Goat watch: 2012

Josie is as big as a house. She actually waddles side to side when she walks. I swear she gets bigger every day, and if the guy who sold her to us is right, she should be due to give birth tomorrow. (The joke around here is that she is not pregnant at all and has just gotten really, really fat!)

Since she is CAE positive, we are going to try our best and be there when the babies are born. If we can pull them before they nurse, there is a good chance that they will not catch the virus from their mother. So we are officially on goat watch.

Every night we get the big girl up on the milk stand for dinner and checking her tail ligaments and her udder. Just before a goat is ready to give birth, the ligaments on either side of the tail get soft and smooshy. Her udder should also feel very full and tight.

So far the udder is loose and the ligaments are tight so after a night of dreaming of goat babies, I left for work today with my fingers crossed that the girl will hold out another day.

The bad thing is, we still haven't been able to find any local colostrum so the kids will have to make due on powdered or mom's heat treated stuff. Not an ideal situation, but it's better than catching CAE.

Close encounter of the serpentine

I was happily digging around in the garden this week, putting in some freshly sprouted pumpkin plants when I saw something moving in the grass by the fence line, just about 6 inches from where I was working. I took a closer look and saw the back half of a small snake.  Thinking it was another rat snake like the one I've been catching glimpses of for months, I pinned it with my trowel and carefully ran my hand up its body to grip it right behind the head. (I do have some snake handling experience.)

It wasn't til I lifted the snake out of the grass that I realized that what I had in my hands was not, in fact, a rat snake. It had a diamond shaped head and an upturned snout. I was holding 10" of venomous god-knows-what!

I just stood there in my garden for a minute trying to decide what to do. Put it down? No, there were way too many animals wandering nearby to release this potentially deadly thing. Kill it? With what?! If this thing bit me, I was home alone and kinda screwed. What to do? What to do?? 

I finally stopped spazzing out and carried it over to the poultry house where I found a big waterer that screwed shut. I tossed the thing in there and slapped on the lid!

Just to be doubly safe I put it in one of the cages, locked the door, and waited for Big Onion to come home so that if I got bit at least there would be someone there to bring me to the hospital!

We did some research and decided that the snake was probably a cottonmouth and that the best course of action would be to dispatch it.

I rallied my courage and grabbed a pair of tongs and my trusty kitchen scissors. It wasn't long before Mr. Snake was no longer sharing the same address as his head.

WARNING: Graphic dead snake picture below...

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. 

Compost

Another thing I've been trying to get around to is building us a proper compost area. When we moved here we moved with our trash can composter. Now that we have the space it was time to put together something more permanent.

The sheep have decided that they like to spend the night around the back side of the poultry pens. This has led to a buildup of ... fertilizer. I decided to rake and scoop this stuff up to include in the new compost heap.  (The turkey was not nearly as helpful with this as you'd think.)

So this is our new composting area. I used materials we had around the farm: old bits of fence material, cinder blocks, and a pallet from the feed store. It may not be very pretty, but hey, it's a pile of decomposing trash.  I made two separate areas so that we could add to one while the other did it's composting thing.

The actual pile is layers of old compost, grass clippings, manure, food scraps, and shredded paper. Today I watered the whole mess so hopefully it will be ready to put back into the garden someday soon. 

Rabbit tractors

Building portable cages for the rabbits has been on the 'to do' list for a long time. We finally got around to starting on one last weekend.

 Ajah and Barley modeling the unfinished cage. 

Here's Zinny A.K.A. Hyzenthlay (well of course we named our breeders after Watership Down characters!) enjoying the finished product. The only change I want to make is adding a shelf in the enclosed area for then to have more of a den to feel safe.

And here's Josie doing her best to destroy it. There was not a single doubt in my mind that Josie was going to end up on top of that cage as soon as we put it within her reach. We actually added extra reinforcement with her in mind.

The baby rabbits are still spending their days outside in rabbit-topia and nights safely tucked away in the poultry house.

'Course they barely look like babies any more. They will be big enough for processing pretty soon. We will probably keep one more female for breeding though. She'll be chosen based on size and temperament. We are looking for big, calm, easy to handle girls. 

Guess that means we need to build more tractors! 

Bianca's brood

Bianca, Reggie, and one of their little ones.

I'm not sure if I have mentioned it here before or not, but our silkie hen, Bianca, finally set and hatched a batch of her own eggs. She ended up with 6 cute little white fluffballs.

When the chicks were just a few days old, I picked up a group of "heavy breed pullets" from the feed store and snuck them under our broody hen. So our tiny, little bantam gal has been raising 11 chicks, half of which are quickly getting to be bigger than her.

The last time I visited the feed store, I fell for these adorable little Dorking chicks. We are still trying to settle on a breed of chicken to raise as meat birds. We are trying to move away from the creepy super fast growing commercial birds. These little Dorkings have a very cool history and a good reputation for being easy going, good layers, and pretty fast growers.

At first Bianca was less than impressed with the new additions and all the older chicks were terrified of them.

But after a while, everyone seemed to settle down and get along pretty well. Unfortunately, when we went out the next morning, the smaller of the two Dorkings had gotten excluded from the group and was near death. I guess she just got chilled over night even though our night temps this time of year are just short of sweltering. The other chick is robust and active and doing just fine.

Here are some of the "heavy breed pullets." Can any of you chicken folks out there can give me a clue as to their breed? I'm pretty sure the little striped black one not seen in this pic is a Barred Rock.

Even further proof: Goats are weird

We've got a few minor construction projects going on around the farm these days: building rabbit tractors, putting together a better compost heap, etc. The folks at our local feed store were nice enough to put aside a few of their better pallets for me. I loaded them into the back of my car and drove the car home and parkd in the pasture. I was unloading the rest of my purchases and I wasn't away from the car for more than a minute when I came back to find this.... 

 All I can say is....Goats are weird. 

I guess considering it's Josie, Queen of the Bad Attitude and President of the Ruin my Day Club, I should be glad she didn't take a crap in there while she was at it.