Farm Fresh Blog

To the utter astonishment of the dogs, there were goats in the kitchen sink this morning. Live goats. In the sink.

Over half of you are now making notes to never eat in my kitchen again. Yes, I sank to a new low.

(Well, this might be on par with the calf in the bedroom last year.)

As you have probably figured out by now, the rain did not wash all the syrup off the baby goats yesterday, thus we had to goat-nap and whisk them into the house. While Other Half got the water warm, I let them run around the living room. (cuz they were cute) Then he held one twin while I plopped the dirtiest one into the sink and scrub-a-dub-dub!

Then voila!  Clean goats!

(Slightly disoriented, and telling the flock tales of Alien Abductions, but clean nevertheless)

This morning I was reminded of the Uncle Remus tale "Brer Rabbit & The Tar Baby." 

I violated The Prime Directive of Life With Goats yesterday. Yes, friends and neighbors, I left the babies with access to a syrup tub. This morning they were covered in syrup. I mean COVERED with syrup! Even the white parts are sticky! It appears that not only did they play in the syrup tub, they slept in the syrup tub.

Fortunately it was raining today. Hopefully most of it will come off in the rain. If not, guess who will be washing baby goats in the kitchen sink tomorrow morning?

Grooooooannnnnnnn......................

The baby goats are spending more and more time with the flock. This thrills them to no end.

But it's enough to wear a good dog out . . .

We have several contenders for Mother Of The Year on the farm. Let's start with the "Also Ran" category.

Crimson: Mother to adorable Bailey and brother that at the moment I'm calling Coffee (or Raisin, depends upon my mood)

This photo was taken last week. The babies are two weeks old and pictures like that are few and far between now. Crimson is a crack-head mother at best. She fully buys into the dairy farm idea of pulling babies from mothers and bottle feeding them. I don't have time or energy for that so I expect Crimson to hold up her end as a mother to her adorable brats. But since Crimson spends all night locked up with the little beasts, as soon as she is released to graze with the flock in the yard, she flings off all maternal trappings and refuses to acknowledge that she has babies. Seriously... 

They tag along with the flock, bouncing around their new world, full of merriment and fun, until the flock leaves them. Then they panic and scream their fool heads off, calling every predator in the county. And then this is what you usually see -

Briar sighs and walks over to see what they're screaming mimmies about. They get distracted and shut up. Most of the time I walk out there too just to make sure that nothing really bad is happening. I must have gone out there 20 times today. I check them regularly. Briar checks them regularly. Their mother? Not so much. In fact, she never looks up.

"Babies? What babies? Who has babies?"

Definitely Crimson is not in the running for the Mother Of The Year Award. No, this year's recipient of the coveted award goes to Snickers the Hell-Bitch Cow . . .

. . . for her stunning portrayal of Enraged Water Buffalo Mother when approached by two Border Collies. In case you missed this Short Film, Snickers and five calves were among other cows who made a jail break while I had the gate opened to drive the tractor in the pasture. I was forced to use dogs to get the cattle back inside the pasture. Snickers mutated from her normal Hell Bitch Self into a bellowing, raging water buffalo who rammed fences while roaring at the top of her lungs. It was quite impressive to all.  Snickers fiercely protected not only her own baby, but the other four calves in the Day Care Center. And for this act of bitchiness bravery, I nominate Snickers for Mother Of The Year!

If you have never seen the fierocity of a mother water buffalo, watch The Battle Of Kruger on You Tube. It's painful to watch at first, but keep watching. Not only does it gets better, but you will get a better appreciation for the protective instincts of a water buffalo. This is one of the best wildlife videos I've ever seen!

http://youtu.be/LU8DDYz68kM

There are certain unpleasantries of ranching that we must all endure if we are to be responsible for our livestock - castration and disbudding come to mind.  Castration is must-do chore if we plan on keeping any males for any length of time. The only question is how we want to do it. Most of the time we opt for banding, but we have had Dear Friend Cathy's husband (the vet) do a surgical castration when we've waited a bit long for banding.

In the past, I haven't disbudded my baby goats, but then I was raising meat goats and other than the annoying "getting their heads caught in the fencing" the horns have never been a problem. In fact, they make nice handles. But then I entered the world of dairy goats. I bought some does without horns and I bought some does with horns. Guess what? Getting accidentally hooked by friendly goats isn't fun. Getting hooked in the face is even less fun.  So I sold the horned goats and kept the ones without horns for milking. And I acquired a polled buck in hopes of breeding babies that didn't have horns.

And guess what? Thus far we have a 50% success rate.

The little girl doesn't have horns.

The little boy does.

Enter the concept of disbudding.  That's a white-washed-prettified term for branding the horn bud with a red hot iron to kill it before it develops. Yes, it sounds medieval, but then again so much of what we do with livestock for their own good can sound medieval. 

The cold hard reality of life as a boy goat is that most of them end up either eaten or shuffled into isolation. This little guy's best bet for a good life is to turn him into a friendly pet. The best way to do that is to castrate and dis-bud him, and cuddle him and feed him raisins and put a cute little collar on him. Goats are eaten. Cute little goats that act like dogs have a better chance of becoming pets on farms. 

So Saturday I packed up the babies and took them to The Goat Lady. She has done this procedure countless times and I trust her more than I trust myself. There is an art to this. If you don't leave the iron on long enough you can get nasty scurs - ugly horn growth thingees. If you leave the iron on too long, you fry your baby's brain. That's enough for me to take lots of lessons before I do this for real.

The procedure was pretty quick. The Goat Lady picked him up, gave him a CDT shot and then she shaved his little horn buds so she could see what she was doing. Then she put him down to play with his sister while the iron heated up. Then she scooped him up again, held him down against her thigh and applied the iron for a count of 15 seconds for each bud. He was not happy. Then she sprayed him with purple medicine and set him down.

He bounced off, shook himself, and announced that he had been assaulted. . . "But no hard feelings."

And then he came home and played with the rest of the flock. The little guy didn't skip a beat.

He played and played and then he and his sister went back in lock-up where their Nanny-Dog reassured them that they were not alone in this cruel world where people kidnap and assault baby goats.  

Other Half and I have an ongoing argument about the virtues of cattle versus sheep and goats. He is a steadfast cow man while I'm a dyed-in-wool sheep & goat woman. (no pun intended) He argues that sheep and goats are too much trouble for their value. I argue that cows are too much trouble and too dangerous for their value, PLUS they take up too much acreage.  It's a no-win situation.

And that takes us to this morning. As usual, I have too much to do and not enough time to do it in. He is at work and I'm juggling the farm chores by myself. The morning went like this:

Wake up when large blue toy is dropped on my head. Good morning, Dillon. Bring Cowboy and Trace inside house. Let Lily and Dillon outside. Make sure that Cowboy and Trace are in kennels. Let Ranger out of his kennel and we snuggle for a few minutes so he can feel special. Remember that I have to go to work early today. Exchange Dillon for Ranger. Take a shower. Make coffee. Stumble out to greet the day.

Put Ranger in outside kennel. Put Dillon in outside kennel beside Ranger. Put horses in stalls. Note that 5 calves and Stupid Paisley Cow are loose in neighbor's pasture. Feed horses. Feed sheep and goats. Let dairy goats out to eat and baby goats play. Load Lily in mule with cow feed. Drive out to back pasture. Hot wire is down. Hot wire is in pieces coiled on the ground. Cuss cows. Cuss hotwire. Cuss Other Half for not selling Paisley. Cuss Paisley.

Feed other cows. Five calves return. Paisley cannot figure out how to get through fence. Slick wire with no hotwire on it. Paisley is not a mental giant. Cuss her some more.  Walk out there and try to get her in. She is uncooperative.  Cuss Paisley. Water horses. Checks goats and babies. Call Other Half while water trough is filling. Cuss Paisley some more.

Other Half gives advice:

"Get a sack of cubes."     (Done that.)

"Get a bucket and walk her to the walk-through gate." (Walk through gate has field fencing tacked on top of it by the neighbor. It is no longer a gate.)

"Get Cowboy and run her back through the fence." (The only way to get Cowboy to her is to run Cowboy through ALL the other cows with babies and then down to where Paisley is and THEN walk him back through those angry mommas and babies. Too dangerous for Cowboy. Don't even consider using my precious Lily.)

Walk out there again. She is just as uncooperative. Refuse to use dog. By now the rest of cows have finished eating and are curious. Cuss Paisley. Cuss cows in general. Other Half gives more advice:

"Leave the bitch where she's at. Deal with it later." (Works for me. I can't be late for work today.)

I remind him again how much trouble cattle are. He is not in the mood to listen. Fine. I'm not in the mood to have the same argument. Realize I'm running out of time. No more time for cattle. Put Lily back in yard. Clean dairy goat yard. Give them water. Give them alfalfa. Put goats back up. Water sheep. Go back to pasture to turn off horse trough that I left running.

Turn horses out. No time to snuggle baby goats. Stuff them back in pen. Go to dog kennels. Start to water Ranger. Note that he has watered himself. He has grabbed the end of the hose which was sticking into his kennel. Blue Devil has dragged hose into his kennel about six feet and then chewed it so that now it is a sprinkler hose.  Cuss Blue Dog. Leave him there. Get Dillon and Lily and go water garden in front yard. Enjoy a moment in the garden. 

Let Lily and Dillon play in the water hose. Ranger hears this and barks from behind the house. Remind him that he already had his "play with the water hose time."

Other Half calls back and I have to admit that I left the water hose where the dog could chew it up. He is gracious about it.  He does not cuss my blue dog like I cuss his red cow. At least one of us is an adult today. (The key to a good relationship is that only one person can be a child at a time. . . )

Now the outside chores are done and I must get ready for work. He must get back to work. And maybe, just maybe, when I come home Paisley's dumb ass will be back in the pasture. Or maybe the rest of the cows will be with her in the neighbor's field. I really don't like cattle today. . .

Nothing quite reminds you to live in the moment like spending time with animals, and no one does it better than baby animals. Each new experience is a novel adventure and watching them waddle through life forces me to slow down and appreciate the world around me too.

Take a lesson from this kid. Breathe in life. Each breath is a new adventure.

I had to share these pictures with you! The new babies haven't been introduced to the flock yet. When they were born one of the yearling lambs was already smushing the brown one before Other Half discovered the new arrivals. So all interaction is through the bars for a while. During the daytime I let the whole flock into the yard and lock the babies in a dog run for "day care."  Their mom comes in from time to time for "snack time" and after that they sack out in the dogloo.

Briar has been parking herself either outside the door of the dog run or inside the adjacent kennel so she can keep an eye on the little ones. They are as curious about Briar as she is about them.

I got so tickled today when I was in the pen with them and I heard someone calling my goats/sheep on the highway.  I heard a human say, "Baaaaa...."  and the goats answered.

And so did Briar.  That big dog can move fast.  Apparently two bicyclists had decided to talk to the sheep along their route. Briar raced out there and barked,

"MOVE ALONG!!!  Nothing to see here!  Move along!"

And the cyclists rolled away. Briar returned to the baby goats to touch noses. Yep. They're still okay. No one stole them while her back was turned.  Silly ol' dawg.

Correction!  One baby girl.

One baby boy.

     Once the sun came up we took a better look at everyone's anatomy and adjusted the farm log book accordingly. Both are healthy and happy. Crimson is taking great care of them. The white one is most definitely a loudmouth diva. 

I had toyed with the idea of naming them Liza Minelli and Aretha Franklin. (my favorite divas from the Snickers commercial!) but fortunately we discovered that Aretha was really a boy before the name stuck. And then we discovered that my sister's old reliable horse died yesterday just about when the babies were born, thus we named the white girl, "Bailey", to honor Danna's horse. Someone has already tentatively spoken for the little boy so I'll let her name him.

I LOVE baby goats. I love crawling around in the stall trying to take pictures of uncooperative babies and mammas who keep mugging the camera. Here is a smattering of our morning: