.  I chose the split breasts.  He’s ordering a case of whole chickens for me to pick up on Wednesday.  It’s a bit of a drive to get out there, but the chicken is really high quality.  I like using whole chickens because frequently I’ll take the breast meat off the frame, use that for our supper and feed the rest of the chicken to the dogs and cats.  When I got home and started to unpack the chicken, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was boneless breasts.  That was a mistake on the part of the owner, but it was in my favor.  I’ll be picking up 80 pounds of rabbit this afternoon so my freezers will be full, at least for a while.

My book, Raising Cats Naturally, continues to sell reasonably well.  The royalties that I receive get rolled right back into cat food.  Book sales essentially feed the cats and to some extent, the dogs.

Until later …

Got that notice when I filed my unemployment claim on Sunday.  I was expecting it, but it still upset me.  I have a call into the local unemployment office to make sure I have extensions coming.  I’m quite sure I do, but it would be comforting to know for sure.

I saw a new advertisement for a position which I believe is one that I previously interviewed for.  It came down to me and one other woman; the other woman got it.  Apparently she did not work out.  I submitted my resume, but who knows if they’ll call me back or not.  One would think that they would, but in these times, employers can pretty much do what they please.

We got a little bit of rain this morning which was very nice.  It’s been very dry the past few weeks.

Wally and I have been talking a lot about the horses lately.  It seems we made a mistake in thinking that we’d have time to ride.  All we’ve done is talk about riding.  What does that say about us?  We do have down time, but much of that is spent watching television.  We don’t watch a lot of television, maybe a couple of hours a day.  Is that too much?  I said to Wally that we could forgo television and ride, but he said that he needs some time just to sit; that he can’t come home, change and get out on a horse.  His job has been hard for some time now.  First the employer works the employees’ tails off; then they are sending them home early because there isn’t enough work.  We could send Wally’s horse back, but I likely cannot sell Merlin for what I paid for him which was very little, but these days, people are literally giving horses away.  I guess they’ll stay for now.  They really don’t cost us much to keep.  I’ve pulled from all of the Robbie Potter clinics that I was registered for.  Money is simply too short to be spending it on frivolous things like clinics.

Until later …