Goats! You've Got to be Kidding Me

Well, we've got goats, sort of. The guy we bought the goats from delivered them late this afternoon. We wormed them, and put them in the electrified goat pen that I'd just finished. Unfortunately, just an hour earlier, a thunderstorm that had a tornado warning clipped our holler (the second severe storm of the day). This thunderstorm also broke an insulator that shorted out the fence down to a mere 4 Kv. So even though I'd checked beforehand, So the goats just walked out of the pen, and after a whole lot of chasing, diving through brush, briars, and poison ivy and the occasional diving tackle, we've just about got them all penned up in a holding pen we had set up for the pasture pups. I managed to wipe out and roll down enough of a distance across enough rocks to warrant a trip to the doctor tommorrow to check for a broken wrist and a badly banged up knee that is still numb several hours later.

So very early in the morning, Carla and I are going to head down to the pasture and put up some welded wire fencing around the goat pen. This will give a physical barrier until they figure out that the hot wire is, well, hot. I fixed the broken insulator so the fence is now back in the 8 KV range again. Arghhh.

Fire

So we burned a large pile of brush the other night. It's been dry lately, so the wood was just begging to ignite. As it's spring, the lush grass made it just about possible for the fire to spread, so even with a moderate breeze, we were able to burn with near impunity.

I've always loved fires, especially bonfires. I still do. Sometimes however, I catch myself staring into the flames, and I'm reminded of fires that burned over 3,000 miles away.

In the summer of 2004, I was a Specialist in a unit that spent most days escorting other units and civillians all over Iraq. Here's a pic of me back then. I was about 20 lbs heavier (all muscle my wife will lament!) and a whole lot dumber than now. I was a machine gunner/automatic rifle man, that's my M249, Annette - SN 54166, in the pic below. We spent most of our time rolling down supply routes or getting lost when we strayed off of them. I spent most of my time in a gun hatch on top of a armored Humvee. Heading north of Baghdad one summer day, something huge blew up in front of us and took out a civilian dump truck. It was an almost ridiculously huge mass of flames. Talking with some EOD guys a little later, they said it was probably a napalm roadside bomb. The insurgents had been working on getting the napalm thing down in the area, and, well, judging from the huge wall of fire that just about made me soil myself, they had got it down.

In the pic below is my buddy Myers in the lead gun truck. He's aiming at a black car that peeled out immediately after the explosion. He said it was trigger man, and he had good instincts, so it probably was - but instincts aren't enough to justify taking a life, so he never pulled the trigger. As we drove by, I saw one of the guys that somewhat escaped the fires above, some other Iraqis had him pulled out behind the group of cars above. He was melted alive like a candle. The flames were meant for us, and these innocent guys were burned alive because the triggerman was a little too jumpy. I think of the wonderful life and family that I now have, and I wonder if the men that died had wives, children, and parents that never saw their loved ones return from work.

I'm very thankful for what I have. I let myself think about these things when they come. There's perspective for me in fire.

Locust Perfume

So it's mid spring, and the locust trees in the holler have exploded with blossoms. Locust trees are a leguminous pioneering species around here. They're especially thick on the fenceline of the top bench of the pasture. Locusts are one of my favorite trees around here.
The tree's blooms are really large - bigger than my hand, and smell like honey. This pic was taken right after a rain, and the moisture in the air held the flowery perfume near the ground. It was really heady stuff, but man was it wonderful.

A Good Weekend

So let's just say that it's been a less than ideal couple of weeks past. It's been one catastrophe after another on the farm -but this weekend was wonderful. I sold at the market Saturday morning, and despite the buckets of rain falling from the sky, had a great time. After the storms rolled through, I went and worked on the electric fencing in the back corner of the holler. The clouds were eerie, and rolled right on by. It was beautiful.While up on the top bench, a large pack of coyotes fired up and started yelping just a little way up the holler. The pack was only about 75 yds into the woods, and I'm pretty sure they were eyeballin me as I fenced. The guard dogs were up on the bench with me so I just enjoyed listening to the "concert". It was quite a large pack of coyotes.Across the holler, the turkey hens have built a nest in some branches downhill from the house. They're remarkably camouflaged. The hens haven't taken to setting yet.
Our tom turkey keeps a look out over his ladies though nonetheless.

Cornish Cross Not for Us

It's been one thing after another this season. Some of it's so ridiculous that it's comical at times. Today was the realization that the Cornish Cross Hybrid meat chicken - the same bird that every industrial poultry operation uses, has no place on our farm. We tried a small batch of 50, and they've been dropping like flies. With time constraints of family, work, & farm, I can't coddle these birds. Cornish Crosses are dumb, and I mean dumb. Raising these birds are not compatible to our values. Why did I even try them?

I made the assumption that the Cornish Crosses were the equivalent of the Broadbreasted White turkeys - they are not. Broadbreasted whites do great on pasture, or at least I've never had a problem - they gobble grass, clovers, chase,err I mean waddle, after bugs, dust bathe, etc. Despite common opinion, the turkeys won't drown in rain. They have a good life, and only one really bad 5 minutes to go out on. The chickens, however, are a whole different story; other people can raise them on pasture, but not on our farm.

Blind Turkey Poults!

So it's been a really, really crazy week. I got swapped mid-week into night shifts while interviewing for another, awesome job with a really awesome agricultural non-profit organization. This other job will be much, much more farm friendly. It will also give me an opportunity to help other farmers like me. I can't believe people actually get paid to do this job...How awesome is that?! We'll see how it goes.

In the midst of everything that's been going on our turkey poults came in. There was a problem with the heritage poults, specifically the Bourbon Reds. Half of the shipment was blind! Once we figured out what was actually going on, we contacted the hatchery, Welp out of Iowa, let them know, and they're sending us more chicks. We've switched to them exclusively, because they don't charge shipping, and their customer service is awesome.

So here's a group of normal looking poults.
These are healthy Bourbon Red and Broadbreasted white poults. Below is one of the deformed poults. The eyes are a solid, eerie greenish-gray color and there's no pupils. They were runtish, and completely blind, and they all started dying at four days old - they just couldn't find food or water.
At Bruce's suggestion, I tossed in an older chick to help the little poults figure out how to scratch and find out where the food is. One of the poults took to snuggling under its wing.
Here's a shot of the Cornish Cross Meat birds heading out to pasture here in the next couple of days. They'll be food on May 19th. The growth rate is incredible in the Cornish crosses, growing so fast their feathers can't keep up.
Ugly Duckling, err Tasty Chicken!

Dog Training Invention & Birds on Pasture

So last year, I had some problems with the Pyrenees eating hens. I couldn't figure out what was happening, so I hid in a patch of cedars and watched as two playful puppies followed the flock around and managed to catch a hen. They then laid down with the hen between their paws and proceeded to lick the hen, and then pull out feathers. What was happening was the pups were playing, and being affectionate (licking), but chickens are very delicate, so it didn't take much to kill the bird. Once dead, instinct kicks in and the pups eat the carcass. This is pretty common across the board for livestock guardian dogs - the guy that we're buying our goats from told me about how his Anatolian shephards quickly dispose of any stillborn goat kids. Dead animals attract predators, so the dogs are protecting their flocks/herds. Pretty neat.

But to stop inappropriate play, I came up with the idea demonstrated below. It's just a chicken wrapped in polywire fencing hooked up to a charger. The chicken is on a rubber mat, so it can't be shocked because there's no ground. A mischievous puppy, however, will complete the circuit and get popped on it's nose or mouth, and it will probably be a lesson that sticks for the rest of the pup's life.
In other news, I finally got the chickens back out to pasture yesterday. Finally!