Goodbye Summer

More like good riddance. I'm so glad Summer is over (for the most part anyways). I can't stand the heat anymore, it just makes me feel sick. I started out Summer by slicing my hand with a very sharp, dirty pair of hoof shears. It was a bad judgement call when a doeling started kicking her leg. With the little steri-strips the clinic gave me to hold the wound shut, I was kinda useless for a while, as if I used my hand for anything it would pop the strips off. I have been blessed that I hadn't had a wound like that, since a rabbit bite the end of my finger when I was around 3 years old. I did discover that large amounts of Ester-C worked great to keep my hand from hurting.

I wasn't going to have any baby bunnies in the Summer, because of the heat. Then I remembered "Duh, the does have nice cool holes they can kindle in.". So three litters it was. One doe kindled as expected in her hole, doe # 2 decided to use her house (because she was never able to dig a tunnel off of it, because the dirt is too hard in her pen.), and that resulted in a couple lost kits. One kit got lost when it blindly crawled off on a hot day. I think an animal got it. I had to put a second one down that got abscesses. So that left 4 kits in the second litter which were doing great. Then when they were about 3 weeks old my mom stopped putting food in the chickens feeders in the back of our orchard, because of rats. The chickens of course had feeders that she was feeding them with up at the front. Well this I guess caused all the rats to come up to the backyard and they ate the face off of one of the kits, and attacked a second that survived from litter # 2. I am so disgusted with rats and the things I have seen them do to animals over the years. I don't know how anyone can keep them for pets! They will eat your bunnies face off!

There was also litter # 3 by a doe I named Gypsy. I picked that name for her, because she was the one that ran loose at her previous owners place, and would return to feed her children at night. She had a nice hole and at kindling time spread a bunch of hair around her pen. I checked her hole, no babies. She filled in the entrance, they do that, but she was digging a tunnel in the other direction. She had milk, but no babies to be found. So after 2 weeks I had assumed she had a false pregnancy. I put her in with the buck for another go around. I thought it was strange that her milk hadn't dried up. I think it was only a few days later that baby bunnies appeared in her pen! 

Oh no! They were darling, but their mother was just re-bred, so I made sure to bump up her nutrition. I took the kits away a week before she was due and she's done just fine. She has some of the prettiest babies: castor, blue, blue otter, lilac, lilac otter, and lynx.

The garden didn't get planted till REALLY late. I can't remember if it was mid or the end of June when my mom planted it. We moved the garden area up to what was the main chicken area. As soon as the plants got past the shock of transplant they took off. Thanks to all that chicken manure. But unfortunately she had to replant many plants and seeds. The rats and ground squirrels think she planted everything for them. They ate off entire rows of beans as they emerged, and ate all the cabbage plants I started. She had to plant the beans 3 times. I guess third times the charm. We sure enjoyed the Provider beans while they lasted. My dad and I never tire of them. Just cook them with a little bacon and oh they are so good. That used up all our bean seed planting 3 times in one year. I had gotten Boyd Craven JR.'s books Backyard Meat Rabbits, and Beyond The Pellet: Feeding Rabbits Naturally for my birthday. He wrote about a heirloom seed company called Everwilde that sells none GMO seed, and have really good pricing. So I checked them out. They carried Provider seeds. Yay! And extremely cheap. I was concerned about the possibility of them selling seeds with chemical treatments on them, like I have received from some other places in the past. So I contacted them to ask. They responded that they only carried a few different types of seeds that come with the treatment on them, with a list of which seeds it was. Luckily it wasn't anything I wanted to order. So I placed my order and when my package arrived I couldn't have been happier. All their seeds are sealed in gold colored plastic packages that can be resealed with a ziplock type closure. I read that someone after getting dirty planting, put their pants in the wash forgetting they had put a packet of seeds in their pocket, and when they pulled them out of the washer the seeds were unharmed. I think that's a pretty good seed pack. Especially when its at no extra cost. Plus the seeds are supposed to last a lot longer in these packets vs. being stored in paper packets. We shall see.

I already have some comfrey growing in my garden, but it doesn't do a whole lot, because of where its planted. I want to grow a plot of it, so I can feed it to the rabbits. I have seen an advertisement running for years for comfrey root cuttings, so I used some of the money from bunny sales to place an order. I actually didn't even know if it was the time of the year to start their roots, and for once in my life I didn't feel like looking it up. I figured it wasn't the right time, I wouldn't be receiving them for a while. Not even two weeks after mailing in the order my little bundle of root snippets arrived. I followed the instructions they came with, and planted them in 4" pots, because I wanted to be able to keep a close eye on them, till they become a good size plant to put in the ground. The instructions said that they will start to emerge in about 2 weeks. Its been 3 1/2 weeks and I haven't seen anything yet. I'm not giving up. If they don't do anything I'll order some from someone off e-bay. There are a lot on there and they are better deals. 

The first day of June my mom and I had to drag all our stinky bucks home from our neighbors pasture. They had begun to come into rut and the does were coming into heat, including 2 month old doelings. What is wrong with these animals? Don't they know what time of year it is?! Their breeding cycle obviously doesn't have anything to do with day length. Just like they still don't know how pigeons know how to fly home. So over the past week our goats have been delivering kids. It started with a 7 month old doeling turning up with her own little doeling she delivered all by herself. Then my moms 8 month old doeling delivered a great big white buckling again unassisted. A 7 month old doeling had a set of twin girls. She had them after dark, so I helped dry them. They were fine the next morning when I checked them, but something happened later in the day. The mother took one a long way out into the field and it was laying their injured. I brought her home but she died. We think she got stepped on, and was bleeding internally. The mother wouldn't stay with the other kid. She was HUNGRY after getting 2 kids out of her, and just not mature enough. We brought the surviving kid home. She could have cared less. That changed the next morning when she woke up with a swollen udder. We brought her home,set her up in a dog pen, and gave her daughter back which she gladly accepted. Our mature doe Daisy had great big white twins, again unassisted. 1 doeling with LaMancha ears, and a buckling with big floppy ears and a big Boer head. That completed our out of season - kidding season. Or so I thought..... Since writing that earlier I went to check our goats for the evening to discover our doe Violet in labor! We didn't even know she was pregnant. She had a great big chocolate colored doeling. So who knows if the goats are done kidding, and to think this is going to start all over in March.

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

Guinea Pigs, LGD's, and The Sun

Sir Locksley

 Ringlets

 He love to have his chin scratched. He was eating some orange, so his face is messy.

Even his whiskers grow in ringlets.

Flower

 Her hair had already been cut when I bought her. I think they said she is Silkie. Her hair is soooo soft, and has a very high sheen. Her colors make it very hard to get a good picture of her.

She has a black face, but white whiskers. So cute.

Rhett, and Scarlett

They sure love the irragation water. 

 It was so sunny it bleached Scarlett out in the picture.

Handsome boy.

Scarlett is a bit more silly. Their tails are giant, you just can't help but play with them.

The Sun

We had 1 day last month, that the sun had this very strange dark ring around it.

It was very hard to get good pictures of exactly what it looked like. The sky was very blue, like the above picture. The ring around the sun looked like a dark cloud. The edge of the dark ring was a rainbow.

Kimberly