Easter Bunny Arrives Early at the farm

What a nice (and sweet) surprise greeted me at the mailbox, today. It was a package from Colorado and no one had even ordered (and paid) for anything from there. When I opened it up, THIS was inside!
My daughter Lucy and her hubby played Easter bunny. They baked, and SUPER-decorated a 3-D rabbit, a 3-D basket, a 3-D duckling, and a 3-D spring flower. Unfortunately, the post office broke most of the basket handle into pieces, but it is still beautiful. We'll have to wait until Mike tastes them to tell if they are delicious (though I am sure they are). I'm actually glad I'm dieting now - I'd hate to spoil this lovely work of art by actually eating it! Seems a shame... Thank you, Lucy and Josh! I am very impressed with your basket-weave technique! Can't wait to see the wedding cake you are constructing for Saturday.
Happy (early) Easter!

A few scraps of wood...

According to our "Raising Dairy Goats" guide book, NO goat should have horns - they are nothing but a dangerous nuisance on a dairy goat and should be eliminated from offspring as soon as possible (by day 5). Unfortunately, the only reliable way to do this involves a slightly barbaric technique of burning off the tiny horn buds on those sweet-faced baby kids. We heat an small "iron" until it's hot enough to brand wood and then press it onto the buds. Supposedly, if done correctly, this does not hurt the kid - it's only burning the hard horn tissue that has no nerve endings.

The key phrase "done correctly" is the stumbling block. Every other spring, this has been a two or three person job, and the task of holding/restraining a rambunctous kid goes to the person who drew the short straw (usually ME!). You must hold the kid's head as still as possible while a red-hot iron is pressed onto it. Guess where your hands are? And guess how still a baby goat is? That is why last year's kids all had a nice set of beautiful curving horns, nice handles for dragging them around. Our current buck has such a set - and I do not like them for many reasons!

This spring, Mike and I knocked out a little box designed to do the tough job of holding a kid during the de-horning process. It made the whole dehorning process so easy and I think we actually did a good job of eliminating the horn buds. We were able to hold the iron in the correct place and for the correct amount of time. And best of all, no one, man nor beast, got burned! This is Go on the left, demonstrating the new kid-restraining box. He looks like a trophy hanging on the wall in the last photo, but he felt just fine!

In other goat news, Rosalie, our other brown Alpine goat decided to surprise me and have her kids early, at least according to my figuring - obviously not early for her. On a sad note, she delivered two kids, but I discovered one had been still-born. Both kids were biggen's, so that might have contributed to the problem delivering two healthy kids. It really was a surprise to me - I thought one of Frappie's babies had gotten into Rosie's stall, but he was exactly where he was supposed to be! He's a cute little buckling, and I've dubbed him Han Solo - since he's technically a singleton. His ears stick out like a true Alpine, unlike his cousins. Go and Happy, both bucklings, and Lucky, my only doeling, all have floppy ears, more like a Nubian.

Cute Kids, Goat Kids, that is...

So, we have some kids! Frappacino FINALLY delivered her baby goats - three of them. I walked out to the barn on Thursday afternoon, convinced that Frappy's girth was just a ruse, a twisted diguise to gain special treatment - a private stall with running water and her own feed pan and hay rack. I'd even spread new straw in preparation for these phantom offspring. Just when she had me convinced there really were no kids, she drops 'em. Actually she delivered them very gently and without a lot of trouble, for her, for me, or for her kids. By the time I got to the barn, two of the newborns were already standing beside their mother, waiting for her to get up so they could nurse. But Frappy was delivering a third kid - butt first (i.e. the wrong way round - see previous post). It was dark in the barn, all the doors were closed and the light in the stalls is dim at best. I wasn't sure what was emerging from the doe's backside, but by feeling it, I could identify all the parts of a goat inside a sac - except the head, which was still inside its mama. Without much force, I easily pulled the last of this kid into the world. I decided to call this last-born kid "Lucky". It seemed to me that my timing that day was lucky for the little'n. Lucky is the wet, all-brown one in the second photo of the previous post, and the one thinking about following Go above, though he thought better of it at last.
Lucky was a little slow at first. I was worried that his backward entry may have hurt him. His hind legs were a little disjointed and I didn't think he would be able to compete for one of the available milk taps (A goat doe only has two teats; if she delivers more than two kids, it is survival of the fittest - pushiest). But the next day he was standing strong and nursing and pushing his siblings around.
Of course his siblings had to be dubbed "Happy" and "Go". Go is the black and white one who has managed to find the only gap in the "goat-proof" pen and has moved freely back and forth at least 24 times that I have witnessed! Despite being butted away by all the goats in the next stall, Go insists on...well, GOing! He tried to convince Happy to join him,too, but Happy couldn't find the gap. Besides Happy seems content to stay by his mother, who doesn't butt him away and provides very nice snacks.
Lucky likes best to lie in the sunshine with the cats, while Go does his going and Happy does his bouncing around. Baby kids are so much fun to watch. They get to be very bouncy, springing into the air, all four feet off the ground at once, and then flinging their back legs out, as if trying to click their heels together - and this is all done for the sheer joy of it. Tomorrow there will be less joy for these kids - at least for a few seconds. We are going to de-horn them, before the horn buds get growing. It will make them much nicer grown-up goats if we can get this little chore done early. Then I'll have to introduce the kiddies to the bottle. I'll probably feed them mother's milk for a few days and then start mixing in some kid milk-replacer. The kids get a lot less cute when I am the one who must feed them. That also means I will be milking again! How did I get in this position, anyway??? Oh, well, I have a new milking tool that I've been waiting to try - I'll keep you posted on how (or IF) it works as expected.

Bad Day / Not So Bad Day

We have had some problems with calving this spring. Remember when I said I wasn't expecting any more calves until May? Well, apparently some heifers had here-to-fore unknown "relations" with a bull - and five of them have had (or rather, tried to have) their calves in March. Unfortunately, only two calves have survived, and we have even lost one of the heifers. Her calf was not in the right position to be born, its head and neck twisted sideways and down between its front legs. Almost every living thing arrives into the world head-first - even chicks and alligators peck their way in head-first. When the head is pointed in some other direction, problems arise.

We tried to pull the calf ourselves, but quickly decided we needed professional intervention. The vet arrived with a vet student as an assistant. Dr. Gruenburg told us about the calf's strange position, and that the calf was already dead, but that he hoped he could remove the calf and save the heifer. He and his student worked, I mean WORKED HARD, for nearly four hours, trying several methods to get the stubborn calf removed, but to no avail. Ultimately, we had to put the heifer down. I've never done that before - usually we let nature take it course, or as Mike is often saying, we "give her a little more time". So, it was kind of sad to see it happen, though I know it was really the only thing left to be done.

Dr. Gruenburg was exhausted and so apologetic, saying he hated to leave us with a vet bill AND a dead cow, but these are the kinds of things that you face when you raise livestock of any kind. Sometimes it's so frustrating because you feel like you work so hard trying to save an animal, and often it feels like the more you do, the less it seems to help. You come away from an experience like that and swear that you're DONE with animals of any sort...then, one day you walk out to the barn and you see this...

Spring has arrived, wet and wobbly!

We were feeding big round bales to the cows. I have the job of pulling the plastic netting off these bales before my husband, Mike, uses the tractor-loader to plop them into the feed wagons. It doesn't seem like it would be a difficult job: just use your utility knife to cut the netting from top to bottom and then unwind it from around the upright bale, wad it up and put it in the incinerator. At least it works that way on a crisp autumn day in November - or even on a clear cold day in January, when the bales are still round and clean and dry.
But come the damp, muddy days of early March, the bales have been rained on, and snowed on, and iced on, and thawed and frozen several times. So, the bales are a mess, with this impenetrable layer of ick enmeshed in the hay and netting. I can make the initial slice, but pulling the netting off is a hard and messy (and frustrating) job with dirty ice shards flying in your face - which means it falls to a woman to do it!
Anyway, while I was being distracted by my job, Mike spotted something in the cow lot. He started to point and tried to make it clear what I should be seeing, but I was in no mood for a game of "do you see what I see"; the netting was winning the battle! Finally I saw the object of interest - a newborn calf! This little fella was still wet and just barely able to stand. He was valiantly trying to follow his mama around the lot, but he was having a lot of trouble. His main problem came from the two fall calves who had wintered with their mothers. For some reason, they took a great interest in this new arrival. Unfortunately, their interest manifested itself in a game of knocking the newbie to the ground at every opportunity. So, we decided that the cow and calf would need to be moved to the barn. We loaded the calf into the loader bucket and chased the cow out of the lot, hoping she would have the maternal instinct to follow her newborn - she did!
Our next hurdle was finding a way for a cow to enter the barn. Snow from previous accumulations had been piled in front of the small barn door, and the big door was still frozen in place. Finally, we realized the south side of the barn had an operating door (where the goats spend the hot summer days out of the sun). We drove the loader up to the door to get the calf into the corner stall - by now, he is standing up, ready to leap off the edge of the bucket. We do manage to direct his forward motion into the barn, and mama obligingly follows. So, both are now comfortably settled in the barn, a private suite with access to the sun (new calves need their vitamin D) .
I don't expect any more calves until May, but I guess I could be surprised again. I thought my goat kids would be the harbingers of spring, but again, few things happen as expected around here! And the kids are STILL not here - I don't see how my does could get much rounder.
I better pay attention - order seeds and plants and chicks - spring is on its way!