It’s wonderful when you end up at the right place at the right time! Yesterday, I drove out to the local meat processor to pick up some bones and beef scraps. I dig through their rubbish cans for useable scraps and bones. Just as I got there, they were getting ready to take the cans out back, at which point they’d be swarming with flies and yellow jackets. They kindly stopped moving the cans so I could get what I wanted. Was I ever elated to see butcher-paper-wrapped packages in several of the cans! Apparently they had been cleaning their freezers out of meat that had not been picked up. Much of it was liver (apparently they were saving it for someone who didn’t come to get it), but heck, free meat, is free meat.
Then I drove on to check out a new game processor who was not too far from the meat processor. Over the past years, I had been getting venison scraps from a processor in Vale. I like the people, they are an honest, hard-working group, but they are also hard-drinking, chain smokers. I could smell the cigarette smoke in the meat. I’m sure the animals could as well. In addition, the scraps often had trash in them and they were frequently on the end of turning bad. The payment for the scraps was reasonable: a case of beer for whatever I picked up, which was usually a lot, but the cigarette smoke and trash in the meat was discouraging. Not to mention the road I need to go down to get to their place is so rough that I was risking damage to my car going down there.
This new place was spotlessly clean. I spoke to the owner and he agreed to save me scraps. I go to pick them up at 3:00 today.
Free meat may very well end up being a good thing as we may end up with two LGDs. When I went down yesterday morning to check on the sheep and Liath, I found another sheep with chewed up knees: Dreadlock, one of the Barb sheep. Her daughter also had some damage to her knees. Damn Rose! I guess we put her in over her head leaving her down there by herself. At over a year old, you’d think that she was mature enough to do the work, but I guess not. So far, Liath seems to be doing what she needs to do. She seems a bit unsure of the situation, but I think she’s okay. All of the sheep seem fine. Hopefully the two Barbs and the lamb will recover. The ram seems okay, but he’s still a bit dumpy. We may have to invest in another ram to get the ewes bred.
In all honesty, I’m really upset and disappointed with Rose. Because I’ve been leaving the back gate open during the day so the goats and calf could go out and graze when they wanted to, I’ll need to confine Rose during the day. She doesn’t need to be running around the property doing what she pleases. If she stayed with the goats, I wouldn’t mind, but she doesn’t. She still isn’t 100 percent poultry-safe and the chickens know that. I noticed that they were not in the fenced-in area yesterday doing their chicken-work. What a pain in the butt.
Luckily I’ve been getting free meat to feed these dogs. I’m not sure Janice is going to want Rose given that she’s not 100 percent poultry-safe. I think she’d be fine there, Janice doesn’t have that many chickens, but … still waiting to hear from Janice.
FYI: My web server has been down this morning for schedule maintenance. That’s been a pain.
While we were down checking the sheep last night, I worked both Fern and Gel around the sheep to gauge Liath’s reaction to the Border Collies moving the sheep. She pretty much ignored them. She tried to fool around with Gel once and he showed his teeth to her. Gel doesn’t take to dogs fooling with him when he’s working. Fern is working well. She’s sharp as a tack. When she got too pushy and I growled her name, she took the correction well and continued working. That’s a huge improvement from her previous wilting daisy routine.
I am now down to six goats which is where I want to stay. I sold Raspberry to a man who wanted a dairy goat. He was very interesting, asked all the right questions and had obviously done his research. I sold her for a price higher than he’d get at a sale so I don’t think she’ll end up at an auction.
Until later …