Farm Fresh Blog

Aja has been with us long enough now for us to get a real feel for her true personality. Unlike Oli (medically retired police dog), Aja LOVES being a police dog. She loves everything about it, and truthfully, if this dog wasn't ours, if I saw this coming at me in the dark, I might 'poop ma pants.'

But unlike Retired Police Dog Zena who exhuded a quiet dignity,

Aja is a goofball, a giant puppy with no social skills whatsoever. She has the best of intentions, but Aja makes Dillon look dignified. Like the daughter in ABC's "The Middle", she is a canine version of Sue Heck.

I have to laugh at her. Dillon can only handle limited play time with her because she is so rough. Ranger, ever the tutor, is amazingly patient with her lack of social skills. The rest of the pack look at Aja like she is, well, "Sue Heck." 

Because of this I'm embarking on a project to gracefully mature Aja into "something you can live with."

This involves a lot more play time with Ranger and Dillon and a lot more time loose in the house. Think "bull in a china shop."  

Today I found myself telling her "Drink with your mouth, not with your feet."

I have finally found a way to soothe the wild beast. Today after she'd been careening around the house, bouncing off furniture, playing until Ranger was worn out, and playing until Dillon was worn out, she stood beside me while I folded laundry. I started singing to her and she just stopped and stood there with the sweetest look on her face. I folded an entire load of white clothes while that silly dog sat there listening to me sing to her. It was the high point of our morning.

It has come to my attention that I clearly overlooked someone in the pasture. Apparently the baby goats are not on their own. I've noticed that when photographing them, they tend to hang out with their aunt, Clover. Since she didn't seem to dote on them, I didn't pay it much attention until I saw a most intriguing thing.

     Ice, The Black Wolf, can often be loose with the sheep because she doesn't bother to chase them, but the baby goats have garnered her attention, so I've been locking her up when the sheep are in the yard.  But on this day she was walking with me to get the mail and she happened to look at the babies with just a bit too much interest.

     That's when Clover sprang into action. She rammed that dog so fast neither the dog nor I even saw it coming! The babies peeked out from behind her.

"What she said Dog! What she said!"

"Prayers For Oklahoma . . ."

The goat twins are quite bonded to each other. They are more bonded to each other than they are to their crack head mother. (Who has a habit of just walking off and leaving them alone anyway.) They have learned that when in doubt, you can count on each other, and maybe the lady who doles out sunflower seeds. In a panic, run to Primary Caretaker (or the creepy dog who stares at you) if you can't immediately locate Crack-Head Mother.

Yesterday their bond paid off.

Take 1 old syrup tub bucket + 2 curious goat kids = fun (or disaster)

Around our house the syrup tub buckets are used for everything. They are dog water bowls, tomato planters, doggy jacuzzis, horse feed troughs, sheep feed troughs, and jungle gyms for baby goats.

Because goats and sheep have a habit of climbing in the buckets and pooping in them, I often tilt the buckets against the side of the lean-to or barn to reduce the debris I have to dump out the next morning. This keeps the buckets cleaner.

Enter baby goats. I have several tubs of different sizes just for their climbing amusement. This almost proved fatal yesterday:

Am walking around goat/sheep pen where babies have just been released to play with the rest of the flock. Note with satisfaction that they are careening around comfortably. In preparation to blend babies with flock full time, begin to examine fence for "baby gaps."  Get absorbed in this task until the screams of Baby Brother (who has just been christened "Raisin Bran.") rattle my brain enough to garner my attention. He is hysterical. He is running around hollering his fool head off. I look for his sister. Bailey is nowhere in sight. Hmmmm...

Begin earnest hunt for Bailey. Raisin Bran has climbed on top of a bucket and is screaming at the top of his lungs. I cannot find Bailey either and begin to panic. I cannot hear her answer him. That is BAAAAD!

Raisin Bran climbs off bucket and begins to race around again, searching for his sister. Note that his crack-head mother has not bothered to answer him. Briar is outside the pen so no one comes to his rescue except me, Primary Caretaker.

Then I hear it - the pitiful answer to his screams.  Under the bucket.  I flip the syrup tub to find a very grateful Bailey.  She races off to join her brother,

and all is well in their world again. 

I thank God that I was in the pen when this happened. Had Bailey not been able to get out of the bucket, she would have roasted in the sun. (shudder)

Note to self: Do not prop tubs against buildings. Always listen to the screams of baby goats. Don't forget to thank God for all blessings - large and small. 

Except for Roanie and Ma, I've never really made pets out of the sheep, but that was before the dairy goats. Dairy goats are not goats. They are dogs in little goat bodies. And they're really, really easy to handle. And so, I decided that I need to tame up some sheep. Enter sunflower seeds.

Sheep and goats LOVE sunflower seeds. They are crack for sheep. And look who has gone from a 'touch me not' sheep to a begging crack fiend!

Remember Flower Pot?! She is taming up nicely and hopefully she'll soon be as easy to handle as the dairy goats. Girlfriend DOES love her sunflower seeds! 

And for everyone who has forgotten how this cute lamb got such a stupid name, read: Another
Tale of Two Dogs

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.