Not Fun

Poor Katie had to go to the vet yesterday for an abscess, two actually, on her cheek. It's not CL because of the location. Likely she is biting the inside of her cheek or has a briar lodged in there. Her teeth may need floated.

I've dealt with a couple of various medical matters with my goats over the past 16 months since getting them and let me tell you, I would rather do anything...seriously anything, like having to stick my arm halfway up a goat's wahoo even, than have to flush an abscess! It was traumatic for all of us. 

Katie's twin doelings stood at the gate and bawled most hysterically, which set us all on edge.

Not something the vet mentioned, but I found it helped to open the wounds better by first applying a warm compress of epsom salt solution so that the scab came off and it was easier to get the cannula up in there.

I had Ava helping me restrain her. I won't make her do it again in this particular case for the likelihood of causing her to forever hate goats because of it. It was not a job for the feint of heart. Even held in the milkstand, Katie was of a mind to buck out of there. Horses are easier to restrain than a goat! This is a 56 lb. goat!

I owed everyone a handful of animal crackers after that.

Julie, or Juji as we call her, is doing well for a 13 year old goat. She doesn't get into to as much excitement as the others, but prefers to pick a good spot and lie in the sun all day. We figured out last time that the easiest way to trim her hooves is to roll her over into your lap, lol.

I have found another reason to start bottle raising kids from now on, besides for managing milking or avoiding the hysterical hollering that goes on every time I have to separate them to work on anybody. I caught these big girls still nursing their mama. They are tubby little things and their mama is not. I thought Katie was looking thin because of her troubles chewing, but maybe that is less of a problem than I thought. I am going to have to separate the girls out long enough to dry her out.

I am on the fence about breeding Katie again this fall. She is an excellent mama, but I would like to get her weight up a little first. Her blood test for Johne's and CAE will be coming back soon. I don't expect any problems there.

Katie's birthday and her doelings' birthday is this Saturday, the 25th. Katie will be 12 and the girls will be 1.

Greening Up

2020's garden is well underway! Just waiting for things to warm up around here.

Savannah's rainbow carrot experiment.

Growing some Thai Red Roselle, a species of hibiscus whose buds are used to make a tangy, citrus-flavored tea or jelly. The leaves are also edible as greens.

Good Hatch

Despite all my worrying about humidity levels, we had a very good hatch. 17 of the 18 eggs that went into lock-down hatched. We ended up with 1 black, 4 blue splash, 5 paint and the rest are white, all healthy and vigorous. I plan to sell these here in a couple of days, after the kids have had a chance to enjoy them for a bit. If there is sufficient demand for them, I will set a couple more batches. All proceeds will go toward the purchase of a pair of new doelings!

Day 19

Ok, we're in lockdown...the silkie eggs, that is. 😬 Candling on day 14 had me worrying that the air cells weren't large enough. I ran the humidity low as possible from then until now and made good progress. I hope it was enough. It has been awhile since I've hatched eggs and I haven't done banty eggs before. I kind of flew into it without thinking and forgot to weigh the eggs before setting. We'll see how it goes.

Keeping Busy

I hope you all are staying well and getting along alright during this pandemic. What a surreal event it has been. It seems it will be a long time before things get back to any semblance of normal.

Ordinarily, I am a homebody and an introvert anyway. I could never run out of interesting things to do or means of keeping myself busy. But the thought that you cannot do something makes it oddly more desirable. I have started a lot of different little projects around here and it seems there's always something I'd like to run to Tractor Supply or the hardware store for. I try to bundle all those things into one trip as much as possible or make do.

We have gotten a good bit of tidying up done out on the farm lately. There are many pressing projects that need attended to out there. My husband has been blessed to be able to work from home, but mediating the chaos of everyone else working from home has kept him very busy in the IT department (which he technically isn't in anymore!!) He is set up with a desk in the basement and we really don't see much of him during the day. There are lots of things I wish he had time to help me with, but this has been no vacation for him.

Here are a few pics of things I am doing lately. None of which yet have included spring cleaning, ha.

Wintersowing.

 And starting flats...tomatoes, flowers, peppers, cauliflower, head lettuce, herbs, etc. I'm going to plant a LOT of tomatoes this year and do a lot of canning. I didn't plant up all of the garden space I have available the past couple of years since I was so busy. I plan to can lots of tomato sauce so I can make it keto. 

 Planted early spring veggies in the front raised bed so far.

 Pruned my roses and working on putting down new mulch on all of my beds. I know, these are two different colors! I ran out of the mocha brown and haven't been back to Ohio to get more so I had to settle for black. Not exactly a "necessary" purchase, but if I don't get it done now, I will be fighting weeds all summer.

We bought my Dad's bass boat out of the estate and my husband has been working on the old motor which wasn't running. He bought a big, thick manual on it and cleaned and rebuilt both carburetors. It sounds pretty good, but has some electrical thing wrong with it. He bypassed the kill-switch and that got it starting for now. This is has been his quarantine project and stress reliever. I don't think he would have gotten to it yet if it hadn't been for the COVID-19 shut down. Hopefully, we'll get to spend lots of time out on the water this summer. I bought a new 12-person tent too.

We're on day 13 of 21 hatching a batch of silkie chicks. After candling and removing 6 duds, I have 19 viable eggs at present.

These are some of the parents. (The Polish hen and the Mille Fleur hen's eggs were excluded, of course.) I would love to get some more Mille Fleur D'Uccles. They are the sweetest, prettiest little banties. Our silkies are very cute and friendly too. Just the right size for the kids to cuddle.

 Raising some replacement layers. These are all female Easter Eggers. The EE's will always be my favorite for layers. They have a nice temperament and I just think blue eggs taste better. 😉 I wanted to add some Cuckoo Marans this year, but I'll have to order them. I haven't found any locally.

I am totally obsessed with goats nowadays. I got my first Nigerian Dwarf does in January 2019 and spend a lot of my time studying all about good goat husbandry. The white doe farthest left is Katie and the other two are her doelings from last spring, Heather and Astrid. Lazy ol' Juji is in the barn hiding somewhere.

These are my new registered boys, both carrying milk stars from their dams. They are looking forward to having a job to do this fall. Katie is 11, so I'm retiring her. I plan to breed Rebel (black, in back) to my 2 first fresheners. He is a slightly smaller built buck than Snapdragon (in front.)

Snappy says "Hi"! Who knew you could love something so dang stinky? 😄 Both boys have wonderful personalities and can be so cute and affectionate. Everyone got their hooves trimmed yesterday and the boys stood for me much nicer than the girls do. I'm going to give them a spring shave here as soon as the weather warms a bit more.

I've been working on building them a run. They just go out in it for the day now and sleep at night in the barn until I can finish their little shed. We're putting up a privacy fence around that side of the yard too, as extra protection against loose dogs. I also have electric run around the pen.

When I can, I try to get away for a hike and some foraging as much as possible.

 

Morels are in season right now. I've been out a couple times. So far I have only found this one tiny Tulip Morel, M. diminutiva. 

 

Naturalized daffodils scattered around an old home site. My honey hole was logged 2 years ago. I don't know how long it will take to recover. The machinery spread the daffodils everywhere when they came through.

And we've been digging ramps.

 And playing in the creek.

And Savannah is really into learning to shoot a bow lately. She's pretty good too!

Things are blooming and this is my favorite time of year. I am so thankful for spring as it makes living in the twilight zone much easier to bear. So long as I stay outside and stay busy and don't turn on the news, everything is seems wonderful here in my little corner of the world. My heart goes out to those who are sick or have lost loved ones. It is hard to believe they could let something like this get so out of control in this day and age we live. 

I hope you have a blessed Easter this Sunday, in whatever form that may be.