Sick goats and fishing time!

We had a sick goat on our hands this week. I mean really sick, like -have-to-call-the-vet-but-don't-really-want-to-because-it's-going-cost-a-fortune-sick!

It all started Saturday morning when I checked on the little darlings. I noticed that Esme's hind legs and tail were soaked. I looked around and noticed a large wet spot on the floor, it didn't look like diarrhea but you never know with goats.. I figured she just ate too much grass and had diarrhea. I left her in the barn for the day and didn't think much more about it.

Sunday morning when I checked on the critters I noticed spots of blood on the floor. I looked at her bum and noticed blood coming out of her vagina. Now was the time to panic! But she was acting normal, eating normal and I checked her temp and that was normal. I was completely confused. So Dave and I gave her a shot of Pen-G (penicillin) as a precaution. Needless to say, she was not amused to have a needle in the back of her leg. I still kept her in for the day and kept a close eye on her. What I was afraid of also, "was it contagious?"

Monday I called the vet in Middleton, since they specialize in goats. They were baffled. We talked for awhile trying to figure out what was the problem, but to no avail. The only thing they could figure out was maybe she had a varicose vein in her vaginal wall that had busted and it was bleeding. It would rectify itself. They had never seen it in goats, only in horses, but anything is possible. So she told me to deworm her and give her the Pen-G for a few more days and keep a close eye on her. Then 5 minutes later the vet called me back and said, "I was thinking more about this and even though this usually just happens in Oct or Nov, Esme might be having a pseudo-pregnancy. She's young and confused so she might have thought that she was pregnant. They usually have alot of mucous that discharges when they think they should give birth then have bleeding for a few days."

So my goat thinks she was preggers! What next. I checked her tonight and no blood. Completely clean. Hopefully it stays that way.

My first catch of the season!

So the rest of the week involved fishing for the first time this season. We all went to a river not far from our house. We each caught a pickeral. We are a catch and release kinda family, so off they went back into the river.

J. very excited!

Monday afternoon I cleaned out the greenhouse again and planted my tomatoes. I'm hoping it won't get too cold at night. It's been pretty hot the last few weeks.

My clean greenhouse. I gave up on the middle part.

The blackflies are out with a vengeance. They are hungry and plentiful. The mosquitoes shouldn't be too far off. Shudder...

Father and son

Sunday I actually had a few minutes (very few) to sit in my favourite spot.

My favourite chair. It might look strange but it's ohhh so comfortable.

It's been so dry that our little pond is going dry and my poor little tadpoles are getting a smaller, very smaller little pool.

Tadpoles. Little fish in a very little pond and getting smaller by the minute.

Since it's spring our very plentiful poplar trees are leaving little cling-ons everywhere. You can't get rid of the darn things! And they stain the clothes also. The cats are not happy with them either. Febe has some all over her beard and Shadow has some all over his butt. The photo doesn't do Shadow's cling-ons justice.

Shadow and the clingons!

This ugly part of the old barn used to be the pig pen. Needless to say it is full of nice composted pig poop! Lots of it. So we (Dave) are going to clean it up and it's going to become my pumpkin patch for my giant pumpkins!! Imagine the big pumpkins that will evolve from that poop! Ohhhhh yeaaaah.

The pumpkin patch in the making.

When you think you've seen everything on a farm, you see something else that makes you go "hmmmmm". A few days ago I went into the chicken coop to gather the eggs. The two roosters had kicked out the hens and were sleeping together in the nest. No, no don't even go there.

Well have a blessed day!

Lisa

The slow week

My forsythia and magnolia bushes

This blog should be entitled...The Last Two Weeks in Photos.

It started with a beautiful rainbow. Isn't this picture so inspirational with the Irving propane truck in the foreground. tee hee

I thought the rainbow would show up better.

Well once again its the case of "never say never". Words have alot of calories. That's why I don't seem to be able to lose any weight. I keep eating my words. Sigh....

I always said that we would never, ever get a trampoline for J. Well, Dave found a near new trampoline in the local paper for next to nothing. Sooooo here it is. We are having a blast with it.

J. and the trampoline

The weather is holding out. It's been just beautiful. Some days are a bit chilly, but mostly sunny. The problem like I mentioned in my last post is that we are not getting any amounts of rain. Not good. By now my garden has a few inches of water between the rows. At the moment, it's almost dust. Not good. But my garlic is doing wonderful.

The Garlic

My rhubard almost didn't make it. Dave didn't realize it was there and tilled the garden. Uh oh! This is all I have left of it.

The rhubard on it's last legs

Febe and the exploding udder.

The goats are doing well. They all go outside together now. Esme is terrorizing Cindi Lou. Febe is terrorizing Esme, but most of the time protecting Cindi Lou. My dilemma now is should I get rid of Esme or Febe. I was going to get rid of Febe since she's not very nice with J. But.....she gets along with everyone except Esme. Esme on the other hand doesn't get along with Febe or Cindi Lou. Even J. would rather me get rid of Esme than Febe. His opinion is....

"Mum, Febe is a good mother and milker, you don't know what you're going to get with Esme. I like Esme, but you sometimes have to think about the big picture. I can always stay out of Febe's way. But she is getting nicer to me."

My child is wise beyond his 9 years.

We are going to band one of the boys. It's a buck year. Everyone has had bucklings. Not a good thing. It's hard to sell them. I really hate to think that they would go for meat, but.....

Cindi Lou, Mike and Art

Last night I seperated Mike and Arthur from their mom, so I can get some milk in the morning. It didn't go so well. There was whole lot of blatting going on. But this morning everyone seemed happy and I had 2 litres of milk! Which I am drinking now. Ahhh! It's so good.

I have been trying to take photos of the kids, but it's hard to take a nice photo of flying objects! I love this photo. Look at Mike's legs. He is just flying. (ignore the junk in the background).

The Wild goat rodeo

Cindi Lou had little scabs all over her body. We have no clue why. I even called the vet and they have no clue why. So I've treated her with Cy-Lence and everyone else for that matter in case it's a case of lice or mites. It seems like it's doing better. It's against my religion to drink, but these goats are working hard to drive me to it!

Cindi Lou Who

Otis is doing well. He likes to stick his tongue out at us. He's going to the big pasture up the road in a few weeks. His hair loss is doing better. We treated him with Cy-Lence and it seems like it did the trick. We have a different problem now. Dave got the farmer up the road to come and castrate him because we were told that he hadn't been pinched where we got him. So Herbie, the farmer came to do it (and he's done it many, many times.) He can't find "them" to pinch "them". Hmmm....strange.

Otis

The following photo is the perfect reason why you should plant your veggies in the greenhouse within a few days of cleaning it out. Not cleaning out your greenhouse and waiting a few weeks to plant your veggies!

My Evil Greenhouse!

This is called doing your work twice!!! I swear.. I'll never learn. I thought I was getting a jump on the year. I guess not!

Most of the pigs are gone. Only one left. He was supposed to leave at the same time as the others, but the guy's car broke down on the way, so he's coming Tuesday. If he stays here any longer Dave is charging him boarding fees which is normal.

J. feeding the piglets

Two of our young chickens have died yesterday and today. One from being picked to death and the other, we aren't sure why. Chickens are evil things. I hope we don't lose anymore. The two we did lose were pullets. Crud.

Last week was Stampede Day at our place. Who needs the Calgary Stampede when you have goats!

I needed to get Cindi Lou out of the pasture to feed her. So I just opened the gate a bit and Febe stuck her nose through. I grabbed her collar, but at the same time Esme tried to sneak out also. So I grabbed her collar too. (do you see where this is going?) For a split second I had control of the situation. Then my foot got caught in a tree root. There I go being dragged around for a few seconds (felt like minutes) on the ground by two goats before I realize...."Let go, stupid dummy!" All this time, Dave and a visitor are watching me thinking..."What is she doing?"

Never a dull moment.

Yesterday J. and I painted the barn, well one side of it. Then we ran out of paint. Then he painted his tree fort.

Tomorrow I have the entire day planned..

-get chicken feed

-do banking

-clean sheet day

-clean (and I mean scrub on my knees kinda clean) the kitchen floor

-paint the french door in the kitchen

-clean the goat pen

-make supper so we can eat for 4:30 so we can go to drum lessons

-go fishing with J. after school.

Phew... I think that's it! Dave asked what I was going to do in the afternoon after I've done this list.

Today was a good sermon at church. We had Calvin Smith from CMI come and explain creationism and how is pertains to regular everyday life instead of evolution, which we don't beleive in. www.creation.com

My Magnolia Tree

Well I think that's it for this post. Have a blessed day!

Lisa

Spring goats

Well, where to start.

Me and the kids. All four of them!

All is well. Febe kidded last Thursday. She gave birth to identical twin boys!! Not so happy. But the Lord gives us, what the Lord gives us. We've decided that we are going to keep one and breed it to Cindi Lou Who and Esme. Maybe even Whisper.

We had the problem of trying to name the bucklings. Dave wanted to name them "This One" and "That One". I found it cute but I really didn't want to name them that. At work we have two older guys working with us. They are always pulling pranks and acting foolish. Sooooooo..... I want you to meet.. "This one Arthur" and "That one Mike". Their official names will have Spring Peeper in front of their names.

This One Arthur and That One Mike

I'm kinda worried for them. I don't find that they are eating much. But they are looking healthy. They are getting bigger and playing and frolicking. It's just that Febe's udder is humunga bunga!! I had to milk her yesterday and I milked over 2 litres!!! and I wasn't even done. But they must be finding milk somewhere's.

I got home from an Epicure party a few hours ago and I noticed that the neighbour had a chimney fire going. The fire dept is still there. The strange thing was that she had no fire in the furnace. She just had the oil furnace going. Not good. I'll have to ask Dave what went on. He's in the fire dept.

April 14

Well I had to milk Febe again tonight. They are favouring one side. I got 2 litres on just one side. The poor girl was in misery. I called my goat lady and she said that I should milk her morning and night to keep her even and they'll have enough throughout the day and night.

Cindi Lou Who having lunch

Cindi Lou went to school Monday. She did well and the kids loved her. They even got to feed her. She was so tired when I left that she fell asleep in my arms on the way to the car. But she's becoming a little minx. She's jumping on the milking stand now, while we aren't there, then grabbing things off the upper shelves. She is growing like a weed. She's eating some grain now, but she won't drink out of the bucket so she's still on the bottle. I had to put a bale of hay on the milking stand to stop her from jumping up.

Tonight (April 15) I milked Febe and she hardly had any on both sides, so they must be keeping her even. That's good. But she's got a sore on her head. I think she goes under the feeder to clean up after them and she rubs her head. I hope that's all it is. I'm telling ya, these goats are going to drive me to drink. And I don't drink! This morning I had so much on my mind, I got to work and I thought, "Oh Crud!! I left Febe on the milking stand!" So I call our neighbour in a panic and he went to check. No, I hadn't left her on the stand. I need to get back in the groove of things. Is there ever a groove?

Monday we treated ourselves to lobster. It was good! We had enough for 2 meals. At 4.75$ a pound, that's pretty good. It was actually cheaper than eating in a restaurant.

YUM!!

The chicks have been moved to a larger place. I think they doubled in size overnight. Otis is doing well. His fur stopped coming out. He's off the bottle (that sounds strange) and drinking water. Soon he'll be going to the big pasture up the road.

This coming Saturday is pig day! Everyone is coming to get their piggies. That'll be nice. We are keeping 2 for ourselves for meat this fall.

Ok, it's enough. I have to publish this post. It's been sitting around long enough.

Have a blessed day!

Lisa

Spring has come to the country

Busy, busy, busy! It never stops. I sometimes just want to sleep and not wake up for a few weeks. That, I think would be bliss. But life goes on and the world is not going to stop to let me off anytime soon.

Well first things first. Happy Easter and our baby is now 9 years old. It seems like just yesterday that he was born. Boy I miss when he was a baby. He's growing up too fast. Soon he's going to graduate from high school! Oh well... such is life.

J.'s birthday.

Most of the farm animals are doing well. Except for Otis. Otis seems to be losing his fur at an alarming rate. Between his back legs he's completely bald. It's coming out in clumps. I've never seen such a thing. Mind you, this is only our second bull calf. We've asked several cattle farmers around here and they all say the same thing. "It's normal." Weird. Oh well. He's eating well, still a sookie and looking normal otherwise. So we'll leave it at that. If any of you have seen this before let me know.

Our new hens

We have a few new additions to the farm. We bought a few bantie hens ( like we didn't have enough) from a friend. He didn't want them anymore because he needed the room. 3 hens are just banties and one hen is a Millefleur and so is the rooster. That's why Dave wanted them. They are kind of scraggly, but the feathers will grow back one day.

I'm having a dilemma. I'd love to let my hens run free but we have so many wild mink in the area that I don't know if they'd survive or not. And also, will they lay in the house or am I going to have to go egg hunting on four acres of land everyday?

Charlotte and the kids enjoying the hot spring air.

The piglets are doing extremely well. They should be ready to hit the road next week or so. We are keeping 2 for ourselves. Dave brought a piglet to the school in Yarmouth last week. A friend of ours teaches grade 3 and they were reading Charlotte's Web. She asked Dave if he could come in with a piglet. I don't know who was more excited, the kids or our friend? Not one kid had ever seen a pig and only 2 had seen hay before. Isn't that sad. It's not like we live in New York City. There's farms everywhere around here.

We've come to another hard decision. We have to sell Febe. She's a great milker, great mom and great goat, but she's really, really bad with kids. The two legged variety. I cannot leave her alone with J. for a minute or she attacks him. This is not good. She's a very aggressive goat and I figure that she thinks he's a small goat she can bully and she attacks him. Last summer she smacked him in the chest and sent him flying. This cannot happen again and he loves the goats, he wants to help, but he can't when she's around, which is all the time since she's the head goat.

So this winter when she's dried off I will put an ad in the paper to sell her. She was due to kid today but she's late. I think it'll be a few days still. They can be up to 5 days early or 5 days late.

So since we are going to sell Febe I need another replacement. So without further ado let me introduce to ya'll to ....Hazy Day Cindi Lou Who!

J. and Hazy Day Cindi Lou Who

She came all the way from Sussex New Brunswick. That's an 8 hour drive from here. And no I did not drive that far for her. I have a friend that goes to Bethany Bible College in Sussex. He was coming home for the weekend so he was nice enough to bring her along.

She was born March 25 2010. She was in the CAE prevention program, so that means I have to bottle feed her. It's fun, but alot of work. All the milk I had frozen in the freezer for myself is quickly dwindling down for her. Oh well. She is a sweetie.

Well it's Easter today. The day our Lord and Saviour arose. We organized a breakfast at the church and we had an early morning service. I had my parents over for supper and had rappie pie and I'm stuffed!

Egg hunting

The Easter Bunny passed for J. and left lots of eggs outside for the hunt. The weather was great for it also. It's been gorgeous for a week now. We are getting June weather in April. On the down side it's extremely dry at the moment. It's usually so wet now that we feel moldy. So if it's dry now, by August when it's usually dry it's going to be worse. That means no fires, no weinie roasting, nada, nothing, zip! We'll just have to wait and see what the good Lord has in store for us.

Well I have to go and feed "the baby" and check on Febe.

Have a Blessed Day.

Otis and friends.

Well, once again it's been non stop here. We are at that point that we are starting to wonder if it's all worth it. There's so much work and it just never stops. We don't have 2 minutes to ourselves. We have decided as a family tonight that we are going to set a day or evening where we are going to do something for just the family. The problem is finding that day.

Today was a beautiful day, as has been the last week. I hope that spring is finally here. The goats were happy outside and I cleaned out the chicks and the greenhouse. J. did the chicken coop.

A pig pile! This was taken last week. They've grown alot since then.

The piglets are doing great. Someone came and picked one up after they were only one week old. We didn't guaranteee that one. The person understood. Dave finally made a door for Wilbur so he can go outside and divided the pen with electric wire. Now we know why people tell us to put a barricade on the OUTSIDE of the electric fence. When you train pigs to the electric fence they actually run into the fence if zapped. They don't back away from it like a normal animal. Twice did Charlotte run through it and broke it! Sometimes pigs aren't the brightest bulbs in the bunch.

J. feeding Otis for the first time. He was only 3 days old in this photo.

Well Otis is here! He's the cutest. I have no idea how we are going to eat him this fall after bottle feeding him and cuddling him. I know we shouldn't...but how can we not! I mean look at him. He's got big beautiful eyes and such long eyelashes.

Otis and his first time outside.

I think this is the part I become vegetarian.

We've been bottle feeding him twice a day now and I've also started teaching him how to eat grain. He prefers slobbering all over me than eating the grain at the moment.

Esme and Whisper at the chow hole.

Esme and Whisper are now forever buddies. I have tried putting Febe in, but she terrorizes the poor things. Even outside she bullies her. I'm not liking that. J. is having a ball, though. They love him especially when he shows up with treats!

J. and his friends!

After much anticipation we have a grand total of 19 chicks! I put 53 to hatch and we had 20. One died after a day. This might not be a good average, but compared to last year it's fabulous! Last year I put 30 eggs twice and got only 3 chicks. We were so disappointed. So 19 is pretty good.

Hatchlings!

Hatchlings a few days later.

Last week they demolished 3 buildings from our downtown area. It's really sad to see them go. They've been there for 60+ years. They were ready to crumble since nobody was taking care of them. Most of the buildings in Weymouth are built over the water, so they're on cribbing. Needless to say if it's not taken care of the cribbing rots.

Downtown Weymouth. Not very big.

They're planning on building an industrial building there. I had to give them ideas of colour schemes. I think they liked a few of them.

Snowdrops.

I was so excited yesterday. I have flowers coming up!!My garlic is also starting. I was worried about the garlic, since I had planted it so late in the season. We actually had a snow storm the day after.

Well I think that's all I've got for this week. I know I'm probably forgetting something, but...oh well.

Have a Blessed Day!

Lisa

Maple Syrup Time!!

Liquid Gold!

If there is one thing I would love to do but I can't, is maple syrup. We have no maple trees on our property, so it's kinda hard to tap poplar trees. I don't think it would have the same effect.

So since I love syrup season, whenever I find out someone that does do it, I try and weasle an invitation out of them. It's not hard to get an invite around here. People are more than happy to give you a tour of their sugar shack.

Josette and David King

Since I work in the paint dept. and I have a tendency to talk alot, it doesn't take long to find out who does syrup. This year I got an invitation the Josette and David King's sugar shack.

Josette and J. checking the buckets.

Sunday morning I figured she was going to call me to tell me that the sap was running. It had been cold overnight and Sunday was a nice, warm beautiful day. So Sunday we played hooky from church. We just had too much work to do. I know, I know we're Christians we shouldn't be working on a Sunday, but when you've worked all week including Saturday, you've got to do the house chores at one point.

Maple trees and Buckets by the water fall.

Josette called early in the morning, but we only got there late afternoon. "Red Green" a.k.a Dave had lots of work that NEEDED to be done before Monday morning. So we finally got there. It was so nice. They even have a camp that they rent out to people there. They call it a camp, I call it a house. It's really nice. I never took pictures. I should have.

In the sugar shack.

They just have a small operation. They tap 40 trees, but it's still nice. Josette even gave me a jar of syrup to take home. You get there and it smells like the cotton candy and candy apple vendors at the fairs. Ahhhh heaven.... We stayed there for about an hour and then we had to leave to go to my parent's house for supper. She was making glazed ham with blueberry pie and cottage pudding for dessert. Yum! We couldn't miss that.

I've started my tomato seeds. Last year I had excellent luck with them, so I'm trying it again this year.

We are awaiting the arrival of our newest addition to the farm. There's a big dairy farm about 45 minutes away, so needless to say they have alot of boy calfs (or is it calves) they don't want. So they sell them cheap. They had 4 or 5 cows ready to deliver this weekend, so we had first pick the minute a boy was born. Guess what....It was all heifers!!! That's our luck. Dave had been busy Sunday morning building a stall for him. I don't know how I'm going to be able to handle this one. I have a hard time eating Gus and we only had him a few months. This one we will be bottle feeding! It's only going to be 3 days old. I even have a name for him already. Otis. This is not starting very well. I know...never name the animals that you're going to eat. But geez it's hard.

Red Green at work.

We slaughtered the 2 pigs from Charlotte's first batch of piglets. They were called Caramel and Snickers. The three before that had better names... Bar, Bee and Que.

Mud, mud, mud and more mud. Dave borrowed his dad's truck and went to the valley for feed. He backed up to the barn and kinda got stuck.

MUD!

We got the answer from the insurance company and we are not happy campers. They're writing off the car. And they are giving us about half of what the car is worth. Not good. We paid almost $8000 for this car 2 years ago. They say that there's $3500 damage to the car and the car is only worth $3300!!! Not happy at all. We counter offered, so now we are waiting their answer.

This is the damage. It is worse than the picture depicts.

Well that's been my week so far.

Have a Blessed Day

Lisa