Rialey Raking

  Rialey is just over 10 months now, and she is shaping up to be a wonderful farm helper and companion. She does chores with us every day twice a day, and her early maturity and workability have been a godsend since Luna has had some recent (minor) medical issues that have kept her from being able to work on and off. 

  All that said, living with a 10 month old puppy with a huge work drive and an even bigger brain can sometimes be a challenge. I don't always have the time, the energy, or the creativity to give her all the exercise, training, and stimulation that she needs. Last weekend we decided to see if we could tire the pup out a bit by starting pulling training.  

 We received this wonderful, simple pulling harness for Barley as a wedding present from a dear friend. We put it on Barley first to show Rialey how it was done. We figured we could get the pups to help with a bit of yard work while we were at it by attaching an old broken rake to the harness.

  Barley loves pulling in his harness, but he tired out quickly in the heat. Need to get that guy back into condition.

 The harness was a bit large on Rialey, but she wasn't bothered by it in the least. At one point she actually jumped right out of the front opening. I have a feeling she is still going to fill out more as she gets older, and it will fit just fine.

 Meanwhile, Barley took up his post babysitting little Lucia. She was actually leaning on him in this picture. Barley loves his baby goats and considers it part of his job to keep a watchful eye on them. Such a sweet boy.

    Rialey was happy to trot around the yard at my side while dragging the rake behind her. We worked on starting and stopping and making turns.

 Then the goat girls decided to join the fun.

 It's a lot harder to pull a rake that is carrying several pounds of baby goat!

 "Make it go again!"

 I just love Rialey's expression in this picture. This pup is willing to try just about anything I ask of her and does it with so much enthusiasm. She is really, really fun to work with.

  Even though I don't think we succeeded in tiring her out one bit, at least now we have a foundation that might some day with lots more training and conditioning lead to a very useful skill on the farm.

Blue Eyed Boy

Look we what got yesterday! 

  We finally found a suitable boyfriend for our lady goats. We have been looking for just the right buck to bring on the farm for quite a while now and yesterday we think we found him!

 We needed a male that was small enough to safely breed with our mini goats like Gwen and Eve but big enough to physically breed the larger, taller ladies like Thea and Elanore. This handsome dude is a 3 year old Nigerian Dwarf. His previous owner was calling him Willie after a character on Duck Dynasty. He's a sweet boy with beautiful color and a great build. He's a little on the large side for the breed and he has experience breeding full sized goats in one of his previous homes, so we think he is just the boy we were looking for!

  When we went to meet him, he happily took corn from my hand and stood still for us to attach the least. He was a little reluctant to walk with us to the car but hopped right up into the crate when he saw it was filled with hay. He happily munched on hay and alfalfa cubes on the hour drive home.
  In his last home, the poor little guy really didn't have access to any greenery so the minute we got him out of the car he started chomping down on grass.

  Big Onion brought him over to the "garden" in front of the house. Really it's just a flower bed that we don't maintain very well at all. Why waste time, money, and energy growing flowers when you can be growing goat food? He took no time at all to start chowing down on huge mouthfuls of everything in front of him.

  We have decided to call the little guy Gimli after the dwarf in Lord of the Rings. I think the name really suits him. I mean, would you look at that beard?!

  He also has blue eyes which is not something we were specifically looking for, but if we want to sell his kids (and we do) the blue eyed babies can often fetch a higher price.

  For an adult buck, Gimli has been incredibly sweet so far. He walks well on leash and likes being around people. For these reasons, we suspect he was a bottle-raised baby. I may be a bit odd but I don't think he even smells bad. Of course all of this could change once he meets the girls and goes into rut.

  His first meeting with the dogs did not go so smoothly. Barley was being a bit pushy so Gimli dropped his head and gave him a little push back. I guess Rialey did not appreciate some new upstart of a goat threatening her friend so she ran in to defend Barley, circling with big barks and nipping at the goat's sides. Luckily we were able to diffuse the situation quickly, and no one was harmed in the scuffle. I'm sure it will take some time before Gimli will feel comfortable around the dogs, but at least he learned to have a healthy respect for them from the get go.

  He will stay quarantined in the backyard pen for the next week so that we can get him cleared of parasites and make sure he isn't carrying any obvious illnesses. He is already causing a bit of a stir amongst the lady goats. Gwen was the first to catch a whiff of him. She spent the next several hours pressed against the backyard fence and making little goat love calls. I even caught her backed up to and peeing through the fence! The hussy!

Rialey Update

  I am well overdue for an update about Rialey, our new farmdog. She's about six and a half months old now and is fully into her "teenage years."

 She has gone from my sweet, do anything I ask puppy into a total wild woman. She likes to run over ducks at top speed for no good reason. I have to keep a close eye or she will run the whole flock of sheep from one pasture to another. She loves to run and run and run around the backyard generally annoying the older dogs into games of tag and keep away. She and Barley play endless games of bite-y face and full body wrestling. The other day I even caught her standing ON a chicken. Not trying to harm it in any way, just ya know, using it as a step stool. Rest assured that the chicken was none the worse for it.

  All that said, she's still shaping up to be a really awesome farmdog and general helper. She loves bringing me things. Every evening after dinner, she picks up everyone's bowls and delivers them to either myself or Big Onion (whoever has the best treats of course). She will also carry feed scoop, cups, and small tools so that I have a free hand to deal with pen doors and livestock.

  She comes out with us and Luna for chores every day. She is quickly picking up the rhythms of the farm and seems to understand when something is out of place. One day, I was feeding the bunnies in the pasture pen when a little one hopped right over my foot and out the door. Before I could turn around, put down everything I had in my hands, and get the door secured again, Rialey was right there on that bunny. For a second I was afraid she would try to grab the little thing, but instead she swung around in front of the bunny and put one of her big old muddy paws right on its head as if to say, "Stop right there, mister!" The bewildered bunny stopped right in its tracks and Rialey plopped down right in front of it with a paw on either side and held it there until I could scoop up the errant little thing and put it back into the enclosure. Without Rialey's quick actions, I don't know how I would have caught the little guy.

  She has gone out to a few obedience lessons, mostly for socialization. She has a number of dog friends that she loves to play and wrestle with. She is still learning to trust new people, but is to the point now that she will happily approach most people and accept pets as long as they don't reach over her head too quickly (something to work on). We also went out for one herding lesson. She had a great time working sheep that were much calmer than the ones we have here. I was proud of the confidence she showed working in a strange situation with new people and livestock around. By the end of the lesson she was going around the group and lifting them out of the corners something that is not easy for even an experienced dog to do.

  Around the house she is a total snuggle pup. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that she often sleeps in the bed with us, something that none of the other pups do. She is already bigger than Luna. Right now she is weighing in right around 35lbs, and I suspect once she fills out she will be in the 45-50lb range. Exactly the size dog we were hoping for!

  Overall, we are thrilled to have Rialey here on the farm and look forward to many years of working together. Thanks again to Caroline Betts of Middle Tree English Shepherds for sending this special girl our way! 

Are you my mommy?

 "Are you my mommy?"

Got to watch out for that vicious "pit bull," he might lick the kids to death.

A bird in the hand and a bulldog in the backyard

This morning as I was doing chores I kept hearing Barley, our bulldog mix, barking. Barley almost never barks unless there is something to bark about, and the shelties (for once) weren't barking with him. After 3 or 4 single loud WOOFs from hin, I decided to stop cleaning out bunny pens and investigate.

Barley was standing at the backyard fence line furiously staring down at a clump of tall grass just on the other side of the fence. I figured he'd found a nest of mice and was just about to double back and collect Hunter, our barn cat, to take care of it when I saw a little red tuft of feathers just barely peeking out from under the grass.

Turns out Barley is not just a good snake hunter and rabbit watcher, we can now add quail detector to his list of accomplishments. It seems this little girl somehow escaped the quail pen and was just looking for a place to hide when a bulldog started barking in her face. I tucked her back into the enclosure, and she immediately went for the feeder to get herself some breakfast.

He may not be a herder, but I guess Barley has found a way to be a useful farm dog after all.

Barley vs the Cottonmouth

It seems that we have have been having a whole series of bad luck around the farm these days. In keeping with tradition, in the last week Gwen has managed to injure both her foot and her face. Poor thing is walking around with a limp and a swollen jaw. I whacked myself in the face with a crowbar then had the pleasure of being on the news with a shiner. But I think Barley wons the bad luck prize over the weekend by getting bitten in the face by a cottonmouth.

We had just come in from doing our evening chores when Big Onion noticed that his face looked a little odd. We brought him inside and found that half the poor guy's face was swollen and he had blood dripping from one side of his mouth. A closed inspection revealed several small puncture wounds inside the lip.

It was obviously painful so I got the vet on the phone and started treating him with homeopathics right away. We kept a very close eye on him for any breathing problems, but after getting a remedy he seemed to perk up and be feeling ok.

Meanwhile, Big Onion grabbed his trusty pellet gun and started shaking the bushes out back to find the culprit. He wasn't having much luck. Barley kept going to the back door so I let him out. He went straight to his dad and started helping with the hunt. Not 2 minutes later Big Onion saw him sniffing at some tall grass by the house then jump back and point. Our goofy dude actually pointed out the snake. That pellet gun made short work of the snake and we were able to confim that is was a cotton mouth.

Thank goodness dogs aren't effected by snake bites in the same way as humans. By the end of the evening, most of the swelling had moved to a pocket under his chin. After a few days the swelling is pretty much gone, and he's left with just a couple little spots inside the lip that are slowly healing.

Barley's back to being his goofy self. 

Eggz!

I hate Tuesdays. 

I hate Tuesdays the way most people hate Mondays. 

Tuesday is my long day at my "real job" at the vet's office. 

However, the good thing about Tuesdays is that the birds are kept in all day so they are forced to lay IN their pens instead of us having to go on an Easter-esque egg hunt through the pastures. 

 Here is our haul from this Tuesday. 

(The pups think it wholly unfair that I use a dog bowl for anything other than filling their bellies.)

We got 8 duck, 4 chicken, 2 guinea, and 6 quail eggs. 

Not too shabby! 

It's especially good since we are about to start another batch of eggs incubating. All the above eggs save the quail will be cooking in the big 'bator by next week. 

Barley's Job

Around this place pretty much everyone has a job. The ducks lay eggs, the cats act as pest control, the shelties work as herding dogs and do their best to guard the place as well. Barley? Well, the idea was that Barley would provide some of the muscle. He's a nice sized dog, a mix of breeds known for their pulling power, so we thought it would be a simple thing to have him help move things from time to time. Unfortunately, the first couple times he was hooked up to anything that moved, the dude was completely freaked out. I decided to take a few steps back and start with something simple.....

That's an empty box attached to a leash that is attached to his normal harness. It took a little while and a lot of tasty treats, but eventually he got comfortable with having something dragging behind him. By the end of the training session, he was dragging the box with a couple bricks and chunks of firewood inside with gusto!

So there is hope that the big goof will be useful after all!