I was told that having goats is like running a day care. It does seem that if there's something to stand on, climb on, push around, tear up, or just generally create chaos with, then they want to, just for the fun of it. And then they want to eat something. Always. Even if they just ate, they still want to eat something, and they are pretty sure I have it in my pockets or under my hat. Light River even tried to chew on my ear! Thank goodness they only have front teeth on their bottom jaw, so their nibbles don't hurt.
The goats had fun helping me muck out Rufus's stall, and Wendigo had fun helping Brandon move the trailer with the tractor.
She also has fun chasing her tail!
Check out the stack of cedar fence posts that Brandon harvested on Sunday! Our horse owning friend is clearing out an overgrown pasture, and offered us a many cedar trees as we want to cut down. Brandon spent about two and half hours on Sunday with the chain saw, and got seven good sized cedar trees and three little ones.
They each had numerous branches which had to be sawed off, so the posts aren't exactly smooth or round, but we hope they will work for a fence fit for pig. They still have the bark, and the wood is green so they are filled with moisture and weigh a lot. Our friend wasn't sure we would find it worth while to harvest our own posts, since it's very labor intensive. But now that he's tried it, Brandon thinks it's worth his time, since a post of that size has a price tag of about eight dollars. Seven posts in two and half hours is worth about fifty-six dollars from the store. Store posts are treated, dried, smooth, uniform in size, and probably easier to hang a fence on, but still, we're going to see how many we can harvest ourselves and give it a try. Like most of the project we want to do, we need either time or money, which are always in short supply.
We have a stack of old tin roofing we purchased from a craiglist fella, and now a stack of cedar logs. I have visions of bacon when I see these things!
Poncho, our recently deposed head rooster, disappeared. In his last days, I noticed he was doing weird things, like traveling out in the open pasture with the goats, far from trees or buildings so he had nothing to hide under when the chicken hawk was near. He wasn't friendly to the hens anymore, chasing them away from food. He was sleeping in my corn crib, and pooping on my table. He would leap right into the food bins when I opened them, so I had to fish him out of feed bags so I could close the bins. He lost all fear of me, so he was always underfoot. Wendigo invented a game of trying to put her paw on him which added extra chaos during goat feeding time. I was beginning to think he lost more than just his eye during his battles, and that his brain was damaged. When I asked Brandon if he thought we should send him to the great freezer in the sky, he said "I'm not killing Poncho. You have a pet rooster."
I assume a predator took advantage of his loss of sight and strange behavior, although I never saw any feathers or blood or a sign of a fight. A few days after Poncho disappeared, the baby guinea disappeared without a trace too. I hope we don't have another fox.
No comments:
Post a Comment