On milk, homeopathy, and herbs

Sanuba, bless her pea-pickin' little heart, is up to a quart a day of milk--and what wonderful milk it is! Sanuba, as her name implies, is Saanen/Nubian cross.  My other milker is a full Saanen, and though Bea gives delicious milk, it's low in fat. Sanuba's milk, on the other hand, is rich and full of butterfat.  I can actually skim it right off the top the next morning. Yum!

Buckling, Sanuba and Emily

Sanuba's doeing is already gone, sold at a week old, and her buckling is happily playing outside with the others, dodging horses' feet, investigating geese, and generally taking life as it comes. 


I'm milking Snub (Sanuba) three times a day, not because she has such a huge quantity of milk, but because we're still battling congested udder. I've been working with Glen Dupree, a homeopathic vet in Louisiana, to resolve this, and we're definitely making progress.  From one teaspoon of milk, painfully (for me) extracted, she has increased steadily to a little more than a quart today.  Her buckling is getting all he wants, as well, and I'm sure he's consuming at least a quart or more a day.  This has been a long road for both of us.  I've been massaging her udder at every milking, applying hot and cold packs twice a day, giving her herbs, Ester C, and homeopathic remedies as directed, and though she's much softer and more pliable than before, we still have a way to go.

Today I got some udder salve and herbs from Fir Meadow to add to the protocol. I like Kat Drohval's products, and my goats eat them readily.  Her BWW Wormer is great. In combination with GISoother, it's kept my goats from being plagued by parasites.  The GI Soother targets Haemonchus contortus, a particularly nasty worm that Beatrice contracted from the sheep that was here when she got here.

Emily

Emily has already started to bag up a bit.  I thought her due date was May 30, but I'm thinking perhaps she actually had a false heat?  No wonder my goats keep me crazy!  They won't even let me know when the buck is no longer of interest!  At any rate, after Snub's surprise pregnancy, I'm going to be prepared for both a May 9 due date and a May 30th.  I hope she has bucklings so I don't have to pull the kids. CAE positive does do take some management, no doubt about it.

Leah

Leah is also bagging up, but the earliest date for her would be May 29th. Let's see now--I bred her because I wasn't sure anyone else had been bred, is that right?  From now on, I will not assume that no one's been bred, even if they're tail wagging to beat the band, batting their eyelashes seductively at the buck, and blatting their heads off--or even if they're just plain not interested when they see the buck.  Perhaps, after all, they just want a little privacy.  What a learning experience this has been!

First day out

Beatrice has been teaching me.  I tried to get her and her new kid out a couple of days ago, but Bea wasn't having any of it.  I was premature, obviously.  The kid was still learning to use her legs.  Given the opportunity, she took her kid right back to the stall and asked me to close the door.

Yesterday, she decided it was okay to go as far as the barn aisle.  Little Heartbreak was now able to jump and run, and loved exploring, but Bea didn't want her going too far.   I knew that something had shifted when she came out of her stall last night to milk and left her doeling lying comfortably in the stall, no hesitation.

And today, Day 5, was Introduce the Kid to the Herd Day.  Within a few minutes of coming out of the stall, the doeling was hopping onto the milking stanchion, and after Bea was milked, they were out the door and over at the fence, where the other goats were able to check out the kid safely.  An hour later, I let Emily in with them.  Heads butted!  Bea was not going to let Emily near her kid.  It took a couple of hours, but by afternoon, they were hanging out together in the small pasture, Emily keeping a respectful distance, but still close enough to observe.  She eventually decided she'd spent enough time away from the large pasture and asked to go out.

Bea headed back to the barn, where her kid found the horse's round tub was a perfect size for a nap--if only Mom would let her sleep!

Tomorrow, Sanuba gets her turn while Emily stays out.  Slowly but surely, they'll all be integrated into the small herd.  It'll be a bit longer before she's allowed around the horses.  Magic is still too much of a wild thing to trust her with such a small kid.

Cats, goats, horses, and names.

Maine Coon CatA while back, oh, maybe mid-October, I went looking for a Maine Coon Cat.  I had had one prevously, an orange and white tabby, Copper (short for Copernicus).  After two years, it was time for another Coon cat.  I put out feelers; I mentioned it to friends.  Shortly after, a good friend called me, and said, "I saw an ad for a Maine Coon Cat in Bangor."  Happily, she had the phone number, and when I called, the owner said, "come on up".  Off I went to check him out.  He was perfect:  a 3 y.o. male orange Coon cat.  He looked at me, let me pat him, snuggled up, and I brought him home. As I left, I asked, "Oh, by the way, what's his name?'  "We've been calling him Ninety-nine," he replied.  Ninety-nine?  Odd name for a cat.  That just wouldn't do.  So, as I often do with my animals, I asked him what his name was.  I always figure I've probably got it right if it's something I'd never think of myself.  The name?  Jethro.  Not a name I'd have chosen!  I asked again over the next few days, trying out different names.  Nope, it always came back to Jethro.  Jethro it is, then.

Some people associate the name with The Beverly Hillbillies, but I think of Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, a strong patriarch who gave Moses advice on how to handle the recalcitrant Children of Israel.  Jethro the cat is not a comical character.  He's independent and willing to tell you just how things can be improved.  And like Jethro of Biblical times, he is able to make his presence known without causing hard feelings.  Sassy, my older cat (whom we've affectionately called "Sassy the b*" for quite a long time) always takes umbrage at other animals in the house.  When I had 3 dogs and 7 cats, she was a terror, and never settled down until she was the only one left.  Did I mention she's rather long-lived?  At any rate, Jethro just wouldn't take offense at anythiing Sassy did--spitting, hissing, batting at him--he just looked at her and went back to whatever it was he was doing.  This was something new in Sassy's experience, and she really didn't quite know how to handle it.  In a very short time--a week or two, she stopped  considering him a threat and actually sniffs noses with him occasionally. For Sassy, this is an amazing accomplishment.

Jethro is an outdoor cat, no doubt about it, and, like most Maine Coon Cats, a wonderful mouser.  He's at his happiest when he can slip in and out the door at will.  Home is a place to eat and curl up by the wood stove on a particularly cold or wet day.  When he's in on one of those days, or at night when I refuse to let him out, he climbs on my lap, purrs contentedly, and goes to sleep.  Just the kind of cat I like.  Not too demanding, but very affectionate on a limited basis.  And I haven't had a mouse problem since he came.

Emily is another of my animals who told me her name.  I got her at five days old from a dairy farm.  I'd actually been looking at another Saanen doeling on the far side of the pen, bigger, broader, possibly even show material.  That doeling steadfastly refused to come to the front, and another little doeling steadfastly refused to go away.  I finally picked up the pesty one with the intention of looking at her horn buds to see how well-developed they were, figuring since they were all the same age, it would tell me how far advanced the others were as well.  As soon as I picked her up, I found myself saying, "I guess I'm taking this one."  It was a bit of a shock. I hadn't intended to take her, but I there didn't seem to be any doubt that she was going home with me.  My friend Laura was with me, and she drove home while I held the kid in my lap.  I studied her for a few minutes, and mused, "I wonder what I should call her?"  The next minute, in wonderment I was telling Laura, "Her name is Emily."  Emily?  Where did that come from?  From Emily, actually.  No one will ever convince me that she didn't tell me her name. Like Jethro, Emily is not a name I would have chosen.

There are other aspects of names.  One must always beware of what name is given.  I bought a Trakehner filly once, a Vincent daughter, a redhead.  I called her Freedom's Fire.  Big mistake.  Freedom joyfully broke out of every fence and went through every gate that she could.  She loves freedom, she revels in telling you so.  I sold her as a five year old to a woman in Missouri.  She has ruefully agreed that Freedom's name fits her too well.  However, she produces beautiful babies, so she has a home for life.

I could go on about names--how Angel came by her name, how Magic's name got changed and why, but that'll have to wait for another day.  Suffice it to say, names are interesting things; they have power, and sometimes they have histories we're not even aware of.

Goats, horses, and fences.

The weather is wonderful today.  Though the forecast calls for a 20% chance of snow, the temperature will be close to 40--a heat wave!  There's so much to do before spring thaw!  Last week my son helped me build a partition in the chicken coop to separate the geese from the chickens, so they have a place to nest without being disturbed.  Okay, I helped him. He did most of the work and I was the go-fer.  Today I will put the door on and that job will be done.

Then comes the fun stuff:  finding the shorts in the electric wire.  It's always been a source of amazement to me that I can get a good charge at the source, and have nothing 5 feet down the way, and all the searching in the world won't show me a break in the wire or a place it's going to ground.  Does electric wire have a consciousness, one that snickers and snorts when someone comes out to make it goat proof?  I've taken to going out in the dark to see if I can find a spark every 2 seconds emanating somewhere along the fence line. I've tried to hone my hearing so I can hear the subtle snap, snap of a shorted wire.  The goats watch expectantly, especially Emily, who wants to escape into the wide world of the forbidden.

Someone should explain to me one day, in a way I can understand, why goats and horses can have 30 acres of pasture with excellent grass and browse, but what is beyond the fence--that is, the lawn and the rose bushes, look so much more inviting.  If there's a hole in the fence, Emily will find it.  If the gate is left unlocked for 5 minutes--unlocked, mind you, not open--Magic will suddenly come up from the pasture and push it open, then, kicking and bucking, gallop across the lawn, tail up, ears forward, celebrating her new-found freedom.  If the electric fence goes to ground, either Emily will slip through, or Magic will reach over to eat whatever is on the other side, regardless of how much feed is on her side.

I think 30 aces should be enough for any horse or goat. Obviously I'm missing something, so today I'll tackle the small orchard and give the goats something beyond the paddock area where they're now confined, pending better fencing.  It's a good day to do it, a good day to be outside enjoying the January thaw that showed up in February, a good day to imagine that spring is just around the corner.

Time to catch up.

The summer fled by, the fall is gone, and we're right in the middle of a cold Maine winter.  I now have four goats. I added an Alpine, only to find that I really prefer my Saanens.  Ali is a beautiful doe, registered, belted Chamoisee, but her personality is much different from the others.  Where the others want to be outside, she wants to hang around the barn.  The others are sociable with each other as well as with horses and humans.  Not Ali.  She wants to hang out with people.  She's also a very dominant doe, so it took a while for things to calm down after she came.  Now she and Beatrice share a stall and Emily and Sanuba share a stall, and all is quiet.

Three goats are bred:  Ali is due April 1st and Beatrice is due April 20th.  Sanuba may be bred.  I thought long and hard about whether to breed her.  She was, after all, only 8 months old in November; but she's a big girl, and weighed about 100 lbs, so on the last day of her heat, I put her in with the buck.  She ran from him, butted him unmercifully when he got too close, but he finally cornered her and she never came back into heat.  If she's bred, she's due on April 26th.  Emily, aka "Tank", can wait until next year.

It's mid-May already, and I haven't planted the garden yet. The fiddleheads are almost past! Where has the time gone? As usual, spring is galloping along faster than I can keep up, and time, that awful thief, is picking my pocket once again.

But since this is my first blog entry, it seems only fitting that I should introduce all the furred and feathered inhabitants of Crooked Shade Farm.

First, the two horses, Winsome Angel (aka Angel), my Arabian X mare, 18 years old, the matriarch of the farm animals. Angel's been with me since she was two, and we've learned a lot about life and each other in that time. She's my "everything" horse, and she does it all: trail, dressage, jumping, barrels, pole-bending, and even vaulting. What she likes best, of course, is being a pasture ornament, and she does it well.




 Pyxylated Magic, Angel's daughter, is in the D registry of the American Trakehner Association. I used to call her Pyxie, but, believing that beings grow into their names, I decided I didn't want to encourage her naughty ways. Magic is still somewhat of a brat, but I have high hopes that she will truly be a magical being as she grows older. 

Next come my three goats. Beatrice is a 2 year old Saanen doe, and freshened for the second time in March. Her buckling left shortly after, having been traded for pruning of a couple of apple trees, and now facing a longer and better life than he would have had otherwise. The same day, I brought home a little Saanen/Nubian doeling, born on the same day as the buckling. Sanuba is the inquisitive, feisy one of the group, always greeting the horses on hind legs, or challenging the roosters.  Sanuba and Magic are best buds.  Angel isn't so sure she really likes having them around.  Perhaps that will change as time goes on.  Angel is usually pretty easy going.


Two weeks after Bea kidded, I bought another little Saanen doeling, Emily. Honestly, Emily told me that was her name. I actually had no intention of taking her home, being more interested in a larger doeling that was posing just like a little show goat, but I picked up the little doeling that kept coming over, just to see how far along I could expect the horn buds to be developed on all of the doelings of that age, and suddenly I heard the worlds coming out of my mouth, "I guess I'll take this one."


Emily is the climber. I find her in places that the others don't even think about, and I've had to take a serious look at what she can reach in the barn if given ample opportunity.

And talking about Emily, it's time to feed her, so I think I'll finish this later.