December

I never got around to taking pictures of all the baby goats that were born this Fall. Then when they were about 3 weeks - a month old I walked out the door and saw something black out in the back of the neighbors pasture. I walked across the road and all the way out to the back field to discover vultures eating one of the baby goats. My favorite one. He was sooooo sweet and easy going. He would often sleep out in the field while the other goats would come up for hay or water, and I would walk out and bring him up. He would look at me like "What? I had a nice, cozy, warm spot here in the grass." I couldn't tell anything from his body what had happened. The head had been eaten and the neck was gone, but the body hadn't been touched. I would have thought that a coyote or fox would have gotten him from the back end leaving teeth marks, and would have eaten him. I talked to my mom about the vultures. Could they have killed him? She said they only eat dead animals. Well what are they supposed to eat when nothing dies? They still have to eat. We were thinking that maybe there had been something wrong with him and we just took him for a really relaxed goat. Maybe he just died out in the field and the vultures were cleaning him up. 

I think it was two days later that I looked out at the goats in the morning when I took the dogs out and I could see Daisy's twins nursing on her. I went in and took a shower. Then my mom told me she could only see 3 baby goats across the road. There should be 5! Again I walked out to the back of the field to find vultures eating Daisy's daughter. I had just seen her earlier. One of the other goat kids was missing. I went home and got my mom. We walked all over till we found a leg from the missing goat kid. That's all we found from it. We looked over Daisy's dead daughter. There were marks on the neck leading us to believe that a coyote got her. But if so, why did it leave her body?

So down to three goat kids, we penned all the goats up in the front pasture. They are right by the neighbors house. We haven't lost any since. What ever it was Daisy's son barely escaped it. He was looking rather sad after his sister was killed, so I caught him and looked him over. His thick fur was hiding scabs down his back. When I was working on the fence to lock them in the front, I talked to the guy that raises livestock on the neighbors property next door. He said they had been loosing animals. He thought it was a coyote, but hadn't seen it. His dad actually waited out there at night to try and get it, but never saw anything.  He said it even took a 2 month old goat kid or lamb I can't remember which. 

While writing this post I decided to do a quick google search for "vultures kill baby goat". As it turns out, vultures DO kill baby goats and lambs and whatever small "smallish" animals they can find when there aren't dead animals laying around for them to eat. My mom had let the goats loose a few days ago in the middle of the day, during what we figure is the safest time to do a little grazing. She said that as soon as the goats got out to the back pasture a swarm of crows flew up and acted like they were attacking our goats. Apparently crows will kill baby goats too according to what I read online. So what are we supposed to do? Put a net over the whole field... They have Snooki the cow over there with them and she has always done a super job of keeping them safe up until this point. She had stopped grazing with them, laying around lazy since the grass was dying back. During the Summer my mom had seen someones dog get out there with the goats and Snooki took off after that dog till it escaped to its owner on the safe side of the fence. I guess she was going to stomp it. Hopefully that was a lesson learned by the owner of the dog!

The last 2 litters of bunnies that were born reached 4 weeks old. They were sooo cute. They made a little tunnel between their pens (they were in neighboring pens). They would run back and forth playing and climbing on each others mothers and aunty. Then the stupid rats came back and got 2 bunnies in their hole. It was too small for their mothers to get into, so I think that's how the rats were able to get the babies without being attacked by the mothers. It of course had to kill our only chocolate bunny. So all the holes are closed off now. We have since had several litters of kits born. 5 live litters actually. That are doing quite well. One of my does I was waiting to have her first litter and I was soooo excited waiting in anticipation for how many she would have. She is my biggest doe. The day came and she had one great big kit. I was out there when she had it. Unfortunately it was dead. 4-5 days later I went out to check everyone in the morning and there laying in the front of her pen was a giant, kinda-furry, chewed up dead kit. She's doing perfectly fine. I don't know how that came out of her. She needs to be rebred. Hopefully things will go better for her the next time around, and she will have a normal size litter. Another doe I named Sparrow had 9 kits! She is one of the smallest does. I couldn't believe it when I started counting her babies and I kept pulling more and more babies out of the nest as I counted. She is an excellent mother, but just didn't have enough milk for all those kits. So it was Dottie to the rescue! Sweet Dottie. It was her first time having babies and she had 3 toads (What you've never heard of a rabbit giving birth to toads before?). After the 2 smallest of Sparrows litter started shriveling up I tried catching Dottie to try nursing them on her. She ran into her nest when I tried catching her, so I just gently tossed the kits in underneath her (her nest is in the back of a dog house). All the babies nursed, and when she came out I checked them and they had nice round bellies. There is a major size difference and color difference between her own children and the fosters, but Dottie doesn't care. She's as good as gold.
Our total of kits in the nest right now is 30 from 5 does.

I butchered 5 more rabbits (all bucks).

I had watched a couple video's on Youtube from the Salatins farm demonstrating rabbit butchering, and it was extremely helpful. Saved me a lot of time. I set up a pan of warm water to rinse my hands and knife off in while working, with a couple old towels next to it. Set my knives next to that with the pruners to clip off feet. I did all the butchering, but when I finished each one, I brought it in for my mom to rinse and cut up and bag, since I had a limited amount of daylight. I started at noon and was done at 5 P.M. The last one I did in 30 minutes. After I butchered each rabbit I would dump my pan of water to the avocado tree and refill it with more warm water, before starting on the next. Not only did this help keep my hand clean, but also warm, since the weather was cold. When I came in my mom said "They are so much easier to cut up than chickens!" I said "Yah, and their gut don't stink anything near as bad as poultry!." As far as butchering goes I think we are pretty well sold on rabbits. Now we need to eat them. We have 6 waiting in the freezer, but my dad is freaked out at the thought of eating a cute bunny. He pulls up weeds from around the yard to feed to the rabbits all the time, and lets it be known that they are to cute to eat. But he did come home from work recently with a web address for a rabbit recipe he heard on the radio. He gave me a paper with the address to look it up. He wrote that it was for "blazed rabbit in tears" I went to the website and it was for "braised rabbit with pears" . Oh did my mom and I laugh! So we might have to make him some blazed rabbit in tears!

I think the rabbits were 17 weeks when I butchered them. Most people butcher younger, but the way I see it is the bigger you let them grow, the more meat you are getting from each life. Plus the older they are the nicer the pelts. I didn't weigh them before butchering, but I did after. The smallest rabbit weighed about 2 1/2 lbs. The largest was about 3 1/3 lbs., and all the others were right around 3 lbs. So we were happy with the turn out. I let the rabbits eat as much as they want and found that they have a huge amount of fat on them. Especially compared to the pictures of peoples butchered rabbits I have seen online. Although they also had a lot more meat than the size that a lot of people butcher at. There is something called "rabbit starvation". I learned about this before I ever decided to get the rabbits. Its because rabbits tend to be so lean that, if its a persons only source of protein that they can actually starve to death from lack of fat in their diet. This is why it is good to also have pigs, and cook the rabbit with lard. For this reason I decided to leave as much of the fat as possible on each rabbit this time. I know I said in the last post that I removed the fat from that rabbit (I have heard its a little bitter), but that rabbit had an enormous amount on its back. I have since seen that some people actually render the fat from their rabbits. So I guess it depends on each persons taste.
So hopefully next time I post, I'll actually have a couple good rabbit recipes.

Kimberly

Murphy's Law + Snooki

I had it planned out to do a post including seed starting. I took the pictures of some of the seed packets when I got started.

 My friend Tina gave me a whole bag full of these plant tags she made out of old window blinds. They are so much nicer than the ones you buy at the store.

The seeds I got free from WinterSown . I planned to try one of each, and then decide which ones I like the best, and next year separate them for seed.

I got them all planted and marked. I filled three flats with there 4" pots.

Set up my mini greenhouse, and set it in the only place that I thought was safe. "Thought" that's the key word. Last year I was able to set it on the edge of the back porch up, against a shelf, and tie it to the shelf so the wind wouldn't knock it over. But when my Dad fixed the back porch, we moved the shelf. Leaving me with nothing to strap it to. So this time around I set it on the edge of the porch up against the freezer. I thought that the freezer would block the wind from blowing it over. I was wrong! The north wind came up a few days back during the night. When I woke up, I could hear it crashing into the house. I dreaded getting out of bed knowing it could not have withstood these strong gusts, causing the house to creak and pop. 

It knocked it over spilling the tiny newly emerged seedlings out onto the ground. As a began picking plants up and putting them back in there pots, I realized it wasn't as terrible as it could have been. I managed to save about 90 %. Some got spilled together preventing me from being able to identify what tomato plants they are, but at least they survived. My main loss was the herbs I had just planted a couple days before. They will all need to be reseeded, along with all the tomatoes that lost there tags, so I know what I am testing out.

They are all back in the greenhouse, but this time I Gorilla taped it to the freezer. I have learned my lesson.

I'm starting to think this place should be called Murphy's Law Farm.

My parents took a little day trip and picked up her new cow on Sunday.

Before they picked up the cow she said the seller named the cow Snooki!  And I asked if she was going to rename her, since we are not fans of that show. She said "We will wait and see. If the cow knows its name, it will stay." When they backed the trailer in the driveway, I climbed up on the side of the trailer to take a look. I was shocked! She is soooo tiny! And she was Snooki! It is so funny how fitting her name is, and she does know her name.

I think she's as close as we will get to watching Jersey Shore. 

She needs a bit of a fattening. Obviously we know how to do that ; ) But she is supposed to be 16 months old and already bred. My Mom asked if she is a miniature, since she is so tiny, but the guy didn't know. My parents said all his Jerseys were really tiny including the bull she was bred to, so I looked Miniature Jerseys up, and that is what she looks like. I'm glad. I don't want to handle any great big cows anymore, and my Parents aren't getting any younger. Not that any of us are. So she looks like the perfect cow for our family. She isn't used to being handled much, but we aren't having any trouble winning her over with grain, apples, and yesterday she discovered how wonderful it is to have a human brush her.

So that's Snooki.

Kimberly

Rainy Days *Warning Contains Graphic Image*

We finally got some much needed rain. 

This was only the beginning.

I had to break out my Muck Boots. It was the only way I could walk down the pathway to the pasture, without slipping and sliding all over on the clay.

The lambs stayed snug and dry in their pen.

The cats found a nice dry place to cuddle up outside the kitchen door.

My Dad recently brought this chipper home from his parents house. Now we can put it to work making lots of wood chips for the garden. Yay! Bye bye pesky weeds.

One of my Peruvian guinea pigs, Lottie, had her babies. She had two but only one survived birth. A little female. Here she is at a few days old.

*Now we get to the graphic stuff.*

I know everyone wanted a update on my Moms cow Sweet Pea. 

Well, she continued to gain weight even though we tried to keep her on a sparse diet of rye hay. Any little change in diet would cause her to bloat, and always laying on her right side with her rumen sticking up (their rumen is on the left side). Cows or any ruminant animal, cannot burp when they are laying on there side. 

Finding your sweet pet cow laid out with her legs sticking in the air, and her abdomen swollen to twice its normal size is quite a horrible site.  She would gasp for air, with all the gas in her crushing her lungs. My Mom was very careful about feeding her, but she just kept gaining weight causing her belly to hang down lower and lower. 

So it was very sad for my Mom to have to make the decision to have her butchered. But it was either that or she was just going to end up dying one day when we didn't catch her in a fit. I think she has bloated a total of five times, and that's five times to many. It's not easy getting a cow rolled back over onto its feet! At least if it was a goat a single person could pick it up. This last time we (my Mom and I) tried and tried, and just could not get her up ourselves. So my Mom got the tractor, and I tied her lead rope to the back of it. she pulled, while I pushed, and it pulled her right up. Then I thought "Why didn't we do that before!" 

So the next day was the appointment for her to get butchered and when the guy that does the slaughter showed up, he said that he had never seen a cow like her in all the years he has been butchering. We were a little nervous that there was going to be something like a tumor inside of her, and the butcher was quite sure that there was something bad in there. But to everyone's surprise IT WAS JUST FAT. Tons of fat. Bright yellow, so yellow it was almost orange.

This is just the fat that was on the intestines and rumen. There was lots of chunks of fat that was thrown into another container, but I thought I would spare you the image.

He showed us her reproductive organs and they were completely normal with no problems. Still no explanation as to why she had milk without a calf. And the milk never did dry up. 

It was a sad day, but it ended with quite a surprise. After a tiring day of getting everything cleaned up after the cow was done. I went out that evening to feed the goats, and one of our newer goats (Henna) was out in the shed with a baby toddling around her looking for milk. We were not expecting her to have her baby for about a month! I hurried to feed the goats, so they wouldn't follow us out there. And we rushed out to check the new baby.

Where did those ears come from?! Her Mom is LaMancha. It turns out the previous owners Nubian got her, before she put her in with the LaMancha buck. Surprise, Surprise. She is so tiny, and I mean tiny. 

So we had to play musical animals to get her situated in a nice warm, dry pen. That meant moving the lambs here, so we can move that goat and baby over there, Oh well...... Let me just say we went to bed very tired that night.

Kimberly

Good Dogs

I'm doing a pictureless post this time, because Blogger has been giving me a hard time uploading pictures lately. My last post took me several hours to put together, all because it kept gettting stuck half way through loading pictures.

My Mom came inside yesterday with a giant smile on her face. She said she was out by the pasture, and all the goats were out in the very back eating the the shade of the eucalyptus trees. Then she spotted a coyote in the front of the pasture. She didn't know where Rhett and Scarlett were (most likely asleep under the trees), but they caught wind of the coyote. She said they took off after that coyote, chased it all the way to the back of the pasture till it leaped over the fence. Then they stood at the fence watching the coyote till it cleared several neighbors properties. Thats when she yelled to them "Good Dogs! Good Dogs!" They were quite proud of themselves. This is the first time they have been witnessed in action.

Sweet Pea still has a small udder. No calf, and she has not shown any signs of coming into heat. But at least she is healthy, and hasn't had any more episodes. She is on a rye hay diet, and is starting to loose weight. Thats a good thing.

Emmett never adjusted to being a lone guinea pig. After a month of not hearing a single squeak out of him, and him continuously barricading the door to his box with his food dish we decided it was time to find him a friend. Our local feed store gave my Mom the number for a lady they said is "Thee Guinea Pig Lady". As it turns out, it was the same mother and daughter that she bought Emmett from, AND the people I sold all my rabbit supplies to. What a small world. The daughter is in 4-H and raises, and shows many verieties of guinea pigs (AKA cavies). They were very nice, and showed us many different guinea pigs available that were young enough to be placed with Emmett. Many years back when I first started raising Satin Angora rabbits, I had wanted a Texel guinea pig. I just loved their long curly hair that grows in ringlets. But finding a local Texel cavy breeder is like finding a needle in a hay stack. Their aren't very many people raising guinea pigs period. They had one young Texel male available. He was very sweet, and a pretty orange with white dutch type markings. I bought him and named him Sir Locksley. I also bought a black with white markings female. I named her Flower after the skunk on Bambi. I think they said she is a Silky, I will have to check the pedigrees when they drop them by. She was the only long haired female they had available at the time. She is being housed in a seperate cage for 2 reasons. 1. She is to young to be bred. 2. The two males (boars) will fight over a female (sow) if housed in the same cage. Emmett personality did a 180 the moment I put Sir Locksley in his cage. He is squeaking, and chattering up a storm. I will have to post pictures in my next post.

Our weather has been rather crazy and unpradictable this year. Well I should say the last few year I guess. It seems it just can't make up its mind whether it wants to stay hot or cold. One week we are having a heat wave, and the next it is cold and raining. Last week it was cool and it rained a little, then it got humid and hot, and now we are having another heat wave! Its supposed to get up to 106 today. It's a good thing our air conditioner is working.  It's supposed to get even hotter, and Tuesday is supposed to be 111 degrees, Ugh. Rhett and Scarlett don't seem to mind the heat, its an excuse for them to hang out in the irragation water all day. They certainly love water. I have tried pushing Rhett into the water a couple times (just playing around of course), and he responds by trotting around behind me and trying to push me in! He doesn't succeed, but he does get my pants soaked. They sure are smart dogs.

Oh, I almost forgot. Several blogs have been saying that Google Friend Connect is going to disappear. I tried searching Google for this information, because I had not received any notice. I could find no information from Google that this is going to happen. I did find many blog posts from the past several years with rumors saying that this was going to happen numerous times. I am hoping that this is just that, Only a rumor. Because if so, I will loose all the blogs I am following. I am going to write down all the blogs I follow just in case. I have been working on creating a Website and Blog Links Page for my blog, so I can move over all the blogs I follow from the side of my blog page, and get things straightened up a bit. But that has been easier said than done. I thought I could just transfer the Blogs I Follow widget thingy onto the other page, but I was wrong, or I don't know what I am doing. So it will get done. Just slowly as I grab peoples Buttons and pin them on the page. It will pop up one of these days.

All for now.

Kimberly

No Calf?!

My Mom wanted another milk cow, after her last cow died of old age in her 20's. So she bought a Guernsey bottle calf, and named her Sweet Pea.

 

The woman she bought her from, transports cows for the dairies, and was told to take her to the auction, but she just couldn't do it to her.  She said she was a tiny premie twin. So she bought her from the dairy, and raised her for about 1 month before putting her up for sale. We didn't know anything about Freemartins when my Mom bought her. When we were informed about what a Freemartin was, my Mom called the woman to find out if her twin was a male, but she didn't know. The twin was born dead, so the dairy workers had already disposed of it before she got there. So all we could do was wait and see. She started coming into heat like a normal heifer, and when she was old enough we had her bred.

We were expecting her to have a calf around the end of this month.

We have watched her belly grow and her udder start to develop.

 

We have had the cows over on a neighbors property since winter.  Around the beginning of of the month Sweet Pea gave us a scare. The neighbors called to let us know something was wrong with our cow, that she was on the ground, and unable to get up. We rushed over to find her layed out and bloated up. Unable to hardly move or breath. She was so big we could not get her to her feet. So my Mom began rocking her with all her strength. It seemed to get some of the gas out, but not nearly enough. I ran home and called a vet. I ran back, and traded off with my Mom. Then when I was tired, my Dad took his turn. I started to head home to watch for the vets arrival, when my Mom started yelling. I turned around to see Sweet Pea standing. Sweet Pea had tried to get up, and my Dad pushed with all his might. He rolled her onto her chest, and she was able to stand. My Mom walked her home, and we waited for the vet. We didn't understand what caused this. She wasn't on lush pasture. It was drying up, and it had been VERY windy. The vet arrived, and gave her a thorough inspection. He checked to see if she was in labor. Nope. So he checked to see how far along she was, and he said theres no calf. What! No Calf!? How could that be? She looks pregnant. She's developing an udder. How could she not be pregnant? He asked if anything was suckling on her to cause her udder to develop. Nope. Hmmm. He checked her udder, and she had milk. But she is a twin. Is she a Freemartin? So he gave her a very thorough check. He said she is not a Freemartin, but she's not pregnant. That he is 95% positive. We know she's over weight, but he had no explanation for her having milk. He said it's the first case of phantom pregnancy he has ever seen in a cow. We don't know what caused her to bloat. He said she might have started to get a little ketosis (meaning her body was starting to burn its fat, and making her have sore muscles), because the field was drying up. She also might not have wanted to get up in the morning, because of the strong wind. So she stayed laying down, started bloating, and then couldn't get up. But these were guesses, we don't know for sure. All we know is she gave us a scare. Sweet Pea is now home on our irrigated pasture, playing boss of the goats. Her bag has continued to grow since her visit with the vet. So I took the pictures above. I search online for information on cows having phantom pregnancies to no avail. Is there such a thing as a 5% chance of pregnancy?

Kimberly