Just 'a Grazing

We decided to let Prada and Candyman out to play in the the big pasture too!  So now the four of them are mowing the yard ... er, I mean grazing.

Building Fences

We have a front pasture!  Today Bryan finished pulling the 4x4 cattle fencing wire around the perimeter of the front acre or so and put up the gate.  It's sort of an "L" shaped pasture that butts up against the dog fence on the side of the house and then continues all the way across the "yard" in front of the house.

Bryan's been digging post holes and cementing corner posts and twisting bracing wire and pounding T-posts for what has seemed like forever.  I was looking through our "farm photos" and I have pictures of front fence work from back in November!  We've had rain and flooding, snow and hail, and just life with "day jobs" making progress quite slow at times.

The kids and I have helped some, but let's face it, I don't have the upper body strength for that kind of manual labor.  He also had help on occassion from Pepa and from Danny (Mema's husband, sometimes referred to as Paw Dan), but really did the bulk of the work on his own.

And now the goats are in their pasture ... well, some of them.  Prada is still shacking up with Candyman -- we've been trying to breed them for a few weeks now.  So the two lovebirds have the run of the place in the back with the goat house.  But Milky and Seth (along with Max) are in the front now.  'Course they seem to be draw to the small stretch of fence that separates them from Brix and Belle.  Seth seems quite interested in them, though you'd think Milky would know better - seeing as how she was present for Prada's near death experience.  I've been so excited  as we worked toward having a pasture for the goats but when we let them free in the front they ran right back to the dogs.

So now as I sit here typing I hear constant barking right beside my bedroom window ... wonder if this is such a good idea after all?  Hmmm ... maybe I'll keep that thought to myself.  Of course, as I'm thinking that Bryan says aloud, "Belle's never gonna shut up for the rest of her life now," ending his statement with a huff of finality.  He's probably right, but as I pointed out once before ... as long as she's barking it means she's not chewing.

Ode (sort of) to Cookie

"Cookie"

December 28, 2009 - January 6, 2010

We brought "Cookie" home with us from Bryan's mom's house in Alabama this past weekend.  A tiny little pygmy kid, she was just born on December 28, 2009.  On the trip home, we named her "Cookie" because the contrast between her ears and her body coat looked like an oreo cookie.   

Once we got home, we put her in the goat pen with Milky, Prada and Max.  She didn't miss a beat, hopping through one of the holes on the cattle fence panel and taking home.  We tried to chase her down, each coming at her from a different direction, until she did the unthinkable.  She ran straight for the creek and jumped right in.  We couldn't believe it.  It was like 30 degrees outside and that was completely dry!  She swam for a minute and then started failing.  Bryan jumped in (oooh, the hell he caught from his dad over that later).  He got her out and stripped out of his wet clothes down to his undies.  While he got himself to the house and back to a normal body temperature, I brought Cookie to the house to make sure she was warm and dry before nightfall.  I was a little nervous about leaving her out for the night but we shut all three of the goats up in the goat house and they snuggled together.  The next day, Bryan spent the better part of the day, in snowfall, tying chicken wire around the outside bottom of the goat pen.

Because we took her away from her mom before she was weaned, I've been bottle feeding her kid milk replacement 3-4 times a day.  Or at least I've been attempting to.  The first few times, she fought so much I don't think she got more than a drop.  Finally, though, she seemed to be getting some and even seemed to enjoy me holding her; she'd lean into me, resting her head on my chest while I squatted in the goat house to feed her.  Cookie also started eating a little hay and straw and even wiggled her head into the food bowl to get some grain.  No wonder Prada head-butted her.  We were thinking that she was too little to be eating the grain or hay but didn't think it could really hurt anything.


Surprisingly, we think she bonded more with Max (the Anatolian) than she did with Milky and Prada (the Nigerians).  At first, she followed Milky around a bit and we thought she might even try to feed, which would have been futile since Milky's dried up right now.  She pretty much stayed away from Prada, though, probably because Prada rammed her every chance she got.  We're starting to think Prada's going to be "herd mama."  The other night, though, Cookie started rooting around at Max ... and he just rolled over and let her do it!

Last night, she sat in my lap and drank from the bottle of kid milk; when I put her down, she followed me around for a bit.  This morning, when I went out to feed her, I found her lying in the corner of the pen, cold and stiff.  I'm not sure if the cold got her; if it was the stress of the move; if it was related to her polar bear swim; or if she had some sort of digestive blockage, perhaps from eating grain too early.  Truth is, I'll probably never know.

Tonight we're in for more freezing temperatures, so I spent the early evening doing some shift work around the farm.  The dogs are in the garage and the goats (Max fits in this category) are in the workshop.  Man, we need a barn!

Today, I didn't much enjoy being Farmer Steph, and I'm certain they'll be more days like this; this is life on a farm.  But tomorrow is a new day and I look forward to being greeted by some warm noses (Milky and Prada give Eskimo kisses in exchange for animal crackers! Hey, I'm not above bribery.)

The Farm Expansion a/k/a Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

I grimaced when I first wrote the last word of the title to this post ... read on, you'll understand.  Warning: this post has pictures which may not be for the faint at heart; proceed at your own risk.

Within a week (or maybe 2, honestly, who can keep up?) of getting the chickens, we must have thought things were a little boring down on the farm. We took Brock to the state fair for his birthday and by the end of that weekend (and the end of the fair) we were the proud owners (parents) of two Nigerian dwarf dairy goats. Since then, I've learned all sorts of fascinating tidbits, including how to milk and wean a goat, and how to care for one following multiple vicious dog attacks (by one of our own!), which ... wait for it ... involves purple-stained skin, and a hook and fishing line.

When we first got Milky and Prada, we didn't have our "official" goat area so we put up two cattle panels in one corner of the fenced area around the pond, where Belle and Brix live, to make a square contained area for the goats.

(We quickly replaced the bright yellow rope that seemed to take lightyears to wrap and unwrap with bungee straps, but I don't have a pic of that.)  Anyway, this square set-up seemed to work well for awhile.  The goats love to explore though, so we started letting them come out of the square and roam the yard around the pond.  We still have stakes and tie-downs for the dogs from before the fence was complete; so we'd just chain up the dogs for awhile and let the goats have free reign. 

One Saturday afternoon, just as Ben went down for a nap and I was planning to take one myself, I heard Bryan start screaming "Noooooo." I ran outside to find him cradling Prada and carrying her to the back porch.  After I got Milky safely stowed back in the square, I joined the tragedy on the porch.  Turned out that Belle had snapped her leash, I guess from pulling so hard, and chased down Prada, essentially body slamming her to the ground.  Once we checked her over, we determined that she had two small open wounds (from Belle's teeth no doubt!) - one on her jaw line and one on her front shoulder.  We brought her into the garage and, after a trip to gather supplies, Bryan cleaned her wounds and doctored her up good.  He'd gone to the co-op and got some Blue Lotion, which is applied with a lid brush, sort of like the ones in Rubber Cement, but with what looked more like a cotton ball than a paint brush, and is really more of a purple than blue color, and stains your skin and clothing like nobody's business.  All told, I think I lost three good shirts to that stuff and had purple fingers at work for days.

More than anything, Prada seemed in shock.  The wounds themselves, in hindsight now, weren't all that bad, but as a first attack on our first baby goat, it was horrific.  And to see her seemingly so weak and dazed, it was pitiful.  The next day though, it appeared that she was getting back to normal, and I naively thought the worst was over. 

The very next Saturday, while Bryan was at the hospital for a special work day, I spent the early morning outside with all the animals.  After cleaning out the chicken coop and letting them graze for awhile, I chained up the dogs and let Milky and Prada out of the square to explore.  This time, I stayed out there with them though, staying near to Belle and making her sit or lay the whole time.  After about 20 uneventful minutes, I put Milky and Prada back in the square and let the dogs free.  Feeling quite satisfied with myself and all that I'd accomplished bright and early on a Saturday morning (note: I am not a morning person), I came in the house and sat down on the couch to fold some laundry while the kids watched TV.  Wasn't I being so productive?

Suddenly I heard screaming and screeching, but strangely no barking, and ran out to see Belle and Brix getting Prada through the cattle panel.  Apparently she got too close to the fence and Belle stuck her head through one of the holes and grabbed Prada's back leg.  They were trying to pull her through the hole!

When I got to her, barefoot in the mud mind you, I thought she was dead for sure.  Her back right leg was torn and chewed from her knee joint all the way up to almost her bottom, and her shoulder wound was skinned and fresh, I think by being pulled through the fence hole.

I didn't know what to do but hold pressure on everything and try to get Bryan home from work.  Meanwhile, Bryanna was "starving to death," Ben wanted to come out in the 50 degree weather in nothing but a diaper to "play with Prada," and I didn't want to know what Brock was doing.  

The "dustbowl fella" (i.e., Johnny, who lives down the street, the dirt and gravel way, at the 4-way stop and says the way people drive through there it's like he lives in a dustbowl) happened to come by with his grandson, who is in Brock's class at school, and he helped me look Prada over while I tried to get a hold of Bryan.  Johnny raises oxen, so his presence and opinion that she wasn't "done for" was reassuring to me.

Bryan came home as quickly as he could and then decided he needed to make another run for supplies; it seemed the blue-lotion-that's-really-purple wasn't going to be enough this time around.  We're learning that having a de facto farm means becoming a de facto vet; I've lost count of the number of vets that say "we don't see goats."

With me holding Prada down, Bryan went to work shaving the area around her shoulder wound, cleaning it through and through and stiched her up, with a hook and fishing line (and days later when we were finally able to have her looked at by a vet, he complimented Bryan's sewing job, go figure).  Her back leg was so torn up, though, we couldn't figure out what was supposed to go where, whether anything needed to be cut off or pushed back in, or what part of remaining skin connected to any other part.  Ultimately, we just cleaned it as good as we could, put antiseptic on it and bandaged her up.

She hung out in the little teepee Bryan built for their shelter for most of the time over the next several days, coming out to get a little food and water here and there.  I kept worrying she'd just give up on us until the vet we saw told me that "goats are funny." He said some goats will get a little sick and just give up, while others are fighters and "darn near impossible to do in." 

 

Over the following weeks, we could see improvement and healing happening.

Now, about 2 months after the second attack, the hair on her shoulder has grown back thick and full and she hops and jumps around like she's never had a bum leg.  Yep, our Prada's a fighter.

The (not-so) Great Flood

It's been an exciting Christmas Eve on the Farm today.  Since we moved in here in late Summer, we've had a few "floods" way in the back where the tree line of the woods starts.  There are a few stray patches of concrete in places around the grounds -- apparently the previous owner worked for a concrete company and would pour in various places, some of which prove useful and some I guess just add character.  There's one particular patch along the "road" going off into the woods that's not far past the chicken coop and goat house.  We use that as a gauge for the water level when it rains.  If the patch is covered, which has happened once before, then we're flooded -- otherwise, a little rain never hurt nothing.  Well, today, that's an understatement.

Before lunch today, we decided to move the goats from the goat house/yard to the dogs' yard, which, of course, meant that we had to move the dogs somewhere else.  In our short experience as farmers, we've learned that the goats and the dogs (that is, Belle and Brix) cannot live peacefully within the same confined area.  I still have to tell that story, but honestly it's exhausting to even think about.  Wonder what Noah would have done if God had told him to build separate Arks for the different species?  Anywho, while I'm fairly certain that Max the Guard would take precedence over Max the Dog, thereby protecting the goats from the dogs, "fairly" isn't enough certainty for me.  So today has been a day of shift work on the Farm.  Brix and Belle were shifted to the garage, while Max, Milky and Prada were shifted to the "back yard."

The bayou waters to the right of us continued to rise, flooding out the road where it turns to gravel right past our house.  And in the back, the gauge patch is just a memory and the goat house has a river for a floor.  But all is well, though, right? Ha ha ha.  Milky and Prada are master escapees through the rungs of the cattle gates, which have satisfactorily confined Brix and Belle up to this point.  So after at least 3 times of chasing down the goats in the mud and rain, we admitted defeat.  Something had to give.

Reevaluation in the back turned out to be reinforcement.  The goat house is in a river and the chicken coop is not far behind.  Fortunately, the chickens can get up in their nest and be safe from the rising tide.  Will they is a whole different question.  'Course Bryan said that it's a Darwin thing, whichever ones survive will make good breeders.  Pepa just said we'll get smarter chickens next time if we have to.  Lovely, huh?  I'm trying my hand at some positive thinking - the chickens always go up to their nest at dusk and stay there until daybreak - surely the water will start to recede by then.

Anyway, refusing to worry about the chickens, we were still left with a goat problem to solve.  After a little disagreement, I lovingly convinced Bryan that we had 2 choices for the goats - the garage or his workshop.  He was none too happy about either option, but he reluctantly agreed.  So we tried to "goat proof" the workshop as much as possible and got Milky and Prada settled for the night.

Since Max, Brix and Belle have gotten along in the past, we figured they'd be okay in the back yard together.  When Bryan opened the gate to let Brix and Belle back in, Max lunged in attack and then took off.  Max still has a lot of puppy in him which combined with his size makes him hard to handle.  Brix and Belle mind pretty well, as long as there's no aroma of tasty goat meat lingering nearby.  Not Max.  He doesn't respond to basic commands like "stay" or "come" and hasn't yet been trained to walk on a leash.  If you grab his collar, he just falls over in submission, making it even harder to "guide" him anywhere.  Once Bryan chased him down, we finally got all three of the dogs in the back yard.  Hopefully ... they'll all be there in the morning, the goats and the workshop will survive each other, and we won't find out the hard way whether chickens can swim. Yay for positive thinking.