First goat kids of 2012

Wednesday afternoon, Feb 8th, I thought our doe Viola was in early labor. So I left her in the "maternity ward" stall in the barn and checked on her every couple of hours or so. I noticed Little Bit wasn't with the rest of the herd but hanging around the barn, but I figured it was just because I was there. She's our "puppy dog" doe, who would rather be with humans than goats. On my 4pm or so barn check I took loose minerals with me to refill feeders, and when I went in the "communal" stall the rest of the herd uses, Little Bit ran in with me. I turned around to shoo her out and lo and behold, she's laying down grunting and a water bag is appearing. She had no goo, had just started barely bagging up, and no sign of being ready to kid.  Within ten minutes she had given birth to twins, one buckling and one doeling!  Both very healthy, very cute and very active.  

And Viola still hasn't kidded.  After Viola will be Oreo if I don't sell her first, then Madeline if she is even pregnant.  She doesn't look it but then Little Bit didn't look ready to pop out twins either.

Animals come and animals go

Lots of changes around here since the last post (yes, I'm doing great at keeping up with this blog, I know :/  ).  Missy the Tennessee Walking Horse mare was sold, which had us down to three horses - Rose the Belgian mare, Ruby the Saddlebred mare, and Dixie the free-lease TWH mare.

In November (2011) we bought a Haflinger mare named Amber.  She was most likely in foal for spring, to a Haflinger stallion.  She arrived on our little farm at 8am on a Tuesday morning.  But just 20 minutes after the seller left, Amber jumped a fence and ran up the mountain behind our property, never to be seen again.  Well she was seen a few weeks later, by hunters on the other side of the mountain.  Unfortunately she had been shot and had been dead quite awhile.  I feel terrible that I didn't put her in a stall but it never crossed my mind that she would jump the fence and run away.

But, if nothing else, we learned from that experience to never put a new horse in pasture right away, even if they've never been stalled and only ever lived at pasture.  And in January we found out about a small herd of Arabians in Georgia that were being given away to good homes due to the owner's financial problems.  I thought it sounded too good to be true, but decided to call anyway.  I talked to the owner on the phone and it actually was true.  So for the cost of a professional hauler bringing them the 245 miles here from their old home, we got two very nicely bred purebred Arabian horses, along with their papers.

Metal is a 12 year old stallion, flea-bitten gray, 14.3hh and just breathtakingly beautiful.  He's also very sweet, friendly, well-mannered and smart.  His downsides are, he has an old injury to his right front leg that may never heal enough to be completely sound.  And he is cryptorchid, meaning he has one testicle that never dropped.  Should we decide to geld him in future, it will be much more involved and expensive.  He'll have to go to an equine hospital and go under general anesthesia and have abdominal surgery.  But we see no reason to geld him right now, as he's a complete sweetheart of a stallion.  I fell in love with him on first sight, as he stepped off the trailer here from GA, and I love him more every day.  He's my dream horse of my childhood come to life.  :)

Althea is a 17 year old mare who's only ever been a broodmare.  She has had two foals, the most recent in 2005.  She's petite and has the most beautiful dished face and large jibbah I think I've ever seen.  She came to us somewhat underweight but not starved, so she is just gaining weight, settling in and getting used to her new home and new people.  When she's back in shape I will start her under saddle.

And that's the news from our little horse herd for now.

Tropical Storm Lee = dead baby chickens

The rain and cold from Tropical Storm Lee wiped out all but one of the surviving chicks from our May hatchery order.  At least 40 dead.  I don't know how many were still alive but one little Rhode Island Red is the only survivor.  Very disheartening, and very not-fun to dispose of that many 3 month old dead chickens.

Still only getting a few eggs a week from the adult hens.  I suspect they're going to start molting soon, as they are over a year old now.  So no real egg production from them for awhile, and no new generation to take up the slack.

No duck eggs found either.  I've been buying eggs from the grocery store but they just aren't as tasty as free range farm eggs.

On the good news side, we are getting at least a gallon a day of milk now, between Viola and Little Bit.  Once Little Bit's buckling went to his new home and I started getting all the milk, we no longer have any milk shortage.  More like an overage.  I've made soft cheese once and it was pretty good, so that will be one way to store milk.  Make it into cheese and freeze it.

Still haven't sold Missy the TWH mare.  It's all good either way, she can live here if there are no buyers.  Just seems a shame for a sweet little mare to go to waste as a pasture ornament.  I need to email the therapeutic riding center down the road and see if they would take her as a donation, I know they have other TWH's.

And now I should go to bed, tomorrow we go to town to visit family.

Hens are teasing me!

I got 9 eggs last week, but none for the last 3 days. I even heard a laying cackle yesterday morning but haven't located the egg. I am tempted to pen them up in a stall in the barn at night, and not let them out in the morning until they pay their debt to society - in eggs!

No duck eggs either. The ducks sound like they're laughing at me too, every time they quack.

In other news, Ezra the baby goat isn't such a baby any more. He's quite interested in all four does, and spends a lot of energy playing head-butt games with his wethered "cousin," Hickory. Ezra is 9 weeks old now and ready to go to his family, as soon as they can come get him. Although I must admit the thought occurred to me yesterday, that I would love to get a doeling sired by Ezra out of Viola. I could really use some of Ezra's dam, Little Bit's, nice udder genetics to improve on Viola. I know Viola was in heat in July, and I wouldn't doubt she's already bred to Hondo (Ezra's sire). Maybe ask for some return breeding rights for Ezra from his family. I do know that Hondo's dam, Cat, had a pretty nice udder as well though, so maybe that alone would be enough to improve Viola's daughters. Breeding to improve is very much a game of patience, because any doeling born this winter wouldn't freshen until a year or more later, so I won't know what if any improvements there would be for at least 1.5 years.

I decided to give the meat rabbits one more try. Now that I'm the one feeding and watering everything, it's much more likely for livestock to survive than when we were depending on older kids to do it. I bought another New Zealand White buck, a big sucker they had named Clyde. I put Hasenpfeffer in with him last Thursday, and another doe this Thursday. Next Thursday the last doe goes in and 2 weeks after that Hasenpfeffer will kindle if she's gonna.

Dead worms, dead duckling, dead tired me.

The second shipment of worms was also DOA. Finally arrived August 2nd, again almost a week late. So once again, Amazon got back a box of stinking putrid worms, and I just asked for a refund. I haven't contacted the person on the local CraigsList that's selling worm tea yet, just haven't remembered to when I had the energy to deal with it.

And our very expensive Ancona duckling was dead when I went out to do chores this morning. No idea why.

Still no eggs from either chickens or ducks. They still eat and they still poop all over the place, but no eggs for all the food and mess they leave. Oh yeah and they invade the garden and eat everything growing there before we even know there's anything worth harvesting. They were fighting over an acorn squash today, not the first time, and we've yet to get the first edible thing out of the garden. We put many tons of composted cow manure on it, plowed it, cultivated it, disked it, planted it, and now, the chickens eat it all. So annoying.

The farmer next door has been spraying his cotton every week lately, which makes all of us here feel completely rotten when the chemicals make their way to us. The only thing we've found that helps us is to wear breathing masks with activated carbon in them. But I've not managed more than the bare minimum since early July because of breathing chemical soup.

And the pump on our washing machine died. Greg ordered a replacement today which should be here in two days, but in the meantime we're very close to being out of clean laundry. I was close to getting it caught up, then this happens.

We're still fighting the flea infestation in the house as well. Between the house cat sneaking outside and the barn cat getting inside, we got invaded by blood-sucking pests. I vacuum as much of the house as I can, as often as I can, and empty the canister outside. Haven't done so in a couple of days though, so it's past due again.

Some days I just want to sell all the livestock and give up. But what would William drink if we didn't have milk goats? He doesn't tolerate store-bought cow's milk well at all. So, I keep on keeping on taking care of critters. But I'm so tired all the time, and hurt all over a lot of the time. Very discouraging.

Adventures in vermicomposting

I decided to set up our worm bin again, to compost all the things that chickens/dog/cats/etc. won't or shouldn't eat. Moldy bread or produce, etc. I kept a compost bin in the kitchen when we lived in the subdivision in Durham, NC with great success. No smell, no flies as long as I went behind the boys and covered the food with shredded paper. And more worms than we knew what to do with. I ended up putting two 30 gallon trash cans by the back fence and seeding them with worms and shredded paper and they took off as well. Lots and lots of lovely worm castings and worm tea for happy veggies and houseplants.

Unfortunately the worm bin was neglected over the past year here, and all the worms died. Just for the heck of it, I looked on amazon.com to see if I could order more worms. Well, not too surprisingly, I could. The seller had 50 or so 5 star reviews and only a couple of bad ones at the time I placed my order, on July 20th. July 22nd I was supposed to get 1000 live red wigglers, via FedEx. The 22nd came and went, and no worms. Finally, at 6:30pm on the 26th, the box showed up. I wasn't very optimistic about it, as 6 days in a box in this heat didn't bode well for the little wormies. Sadly, I was right. All were dead, the dirt was bone dry and so were all the worms.

Amazon offered to re-ship them, if I sent back the "damaged product." Really? You want to make the poor UPS guys pick up a putrid box of dead worms and bring them back to you? Okay, if that's how it is, I'll do it. So, the re-ship was supposed to arrive on the 28th, this time with 1-day shipping instead of 2-day shipping at no charge.

It's now noon on the 29th. Guess what. Yup, you guessed it. No worm sign yet. (Sorry, had to throw in the geek reference there.) If they show up dead this time, I just want a refund.

Someone on the local Craigslist has been offering worm tea. If this second shipment is dead, I'm going to email them and ask if they have any extra worms they can sell me as a starter culture. I know from experience that it only takes a small handful of worms to get you thousands of worms pretty quickly when managed right.

Maybe I'll find their ad and ask them to buy some now, even before the second shipment shows up. That way I'll have at least one starter, if not two....

Still hot.

Right now weather.com says we are at 93F, heat index of 99F. Which is better than 118F heat index, to be sure, but it's still hot.

Lost two more chicks to the heat, one was the sole Ameraucana hatched out here in spite of the week without electricity caused by tornadoes in April.

Still getting no eggs, now not even from the Ancona ducks. I started closing them in a stall in the barn again last night, and letting them out at noon. They have food and water in there, of course. No eggs this morning but I'll keep it up and keep hoping.

The cotton farmer next door has been spraying his fields again the last two days, so I'm not even keeping the milk from the goats. Luckily we have two gallons ahead in the fridge so we won't go without.

Not much else I can think to write about now.