Sweet Meats

A couple of months ago, our local feed store got in some turkeys, just the commercial broad breasted white variety. We picked up 5 to see how we like raising these bigger birds. Around the same time, we got 6 guineas, and since they take the same food, we decided to raise them together.

I should have know it was going to be all downhill from day one. The little poults would run toward us instead of away when the brooder was opened. More than once I had one fall right out into my lap. 

Later, when they were moved to a larger pen they mourned the loss of their duckling neighbors, letting out these sad little three note calls for days afterwards.

 Eventually, they got moved to a larger outside pen with their guinea friends, and we started the usual transition to free ranging which involved opening their pen and putting temporary fencing up so that they learn where their pen is and how to go in and out. 

The next step was letting them loose during the day. Big Onion and I were worried about them taking off over the fence or trying to roost in tree at night, but they found a much better survival strategy. They follow us everywhere. They like giant, ugly, white feathered puppies. No matter what I do, they are with me. At the end of the day, I don't have to call Sheltie to herd them into their pen. I just call out, "Turkeys! Turkeys!" and they and their guinea buddies come a-runnin and happily follow me around buildings and into their enclosure. One day, I bent to straighten one of the next boxes, a damn turkey actually hopped up into my lap and settled down for a nap. It's ridiculous.

It's actually really sad too. I've tried my best not to get attached, but it's hard not to form a fondness for creatures that come running the minute they catch site of you. The sad part is, these are broad breasted whites. Meat birds. We actually can't just keep them. Commercial meat birds, chickens and turkeys alike, were bred to get as big as possible as fast as possible. They just keep growing until their hearts give out, and they keel over dead. Keeping them alive would not be a kindness to them in the long run.

Big Onion swears he can do the deed when the time comes. Until then, I'll enjoy the company of my big white puppies.

Luna brag

Luna just picked up my dropped stock stick and handed it to me!!

We were letting the goats graze the backyard and after weeks of running, yelling, and waving a stick to keep the girls from eating our blueberry bushes, I finally got smart and parked Luna under them. Now, Luna may seem like a sweet, love-bug of a dog to you and me, but to livestock, she is a scary, scary wolf out to get you. I've seen this Sheltie move stock with just a look. 

Well, it worked like a charm. One look at that  blueberry guarding wolf and Josie and Jenni steered very clear. The goat gals grazed on various things for a while then headed back to their pen. Luna and I closed them in and as we were walking back to the house, I dropped my stock stick. 

Without a word, Luna scooped it up and handed it to me. We had a giant party with lots of "LUNA WHAT A GOOD GIRL!!!" and pets, and I actually got her to do it a couple more times. I didn't even care about the teeth marks that my iron jawed beast was putting in the stick. 

This is a really big deal considering the dog is 6 years old, and I have been trying to teach this behavior since day one. The other dogs can do it. She just seems to have a mental block about this one thing. Hopefully she has finally got it. 

Fancy That!

I would like to introduce you to our first lamb....

Fancy 

(a.k.a. Miss Fancy Pants)

She was born last Wednesday without any help from us. In fact, we got home from work to find her already dried off and on her feet, and since then there has been no stopping her. 

We had a feeling she was coming very soon. Her momma, Patch, has been in milk almost since she arrived and the last couple days before she gave birth she was laying down an awful lot. 

Poor thing had a rather rough introduction to the shelties when she was just a couple days old. 

Since the lamb was born, I have been using Sonny, our older sheltie, in the evenings to put the poultry away for the night since he is my good obedient boy and won't chase sheep unless I ask. On this particular day, Nova was the first to volunteer for evening duties so I let her come out to help put away the ducks, geese, turkeys, and guineas that had been out doing their free range pasture thing all day. Nova is younger than Sonny and even though she SHOULD have more herding training time under her belt (she was living and working on a small farm before we got her), she is a bit of a goof ball.

Nova walked very nicely out the back gate and down to the poultry pens with me. I asked her to go out and get the first set of ducks to be put away. Well, Nova took a look at those ducks, then at the sheep farther down the field and decided that sheep would be WAY more fun to chase around. She took off straight for the sheep   before I could stop her. I tried yelling a couple times but found that I was wasting my breath. That crazy girl was dead set on herding her some sheeps!

Seeing a tiny black and white wolf heading for them, the sheep took off for the safety of the poultry yard with Nova hot on their heels. Poor Fancy just wasn't up for a full speed chase and soon fell behind the flock. Nova, being the utter ding bat that she is, ran over the poor 2 day old lamb in pursuit of the rest of the flock.

At this point, I was finally able to call Nova off and have her come back to me. Fancy, in the meantime, got back up disoriented and took off at top speed in completely the wrong direction and straight for the last pile of scrap metal I hadn't trucked off to the scrap yard and the creek beyond it!

Now our creek is about 20ft below the level of the pasture and has a rather steep embankment. Fancy heading straight for it had the potential to be a serious problem. Thank heavens our friend A. happened to be visiting. She saw the problem and took off after the lamb while I got the misbehaving sheltie under control.

Fancy ran straight into the scrap pile with a bang and disappeared on the other side. By the time I got there, A. was in full lamb rescue mode trying to head off a very frightened and confused baby right on the edge of the embankment. I called out, "Just grab her!" and A. made a lunge and caught the baby just in time.

We checked her over and found that the poor gal was very frightened but otherwise unharmed. Momma Patch was very very relieved to have her baby returned to her in one piece.

Hoppy Easter!

From all of us -- feathered and furry -- here at HighTail Farms, we hope you've had a very happy Easter holiday.

Spring

When I was a child I used to adore summer. It was the time of rest -- no school, lots of playing outside (although most kids today have no clue what that means), and a time to gear up for the new school year in the Fall. However, as I've gotten older the heat of summer isn't something that I exactly look forward to anymore. As my agricultural activities have grown, so has my fondness for spring.

Spring is a time of renewal. Althought winters in Louisiana aren't quite the same as some of our friends up north (snow? what is that?) things do die down a bit. Trees are bare, the grass is low, and there is very little activity. But spring hits, our clocks change and suddenly the grass is growing, trees and bushes are flowering, fruit is budding, vegetables are sprouting, bees are buzzing, and birds are hatching.

When we first moved to the property we had an idea of what some of the flora was, but couldn't know for sure until things started to grow. As K has said before about this property always giving us what we need, we're finding that there are many fruits growing all around the house. Here's some of our finds that made us extremely happy.

Mad as a wet hen

A few months ago, we were offered a set of white silkie chickens for free. They were living in a backyard in New Orleans and the rooster was crowing just a little too much for undercover urban chicken farming. I was happy to take them in after reading that Silkie girls are great mothers and will set on just about any kind of egg you put under them. 

Since they were fancy, fluffy, white city chickens we decided to call them Bianca and Reginald. Reginald was quickly shorted to Reggie when we learned what a tough guy this cotton ball of a bantam thought he was, always doing this silly shuffle step display/dance that seemed to say "Put up ya dukes! I can take ya's!". 

We anxiously awaited Bianca's first egg, which after our years of duck egg collecting was adorably tiny. She laid for a few weeks then finally decided to go broody (stay on a nest of eggs). She only had about four of her own eggs in the nest so I carefully tucked a few duck eggs under her as well and hoped for the best. 

We stupidly didn't make note of the date she finally took residence on that nest so the last week or so we have been going in the pen and poking around under her in hopes of finding babies. A couple days ago, Big Onion walked in and found an empty shell in front of her. 

Like a proud new father he pulled out his cell phone to video the blessed event. The audio goes something like, "Hey, what cha got under there girl? Wait...what's that on your face....oh...OH...oh god..."  

Turns out she ate one of the duck eggs. Didn't just eat it. She coated her whole face in rotten egg. When we checked on her today, we found the whole nest had gone bad. That is a smell I will never forget. There was rotten egg all over the nest and all over our beautiful white fluffball of a chicken. 

I carefully scooped her up brought her over to a nearby bucket of water and proceeded to try and bathe the dried rotted egg off one seriously pissed off little chicken. I've read that wetting a hen can also break her out of being broody. Big Onion dumped the entire contents of the nest into the creek. I'm sure the turtles will eat well tonight. 

I think the bath did the trick because when I put her back down she was going after food with a passion and starting to clean herself up. Reggie, for his part, was so thrilled to have his woman back he did his little shuffle step victory dance and fell over.

Dog breakin'

Now that we have the sheep it's even more important that we 'dog break' our goats so they can go hang out with their cloven hoofed cousins in the pasture still come in for milking twice a day. 

Dog breaking = getting livestock used to responding properly to a dog herding them

Responding properly means turning and moving in the opposite direction of the dog without challenging the dog or running headlong into a fence. 

Our ducks grow up around the dogs, so dog breaking just comes naturally as they grow up. Our sheep came to us from a farm that uses Corgis on a daily basis so no problem there. The goats, on the other hand, are a problem. 

You see, a few days before we got our goaty gals their previous owner's pack of wild dachshunds (yes you read that right) got loose in his yard and killed all his chickens right in front of them. I suspect the dogs got a few chomps in on the goats as well as our girls came to us with a few dachshunds level scabby spots under their chests and stomachs. 

When they finally came here, they were terrified of our pups. They would literally start quivering when the dogs would bark or come into view. This was a major problem since their pen opens into our backyard a.k.a. doggy play area. 

The first step was just getting them used to the presence of the dogs. We put an xpen up as a buffer so that the dogs couldn't gawk at the newest additions thru the fence and right in their faces. After the goats got comfortable enough not to tense at every canine sound or movement, the xpen got taken down. 

Next I tried bringing Sonny, the least intimidating of our shelties, in the pen with the girls just to get them used to him being around. The first time I brought him in, the girls actually walked up and sniffed him. Good progress. 

We did this a few times until Jenni tried to headbutt Sonny while he was not looking. Ok, a little too comfortable there. 

The next step was to get them started on learning to be herded. I put a leash on Sonny, brought him into their pen and had him walk up to their heads. The idea is that the goats learn to turn and walk away from the pressure of the dog. Heads turn and you call off the dog. It's a very simple first exercise. Dog walks up, goats turn away, dog gets called off. Rinse and repeat. 

At this point, I made sure I had something to use as a stock stick in my hands. If you have ever watched anyone herding, they almost always carry a stick or a cane. This is not to beat the dog (despite what some people think), it is to help you communicate more clearly to dog and stock and more importantly, it's there to back up your pup against misbehaving creatures that are at the very least twice his size. 

If a goat didn't turn away or started to look like it was challenging my sweet and not very pushy Sonny, they got a light swat with the stick. Goats are smart creatures. It doesn't take them long to catch on. 

Tonight was the first time we would try herding them in the yard instead of in their pen. I brought out Nova first. 

Nova spent a few years living and working on a small farm before she came to us, so I figured she would be a step up from Sonny in presence and pressure. Not so. Nova just ran in circles and barked at the goats. This does nothing to win the respect of the livestock. When I saw them starting to turn and challenge her (remember, our goats have horns!), I decided it was time to bring out the big guns. 

Luna is 28 pounds of drive and guts. She has never balked at a challenge. When she walks out in a field, the livestock generally stand up and salute.  With a leash on her to keep her from getting out of hand, we walked up on the goats. They challenged, they got a swat from me and a hard look from Lu. After that, it was like they'd been worked all their lives. We walked them across the yard and back again a few times. 

Big Onion was hanging out at the halfway point handing out oats. It's another simple lesson for the goats - dog chases you, you find human, dog stops chasing, and you get wonderful things from human. 

The gals are far from ready to put out in the field, but at least I think we are all heading in the right direction.