Sheep have beautiful eyes, but they are not all the same. Different breeds have differently coloured eyes, different shapes and different sizes too. The Maremmas have large heads and very big faces with wide noses. Their eyes are rounder shaped and yellow and large, to match their very big faces, while the Icelandics have almond eyes that are hazel to brown in colour. The Karakuls have darker eyes again and the Cotswolds are more similar to the Merinos. Each breed has its own beauty and wonder and its own distinct eye shape and colour. How magnificent!
0 Comments
Things should go smoothly, they really should, but they seldom do. The heat was not working in the bed and breakfast house and since it is a boiler system, the plumber was called. He replaced something that was connected to pilot light and then the gas was able to maintain a flame long enough to light the pilot. The water softener in the farmhouse has not been working, nor the iron remover system and he took a look at those while he was here, adjusted something on the softener and broke up the salt, which had clumped together at the bottom. Coming from the city, it is a huge learning curve to deal with systems that are taken for granted, like the water. The well water has quite a lot of iron in it, more this time of the year than some others, for some reason, but the company who installed the Kinetico system and rebuilt the water softener will not service it. They got their money and told me to hire a plumber when I had problems. Obviously, they are not in my good books. I personally think they should not be allowed to run a business.
The young Hutterite man who delivered hay used my brand new skid steer to move the bales. He told me he was well experinced with skid steers and with bales and likely he was for his few years. Accidents do happen. The bale slipped from the bucket and shattered the front window. Glass is everywhere! The young man was not hurt, just upset. His father came and took the door off and will replace it for me. They are good people. I didn't realize the bucket would not work without the door and got the skid steer stuck trying to move a bale, where it sits still. The whole problem is that the salesman did not arrange to have the bale forks brought out with the skid steer so the problems created a landslide effect. I must vacuum the glass in the cab before it causes any damage and get it off the driveway somehow. The hay is poor quality and the bale moved to the horses was full of mould. I skinned about a quarter of it before getting any usable hay and even then it is poor. That was the second load of hay brought, too. The first load, from a farm in Iron River, is also very poor and I did not want to feed it to the animals, because the mould can cause pregnant animals to abort and the sheep and goats are pregnant. Then, there is the problem of Sarah the goat. She will not stay in a fence and if she gets into the grain, she could over eat and bloat and die. With the high snow pack, she can easily scale any fence and does. I am not sure how to tackle that one. It seems there is a landslide of problems lately, one right after the other and all very costly and expensive. I am finding it hard to remain positive and be uplifted into bliss, though I truly enjoy the farm. I wish the people who sold it to me were honest. That would have helped, but I have been really trying to move forward and not look back, yet with one problem after the other with their house, the house they built themselves, it is hard to remain positive. The one saving grace at the moment is that my best friend from home, from White Rock, is out visiting. We go back a very long way to when our children were babies and have been fast and true friends through thick and thin. She is a wonderful person and good support for my many woes of late. I am grateful for her and I am trying to be grateful for the problems so that I can be ecstatic when they are over. Really, I am. Currently there are only two cats at The Fat Ewe Farm. Of all the animals, cats, chickens and turkeys seem to be the least likeable by the farmer. It seems the dogs love the cats, but they treat them like rag doll toys, tossing them about in mid air, not to be mean, but to play. The dogs are all huge and the cats, well, they are tiny in comparison. Several cats have been rehomed in the past few months to provide them a harassment free environment. Barbie and Janie stayed. They bat the dogs, hiss at them and run like crazy, so they seem to be holding their own, not that they are not chased on occasion, especially by the puppies. The Maremma sisters are severely reprimanded for this behaviour, but when the pack leader is away, the pups will play.
They chased Janie and she was having none of it, so climbed the big elm tree, and climbed and climbed, until she was almost a speck in the great tree. The puppies looked up at her wagging their tails, waiting, for all of 2 minutes, then gave up and went to play elsewhere. Janie stayed in the tree until she was relaxed and came down for a bit of a pet and some loving. One thing for sure, she is not a good mouser so far, but she can climb a tree really well! Little goaties are very personable animals. They are curious by nature, robust and full of life and fun, but they are not easy to look after. Goats, more than any domesticated livestock, are unhappy kept in pens. Their nature is that of a browser, not a grazer, and they eat above the grass level usually, given a choice. When forced to eat grass, they pick at the leaves, trample a whole lot and once they stomp on it, they will NOT eat it plus they eat only the leaves off the grass stems, wasting a great deal of hay. Weeds are better to feed them, and twigs and branches.
Winter is very hard, since most hay is grass hay. They like alfalfa hay, but will only eat the tiny leaves and waste more than half of the expensive alfalfa. They need several supplements to fulfill their nutritional needs as well. A goat mineral, formulated for the area in which the goats are kept, is necessary. The soils need to be tested and then a general formula made to supply what is deficient. Without adequate levels of selenium and copper, goats can die and may also abort or produce off spring with a condition called white muscle disease, where the kids are floppy and cannot support their weight. Additional injections of selenium often help, but not always. Males tend to get urinary calculi when fed grain. Goats are ruminants and thrive on forage, when it is the right kind, not grain. Grain is like candy to them, as it is to humans, and is converted to sugar. The fermentation of the the grain in the gut can cause bloating and goats cannot burp rumen gas, so they can bloat and die. Baby goats need to be introduced to grain slowly to prevent this, but natural forage feeding and no grain is best. To combat urinary calculi and keep body salts in line, goats should have free choice baking soda, both the males and females. Baking soda alkalizes the body, which grain causes to be acidic. Forage does not cause acidity because weeds are basically quite alkaline. Humans benefit from baking soda for this very same reason, to combat acidity in the body and return it to the alkaline state of health. Grain and sugar based diets are the ripe breeding ground, and acid system, for disease, whereas an alkaline system of green and coloured vegetation fights disease. Goats also require salt and iodine. Mineralized salts that are free flowing and not in a block, are necessary to provide adequate amounts. Licking a block will not ensure the goats are getting all they need. Goats who are pregnant often suffer an influx of worms upon delivery and should be wormed a week or 10 days before delivery and the day after. The Famacha eye test is a great predictor of the state of anemia of the goats. The whiter the inner rim of the eye, the more anemic the goat. A healthy goat should have a hot pink to almost red inner eye and does not require worming. A goat carrying an intense worm load will have a light pink eye. When the eye is white, it may be too late to do anything and the goat may die. Vitamin B shots should be administered along with a full spectrum wormer and then 10 days later repeated. Goat pellets are made from genetically modified grains and are full of pesticides and herbicides as well and should not be fed. We are formulating a wormer from herbs containing a variety of herbs and garlic. The wormer can be made into a small ball the size of a large jaw breaker by mixing it with oatmeal and mollasses and hand feeding one to each goat daily for 2 weeks. The mixture will not kill worms, just make the environment inhospitable and the worms tend to leave to find a more suitable host. When chickens are kept with the goats, they will pick through the droppings and devour the worms, helping end the parasite cycle. Goat worms are not transferred to chickens, thank goodness. In the meantime, some of the goats seem to have become immune to the chemical wormer, Ivomectin and are not improving. We used Valbazen, but it cannot be used during pregnancy because it causes abortion or unstable fetuses. Currently, Mamma Theresa, a normally very hardy Pygmy, is suffering from a resistant worm overload. We tried Panacur and will redose her on Tuesday, plus give her a vitamin B shot to boost her blood and pray for her to recover. She is also pregnant and just not doing well. Another goat has a skin condition that has not responded to antibiotics or antifungals, so a skin sample must be taken to the vet for analysis. She too, is pregnant, so caution must be extended. In addition to the wormer, feeding pine tree needles helps evacuate the worm population. Goat babies cannot get a chill so we breed for kidding in June. That way the weather is warm and the kidding is done in the pasture, naturally, with no fear of frozen babies born in the dead of the night. Still, a good goat herder needs to be ever prepared with towels, tubes and needles to assist delivery and help the weaker kids. So, goats are fun, yes, but likely the most difficult livestock to rear naturally. Are they worth it? You tell me. Robbie checking Jeanette. Hello little girl. It is the way with a new mother. She is unsure, over protective, over reactive and not sensible sometimes. We are expecting snow tonight, not a major snow storm and with fairly mild temperatures, if you can call -11 mild. I put the cria, the new baby llama, now named Jeanette, in a pen with a good shelter with her mother, who promptly jumped the fence out into the larger pen and called for her baby to join her. I had barricaded the baby in and I did not think she was yet capable of jumping. I even provided mother Karin with a straw bale step to go back to her baby when she wanted. Yesterday, she insisted on removing the baby to the back of the pen where there are some every green trees, not enough for real shelter, but better than nothing she thought. When I returned to check on the pair, the baby and mama were again in the back of the pen in the trees. Argh! So I picked baby up and carried her again to the shelter, tied the barricade in place this time and even though Karin jumped right back out over the fence, I was pretty sure Jeanette could not get out. But when I checked just before nightfall, out she was and back with mamma in the trees. I scattered some straw there yesterday so the little one would not have to lay on the snow. So, I decided to create a bit of a shelter since the mother insisted on staying there. I had to haul the straw bales on the toboggan, two at a time and set them up as a windbreak with a piece of plywood against the north side. I scattered a half bale of fresh straw on the ground and stuffed in corner and cracks with straw as well to keep the drafts out. The only protection from above were the meager tree branches, but if baby snuggles down in the fresh clean straw, she should be fairly protected from the wind and snow. It was the best I could do since mama would not cooperate and stay in the shelter. I hope they are safe and sound tomorrow. I think the llama who lost her cria in the bitter cold was Joyce, because Lucy looks as though she is ready to deliver any day now. I will keep checking because the nights are still cold. Llamas usually have their crias between 9 and noon, though, so I do not have to worry about midnight arrivals with them. Snuggle close to mama Karin, little Jeanette. By the way, the llamas are all named after my female cousins, so my family is always with me. Blessings. I was looking out the kitchen window this morning, just after 9 and to my surprise, there appeared to be two little ears poking up in the llama area. Could it be? I put on my coveralls, boots, hat and gloves and went to investigate. Still wet from birth, the little butterscotch baby was in a kush position, that is with her very long legs tucked under her, laying down. She was small and so very beautiful. But, whose could she be. All the llamas were eating. Stanley was busy breeding Karin. It must be either Lucy's or Joyce's baby then, but neither looked like they had just birthed a cria. Stanley, you would not be breeding Karin, weak from delivery, sore from her first baby, now would you? He was. When he was done, Karin got up and went to her little one. Joyce showed particular interest in the baby and a bit later I found out why. The cria, stood on shaky legs and nursed from Karin, showing indeed, that was her mother. I went to the shelter to check things out and there was another cria there, frozen and fairly new. I suspect it is Joyce's baby and was cold, then died. It could have been any other thing that was wrong. The little one that was gone was a beautiful white girl with suri type of fibre, that is long and silky like Stanley's and white like Stanley's. Try as I might, I could not move Karin to a safer location. I pushed, I pulled and I shoved. I put her baby on the other side of the fence, and still Karin would not budge. Finally, I called my friend, Dale, for help and fortunately he and his wonderful wife (they are awesome people) came with a long rope. Dale tied one end to the fence post and put the other at Karin's behind, while I pulled pushed and shoved her through the gate. The tap, tap, tap of the rope worked and she finally went through. Then I gave the cria to Dale, who carried it with Karin following, to the new pen with the Angora goats and Walter, the Cotswold ram who is done with his job for the year. Karin did not stay where the shelter was and instead took the baby to the far side under the trees. Ofcharka and the puppies went to investigate with Robbie. Ofcharka laid down beside the baby and began to lick her cleaner. Her mom had already done a great job and she was dry, but Ofcharka just wanted to be sure. I told him to quit and leave her and he went a few feet away and laid down to watch over the baby. Good dog. The puppies were not too interested after a few sniffs and played in the snow and Robbie just wanted to know what was next, huh, huh? So, one life lost, one gained, one possibly created all in a matter of a short time. Nature is without equal in its perfection, so abundant are the blessings. I am grateful for the little baby girl cria today, and for her mom and for the father, Stanley and the amazing creation of life. Thank you Creator! In the new pen Now that is a good day! Sarah is a young purebred full sized goat, an Alpine. She is beautiful and extremely people oriented because she was bottle fed from birth. I got Sarah as a trade for some wool and was so pleased with the little girl, but in no time at all, I also became frustrated with her. She is quite an escape artist and climbs fences, climbs in the feeders and basically gets herself in a great deal of trouble. The goats at the Fat Ewe Farm are not generally fed grain because ruminants do better on grass and forage and would not naturally eat grain. As a matter of fact, if they ate a lot of grain and were not used to it, the bloating from the ration could and does kill them. Sheep are worse with that issue. Ask me how I learned. Sarah was not only bottle fed, but grain fed. She learned that humans who carry buckets have good things inside and they, of course, are all for her. Being larger than the other goats, she pushes them aside, but she is not top goat. The other goats, though half her size, butt her out of the way to get what they want. Sarah does not seem to mind. She just gets something else. At first, Sarah was so frustrating, going through chicken wire to get the duck's feed, breaking through tarps and always getting out, that she was going to be sold or given away. But since she was a gift, Sarah stayed and although she is a pain in the butt, she is loved and has earned her place at the farm. Silly goatie. |
Categories
All
AuthorFluffy writes daily about the experiences on the farm and with the bed and breakfast patrons. Archives
October 2020
|