Taking the Good with the Bad: Late Winter on the Farm

Saturday was the first rain-free day we've had in a while here. It seems like it has been windstorms and Pineapple Express-born heavy rains in our little neck of the woods all Fall and Winter. No severe cold this year and no snow to speak of, just endless wet.

It puts a strain on us, our garden and our critters. Trying to keep bedding clean and dry is a battle without end. Making sure that our beehives are draft-free and cozy for our little honeys is something we fret over, especially when the winds pick up.

So it seemed like a good omen - actually, a bit of a surprise - when Bill went up the hill to take a look-see at our three hives. The temperatures are still just a tad low to actually open the hives up and check things thoroughly, but observing your girls' activities can still tell you a lot about the health of the hive. Bill saw comings and goings at all three hives, a promising sign of life. Better yet, he saw bees coming in with pollen on two of the three hives, which is indicative of a happy hive, as pollen is what is fed to the "brood", infant bees.

We were pretty dumbfounded to have all three hives seemingly healthy and active, especially after one of them had the roof blown clean off their hive during one of the larger windstorms we've had this season.

Alas, if the bees' good disposition was our Yin, the sadness that awaited us in Goatlandia was the Yang.

After greeting and giving good head scratches to my goat gang, I went in search of Blue, who usually heads up the treat shakedown/scratch-fest. I found her in the goat house, looking very much like she was asleep. Our strong, sweet, sassy, irrepressibly-maternal little girl Blue, left us on an unseasonably sunny Valentines Day.

Blue was 14 years old, though we'd only had her for her last 4 years. She came to us with her little tiny buckling, Blackjack. He would be the last baby for our Bluey, and as though she knew that she'd reached the end of her new-mothering journey, she coddled and protected that little stinker to the point of spoiling him rotten. She was small but fierce.

Blue & her little man, Blackjack, chowing down.

In the years following, Blue became Auntie Blue, the maiden aunt/foster mom to many of our kids. If a doe had quads and couldn't keep up - the kids nursed Blue. If a Mama rejected/neglected a baby, Blue took them in. Even when her infant charges were nearly taller than she herself was, she nursed them when she could, fought for them to get their fair share at the feeder, napped with them in pools of warm Spring sunlight and slept close to them in the goathouse at night.

Bluey, in all her chunky glory :)

Waiting (uncharacteristically!) patiently for head scratches from her Papa

It hurts - literally hurts - to think that I'll never hear her insistent, distinctly unladylike "EH-EH-EH-EH-EHHH!" and see her rotund little form come trotting around the corner of the goathouse, in hot pursuit of snacks and head scratches. Her sassy little spark has gone, and I miss her.

So long, sweet girl.

Piggies, Birds and Disbud-a-palooza

This was a very full weekend for the residents of Boggy Hollow. First of all, two of us turned a year older, which, hot on the heels of a knee replacement surgery does not tend to make one feel Spring Chicken-y, generally speaking.

In addition to the clicks on the odometer, we managed to cram a whole lot of farm stuff into those 48 hours.

Firstly, Bill finished building a pig pen and pig house on the site of our first (completely flopped) garden, in the bottomland. Plants didn't grow well there, but we're hoping that piggies will.

Secondly, we bought ourselves some piggies. We got two gilts and a barrow, also known as two girls and a castrated male, 6 1/2 weeks old and already weighing 30-odd pounds apiece. They are mutts, essentially, being primarily Berkshire/Duroc crosses, with a little Yorkshire somewhere in the mix way back. They're fairly mellow little things, who managed to root up the grass in their newly built yard in a single evening.

Against the advice of some, Scarlet has decided to name this motley lot Baykin, Porkchop (Choppy) and Prosciutto (Shootie). I personally have no doubt that any inadvertent sentimentality for these gals & guy will go out the window just as fast as the first whiff of frying bacon (or Baykin) finds its way to my kids' snoots.
These will not be the first animals that we have harvested for food on this farm, but these will be the first that we will have raised for expressly that purpose. I certainly hope that knowing that going in will make it that much easier to harvest and eat these lil' oinkers. For the record, the pigs cost us $95/each. 95x3= $285

As if our dances with pork weren't enough for one weekend, we also were gifted a pair of strikingly pretty/odd Guinea hens. These gals are useful in guarding and alerting our chickens to the presence of the nasty coyote who killed Cotton and who keeps dropping by. I'm not sure if they'd defend our flock or just raise the alarm about a predator in the vicinity, but either way, these gals are a very welcome addition to our rag-tag flock.

Per Wikipedia, Guinea fowl are voracious consumers of fleas, ticks, lice and other insect pests, and will keep your coop and garden relatively bad bug-free. That's a pretty sweet deal, no? I have to admit that I'm also quite in love with their super-cool polka dot plumage. I think that Bill could tie some really cool flies with those feathers!

And as if that weren't enough to fill up a weekend, we also enlisted some help getting our 9 baby goats vaccinated, disbudded, and (where applicable) castrated. The gal who came out to do the deed was kind enough to show Billy the ropes, so that maybe next time we can do the disbudding and banding all by ourselves. For the record, the gal charged $15 per kid for the disbudding/vaccination (with our meds)/castration. x9= $135

Just to clarify, because I feel kinda like I need to justify our descision to disbud, we personally do not care at all whether our goats have horns, but since we're looking to sell these kids to folks, possibly within Olympia city limits, where horned goats aren't allowed, we thought it prudent to go ahead and have the babies dehorned. We also went ahead and castrated all of the bucklings, since one uncontainable buck is plenty for this little farm, thankyouverymuch.

So, that was our weekend. Even with having had goats and a whole mess of chickens for years now, something about bringing pigs and exotic birds into the fold makes this farming-thing suddenly seem super legit. I am going to do my level-best to keep good, accurate records about how much this pig adventure costs us, and how much meat we end up with for our trouble. I'm really, really hoping that between excess goat milk, bakery outlet scores and garden/kitchen scraps, that we'll be able to feed these pigs up, on the cheap. Come harvest time, which we guesstimate will be in August or September, I'll have to crunch the numbers and see how much this experiment cost us. More importantly though, will be whether or not this pork tastes ho-hum or crazy delicious.

Only time will tell!

Today's take:

Eggs - 8

Wintertime Do's and Don'ts for Chickens

This article brought to mind that, with the temperatures falling fast, it's officially time to go into Winter mode with the chickens. Around here, that means-

*Carbs, and lots of them. We very rarely give our chickies corn or bread products during the rest of the year, as warm/hot weather and excessive sugar/carb intake are the perfect storm for chicken diarrhea (ew). However, during the cooler months (in Western Washington, this is, at a minimum, November-March) we like to feed a carbohydrate-intensive food at least once per day, to help the birds maintain their fat/muscle while still managing to keep themselves warm.

*Grit, just a little extra. I worry that downpours that keep the chickens inside, or snow that blankets the ground could keep our chooks from getting necessary grit. So, we add just a little extra to the scratch/pellet mix that we feed, just for insurance.

*Out early, in early. We are back on Standard Time, so it's getting light a little earlier, and getting dark way earlier. We have to adjust out chicken liberation/round up times accordingly. Otherwise Mr. Fox will catch us out and remind us that laziness is not a virtue.

*Diatomaceous Earth. We add DE to the chickens' rations in small amounts all the time, but when the guys and gals are going to be spending a little more time inside the coop, it'd be a very easy thing for a parasite (mites,worms) to run riot through our flock, and so we add just a little extra to their food. Lots of folks also throw a very light dusting on the bedding material to deter things like mites, but as we have two asthmatics in the family, and DE is essentially microscopic glass, we don't use it in a way that could likely render it airborne and inhalable.

In the midst of all of this suddenly cold weather, naturally, the chickens have decided to throw a molt in the mix, because apparently things weren't interesting enough. So I'm really ramping up the carbs right now, because it's cold and they're all half naked. And on top of that, no eggs for a week now. :( These stinkers should be glad that I love them all so much, because a meaner farmer would start making soup when hens started eating double and laying nada.

Oy, I say.

Update: Annabel

As you know if you've been reading this blog long, we recently lost a hen who was very dear to us, sweet Miss Annabel.

She took ill rather suddenly, and over the course of the next four days, continued to steadily decline and was in such obvious discomfort that we felt it necessary to take her to the vet. Setting aside financial and logical issues (we had pretty much accepted that she could not, at this point, be saved), we took her to the one critter clinic in town that even sees chickens, South Bay Veterinary Hospital.

I can't say enough about how sweet they were to us and our chickie.

After making the difficult decision to let Anna pass away in comfort, we discussed what her illness might mean for the rest of our flock. The doctor recommended having Anna undergo a necropsy.

Within a few days, we heard the initial findings - it appeared that whatever illness or disease had killed her had done so via her kidneys and liver, both of which looked abnormal. Today we received the final word on the pathology studies, Annie appears to have had either chronic kidney disease or kidney cancer, which in turn spread to/effected her liver. It sounds like toward the end that she was experiencing multiple organ failure.

It's terrible to think about how much pain Anna may have been in, for God knows how long, before we finally noticed that she was not herself. But at the same time, knowing what we do now, it is also comforting and somewhat reassuring to know that we could not have done anything more to save her, and that what took her from us was not something that the rest of our flock was in danger of also catching.

So, there you have it. Answers that both trouble and comfort us at the same time. We were so lucky to have such a beautiful and sweet girl as long as we did.

Fly home, sweet Annie. xo

Annabel

My Annabel, my very first hennie, is dying.

There isn't much to be done for seriously ill chicken, and so I feel helpless just seeing her decline day by day. I could take her to the vet, but being honest, I know that it'd be a pointless exercise. We've taken chickens to the vet in the past, we've never taken a chicken home from the vet.

If anybody has any suggestions, I'm willing to try them. She has been losing strength over the past few days and eats very, very little. Her comb has a grayish-blue cast that scares me. She doesn't look to be in pain, just very tired.

I'm wringing my hands. I don't know what I should do for her.

We have a goatie dooooon!

Our poor Fritzen girl has just come down with a mild case of mastitis. :(


Fritzen & I, on our first go with the Henry Milker.

Thankfully, it is "sub-clinical", meaning that it is both less uncomfortable for her, and easier for us to treat than "full-blown" mastitis.

She presented with reduced milk supply and increased tenderness upon milking, which made Bill & Liv suspect mastitis. A paper mastitis test strip confirmed their suspicions. To err on the side of caution, we threw out the past two days' milkings. Boy does that suck!

We'd been looking at beginning the dry-off process for our milkers anyway, since they are both likely already pregnant with this spring's kids (on their schedule, not mine - d'oh!) and need to focus their energy into growing babies and keeping a good amount of meat on their bones this winter instead of milk, milk, milk.

So Fritzen is officially drying off now. We will continue to "pump & dump", just to keep the milk from further backing up and clogging the works. We're also treating her with an udder balm and teat dips, and will be talking to our vet for further instruction with regard to either treating her with injectable antibiotics and/or orifice flushing.

It's kind of insane, the sort of stuff that you end up having to do with and for livestock that is soooo beyond the scope of what you'd normally think of doing for a "pet". Giving intramuscular injections, for one. We had to give Chardonnay i.m. antibiotics last January, right after we first bought her, because she had a severe case of hoof rot. That was awful. Thank God for Bill being tough enough to do what had to be done, because I don't know if I could have.

That was a particularly tough case anyway, being that she was a) new to us, b) weeks away from delivering twins and c) didn't have a lot of muscle in which to insert the needle. The poor lass was not in great shape at all when we first got her, but we managed to help her find her way back to health, and learned a heck of a lot about veterinary medicine in the process.

Hopefully Fritzen's health hiccup will be nowhere near as serious, but we're prepared to do whatever we have to to make our girlie well and comfortable again.

Chicken & Eggs Update

The chickens are on night #3 of their antibiotic regimen. No new chickens have fallen ill, so this course of tetracycline and electrolytes will hopefully fix anyone who might have been a bit sick, and prevent any other chickies from contracting whatever the mystery illness was.

The one thing that we're sure that it isn't is Fowl Pox, which is what took two of our bantams last year. Before our vet was able to rule the fowl pox out, I was really stressing and kicking myself, half convinced that that must be what was making our hennies sick. Fowl Pox is a nightmare - not only does it spread like wildfire from native and migrating birds to livestock birds, killing them fast, but we actually have the flippin' vaccine for it in our fridge, but just haven't got around to administering it yet. Well this was a wake up call for sure. As soon as these antibiotics are done and everybody is on an even keel health-wise, it's shot time!

We've collected 14 eggs so far since we've had to stop eating our eggs. We have them on the porch, as the weather has been cool, still deciding whether or not we want to toss them, hatch them or decorate them.

Two days ago I was begging people to take eggs off my hands, and today I had to turn a egg buyer down. Bummer! I'm as sad about them not getting to experience our amazing eggs as I am about having missed an opportunity for a sale. Ah well, we're doing what we have to for our babies. God & weather willing, there will be more eggs to come.

The eggs in the incubator are on day #5. The yolk no longer moves freely through the egg, the blood vessels are quite visible, and the size of the air sac (in the point of the egg) has increased. If I remember correctly from our last foray into incubating, somewhere around day 7-10 the babies will actually start to react to the candling light, and move around a bit. So excited!

I also can't wait to see if we end up with any frizzled chicks in the lot. Curlie gets around, so the odds are decent. :)

Shoot me a comment or email if you are interested in hatching eggs or some of our (hopefully) 20 mutt layer chicks. They're due to hatch in 16 days!

*Update 9/18/11* I forgot to mention yesterday when I posted this that Bill made 1 1/2 gallons worth of Feta on Saturday, and 1 quart's worth of cajeta. :)

Today's Take 9/16/11

It was a pretty quiet day today. The vet got back to us late last night with the findings on Judith the Australorp's necropsy. She was not egg bound after all, but had an infection of some sort, which appeared to be bacterial. As a precaution, we began treating the whole flock with Tetracycline dissolved in their water. The treatment will last for a week, and began last night. As a food purist and organic farmer, I do not believe in using antibiotics or any other pharmaceuticals, pesticides or other chemicals willy-nilly. But, as we can't be 100% sure what the culprit is here, we are hedging our bets slightly and treating the whole flock prophylactically, lest we lose them all.

In addition to using medicines on my animals that I'd rather not, this treatment prescribed by our vet has an additional downside - its effect on the eggs. All of the eggs laid while the flock are on antibiotics are considered unfit for consumption. Therefore, we have to throw approximately 7-10 dozen eggs away during the medicated time frame, and for a few days following the treatment.

We're considering our options here, since, for one thing, that is a LOT of eggs to dispose of. If we were to throw them all in the compost pile, we'd almost certainly bring a hoard of raccoons, foxes and opossums to our doorstep. No thanks!

Maybe we could/should bury them then?

The other options we are entertaining/researching, are hatching them out, or saving them for making Pysanky, Ukrainian Easter eggs.

We'll have to decide soon, because chicken ovaries wait for no man. Or woman. They are hardcore like that.

Goat Milk, 1/2 gallon (64 ounces)
Eggs - None collected
Tomatoes - 8 ounces
Bachelor Buttons - A few cups of flowers for dehydrating. The don't really have a fragrance, but they are beautiful, even when dried.

We also weighed Bill's parmesan, which is now 6 days old, just to track the weight loss that occurs as it dries. Today it was 1 lb, 7 ounces.

Today's Take 9/13/11

Our poor little Junebug didn't make it through the night last night. She looks like she went very peacefully though, so that is a small comfort. We are now down to 22 hens and 5 roos.

As it usually, thankfully, seems to happen, we had some blessings in the chicken department today along with our loss. We set yet another most-eggs-in-a-day record today with twelve. A dozen in a single day! And those were the ones that we could find. Who knows how many may lurk in the bushes? I fully expect that any day now, one or more hens will come strutting out of the shrubbery, trailing a flock of wee ones. If so, and the eggs in the incubator hatch out, we're going to be drowning in birds. ;)

Goats milk, 1/2 gallon (64 ounces)
Eggs, 12! :)
Rose petals, bachelor buttons and lavender - a few cups worth for dehydrating for sachets.

Today's Take 7/11/11 (and other ramblings)

Wow - I just realized that I have been writing the wrong month in these "Today's Take" posts for over a week now. Where is my brain? ;P

I pulled a whole wheelbarrow full of weeds from around the pumpkins and watermelons in the garden today, then fed the lot to some very grateful chickens. The only disappointment was that for all of my weeding, I hardly made a dent in the onslaught. Does that expression "A clean house is a sign of a wasted life." apply to the yard and garden too? I hope so!

Speaking of the garden, the radishes are all about ready to come out, and will thus make way for my last few Yukon Chief corn seedlings to pop into their place. The lettuces are finally looking good. What a strange growing year this has been! In an average year (what does that even mean anymore?), my greens would have bolted by now. Then again, I'd also probably have zucchini coming out my ears, and that's not happening either.

The pumpkins and Amish Pie squash are both spreading out and producing nice big leaves and blossoms now. In fact, one of the pumpkins has a baby on it, but I don't think that it's going to make it. It is wee and yellow. Maybe it wasn't fertilized?

With respect to the critters, we're having some ups and downs, as seems to be our new normal. We had to segregate an Australorp roo from the rest of his flock because his testosterone was getting the better of him and making him act like a rather aggressive jerk to the ladies. When we originally ordered our chicks I opted for 10 hens and 2 roos, so that we might have better odds of getting a "good" rooster. A gentleman. For whatever reason, Murray McMurray included a free 3rd Australorp roo, so we feel like we can afford to be that much more picky about our keeper. If we had somehow magically ended up with three saintly boys, we'd have craigs-listed the extra two, but since Captain Crankypants has outed himself as an irredeemable misogynistic thug, he's destined for the frying pan.

As for the goaties, it looks like two of our does, mother and daughter, may have some hoof issues. This is the never-ending issue with goats! The little girl's hooves are so thick that the trimmers won't cut them, and she's walking on just 3 legs right now. Her Mama has dirt, poo, and straw "impacted" in her hoof, and the stuff will. not. budge. I think we need to give her some warm iodine foot baths to get the gunk soften up. Poor babies! I'm going to email the vet, just to see if she feels that they need to been seen or further medicated. I want so badly to give these animals the best life possible, but we just keep hitting these snags. I feel especially bad that it sometimes takes me a little while to figure out that there is a problem, being that I'm still a relative newbie goat owner. Live and learn, I guess, and pray for my babies to stay well and strong.

*Goats Milk, 16 ounces
*Eggs, 3

For the Record, week of 6/6-6/12/11

This has been a mostly sunny but mild week, weather-wise. A few little showers here and there - just enough to keep things growing but not ruin anybody's day. ;) As a result of our sunny but not hot weather, we've all found ourselves with a little more energy, and have been spending more time outside working.

Scarlet has been, as ever, my number one garden helper. Today we planted 36 Yukon Chief corn starts, 1 row of French Breakfast radishes & 1/2 row of Red-cored Chantenay carrots. Coming up next are the wax beans and pole beans, which have gone nuts under the grow lights and are ready to go in the ground and do their thing.

I still need to find a place to shimmy in some beets. Maybe between the rows of peas & beans?

In critter news, we had a sick little goat this week. While trimming and cleaning hooves earlier this week, we noticed that Hop had copious amounts of yellow discharge coming out of her right ear. We'd noticed a week or two before that she wasn't quite acting herself, but never did see anything wrong until we had her in the stanchion for grooming. Poor girl! I took her to the vet the next day, where they flushed her ear. The vet said that there was a LOT of gunk in there, but no foreign objects. The likely reason that she got infected is because she has such small ears (as do many Lamanchas) that can't "breathe" that well. So we're giving her ear drops once per day, and are going to irrigate her ears with a solution of one part silver sulfadiazine cream dissolved into 9 parts distilled water. If worst comes to worst, she can have the opening to her ear surgically enlarged. Boy I hope that it doesn't come to that, because that sounds spendy! Our wonderful vet, Dr. Natalee, said that in a production dairy, Hop would no doubt have been culled for this tiny defect. We're just not that intense here, but it does make me think twice about ever breeding her, even though she comes from excellent bloodlines. Luckily I have a while to think it over.

We also aquired a new roo this week who the girls have named Thunder (no pic of Thunder-chicken yet, but he looks just like this guy.). He is a white-crested black polish, like Curly, but not a frizzle, like Curly, which is a good thing, because breeding a frizzle to a frizzle doesn't work out well. The feather curling gene goes haywire and produces a "Curlie" who's feathers are overly curled and brittle. So if/when Curly and Thunder fall madly in love and have babies, about 75% of the chicks should be frizzle. I can't wait!!!

The guy who raised Thunder up to this point lives in city limits, and therefore can't have a roo. So he gave us Thunder and we gave him an Australorp hen. A good trade for all concerned.

Besides all of that gardening and critter care, this week was fairly low-key. The kiddos have just a couple weeks of school left, so I'm trying to get all of my do-not-disturb type chores out of the way before I have myself a couple of shadows 24/7. I'm forgetting something huge, I just know it.

Weekly totals-
-20 eggs
-4 knit dishcloths finished

The Wheel in the Bog Keeps on Turnin'

We lost two more roos this past week. Uhg! And we had house guests at the time who wanted to know, (perhaps interpreting our seasoned acceptance of a farm animals untimely deaths as a something like callousness toward loss?), how often does a critter kick the bucket around here?

Too often.

We're learning as we go, and even though we try our darndest to give our critters the longest, happiest lives possible, shit happens. Like our surprise litter of bunnies, born in January. Had we any idea that Goldie was in fact a boy and had impregnated Cinderella, we could have moved them inside or at least better prepared the hutch for the babies' coming. But we didn't and we couldn't, so we lost them.

And now it's the chickens that we're struggling with. Our last Polish rooster just up and died, as did Queenie the Turken, who turned out to be a roo, but didn't live long enough to receive his name change. :( We're not sure what's happening. We've just started letting them out in the run daily, and we've recently switched them up from crumbles to pellets. Is it too much change too soon? Who knows.

To answer our guests' question, we did a hasty, grim count of our critters that have passed on since we established this little farm in August. I believe we arrived at 29 souls. Sheez! That's more animals than we had altogether when we moved to this place.
Most of that number are chickens, including the evil roos that did not die naturally, but ended up being someone else's dinner. Only one was a goat, and she was stillborn, though she looked tiny but perfect to my biased eye.

All of the passings have been met with sadness, but I think that over time I've become somewhat tempered to the gutting despair of a loss by the recurring guilt and shock of it. You can't have a stay-in-your-pj's-and-cry day every time a chick doesn't make it. The kids don't tend to take it as bad as they used to, but every once in a while a "special" animal dies and they lose it a little. I hope that they are never hardened or take lightly the passing of a life, but I do hope that their little spirits aren't dented by this life too much either.

Gertie the Pregnant Goat

For the past four months, we couldn't tell whether or not Gertie was pregnant. We deduced that she was by her increased appetite and the fact that she didn't come back into an obvious heat, but with the nature of goat bellies being bloaty and round, it was too close to call.

Around four weeks ago, it finally became obvious that Gert was expecting. Her middle is now at least as wide as it is tall, and her udder has magically appeared, chock full. Her little bum-bum area looks fit to burst, but it has for about two weeks now, so we're on pins and needles looking for that for-sure sign that it's "go time".

Jen thought she saw Gert's belly contracting yesterday, but by the time that I got up to the pen, they had stopped. I managed to wrangle her and lay hands on her sides, but I couldn't feel the babies kicking. I'm worried. I really don't want to miss this birth, since it will be Gertie's first, and since I fear (hopefully irrationally) that these kids might be in trouble.

So I slept like crap last night, starting at every little squeak and creak, worried that Gertie was delivering unattended and scared, or that newborns were wandering around the pen wet and cold. Thankfully she has held on through the night. I would very much appreciate it if she delivered these babies in the daylight hours, but I know we're on her schedule now, so I'll come when called, whenever that may be. Hopefully soon!

Pictures are forthcoming. I just got an awesome new camera that I haven't figured out how to download yet. ;\

What's Happenin' - 3/8/11

Forgive me if I ramble a bit here and jump topics. I am both sleep deprived and massively over-caffeinated which results in herky-jerky thinking. I've also been wiping chicken butts all morning which is maybe not the finest way to start your day. Anyway, I'm a goofy, babbling dork and I know it. :p

The new chicks arrived yesterday, and all but one survived the journey and transition. We lost a little silver-laced Polish pullet, Mrs. Floopy, due to a bad case of pasted butt which rendered her too weak to stand, eat or drink. I kept her close to my skin and tried to feed her sugar water, drop by drop, but she didn't seem to have the knack of swallowing. Poor baby. The hatchery was kind enough to refund me for her, but now we're down to just one silver laced Polish, darn it, and I really wanted a pair.

A few of the other babies' tushies got a bit pasted overnight, but I gave them my standard treatment of a warm water wash-up, followed by a drop of olive oil rubbed into the feathers around the bum-bum to help prevent further sticking or build up. Oh the glamor! ;)

We've made some adjustments recently with the kids and their critter patrol duties. Up until a week ago, I'd had them doing critter chores both morning and night. Nothing major, just feeding and watering everybody and turning the chickens out. But I started to notice an increase in the amount of stress in the girls, building and occasionally interfering with school and sleep, so I relieved them both of critter patrol duties for a week and took them on myself. I lost 5 pounds doing what they used to do every day, so I know that I made the right call for them and for me. We're trying to strike a delicate balance between home life, school, extra curricular activities and educational opportunities/teachable moments without over scheduling them and slurping up all of their free time. It's a struggle, but we're working through it. Anyway, the girls have resumed their evening critter patrols, which is a significantly lighter duty than morning patrols, and does not have the added stress of trying to get everything done in time to catch the bus. So far so good. Unfortunately for me and my gigantic lazy-streak, this also means that I am on morning critter patrol for the foreseeable future. Have I ever mentioned how much of a morning person I am not? ;)

The hens are enjoying the increase in sunlight, filtered through the grey clouds though it be, and giving us about 2 eggs per day now. Gracie has yet to lay at all. I hope she steps up soon because we have lots of folks who'd like to buy our eggs and can't meet the demand. Hopefully our babies will be laying by the end of summer/beginning of fall and we'll be overwhelmed with eggs.

The goats are all looking pretty good, except for young Mr. Blackjack. He's got a very snotty nose, which I have not seen before, so I'll need to scour my books and the interwebs to see what it is he might have, and go about treating him for it. I had really wanted our farm and all of its critters to be 100% organic, antibiotic free, etc., etc., but when this baby, or any of my other critters need intervention to live a happy and whole life, who am I to deny them that? I wouldn't hesitate to give my children antibiotics if I knew they needed it. It pretty much follows my philosophy about vaccinations. I don't love the idea of shooting mostly dead bacteria/viruses and lord knows what kind of chemicals into my little ones, but having seen some suffer and die from something horrific and preventable, like Bird Pox, I begrudgingly give in and vaccinate everybody.

That being said, I am very much against the non-organic standard procedure of feeding or otherwise administering antibiotics, hormones and stimulants routinely. It's a very short-sighted "solution" that will eventually have some pretty dire results for the critters that are being treated (and who's bugs are building immunity against one antibiotic after another) and for the people consuming those animals.

I'm going to do the best that I can by the animals and humans that are in my care. I'll keep on feeding them the best food that I can find, tend to their illness and injuries, provide them with a safe place to lay their heads and stay warm, and shower them with love and snuggles and hope for the best. I feel the weight of each of these lives on my back, but I also feel a joyfulness and depth of love in excess of anything else I have ever known. As much as I whine and as hard as this life we've chosen can be, I am thankful for it every day.

The Saga of the Boggy Hollow Bunnies

This week has been slightly rabbit-centric.

First, the bad news. We lost a baby bun-bun two days ago due to what looked like a prolapsed colon/rectum. By the time we noticed her lethargy and saw the protrusion, she was already extremely weak. She passed away within an hour.

In happier news, the rest of the baby bunnies are looking really good. They all had opened their eyes and started hopping about by the 23rd, which means that they were probably born on the 7th of February, even though they weren't discovered until the 11th. This litter started out at 7 and is now six, only one of which we're probably keeping. Scarlet immediately staked out one of the albino babies and named it - uhg - "Milky-Silky Jackson". We've agreed that her middle name/nickname is Snowdrop, since I refuse to call the poor thing such a humiliatingly cheesy name as Milky-Silky. Not to mention that it makes her sound like a disreputable character from Starsky & Hutch.

Last night after dinner we brought in all of the bunzos into the house and made them an impromptu hutch out of one of the goat kennels (yes, we have goat kennels) and set them up in the dining room. Everybody seemed very contented by their new surroundings, some, maybe a little too comfortable, as it seemed to be a bunny honeymoon going on in there. Prince Charming must have known what the next day would bring.

Bright and early this morning, PC went to the vet to be neutered. He was as calm as can be, calmer than me in fact, when the vet tech told us that the odds of Princey not making it through the surgery were substantial enough for us to pause and possibly rethink going through with the procedure. Apparently "prey animals", like rabbits are prone to shock. But keeping him seperate from his Cinderella for the rest of his life didn't seem like a viable option either, so with frazzled nerves, we consented to the operation.

When we got a call from the vet this afternoon, we were all strung as tight as piano wire. But we needn't have worried, PC came through the surgery just fine and is now back at home resting comfortably. The girls have been fawning over him and bringing him his babies and his lady-friend over to visit him one-by-one, so that everybody knows that everybody is ok. He's such a good Papa! The babies snuggled right up to him and one even shared his nibble of lettuce.

With all of the frisky bunny action last night, (I can't mentally handle the image that might be the sort of thing that goes on every night, so indulge me here) I suspect that we will have one last batch of babies in another 4 weeks or so. The first 6 won't be ready to leave Mama bunny until they are fully weaned at 8 weeks old, so if she has another litter, it's going to be bunzo madness around here.

Keep in mind that our current six will be ready to be re-homed right around Easter, folks. Call me! ;)

What's Happenin' - 2/16/11

Chardy's right udder/teat are still showing signs of mastitis. Despite my best efforts to milk out that side and get the kids to drink from her right teat to help ease the pressure, her little booby is still filled to the gills.

I'm going to go buy a thermometer tomorrow so that I can take her temperature and try to determine how serious this is, and whether or not her infection (if it is indeed an infection) is calling for antibiotic treatment now. I've been using a great, natural udder balm from Fias Co Farm/Molly's Herbals on Chardy's udder twice per day, and if I could get her to sit still long enough, would like to try a warm compress, but she won't stand for it. It's obvious that she is still uncomfortable, and she's Mehhhing her head off at me, but when I try to intervene, she either bolts or tries to kick me. Aye, what to do? I've emailed the vet for advice, but still haven't heard back from her. I guess we'll just keep on keepin' on 'til we get some results.

The baby bunnies are holding their own. A friend of mine who also owns a bunny has lent us her special critter heating pad to see us through this latest cold snap. The bunzos are literally growing markedly bigger every single day - it's nuts! Their fur is filling in well, but nobody has opened their eyes yet. When their eyes finally open, we should be able to count back 10 days and get a better idea of when exactly they were born, since Cinderella was a sneaky monkey and kept them hidden from us for a few days or so before we figured out what was up.

On the brighter, all-things-chickeny side, today was our first three egg day in quite some time. Now if Rosie and Gracie could get their little butts in gear, we'd be reaping almost 3 dozen eggs per week.

We'd been keeping the ladies in the run, following last week's near miss with the hawk, and just yesterday finally turned them loose again. Apparently the sweet taste of freedom was so divine that they deigned to grace us with a few of their lovely eggs as thanks. I'll take it! As I've whined said before, even the best commercially available eggs can't hold a candle to homegrown. So I'm more thankful than ever to be back on the good egg track.

Next on my hit list - milk. Bill is building me a milking stand this weekend and then the fun can begin!

The Care & Keeping of Goat Boobies

Poor Chardy has mastitis in one of her teats! One side of her udder has been milked bone-dry by her babies, and the other side is so full that the skin is stretched and shiny and her right teat looks like an Oscar Meyer wiener. (Don't say I never paint you glorious pictures with my words!)

Between googling and consulting my goat books, it sounds like there are two ways to go - the "natural" way and the "western medicine" way. The things that they both have in common is that you massage and "milk out" the infected teat (discarding the milk), then thoroughly clean the udder and teat and apply an udder cream and massage in well, followed by an application of teat-dip or anti-bacterial spray. The natural method also recommends applying a heat pack. The more medically invasive method suggests giving either intramuscular antibiotics (which Chardy just finished a course of) and/or injecting medicine directly into the teat orifice itself.

I'm going to start with the natural method in the hopes of avoiding having to give poor Chardy any more shots. Trying to give intramuscular injections to a rail-thin goat is hard on everybody involved, so we're going to do all that we can to avoid traumatizing or potentially over-medicating her further, but if I feel like she's getting any worse or simply doesn't start improving very soon, I won't hesitate to treat her with whatever antibiotics it takes to rid her of this infection.

And now I get to go milk a reluctant, under-the-weather doe, while dodging cranky kicks. What a way to spend a cold and windy evening!

A Crash Course in Goat Midwifery

Chardy had her babies today! We have a boy and a girl, both healthy and spunky.

I had a feeling this morning when we did critter patrol that today was going to be that day. Chardy was very vocal, which she is not normally. She was MEEEHHing at me the whole time I was with her, and switched into MEHHH hyperdrive as I walked away from the pen. I debated about whether or not to walk back down there and sit with her for a bit, but I had planned a morning walk with my friend, and didn't want to ditch her for a baby that may or may not be happening. So I went on my walk, but I thought about my goatie girl and worried a little that I might have up and left her when she needed my comfort most. Mommy guilt to the bazillionth degree!

I hustled home from my walk, and even before I went down to the pen to check on her, just had the feeling that this was really it. So I brought my camera, my cell phone and a bath towel just in case. It was a good thing I did.

I found Chardy shifting around in the goat house, pawing at the straw. I looked her over and saw that her udder was now SUPER full, and that she had passed her mucus plug. It was go time.

She plopped down in the goat house, and I pulled up a little folding stool that I use when I'm visiting and brushing the goats. I had a ringside seat!

Thankfully having brought my cell phone with me, I started texting everybody The babies are coming! My friend and her daughter were able to make it down just in time to see baby #2 pop out. :) What a beautiful and educational experience! I only wish my girlies had been home to see it. Luckily, I have a bit of video and a few pictures of the blessed event. The video of Chardy's various stages of labor and birth are rather intermittent, as my camera batteries died right in the middle of it all and I was naturally more concerned about being able to support Chardy and the babes that I was with being a stellar documentarian. If you are curious and not particularly squeamish, check out the videos below. ;)


What a contracting goat looks like.


Her first bag of waters.


Baby Boy, just delivered.


And hot on his heels (and back), Little Girl.


Checking out her wee ones. :)

Chardy is doing great. She dealt with labor like a champ, barely making a sound as she delivered her beautiful babies. She is presently snuggled up with them and eating like a horse. I wonder if she wasn't able to eat to her fill before because her abdomen was so full of babies, because she's eaten more than a full day's worth of hay, grain and apples since just noon today. And as if she weren't spoiled rotten before, now she's getting room service so that she doesn't have to fight Blue and Fritzen for every last bite.

She passed her placenta within 2 hours of delivering, and has had minimal bleeding and discharge since, which eases my mind more than I can tell you. It sucks to fret over something that you're powerless to do anything about, so I am thanking my lucky stars that nature and instinct have seen Char and her kids through the danger of birth safely.

Everybody's looking good, but just for peace of mind, we've decided to check on them all every few hours throughout the night to ensure that no one gets too cold or wanders away from Mama. Imagine trying to mother twins who could both walk within 20 minutes of being born! No thanks!

So we've safeguarded everybody as best we can, but still, every little peep and strange sound from the vicinity of the yard makes my heart skip a beat. Fear of loss and the joy of providence are two sides of the same coin. I don't know if I'll be sleeping worth a darn for a while yet, 'til I can convince myself that they will thrive and be with us for many happy years to come.