T Rex Cows and Escaping Goats

Dealing with the animals last week (and over the weekend) was trying, at best.  Things are changing around here.  There is a girl building a barn down below our farm.  Essentially, that is not a bad thing because she’s improving our driveway and adding additional pasture to our existing set-up.  Also, they will be fencing other areas around where we live to graze cattle, which is way better than planting soy beans and corn.

The goats have had free range for a long, long time now.  The go out, browse and graze and come back.  Usually Rose is right there with them.  Now that there’s a lot of traffic in and out, the goats can’t free range.  I put them in the lower pasture, but every day, they escaped.  When they escape, they come up near the house and get into hay and grain storage and my herb bed, which they’ve trashed!

I called the guy who bought the other eight goats and offered the remaining nine to him.  He called back with a low ball price for them and I refused.  It’s a good thing because I really shouldn’t sell these goats.  Except for one, they are all my breeding and really, really nice goats.

So Wally and I spent much of Sunday fixing fences.  While he worked on the pasture fence, I ran a line of electric rope to keep the milk cows from going into that girl’s property.  Once she finishes her own fencing, I won’t need the electric rope.  One wouldn’t think that two lame cows would go too far, but they can travel, especially now Penny who walks almost normally now.  It was a beautiful day to be outside working.  It’s likely we’ll be doing more fencing work next weekend.  We fixed one section of the fence, but there’s another section that will allow escapes.

While we were down there working, the dogs were with us.  Faith, a/k/a the T Rex cow, was getting more and more worked up with all that was going on.  I knew this was coming … while I was shuffling goats around with Gel, Faith charged me.  That is completely unacceptable!  I’ve been afraid of her for a while now.  She’s already charged Gel numerous times.  I don’t feel like I can trust her and was really worried about how I was going to manage her when she freshened.  So she’s going to freezer camp as soon as I can get an appointment with the processor.  It’s a shame really, but we cannot keep aggressive animals.  The last Jersey bull we processed, Poncho, went to the processor sooner than we wanted to take him, but he had become aggressive and was tearing up fences and water tanks.  Luckily, he respected Gel and if Gel was in the pasture, he stayed away from us, but if we were ever in there without Gel, he’d paw the ground and bellow at us.  Not good.  Luckily, the bull we have now has not been any trouble so hopefully we’ll be able to keep him until next spring.

If all goes well, I won’t have to do any traveling around this week.  On the agenda is cleaning out the office and the storage room.  There’s a chance I may take advantage of a federal program and go back to school to obtain a two year degree.  What I’ll get the degree in is up in the air now.  I’m leaning towards web technology, but photographic technology or perhaps graphic design are possibilities.  I need to figure out which degree may allow me to obtain employment once I finish the degree.  The orientation is this Thursday. If I go back to school, I’ll need a place to study without interruption.  We have a lot of wasted space in this house.

Wally and I brought home a refrigerator from his mother’s house and I need to get that cleaned up so we can put it in place this evening.  Right now, it’s in a million pieces and very dirty. We bought a used refrigerator a while back and it will go into the back room for the time being.  Once we get into vegetable production, I may need additional refrigerator space, but if not, we’ll just sell it.

We have a chance for rain today and tonight and I really hope we get it (even though I have several loads of laundry to hang out on the line).  It is extremely dry.  We haven’t had any substantial rainfall in well over a month.  When I walked down into the lower pasture last night to bring up the bull and one of the calves, I realized just how dry the pasture has become.  It’s rough!  Future forecasts call for above average rain for the end of November and I hope that’s a correct forecast.

It’s still too dark go out to milk, but I can start working on the office so off I go.

Until later …