Farm Fresh Blog

My first clue that something was amiss was when everyone else filed in and Mariannie stood behind the hay barn staring at me. The Border Collie did a loop to pick her up but the large gray ewe tilted those impressive horns in the dog's direction and stamped a foot. Alrightie then. Houston, we have a problem.

There was clearly a reason why she felt she couldn't come into the barn with everyone else. I walked over there, half-expecting her to be snake-bit, but what I found surprised me even more. Mariannie was in labor.

Whoa.

I don't have a ram. My mind quickly reeled back to when I purchased this batch of sheep - November 20. Nope. She didn't come already bred. That's a shame, because if that had been the case at least the lamb might be a Navajo Churro or half Jacob. But since the gestation period on a sheep is 5 months, there could be only two suspects:

Cash - young Dorper ram who sired this year's crop of Dorper lambs. I had taken great care not to expose Cash to the Navajo Churro ewes because who wants a cross between a sheep known for its high quality wool and a sheep known to shed its wool?

Although I had no recollection of Cash getting loose with the churro, it's possible. Anything is possible if you have a ram.

The other possibility was more of a Jurassic Park adventure - Hermionie, the hermaphrodite ewe.

Yes, she/he has boy parts and girl parts.  Hermionie has a vagina, but she/he also has an easily visible scrotum that appears to be empty. I've been told by vets that Hermionie may have testicles in her abdomen. Alrightie then. Does she have a penis? As I stared at Mariannie lying in the sand behind the hay barn, I couldn't remember if we checked to see if Hermionie had a working penis because she/he clearly urinated from the other end.

Yes Folks, this is the kind of crap that you deal with if you have a farm. Life is beautiful. Life is cruel. Life is exciting. Life is a lot of things, but life is never boring.

So there you have it. Mariannie was clearly having someone's baby. We ushered everyone inside and moved the Livestock Guardian Dogs outside. Since things like this cannot be kept to yourself, I grouptexted my local churro sheep tribe. (If you didn't get a text don't feel offended, I hate group texts myself and try to limit their use. I only texted the folk who would have beaten me over the head with the phone had they not been real-time involved in this adventure.)  Anyway, a lambing stall was prepared, a ewe in labor was in it, and now all we had to do was wait. And wonder. Who was the daddy?

It was decided that since the black-headed Dorper trait is so dominant that if Cash was the father, some combination of that would probably show up. When considering the possibility of Hermionie as the sire there was much talk of the Jurassic Park Jeff Goldblum quote,

"Life will find a way."

Up until I discovered that Mariannie was pregnant it was my understanding that Hermionie 'identified' as a ewe and used the Ewe Bathroom. If Hermionie was the 'baby daddy' that would seriously complicate things because although I have nothing against them, and in fact, I really like Hermionie and want to keep her/him, I'm not in the business of breeding hermaphrodite sheep. If Hermionie was the father then I could no longer keep him/her with ewes, nor could I sell him to someone with ewes. Or even with a ram, because for sure she/he has working girl parts. I'm not sure if she/he can get pregnant but it isn't a chance I want to take.

And as my 'tribe' pointed out on group text, what if Mariannie wasn't the only ewe pregnant? Gotta love friends who will point out the worst possible scenario in the middle of a crisis. I decided to cross that bridge when I came to it. You can only handle one situation at a time, and the crisis at the moment was prayers for a healthy birth. I didn't care who the daddy was as long as Mariannie and the baby/babies were okay.

Three and a half hours after I first noticed her in labor, Mariannie delivered a vigorous baby girl. As a nod to our "who's ya daddy" mystery, I named her Jerri Springer.

(For those of you who live a full life and have no clue who he is, Jerry Springer is a television host of a somewhat sleazy talk show that often deals with "who's the daddy' paternity tests.)

Jerri is solid black. This gave no clues as to who was her daddy. There was only one thing left to do. Just minutes before midnight, Other Half and I stood in the barn and argued about it. I won, so we awoke and sexually assaulted poor Hermionie to determine if she/he actually had an external penis. I can now report -

drum roll please . . .

 . . . that she/he does not.

Therefor it is physically impossible for Hermionie to be Mariannie's baby daddy!

Which leaves the equally undesirable option that little Jerri is a Navajo Churro/Dorper cross. Oh joy joy.

Oh well. Jerri is healthy, Hermionie is healthy, and Cash now lives on another farm miles down the road so there will be no encore performance. Cash had a soft plushy coat so there is no telling how Jerri will end up. I need another pet sheep like I need another hole in the head, but I also believe that God doesn't make mistakes. Somehow Jerri ended up with us and so be it. She's a cute little thing.

Hopefully Hermionie will soon forgive us for the midnight home invasion and assault.

I looked into his eyes and stepped back into another world, into another person long since forgotten. A lifetime ago, before I went into police work, and then retired to ranching full time, I was a sixth grade Science teacher. For ten years I taught children about life before finally deciding the public education system wasn't for me. I loved the kids, and I loved teaching.

What I didn't like was the direction public education was headed. I still firmly believe that standardized testing and teaching a curriculum aimed at merely passing tests is a mistake. This does not lead to a well-rounded education. The education system is losing too many talented teachers and students each year as it doggedly marches down this path. In the mean time, those left are doing the best they can while their hands are tied by an out of touch system. Like tired swimmers they dog paddle along, trying to keep afloat while more and more responsibility is heaped upon the tiny raft they cling to. And bless their hearts, they keep on swimming.

It's been such a long time since I've been in the classroom that I'd almost forgotten the best part of teaching, the simple joy of watching a spark of interest ignite in a child's eyes. Away from the standardized tests, and the lesson plans, and the endless series of time segments marked by the ringing of bells and the scuffling of feet and backpacks, the essence of teaching is about lighting fires. In this age of information, where the world is only a tap on the smart phone away, true learning is still no different now than it was forty years ago. An education is not simply a regurgitation of facts, it's an accumulation of life experiences, an awakening of interests, a love of learning, and the knowledge of where to go to find out more. Knowledge is power. The art of bubbling in answers on a scan sheet is not knowledge. It's a skill.

It rained so much this week that I didn't bring the sheep to Pioneer Days. When my husband impulsively volunteered me to demonstrate spinning raw wool into yarn, I wasn't too keen on it. The idea of participating in Pioneer Days may have been fun if I'd had period clothing and the time to prepare, but this was pretty short notice. All I had was muddy sheep, some leather snake boots, an oversized cowboy shirt, and a black belt I made myself from Navajo Churro wool. I also had raw wool in various states of preparation, and my trusty Kromski Sonata spinning wheel. And a distant memory.

I remembered what it was like to awaken a spark of interest. I remembered what it was like to blow on that spark to make a flame. And I remembered when to let go, to let that flame take off on its own. And it did.

Children still tickle me. None of them woke up that morning with any interest whatsoever in wool or spinning yarn, and frankly my goal wasn't to teach them to be expert spinners, it was to awaken an interest in a dying craft. It was to give them something they can't find on The History Channel, a real tactile experience. Touch it. Smell it. Feel the life of the sheep in your hands.

I could have provided a history lesson on spinning. I could have tossed out the neat little factoids that interest me so much. For instance, did you know where the term "spinster" came from?

In Colonial America spinning was serious stuff. Wool was big business in England and the Colonies. Massachusetts even passed a law requiring each family to spin a pound of yarn a week for thirty weeks. They were charged money for every pound the family fell short. Because of this many families brought in unmarried relatives or friends to help spin wool. This is where we got the term "spinster.

But I digress. Kids don't care about taxes. Kids want to touch things. They want to hear that spinning yarn is a skill they can master, like dribbling a basketball. They want to pick things up, and smell them, and feel the grease on their fingers. They want to sit on the stool, touch the magic fiber, peddle the treadles, and watch the wheel turn that fluff in their fingers to yarn. And they want to take that yarn home. The yarn will stay in their pocket for the day. It'll be dangled in the faces of family members, and in time, it'll be thrown away, or stuffed in the back of a drawer. Maybe, if it's lucky, it'll be tucked in a cherished place with other childhood treasures. The important thing isn't the yarn, it's the spark of interest in the child.

And they were interested. In no time they gathered to spin. The kids took to spinning faster than the adults. There was a line of children waiting for their turn at the wheel. My little Sonata wheel was very forgiving of their efforts. The wool liked the children and in most cases twisted itself into yarn with little or no trouble. As soon as the child on the stool had mastered spinning enough to produce a decent amount of yarn, they yielded their seat and taught the child behind them. Not only was this non-threatening to the next child in line, but it was empowering to the child teaching the new skill. They now shared some ownership. And what we own becomes more important to us. Nothing was stolen. Nothing was broken. The kids were very careful with the wheel. They left with a piece of yarn, some memories, and a fragment of a skill almost lost.

And I was richer for the experience too. Some reenactors from another booth came over and asked if I'd do a spinning demonstration at their event next Fall. I agreed, but with some reservations. My wheel is not a period wheel, and I don't have a period outfit, but we can probably work around that. We'll see. On a farm it's easy to shut yourself off, to fall into the routine of caring for animals and thanking God for the sunrise each morning. It's easy to enjoy our blessings and forget that we need to give back to others. This experience reminded me to share those blessings, and to reach out and touch the next generation. The things and skills that are important to us, these things we don't want lost, can only be saved if we share them with others, if we awaken a passion in someone else.

Charles Darwin didn't have to travel to the Galapagos Islands to find enough data for "On the Origin of Species," he could have just spent more time on a ranch to see natural selection at work. The strongest, smartest, fastest, and luckiest survive to reproduce their genes, and make no mistake, luck tends to favor the smartest.

Mother Nature is cruel, and the innocent pay for the mistakes of their parents. As humans, we are forever interfering with nature, but doing so brings its own responsibility. If you're gonna play with Mother Nature, be ready to accept the consequences to upsetting natural selection. If you feel so sorry for the barn swallows who built a nest in the tongue of the horse trailer where the cats and dogs could get the babies that you build a safety pen of panels around that area, and refuse to use the horse trailer until the babies fly away, and pen up most of the cats, then be prepared for the fact that you will either continue to breed stupid birds or you'll get your heart broken when a cat gets the birds anyway.

And while playing God and rescuing wild animals from their poor choices or the poor choices of their parents doesn't necessarily cost anything more than heartache, the choice of whether or not to interfere with natural selection when it comes to livestock hits you straight in the wallet.

It really depends upon the livestock you raise. If you choose to raise dairy goats, kiss any kind of ranching in harmony with natural selection goodbye. These animals are so high maintenance that you must intervene. As farmers we have selected for animals with high milk production, not their ability to survive on their own.  Accept it, or don't raise dairy goats.

With sheep and cattle it's a different story. We try to choose breeds with excellent mothering skills, and select individuals within those breeds who are good mothers. The terrain, climate and predator load in some places can enable the mothers, hiding their poor choices. Other places are less forgiving. On our ranch there are very few chances. If the humans are not there to catch the mistake quickly, natural selection swings a hard hammer fast. Calves who stray too far away from the herd can find themselves on the menu at someone else's party. And as poor IB1 apparently found out the hard way, if you choose to give birth right beside the creek, your baby can wobble over the edge and be swept away.

The idea of an innocent calf drowning is heartbreaking. The monetary loss is significant too. And this is where as ranchers, we dance that delicate waltz with Natural Selection. We can choose to harden our hearts, throw the cattle out there, and let the mothers and calves suffer their own poor choices. This insures the strongest, the brightest, and the luckiest survive to reproduce. This can also be very expensive.

On Memorial Day $700-$1000 floated downstream. It appears that IB1 had a successful birthing approximately 3-6 feet from the edge of the creek. We found the afterbirth there too. There was no evidence of predators, just the easy roll of the water and the mournful bellows of a cow calling her calf.

On the other hand we could choose to micromanage the livestock and lock them up until the calves are big enough to handle the predators.  This is also very expensive because you have to haul a lot of feed to them and they still will not have the bloom that pastured cattle have.

And here is where we dance. Because we bred some of the cows to a large-boned Charolais bull and there was the possibility that we would have to assist birthing, we kept those girls penned until their babies were successfully on the ground and very mobile. We hauled gobs of feed to them, and yet still watched the mothers drop weight. The calves got fatter and fatter and the mothers got skinnier and skinnier. It just didn't make sense to continue to haul money in feed when the cattle are surrounded by pastures with tall grass, so as soon those Charolais-bred cows had calves, we turned the entire herd loose. On knee-deep grass the calves got fatter and their mothers started gaining weight again, but every day we drove out there and counted calves. And every day we checked expectant mothers. Because one of those cows was a first timer, this past week we drove out twice a day to check IB1.

There are limits to what we can do though. IB1 had at least 350 acres to have her baby. Most of this was a safe variety of heavily wooded, partially wooded, and open pasture. Instead, she chose to give birth in a heavily wooded area 3-6 feet from the edge of a 15 foot drop-off into rolling water. Seriously?!! What the heck??!!!

That's called Natural Selection.

I hate it. More than the loss of the money, I hate the thought of that innocent baby drowning. I hate listening to IB1 call for her lost calf.

And so we go back to the Natural Selection Waltz. How much do we intervene in their lives? Some decisions are obviously our responsibility. If we choose to breed to a big bull, then it makes sense that we have to help with calving. But after that danger has passed, how much micromanaging do we do? We are running a cow/calf operation in an area that has a very forgiving climate, but unforgiving predators and an unforgiving creek. If the cattle are loose on the ranch, it is physically impossible to micromanage their lives. They have everything they need to survive and thrive here. But they, and we, have to live with their poor choices regarding the predators and the creek.

IB1 will breed back in a month or so. If she loses her calf next year then she'll be sold with that calf crop because she needs to be on a ranch that isn't as wild as ours. Maybe she has learned something. I don't know how much cows think about these things. IB1 had an excellent mother herself, so hopefully it was just a novice mistake on her part. From the sound of her calls she clearly didn't just abandon her calf. I feel bad for IB1, but I feel worse for the calf who was an innocent victim of the Natural Selection Waltz.

I almost shot him. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the room full of people around us. It started innocently enough a couple of weeks earlier when the pastor asked if I would bring some sheep to a reenactment of Jerusalem Marketplace this summer.

Ahhhhhh..... yeah ... sure. (Make mental note to select some candidates and tame them up.)

Behold the power of Purina NickerMakers! This little horse treat has tamed more than a few wild sheep, and didn't fail me.

Within a week I had the three Jacob Sheep tamed to the point where they have become annoying beggars.

"You got any NickerMakers???"

We had recently sheared these sheep and I've had a blast spinning their wool into yarn. They had surprisingly lovely fleeces. Hopefully by July their wool will have grown out enough to look decent again. At the moment they look kind of naked, but that's okay because they just have to be sheep in a marketplace. Nothing fancy. I'm actually kind of looking forward to it. Flash forward to the Crime Watch meeting.

The meeting went well. Other Half had just given a presentation and it was time for new announcements. A lady stood up and reminded everyone of the local Pioneer Days  event that was coming up which showcases skills from the 1800s. At this point, my husband, God bless him, stood up, pointed at me, and said,

"My wife shears her own sheep and spins the wool into yarn, just like in the 1800s!"

Yes, he did. I almost shot him.

Oh. My. Gosh.

In no time I found myself volunteered to do an all day demonstration of a skill I just learned myself. Okay, yes, I can turn raw wool into yarn, but suddenly being thrust into the spotlight was unnerving.

The school teacher inside me slowly warmed to the idea when I realized that I could bring the Jacobs to give people a short course in "sheep to yarn." (Little know fact: Before I went into police work, I taught sixth grade Science for 10 years!)

No sooner had I finally welcomed the idea when my sheep were invited to do another farm event in July, so that's three events in two months. Now might be a good time to train the sheep to walk on leash. I've decided to embrace the idea of doing demonstrations. The key to our future as a society lies in the education of our children, and maybe my sheep can teach children that clothes don't just grow on hangers in The Gap, and maybe, just maybe, I can awaken a spark of interest in the heart of a child. And that spark may ignite to become something bigger. All it takes is one.

Most farms have a few oddities, things that stand out as just not quite like everything else. Last fall Other Half added a couple of Longhorn calves just because he likes seeing them. They definitely stand out as odd in a pasture of beef cattle, but I see his point. I like watching them too. And the red one is very photogenic.

With my goatherd of Nubians, I have these little precious oddities: Natty & Liam

Natty came to us as a foundling who needed a home with other goats. She was like an unplanned pregnancy. We didn't expect her, but now we can't imagine life without this little ray of sunshine.

On the other hand, Liam is not a warm and fuzzy ray of sunshine. Liam is more like a loud blast of happy music that jars you out of your comfort zone but leaves you laughing and tapping your foot as you begin to dance to this slightly different little drummer.

Yes, he really is as soft as he looks.

From the first moment I touched Pygora fiber in a yarn store, I wanted to add a Pygora goat to my fiber flock. Liam is that goat. A Pygora goat is, in essence, a cross containing a specific percentage of both Angora and Pygmy goats.  It is its own breed now.

I've had a lot of goats, but Liam is definitely marching to a different drummer. He combines the clownlike personality of a Pygmy goat with the charming annoyance of a bottle baby imprinted on humans. Natty was a bottle baby, but she wasn't imprinted on humans. Natty knows she's a goat. Liam doesn't. Liam is not a goat. Liam is a Liam. He's loud. He's demanding. He's naughty. And yet he's the most adorable little rascal to ever attempt a dictatorship.

Liam destroyed the screen door into the kitchen. He has bonded with Other Half and so the moment Liam hears his voice, he races to the screen door and starts to scream and bang on the door. The screen has since been replaced with hardware cloth and we make a point of ignoring him when he bangs at the door. Ignore him? No worries. Liam has no lack of self-esteem and has a very high opinion of himself. He can entertain himself. You may not like how he does it though.

Liam climbs on the mule, and pees in the seat.

He climbs on the welding machine.

He climbs on the tool table. If you leave the tailgate down, he will be in the bed of the pickup truck, and from there, it's just a skip and a hop to the top of the truck. Yes, I've found little hoofprints in the dust up there.

Liam gets into trouble the other goats never considered. He climbs things for the challenge of reaching new heights. He flings himself with wild abandon in his quest to reach new heights. One morning I watched him repeatedly run up the front of the mule, across the hood, and up the windshield before falling back to the ground. Over and over and over again. He was like a teenager at a skateboard park. And like the mother of a teenaged boy, I am constantly worried about him ending up in the ER. Liam gave us quite a scare one night when he appeared to have knocked himself out from leaping into the corral bars. We didn't see him do it, I just found him lying in his pen. He was groggy and very un-Liam-like. We whisked him into the house for observation while I considered whether or not I should take him to the ER. Fortunately he was just dazed and given a little time he was back to being Evel Knievel again.

Natty is his constant companion.

They fit together like Peanut Butter & Jelly. As if from the Island of Misfit Toys, these two have found each other and are best friends. Natty is no longer exhiled while the other babies snuggle in one giant Nubian pile. Now she and Liam form their own snuggle pile.

Natty is Liam's liason to the other goats. The Nubians don't really understand Liam. Natty may not understand his special brand of genius either, but she likes him and makes a point of keeping up with him.

They are George and Gracie. (If you're under 50, Google it.) Natty is the Leonard to Liam's Sheldon. (If you're over 50, Google it.) Whatever else they are, Liam and Natty are family.

You know you live in a ranching community when you go to church and someone says,

"The water tanks are full, the grass is green, and the cattle are fat. Thank you, Lord."

This has been an unusually wet year. Our ponds are overflowing and the cattle are standing in grass up to their bellies. Anyone with livestock will tell you that few things make you feel more secure than the sight of a barn full of hay and pastures full of grass.

Paper money is an abstract form of wealth, and depending upon world events sometimes it's no better than Monopoly money. 
My Edward Jones guy may argue against this point, but for us, good pastures provide a better sense of security than the stock market. I'd rather have fat cattle and good pasture than stocks and bonds. It's something I can see and understand. A dear friend of mine, also a rancher, points out that every calf that hits the ground is like a walking CD. Yes, the cattle market goes up and down too, but when the cattle market tanks, I can still eat my cows. They are tangible objects that don't disappear like figures on a computer. When the stock market crashes, I have nothing to show for the money that has disappeared with a blip on a screen.

This kind of wealth is also not so complicated that we forget where it really comes from. Farmers and ranchers are tied to the land, and more often than not, they are quick to give thanks to God. I once read somewhere that the more intelligent someone was, the less likely he was to believe in God. The implication of the article was that only simple people believed in a higher power. Anyone who was smart enough to question things knew better than to buy the whole God-package. I would imagine that the person who wrote the article would also argue that intelligent people were smart enough to find air-conditioned desk jobs too.

And ironically, he would probably make this argument over a steak dinner.

My experience has been that people with full bellies and full bank accounts tend to be a bit more liberal in their beliefs when hard work isn't involved. Success can foster arrogance, and it seems that the further we get away from our dependence upon the land, the more we get out of step with God.  Maybe it's as simple as the office.

Perhaps if you live and work in a place like this it's easier to say, "Look what man has created. There is no God."

On the other hand, this could be your office, and each morning you could arise and say, "Look what God has created."

It really may be as simple as office space. If you are surrounded by the accomplishments of man, you have to search a little harder for God amidst the chaos, for God does not shout, He whispers. In some places, it's just easier to hear Him.

Retired K9 Officer Aja lost her battle with cancer today. We shall always be thankful that Aja was a part of our lives. As befitting an officer, Aja was wrapped in a flag and buried under the pecan tree in the pasture that faces the mountain. Her happy, goofy face will now brighten Heaven. Here's a salute to K9 Officer Aja.

We tap dance with the predators around here. Just before dusk each night the coyotes gather up and sing. Although four coyotes can sound like forty, I'm still pretty sure we have a double digit coyote pack around here. It's tempting to actively hunt them but to do so would simply open the niche for a less stable pack to move in, so we opt to manage our livestock instead.

We have Livestock Guardian Dogs for the sheep and goats, and if they are grazing in pastures away from the barnyard, we escort them with Border Collies and return them home when their bellies are full. Micromanaging the small livestock is easier than cattle. One would think the cows can take care of themselves, but baby calves are vulnerable. For this reason, we kept the first time mothers close to the house until their babies were big enough to discourage an attack. We do have tiny babies now, but their mothers are veterans who will kill a dog in an instant, so we assume coyotes would fare the same. 

It's hard to keep weight on nursing mothers that are penned, so last week we turned them loose. Naturally we had a baby born in the forest, but she was born to Daisie Mae, a battle ax of a cow who thinks nothing of tossing dogs or humans. (Homegirl needs to head to the auction barn as soon as her baby is weaned.) 

We still check these cows daily to make sure all the calves are still alive and take note of any cows getting ready to have babies. Trace comes with us because, like a Trunk Monkey, you never know when you'll need a Border Collie. I'm sure there are better trained and fancier working cow dogs out there, but Trace does a fine job and doesn't have the bravado that would get him killed, so he's #1 CowDog when working pairs. This is because Trace has enough sense not to take the fight to the cows. 

With cow/calf pairs that attitude can get you killed. Lily has a no-nonsense approach that is best used in other situations. Trace's stare/retreat/regroup/"I'm still here" approach tends to work better with pairs. He gets the job done without upsetting cows or getting killed. Sometimes retreat is the better part of valor, or as Shakespeare's Falstaff says when he defends a seemingly cowardly act of playing dead to stay alive, 

"The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life." 

In other words, doing what you have to do to live another day is a part of valor.

Trace lives by that code. Here he is with Daisie Mae, the Battle-Axe-Bitch-Cow. Trace walks out with Other Half.

The cows notice him in the tall grass and decide he is a predator that must be stomped.

Retreat. Regroup. Reconsider.

Daisie Mae decides that it's easier to just take her calf and move. It isn't showy, but the cow moves and everyone is still alive. 

 Although Lily would call this cowardice, she has been kicked and run over many more times than Trace, so when you hang your hat up at the end of the day, if the job got done and nobody ended up at the vet or in the ground, I guess it's all good. 

A dear friend of mine once described me as being afflicted with "catastrophic expectations," where your mind races towards the worst possible conclusion to even the slightest bump in the road. She recognized the disease because she suffers from it too.  If someone is more than a few minutes late, we immediately assume they're dead in a ditch somewhere and begin making funeral plans in our heads. As you can imagine, a career as a crime scene investigator did nothing to dull my sense of catastrophic expectations, and neither does living on a farm.

It works like this:

If you have a favorite goat, that's the one who will die. If a particularly beautiful baby goat or lamb is born, that's the one who will die. If a calf is missing, the coyotes got it. That lump in the yard is a dead chicken. The bushes the Labrador just stuck his head inside will contain a copperhead. It happens often enough that things like that are always in the back of your mind.

If you have enough animals, someone is always in crisis, on the verge of crisis, or recovering from a crisis. Sometimes just right out of the blue, tragedy hits you. If you have sheep and goats, you are always worried about worms, coccidiosis, accidents, and predators. I just got coccidiosis cleared up in a wether who wouldn't maintain weight. He's starting to bloom. Now I have to worry about occasional diarrhea in one or both of the bottle baby goats. Is it the formula? Is it the spring grass? Is it the fact that they are now eating alfalfa and pelleted food too? They aren't sick, just runny every few days, so we just keep playing with variables.

Aja, the retired patrol dog, appears to have Inflamed Bowel Syndrome, which is in essence, a wasting away disease where her bowel is rejecting food. This is apparently common in some lines of German Shepherds. It can be somewhat controlled with the use of anitibiotics and steroids, but the longterm use of drugs brings its own problems, and they don't always work. Thus we find ourselves juggling her diet. Commercial dog food just doesn't cut it now. She does best on raw food, including raw meat, cooked meat, and cooked eggs. She looks like a prisoner of war now, but she is happy and so we continue to juggle her diet to find things her stomach will tolerate. I worry about her and don't see a bright future in the horizon, but we take it day by day. If she's eating, I'm happy. If she doesn't, my mind immediately jumps to catastrophic expectations.

This week we had a new calf born to our nasty tempered escape artist cow. This old bitch will kick a dog or toss a human in an instant. I've wanted to get rid of her for the last two years. Other Half has a lot more patience because she is a valuable cow who produces nice calves. She has always produced bull calves. I finally got Other Half to agree to sell her as a pair as soon as she calved this year. Someone else can deal with a cow that tries to kill stockdogs and leads the entire herd off the property.

Naturally Nasty Cow produced a heifer calf this year. Since we probably want to keep that calf, it means we still have to keep the nasty cow until her calf is weaned. When I first saw the calf, much to her mother's distress, she had fixated on Tiny and was trying to keep up with his little band of horses instead of her mother.

I guess one red butt looks just like another one. The horses tolerated this pretty well. Eventually her mother reclaimed her. The next morning the calf was missing. A veteran of "catastrophic expectations" I immediately assumed the calf had been killed by coyotes, or bogged down in the creek during one of her mother's escape attempts, and then killed by coyotes. We did eventually find the calf, but I won't stop worrying about her until she is large enough to fend off predators on her own. This kind of calf is definitely fodder for catastrophic expectations.

The Livestock Guardian Dog puppies are ten months old now and are right at the age where they want to escape their responsibilities and run the forest chasing hogs and deer. This is a dangerous sport. The hogs have little piglets. This week The Boyz disappeared for almost two hours. I was worried sick because I had just seen a herd of pigs near the fence where the goats were grazing. I drove off in search on a 4-Wheeler and ran smack into hogs with piglets. We parted company quickly, but being a veteran of catastrophic expectations, I was then certain both boys were bleeding or dead after a hog attack. Two hours later I found the little bastards playing in a watery bog beside our pasture like drunken frat boys. The entire time I had been worried sick, they had been having a party. I was not amused.

All livestock guardian dogs roam, it's in their DNA. It's why so many end up in rescue. You have to train them through that stage. Some never get out of the stage and you just have to adapt their environment so they can't escape. When Briar was this age she was horrible about climbing fences. Since she didn't leave the property, I really didn't worry about it until the day we saw her climb the fence like a giant white ape to attack the garbage man who fended her off with a trash can. Time for hot wire.  Briar eventually outgrew the stage and now she is a reliable guardian dog. And the Anatolians will be too, but they still have to be monitored through this stage. Thus it's time for tires.

We fitted them with wide Bite Dog collars and chained them to tires that they drag around the yard. It doesn't keep them from moving but it sure does elimate that digging under the fence and have frat parties in the forest. If you don't immediately see them, follow the drag trail of the tire.

Naturally this also feeds my catastrophic expectations because even though we've taken precautions, I still obsess about dogs hanging themselves, thus if the boys can't be loosely monitored, we still will lock them behind bars. It's just not worth giving myself an ulcer.   

If you live on a ranch, you get used to tragedy laced amid the beauty like a rattlesnake hiding in a field of wildflowers. It's just there. You can choose to focus only on the wildflowers, you can choose to focus only on the rattlesnake, or you can wear snake boots and keep on going about your day. I wear snake boots. I don't deny the snake exists, I expect it, plan for it, and work around it.  Some folks call that "catastrophic expectations." I call it planning for reality. If bad things happen, you're prepared. If they don't, you're pleasantly surprised.

I felt the stirring so many years ago when I tended goats browsing scrub brush the first time. It is an awakening inside the soul that reaches as far back as biblical times, people tending goats and sheep as they graze. It is a quiet time, filled only with the sounds of birds, crickets, the snatching of limbs, and the patient grinding of teeth. It is a time of reflection. It's a time to get right with God.

The Bible doesn't mention it, but King David would have had an easier time of things if he'd had a Border Collie when he was tending the flocks. They sure make my life easier. We have a central barnyard where the sheep and goats are loose most of the time, but we also have three leased pastures and our own larger pasture where we can graze animals. The hitch is that with the exception of the barnyard, none of these other pastures is fenced for sheep. All the pastures are wild. Think hundreds and hundreds of surrounding acres filled with heavy brush thick with predators, creepy crawlies, and the occasional steep drop-off into the creek. These acres also contain horses and cows who don't always mix well with small animals.

One cannot simply open the gate and turn sheep loose around here. They may or may not come home, and the zombies will eat anyone outside the barnyard after dark. But that's where all the grass is! Grass up to your knees! Browse so thick that only goats want to be in there! The only answer is to use the dogs. After all, that's what I pay them for. And they pay for themselves.

Mesa turned a year old this winter and she is already invaluable around the ranch. I haven't put a lot of training into her yet, I just use her around the farm, and she is ever so handy. She is quick to figure out what the goal is and make it happen. It's easy to micromanage a dog around the barnyard, but in deep brush, you just have to sit back and let them work. I can't see them most of the time. The rules of the game are simple:

Keep the sheep between the deep forest and the perimeter fence. When asked to gather them up, roll the sheep and goats into a ball, and roll your ball back to the barnyard.

This is peaceful, easy work unless the horses show up. When that happens the humans must snatch up bottle babies, who don't flock well with the herd, while the dogs gather everyone else up quickly and push them through the gate before galloping horses can trample young goats. The dogs and the herd are getting pretty good at these fire drills.

I am most impressed with Mesa. She has excellent distance. She gathers better than Lily, and drives better than Trace. Although we use all three dogs, Mesa seems to do the bulk of the work. Lily stays close to me as I sit on a bucket, and Trace sits on a 4-Wheeler with Other Half. Lily and Trace don't work much unless there is a problem. Mesa takes care of pretty much everything else.

I don't have to watch the sheep thick in the brush. I just watch Mesa. She watches the sheep. I'm fascinated by her commitment to task. She waits until a sheep strays too far,

and then she dispatches herself waaaaay around the animal,

pops up in the forest in front of them, and points them back to the flock. I don't tell her a thing. She has assigned herself this job.

This is the product of countless generations of breeding working dogs. It's not about registration papers. It's not about looks. It's about whether or not the dog can really do the job. I have great appreciation for the saying,

"The bullshit stops when the tailgate drops."

And it does. The proof is in the pudding. Does the dog really work? I watch this tiny little dog thread her way into the forest to return a sheep to the flock without any direction from me and I am thankful to the generations of ranchers who bred these dogs for a job.

I cannot do what I do without the Border Collies. Calling sheep with a bucket of grain isn't gonna cut it when they're standing in grass up to their elbows. The brush is too thick to tend them on horseback. You simply must use the Border Collies. And that is what they live for.

These photos are a perfect illustration of tending the flock. This Jacob wether has strayed past the invisible "no fly" barrier and the dogs have dispatched themselves. Mesa has popped up in the forest in front of him as Lily stalks in like a hired gun. 

No rush. No barking. No teeth. Just a promise. The wether has to make a decision. 

He chose wisely. 

This scene plays out over and over again without drama. The dogs allow us to graze the small livestock in the wilder areas. We can utilize terrain otherwise cut off to us. It isn't field-fenced, and so you still have to sit out there with them. I sit on a bucket and admire the scenery. Other Half sits with Trace and plays on Facebook. He can do that because the dogs work for him. And THAT is why we have Border Collies.