The baby goats are now two weeks old. They are at a very entertaining age. They jump and play and chase each other. Their favorite game is to stand on a box and push each other off - king of the mountain!
Despite the major distraction of adorable baby goats, I've been trying to focus on the donkeys. Specifically on their feet. Their hooves are overgrown, and we have an appointment with the farrier on Friday. I dread it. The last time it was more of a rodeo than ever, and I think that's why I've put it off too long. When the donkeys and I tried to practice wearing halters and being tied up, I found that they had outgrown their halters. My donkey babies are growing up! The new ones arrived in the mail and fit much better.
Because donkeys are desert animals, their hooves are designed to grow fast and be worn down by stones. Hattie and Rufus have been all winter in soft clay mud, so they haven't worn or chipped their feet naturally. I have day dreams of paving their food and water areas with stones, to help their feet. According to people on the YouTube, whose helpful videos I've been watching, the bottom of their hooves should be parallel with the top of the hoof. This means a lot of hoof needs to be cut away. Which means I have to be able to pick up their feet!
This is a picture of the bottom of Hattie's foot, crammed with mud. With lots of patience and coaxing I can pick up Hattie's feet, but when she feels the hoof scraper thingy she kicks her feet and jumps up and down. Sigh. Rufus is even worse. The man on YouTube said not to let them have their way when they kick their feet, because they learn kicking gets them out of it. Well, I held on to Rufus's back leg while he jerked and kicked for as long as I could, but in the end he won the battle and I have a sore tricep muscle. Sigh. I'm not giving up though. I'll help the farrier wrestle with them on Friday, but I'm determined to figure out how to trim them myself. Surely we can figure this out. If only there were more hours in the day!
One of these things is not like the other. One of these things is just not the same. One of these things is a turkey!
One of these things is a Wendigo !
On Saturday morning Brandon and I gave ourselves two hours to butcher five chickens. From set up to clean up, we used every minute of those two hours, but feel like we are perfecting our system every time we do this. This time, we worked together to pluck and butcher. It's getting easier every time, and I hardly dread it at all.
Dressed in plastic rain pants and jackets and rubber boots, Brandon held the door of the chicken coop while I caught a bird, and handed it to him. I caught a second bird and held on to it. He chopped the head off of his bird and then handed me the flopping headless body, which I held by the feet, and he took my bird and chopped it's head off. After the bodies were done bleeding, we each dunked our bird in the hot (140 degrees F) soapy water sitting on the gas burner and plucked off all the feathers while we sat in chairs in the greenhouse. We put the plucked birds in a cooler of cold water, and repeated the procedure until all five were done. Then we stripped off our blood and feather splattered plastic clothes and put them in the washing machine and took the birds to the kitchen sink and gutted them, removed the heart, liver, feet, wings, breast meat, leg and thighs, and bagged all the peaces in freezer bags and put them to rest in the refrigerator. We put our tools away, and buried the guts, heads, and feathers in the garden. Done! There a lot of meat in our freezer from those two hours worth of work.
Baby goats napping in a bowl!
Little Nibs and Newnoo are skittish, and run from me when I try to catch them. I want them to be tame, so I'm making a point to pet them as much as possible.
I ordered some dreadful sounding tools that I need for the goats - an emasculator (ouch!) and a dehorning iron (double ouch!). Now I just have to get brave enough to use them!
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