3 Weeks

The little ones are three weeks old now.  Oh my gosh, are they cute!  They jump and play and chase, then take cuddly naps together.  They are also starting to figure out how to get into places they shouldn't.  This morning I had to chase them down to get them from the boy goat side of the pasture, only to realize they can slip through the gate at will, and I needn't have exposed myself to Little Bucks attentions on their behalf, after all.  

I have enough goats now that it's hard to get the whole herd in one photo!  

The boy is bigger than the girl, and looks strong and muscled.  He also has tiny horns peaking through his hair.  Sigh.  I wanted to avoid the trauma of taking them to the vet to be cauterized, since it didn't even work last time, and ordered the hot iron so we could traumatize ourselves.  The iron has been on back order, and I didn't get it on time.  Looks like I'll have more goats with horns after all.  

Sleepy babies in the sun. 

Peaches seems to be handling two babies just fine.  She gets impatient with them when they run up and take a sip and then start to play.  She kicks her back legs and walks away from them when she doesn't want them to nurse. They never seem to have their feelings hurt.  They bang their heads, hard, into her udder when they nurse, so I'm surprised she's as patient as she is. 

The girl has a delicate jaw line, and fabulous ears. 

They are already nibbling on grass and hay, and are so tall they kneel when they nurse so they can fit under the udder.  

Whispering to Donkeys

I picked them up - the donkey feet, all eight of them!  Brandon was watching me move from foot to foot with the hoof pick as he filled the garden cart with donkey droppings, and when I was finished he said it was amazing, like I was a donkey whisperer.  Whoa.  

The farrier was supposed to come last Friday to trim all the donkey feet, but it was raining so hard that morning we postponed until this Friday.  I was glad to have some extra time to practice with the donkeys, and last night, we had a break through.  Brandon and I worked together to put their halters on, practice walking on the leashes, and tying them to fence posts.  I tied the ropes near the bottom of the posts, so the donkeys have to stand with their heads hanging down a little.  

I used those cubes of compressed hay to reward the donkeys for each step, and when I was finished with a foot I gave them another hay cube.  They seemed happy for the attention and the treats, so I have my fingers crossed we can perfect our foot lifting before the farrier takes his turn.  

Rufus, who usually kicks his back legs like a jack rabbit, was the one who showed me how to do it.  I ran my hand along his back to his back thigh and gave him a gentle tap, and I noticed that his entire leg responded to the tap by going completely loose, like someone snipped a rubber band.  I tapped and jiggled his leg to keep it loose and slowly, while feeling for tension in his muscles, raised his back leg, stretched it out, and rested it on my thigh.  Then I held his foot by the hoof only, so that when he tried to push against my hand his ankle would bend but there was no resistance from me for him to push against.  

 

It was so easy!  And once I could do it with Rufus's crazy back legs, I could gently tap and jiggle all the donkey legs until they were in position, and support only the hoof with my hand while I scraped off all the mud.  I made sure to stop before they asked me to, so we ended on a good note, and I rewarded them with extra hay cubes.  It was awesome, and I did feel like a donkey whisperer!  

For the first time I felt like I could really look at their feet and work with my tool instead of struggling against them and I've had such a sense of relief ever since.  This means I can be a good donkey owner, who keeps up with hoof maintenance!  I want to show the farrier my technique, so he can see that it can be done without a rodeo, and maybe give me some pointers.  I also think I need to introduce the donkeys to his tools, by letting them sniff them and touch them with their noses, and give them a treat when they accept them so they aren't frightened by the strange objects.  I plan to give the farrier a handful of treats and ask him to make friends before we get started.  I wonder if I need to instruct him on how to whisper sweet nothings in baby talk while he works, so he can be a donkey whisperer like me? 

Dreadful Things

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!  

My Crib

Of the scattered outbuildings that came with this old house and ten acres that we love, I claimed the one farthest from the house for myself and my animal collection.  We think this building was used as a corn crib - a place to dry and store corn after it was harvested.  It's a tall building with a concrete floor and wide gaps between the wall boards. At some point a big chunk of the wall was cut away, and half of the door was lost.  In the years since we've been here, my crib has sprouted additions to shelter chickens, donkeys, and goats. Just last week, Brandon built a wall to cover the hole, and built a door.  A real one, that closes and everything!  

Guess how many chickens sleep in my crib and poop on my table now that I have a door?  That's right, none!  Take that chickens!

The door is made from plywood, and needs to be painted, but it has a pretty door knob.  

The photo above is from inside the crib, looking at the plywood over the wall hole on the right, and the new plywood door on the left.  Now my cans of chicken layer pellets, sunflower seeds, sweet feed, goat pellets, wild bird food, dog food, alfalfa pellets, and compressed grass cubes are safely locked inside where any escaped goats should not be at risk of foundering.  

On the opposite wall from the door, under the giant oil painting I made in a collage art class of my pet fish, Gully, are small goat viewing holes cut in the wall that lead to the goat stalls. 

When I slide the boards that cover these holes to the side, I can add hay to the goat baskets and check on the sleeping goats.  

If I look straight down through the hole on the right, I can see the baby goats, snuggled in the hay.  This is their favorite spot to sleep.  

Can you see those two small doors near the ceiling above the hoses hanging on the wall?  I try to keep these little doors closed to block the rain, but now that I don't get the light from the open wall hole and missing door, I'm dreaming about turning these little doors (made for dumping in corn?) into windows.  They would be high, like skylights.  

Here you can see the small doors from the outside, just above the chicken coop roof.  Wouldn't my crib look pretty with a nice paint job and some windows up there?    I think the chickens would agree! 

Taking Shelter

This little building, just outside our backdoor, hides an underground space where we say we will take shelter if there's a tornado.  The spring winds have been so strong that Brandon made sure to clear a path through the items we have stored in there, just in case we need to make a quick dash for safety.  

You first, Wendigo.  She sniffs the air right at the entrance, but doesn't go all the way inside.  The walls of the shed have gaps, and wasps build their nests in the ceiling, and giant black rat snakes shed their skin against our stored lawn chairs.  

Boo!  Once you enter the tiny wooden shed, there is a steep and dank stairwell that leads down into the underground space.  And there's a creepy woman sculpture down there!  Brandon rescued her from a sculpture friends collection, and several years ago Jamie put her down in the cellar so she can scare us when we open the door.  She's been down there in the dark ever since.

Her arm is raised like she is shying from the sunlight from the open door.  You can see the underground room is round, and the domed ceiling is higher than I can touch.  Someone told me that if we were to be accused of a crime, and the jury saw our creepy lady trapped in the underground bunker, they would assume we were guilty, because only people up to no good would have such a thing.  Ha!  

The floor is solid, and has a thin layer of damp mud.  It's so humid in there that the dead spiders that hang from webs grow fuzzy with white mold.  The fuzzy spiders also cast giant shadows on the walls when you enter with a flashlight.  I really hope we don't have to take shelter down there, but it's nice to know we have at least one place to go that can't be blown away by a twister.   I'm sure the rickety old shed would collapse over the stairs, and we would be trapped!  If I disappear after a big storm, please come get me out of that creepy place.  

From the round cement wall come this strange assemblage of pipes.  We aren't sure what this round underground room was built for, but my guess is that it used to house a pump to push water from the nearby well, or from the nearby cistern, which could collect water from the roof of the house.  If the pump was stored underground, it wouldn't freeze in the winter.  Other guesses for this room have been an ice house, a cheese house, and a root cellar.  I think the humidity would be great for storing roots and fruits, but not so great for storing things in jars or bottles.  I daydream of white washing the walls, installing some lights, covering the muddy floor with gravel, and storing crates of homegrown pears and potatoes all through the winter.  

From the bottom of the stairs you can look up into the shed.  Even during the day, it's a little spooky in there.  The door usually swings closed when I don't want it to, and then I'm inside, in the dark, with the fuzzy spiders, snake skins, and creepy lady.  It's hard not to overreact.  Let me out of here!  

The shed door is two steps from the backdoor of the house that enters into the bathroom.  The shed is a handy place to store things, including the extra buckets and bags of sawdust and wood chips that we need for our composting toilet system.  

Day Six, Exploring

On their sixth day, I noticed increased activity in the baby goats.  They started to spend more time awake, bouncing around and exploring. 

They even ventured outside the stall and were seen out in the sun, exploring their surroundings, but always close to their mother. 

The barn has never had so many regular visitors! 

Even the cat came to see what all the fuss was about. 

Peaches is so patient.  She doesn't mind if we are there, she stands for them to nurse, with her back legs slightly bowed, and slowly chews her cud. 

Settle in for some quality baby goat viewing!  I kept changing positions trying to capture their antics.  By the end of the video they really get moving.  I can spend many minutes watching them discover their world, but I finally stopped filming when my knees got tired of squatting!  Enjoy!

Exciting Garden Things

There are things, exciting garden things, happening under that dome of plastic. 

They may only be exciting to us gardeners though.  I have some raised beds in the greenhouse!  Brandon helped me use some old lumber to create shallow raised beds in the center of the greenhouse on on each side.  We stood the lumber on it's side, and pounded wooden stakes in the ground to hold the boards in place. 

Then we used a shovel and removed the top two or three inches of soil from the pathways, and filled the shallow beds.  For the past several years I've been amending the soil in the greenhouse with compost, chicken feathers, old hay, manure, and weeds green cover crops.  All that organic input has resulted in beautiful black garden soil loaded with bits of organic matter.  By scraping the good dirt from the paths and adding it to the raised beds, the rich garden soil is even thicker. 

We spread old hay on the pathways.  It won't be long before that breaks down into soil too, and I can make more raised beds. 

I raked the soil surface, and planted lots of greens.  Because of our clay soil, drainage is a challenge in the garden when it rains.  Sometimes water stands on the surface in the greenhouse.  I'm hoping that the shallow raised beds will help with that problem, although I know if will require more watering when it's dry.  All that nice organic matter should soak up the water and hopefully keep it from drying out too fast.  

Look, seedlings!  I planted lettuce, mustard greens, turnips, kohlrabi, radishes, and sugar snap peas. 

The chicks that live in the brooder in the front corner of the greenhouse are doing really well.  They are two weeks old now, and are more than half way through the first bag of chick starter.  I visit the greenhouse twice a day to tend the birds and water the bed of greens.  The wind makes the plastic pop and rustle, but I keep the sides rolled up during the day so there is fresh air.  At night I roll one side down to block the cold wind.