Caprine Ready-To-Wear

Lily & Pickles first potential due date has passed without any sign of labor.  Both are starting to bag up, but Lily's udder is more full.  Not like dairy goat full udder, but definitely larger than they were a month ago.  Pickles still doesn't look very heavy, but I'm hoping the fact that she is starting to develop an udder is a sure sign of pregnancy.  I've been massaging their bellies and haven't been able to confirm a baby in there, which I am a bit surprised at.  When I was massaging Nettie during her bloat incident this past weekend, I was able to feel at least one kid kicking around like crazy.
Next kidding date for Lily & Pickles is on February 28th.

And the day before that, Nettie and Annette are due to kid.  So if you guys don't see or hear from me at the end of February, rest assured that I'll be in the barn up to my eyeballs in afterbirth and wobbly goat kids.

In anticipation of The Insane Goat Baby Fest of 2014, I decided to check how many goat coats I had in my stash.  Last year (or was it the year before??) was the earliest I had ever scheduled kiddings and the nighttime temps dipped into the 30's so I was scrambling to make some sort of goat kid covering and ended up with a butt ugly goat coat..

Susan must have been horrified at my hasty attempt and was kind enough to send me a couple of homemade kid coats.  But even with those two beautiful goat coats and the three dog sweaters I picked up at Walmart end-of-season for like two bucks, I'm still going to be needing a few more.  Four goats due in two days times an average of two kids each and, well, I really need to make a few more goat coats is what I'm getting at.  Although I'm hoping we'll eventually get through these insnae cold-snaps we've been getting, knowing my luck we'll continue this trend just through kidding season so I want to be prepared.

I went through my stash of material and found some fleece blankets that I was eventually going to do "something" with:

The Sponge Bob pattern was selected as the first prototype, because honestly, I can't think of anything else I'd really want to do with it.  I was going to make Outside Kitty a pillow using it but when I showed it to him he rolled his eyeballs and with an audible "humpff" trotted off, butthole puckering his disgust at the thought of having to sleep on something so silly.

So I'm off to make some slightly-less-butt-ugly goat coats.  I'll let you know how they turn out.  That is, if I manage to finish them before the kids hit the ground.

Diospyros Virginiana, Weather Oracle

Yesterday I did a post on the winter fortune telling abilities of our local American Persimmon trees (Diospyros Virginiana).  Well, it's not the trees themselves with the psychic abilities, but their seeds.  If you split one open lenghtwise, it will reveal either a knife, a fork or a spoon.  Finding a knife will mean you're in for some bitter cold winds that cut like a knife.  Opening one to reveal a spoon / shovel means you'll be digging out your driveway on a regular basis.  And one can only hope for a fork, as that signifies a mild winter and good eating.

Not sure if it's just Ozark Hillbilly Snockered on Moonshine kind'a folklore or if it applies to wherever persimmon trees abound.

Where American Persimmons can be found.

The Arkansas Champion Persimmon tree is located in Yell County and has a 151" circumference and is 96' tall (as measured in 2004).  Our persimmons are skinny, tall and lanky with a circumference less than 12" and I seem to have more standing dead ones than live ones.  Not sure if we just don't have the right soil for them, if there's some sort of persimmon disease in our woods or what.  I just try to make sure that Paul doesn't doze them over.

Did you know that the seeds of the Persimmon were used as buttons by the Confederate Army during the American Civil War?  And the roasted, ground seeds can be used as a coffee extender / substitute.

I know that my Northern blogging buddies are jealous of my Southern Oracle Tree so I did some research and came upon the seeds of the Great Northern Persimmon (Holycrapus Damitscoldus). I split it open and this is what it revealed:

I'm thinking you guys are pretty much screwed.

The Persimmon Doesn't Lie

Local folklore has it that if you split a persimmon seed in half (lengthwise...you know, the difficult way), it will tell you how severe the upcoming winter will be.  If there's a knife inside, it will be a bitter cold winter, if there's a spoon/shovel inside be prepared for lots of snow, and if there's a fork inside you're lucky and will have a mild winter (apparently the fork represents good eat'n).

We've done this several years now, and the 'simmons (as Rhiannon calls them) have been pretty much on spot.  This year we got a spoon four out of five seeds.  The fifth one was "kind'a" fork-like, almost like a spork.

Spoons. Definitely Spoons.

Fork?  Spork?!

I was hoping that the spork seed would mean "kind'a good eat'n", but apparently it was more shovel/spoon than a spork because this is what we got yesterday:

This is our third major snow this winter.  Need I mention that we were working outside just this Saturday in the mid-50's weather?  And on top of our 3-4" of snow we're supposed to get some more snow & freezing rain with temps in the upper 20's to lower 30's....meaning it will be a mess for the next week at least.

So I suppose it's good that Pickles and Lily didn't end up taking their first breeding go-around because not only would I have to put goat coats on the kids, but I'd have to look into fitting them for ice skates.

Pppfffffttttt....

Paul was outside yesterday evening around dusk and put the chickens up for me.  Then he comes in and says that he thinks Nettie is in labor.  

WHAT?!  I exclaim with an expletive or two thrown in for good measure.  I wouldn't have been so surprised if he had said it was Pickles or Lily (who have gone past their first kidding date) but Nettie wasn't due for another month.  I hastily throw on jacket, boots & grab my head lamp and on the way to the barn wonder how I would handle a premature goat birth.  

I get to the barn & Paul is in one of the open pens and Nettie is in laying down in the corner, head craned out and moaning a bit.  I check her backside and other than being a little more puffy than usual, she isn't dilated, there isn't any goo and she doesn't seem to be straining from labor pains.  But she is in pain.

I make her get to her feet, check her ligaments (still there) and feel her udder (no new milk).  So I'm pretty sure she's not in labor, but has bloat.  I'm not sure what she would have gotten into that day.  They all got the same ol' same ol' hay that morning and fed the same grain rations just hours earlier.  For whatever reason, Nettie seems to be predisposed to getting bloat.  I think she's had it four or five times.  At least now I've got the routine down and I head back to the house and break open my animal med kit and start preparing a drench for her.

I put a cup of vegetable oil in a jar and then add 3 Tablespoons of baking soda to it and mix it up well.  I brought that, the drenching gun and a thermometer back to the barn and had Paul hold Nettie so I could drench her with the oil / soda mixture.  We got a good ounce down her then Paul & I took turns walking her around, massaging her stomach and drenched her again until I got all the oil / soda mixture down her.

After about five minutes of walking her around, we got some gurgling, a burp and a fart.  Paul and I continued the walking / massaging for about an hour and drenched her once more before leaving her be for a while.  I went out later that night to check on her and found her in one of the goat huts.  I got her up, walked her around, got another couple good farts out of her (yes, I know I could say "gas", but fart sounds so much more phonetic, and let's face it, saying ffffarttt like it actually sounds is fun) and let her rest for the night.

I got up before dawn this morning to check on her and she seemed much improved.  She saw me wielding the drenching gun and made a bee-line for anywhere I wasn't going.  I got her in to the milk stand with a promise of a handful of cracked corn, locked her in the stanchion and drenched her with 5ml of Probios and 5ml of Vitamin B complex.  

It's all fun and games until somebody can't fart.  (Fffffaaaaarrrtttttttt!)

Good job, Chicken!

All but three of the RIR pullets have been making their way into the coop at night.  Which is a good thing because I was getting more & more ticked off as the evenings went by and was being not-so-gentle in my relocation efforts.  Ever see a farmchick manhandle (chickenhandle?) six or seven chickens at once?  At one point I was just opening my coat and jamming as many of the buggers in there as I could to lessen the number of trips back & forth.  It's a sight unfitting for man (woman) or beast (chicken).

Not only have the majority of the pullets made their way into the correct side of the coop, but I even found a pullet egg in one of the nest boxes!  Double-happy-dance.

Now if I can just convince the rest of the flock to deposit their unborn children into the appropriate area we'll be doing great.

I Stand Corrected

It IS freaking cold outside.  And colder than normal.  And I don't mean to make light of the fact that these abnormally frigid temps are taking a toll on many people.  I guess I'm just sick of hearing the media (well, which ones I manage to pick up while online) telling everyone to "wear warm clothes" and "fill up your gas tank" and "have extra food in the house".  It never ceases to amaze me how people need to be reminded of things like that.  Oh, it's going to be below zero today?  Maybe I should put on a sweater instead of my mini skirt and silk top.

And I do have to admit that I check the weather forecast several times a day.  Just so I can complain to Paul about it (it drives him absolutely bonkers).  But really,  I LOVE it that we have the technology to give us (somewhat) accurate weather predictions.  For example; Sunday we hit 70 degrees.  I took Rhiannon to the park and and even bought her an ice cream cone.  Had I not accessed the wonder that is the internet weather channel, I wouldn't have even guessed that the day time high temperature was going to drop almost fifty degrees the following day.  And had I not known that, I wouldn't have taken the time on Sunday evening to put down fresh bedding for all the critters so they don't freeze their keesters off.  I would have been doing it today in the 21 degree weather, swearing up & down how darned cold it is.

Even with the evening temps getting down to the single digits, would you believe that I am still picking ticks off of the GSD (Giant Sloppy Dog)?!  Will they never die?!

Of course, with the extreme cold temps these next few days, I have the potential for Lily and Pickles to kid.  Hopefully their second breeding date is the "good" date and I won't have to worry about taking care of a baby goat in damnitsfreezing weather.  It's bad enough the the GSD and Outside Kitty are in the house at night; Paul will totally flip if I have to bring a hypothermic baby goat into the kitchen.

By Wednesday we're supposed to be back up to more normal winter weather, around 40 degrees, and slowly creeping up to the upper 40's later in the week.  Which is still too cold for me.  And I will continue to complain about it while people who live in states North of me will envy my above-freezing temps and call me an ingrate.  Oh well.  Gotta blog about something :)

small Egg Increase

The Polar Bear Rolex, or whatever the heck they are calling "winter", has descended upon us once again and in anticipation of this rare event (you know, cold temps during, uhm, WINTER) I spent some time out in the barnyard cleaning out goat huts and filling them with clean bedding.  When I was about to empty out Chop Suey's goat hut of choice, I spied two eggs in there. So I sent our smallest farmhand in there and she came out with the two eggs.  One of them was almost half the size of the larger one; a pullet egg!  Add that to the fact that my older biddies are starting to lay more and pretty soon I'll be using up that huge pile of egg cartons in the laundry room.

The Rhode Island Reds are just shy of five months old so it's about time I started finding pullet eggs.  Unfortunately, it wasn't in the coop.  I'm still hand-delivering about half of the buggers to the coop every night and each time they are more & more wary of me so it's more of a challenge to catch the effers.  I'd lock them up in the coop until they finally "got" it, but the older birds are picking on them and they want to get out as soon as I open the door in the morning.

I really don't feel like chasing chickens and playing hide & seek with eggs, especially in the cold!

Just.....strange.