Casualties of the Drought

It rained two inches in October.  None so far in November, although my weather forecast this evening shows a 48% chance of the wet stuff on Friday and a 79% chance on Saturday!  We are praying that we get it.  For years we have sequestered rain water by placing barrels, buckets and water troughs under the drip line of the house and the barn.  Not counting the barn, I think I calculated at one time that I can catch 400 gallons of rainwater with a 1 inch rain.  

We use that rainwater for watering the plants, the chickens, and the cows and goats.  It helps minimize the water bill - when it rains!  Yesterday morning I walked out to bring a 5 gallon bucket full of rainwater to the hens in the chicken tractor.  When I dipped the bucket in the rain barrel, something surprised me.  There was a big dead rat in the barrel that had drowned.  

Upon closer inspection, it was a squirrel.  The poor squirrel had no doubt tried to drink from the barrel and fell in.  Squirrels aren't good swimmers and he succumbed.  With the drought, water isn't as easy to find.  All the water in the ditches has long since evaporated.  We are overrun with squirrels.  They eat all the acorns and pecans and they are plentiful and fat.  I was just thinking that I was going to kill a mess of them and make a good squirrel gravy. 

And then this morning I was greeted with this sight in the water trough that catches rain off of the barn: (Can you see something at about the 4 o'clock position?)

Another drowned squirrel!  But that's not all.  Tricia had pulled another drowned squirrel out yesterday!

There are more shallow water troughs than this one.  I don't know why they are going to that one to try to drink from.  Three doesn't really put a dent into the squirrel population, but I'd rather not see them die and go to waste.  Hopefully we get the rain forecast for this weekend and fill the ditches and holes in the woods with water, thus making available safer places for them to find water.

Mais, It's Cold, Cher!

Hey, do you have a minute?  I'd like for you to take a walk with me this morning.  Look, grab a cup of coffee to take with you.  I made it extra strong today.  Better put on a cap and your heavy coat, it's cold outside!  It snowed last night.  We aren't used to that, and our animals aren't either.  We have to go take care of them.  I'll show you the morning routine.  First, we'll bring some food out to the pullets in the chicken tractor.  They are just starting to lay.  The eggs are small.  The tractor is in the back yard and they are demolishing the St. Augustine grass - just scratching it up to bits.  Let's put some feed in the gutter we use as a feed trough.  I thought we'd have to break the ice off the water in the water bowl, but the heat lamps we turned on last night kept the occupants of the tractor warm and toasty and the water didn't freeze.

The twin bridges that lead into the pasture and the garden were frozen over.  It looked very pastoral and wintry, wouldn't you say?  Don't slip when you pass over now.

Yesterday we frantically put blue tarps over the entire garden except for the radishes that are almost done and the turnips.  The snow blankets the blue tarps, but you can still see the blue of the tarp underneath.  Beneath the snowpack and tarp are beets, carrots, kale, chard, spinach lettuce, onions, kohlrabi, broccoli and cauliflower.  By Friday when things thaw out, we'll fold up the tarps and see if we have live plants underneath.  If not, we'll quickly harvest all the carrots and beets and anything salvageable.

Follow me out to the barn.  We've got to feed and hay the cows and goats.  Look at Belle waiting inside the barn.  The cows are coming round the corner.  The fake owl is doing its job on the roof chasing off hawks that like to steal our hens.  A few chickens are out scratching looking for something.  Let's get a bucket of hen scratch and scatter it around for them.

The rest of the hens are in the hen house.  It is nice and warm in there.  Would you mind opening the lids to the nesting boxes?  We close those up at night or the hens would roost on them and poop in the hay.  Then the eggs would be all full of poop the next day.

And here's Belle.  Look at that girl, would you?  She spent the night in the barn.  She is indigenous to the Pyrenees mountains between Spain and France.  She has a heavy coat and would have been fine outside, but we wanted to make sure she was warm and dry.  She repaid the favor by digging a big hole in the barn.  I'll have to cover it all up.

There was no stick nearby to break the ice in the trough, so I used my boot.  It was an untimely day to discover that my boots have a hole in them.  My sock is wet and my feet are cold now.  We have to break the ice, though, so the cows and goats can drink fresh water.  We never have to fill this trough.  It sits under the drip line of the barn and catches rainwater.  

We'll throw a few gallon scoops of sweet feed and alfalfa to the cows and let them eat.  Then, I'll put a square bale of some good bermuda hay for them to munch on.

I read one time that in northern states, farmers supplemented their livestock's diets with root crops in the winter.  I've been doing that for several years.  If you look below, I have a thick bed of turnips that are growing.  I began pulling turnips, cutting up the turnip roots and feeding the greens and roots to the cows.

Some of the roots are the size of a baseball.  Others are small.  It doesn't matter.  The cows can't distinguish.  They eat them all quickly and beg for more.

The cows can eat in peace for the time being as the goats haven't picked up on the fact that I'm tossing turnips to the cows.  Otherwise, they'd be between the cows causing trouble.  The cows will inevitably toss them to the side with their big heads and necks and the goats go flying.  Seems like they'd learn, but no.

I appreciate you joining me today.  Maybe tomorrow if you're not doing anything, I could show you some other sights in this strange, alien winter wonderland?

Waging War on Parasites from Another Front

Despite using rotational grazing to move our cows and goats to a new paddock in the pasture before they eat the grass down to the ground, our animals have suffered from time to time with parasites.  This is often caused by animals grazing too close to the ground.  If your pastures are overgrazed, the animals will pick up parasites.

Rather than automatically giving de-wormer, we've opted to take stool samples from our cows and goats to our veterinarian.  He runs the test, identifies if parasites are present and in which animal(s) and we treat.  We've seen success with this, but the parasites continue to return.  Tricia stopped by a Shaklee dealer that lives down the road and brought home a gallon of Basic H.  We had read in Joel Salatin's book Salad Bar Beef that he uses Basic H as a cattle de-wormer.

Basic H is not labeled as a de-wormer.  The ingredients are proprietary, so we really don't know what's in it.  Stranger still, here are some of its uses: a rust inhibitor, a heavy duty soap/cleaner, mosquito/flea repellent, removes fish or skunk scent, fertilizer for garden, toothpaste, etc.  At $49.99 per gallon, it is pricey stuff, but we figured we'd try it as a de-wormer.  Hopefully, we won't have to try it to remove skunk scent!

The rate for de-worming is said to be 1 cup to 100 gallons and 1/2 cup to 50 gallons of water.  It just so happens we have a 100 gallon trough in the pasture where the cows and goats are and a 50 gallon trough in the pasture where the two bulls are.  Tricia put a cup in the big trough and a half a cup of Basic-H in the smaller one and turned off the water valves.  This allows them to drink the water/Basic H without the valve opening and diluting the Basic-H.  Here is the big trough after the animals drank for two days:

100 Gallon trough

And her is the smaller trough after the bulls drank on it for a day:

50 gallon trough

We also put some in the chicken water trough.  Notice how it made suds.

Turning off the valves and allowing the animals to drink the water level down showed me just how dirty the troughs were.  I used this as an opportunity to scrub down the sides and completely clean the troughs out.  Then we turned the valves back on.

According to Joel Salatin, you can't overdose your animals on Basic-H.  Tricia and I have discussed treating either once a month or every other month.  We'll give it a try and report our results.  We aren't afraid of trying new techniques on our little homestead farm.  Hopefully it will work to "clean the parasites" out of the animals.  I'm already seeing a positive effect - it cleaned up the water troughs!

Water Break

Water is the Driving Force of All Nature. - Leonardo da Vinci

You step out of the door at 5 AM and it is 83 degrees.  The humidity is so thick you 'wade' through the air.  By the time you get 5 steps in the garage, you can feel a trickle of sweat running down your back.  Ugh!  The middle of July.  We have several months of this left to go!  We're not the only ones who are affected by the oppressive heat - our animals are too.

One thing that really refreshes me on a hot day is a tall glass of cool water.  It is no different with cows.  They love to drink water after a hot day out eating grass.  I like to watch them walking in to the water trough in the evening.  They stand in front of the trough and drink it in in long, slow, gulps, swallowing it down.  You can practically watch its invigorating effect.

I read somewhere that a cow can drink about 27 gallons a day.  Lots of times I turn off the water valve and re-fill the trough with rain water, so I carry 5 gallon buckets.  I've done the math and 27 gallons per day is about right.  Once the three momma cows and the two bulls drink, they can really put a dent in the water inventory in the trough.

Sometimes it's kind of crowded at the trough, but on some days, cows can walk up and have it all to themselves.  I like the photo below as it captures Rosie shortly after she's quinched her thirst.  She is standing there enjoying the shade of the pecan trees and the nourishment of the water.

Unfortunately, she's found another way to stay cool.  She goes and finds the nearest mud hole to lie in.  She gets muddy like a pig!  Oh well, just like humans, they just want to be cooled off in the hot, summer months.

You Can Lead a Bull to Water, But You Can't Stop Him From Breaking the Water Trough

From about July - December, we kept our bull, Chuck, and our little buckling, Buckwheat, in a fenced off area that we call the "bullpen."  We wanted to keep the boys away from the girls, if you know what I mean.  Now is the time that we'd like Chuck to breed Daisy, Rosie, and Clarabelle, but Luna is too young to be bred.  So in order to effectively manage this, we put Luna in the bullpen and simply allow the bull to have access to both cows and heifer that we want bred.  We've seen some activity, but are unsure if breeding was successful.  We should know shortly.

One bad things about bulls is that they love to rub their heads.  They rub their heads on posts, on people, and on any other object they can find.  Unfortunately, they can be very rough and destructive to your property (or your body).  Take for instance the photo below.  This mud hole looks like pigs would be running around in it, but we have no pigs.  What we do have is a bull that rubbed the water trough with his head until he broke the bucket.  I placed one bucket nested in another one and the bull broke that one too.

Water would leak out and create a big mess that never dried up.  This is a management problem as it is a perfect breeding ground for parasites.  I don't want Luna standing in all that muck to drink water.

The bull broke the bucket and made a huge mess

So I went to the feed store and picked out a 50 gallon fiberglass water trough made by Rubbermade.  I think it set me back about $69 bucks.  That's okay, though.  It appears to be tough and durable and this spring when we put the bull back in the bullpen, he won't be able to break this one with his head.

Right now I'm supplying the water by water hose.  The hose runs about 70 feed from a spigot at the barn.  My plans are to run some pvc pipe underground to supply the new trough with water.  I will als put a float valve in it to keep this trough automatically filled up.  As you can also see, I've moved the new water trough out of the mud hole.  The trough is short enough where the goats should have no problem drinking from it.  This should make all the animals happy - except the bull, of course.

Curious Luna came down the chute wondering what we were doing.  She was sloshing through the mud and the muck.  I felt sorry for her.

While we were at the feed store, we picked up a salt/mineral block for Luna to lick on. I think it costed $6.99.  Luna promptly went and began licking on it.  Her pinkish colored nose from licking it made her look funny!  I placed the lick in a flat tub with plenty of holes drilled in it to allow rainwater to flow out of the tub.

Salt Lick

Luna of course can't speak English, so we are not sure what she is trying to tell us, but because I have some hearing problems due to not wearing ear protection, I am pretty good at reading lips.  I am pretty sure by reading her lips, that Luna is expressing her thankfulness for her new water trough and salt lick.  Her face was all pinkish color, letting me know that she had found the salt/mineral lick.  I licked it just to see what it tasted like.  Pretty salty... No wonder she's at the water trough now.

Your welcome, Luna.  Now if I could just keep that bull from destroying everything he comes into contact with.

The Water Trough

In the pasture right next to the fence and adjacent to the garden, we have a 150 gallon water trough.  In the cool morning or late afternoon, the cows can always be found taking long, rejuvenating mouthfuls of water. One of the first things that I remembered learning when we purchased our cows is to never bother them when they are drinking water.  The book described their time at the water trough as "sacred time."

Cows, especially milk cows, need lots of fresh water.  Remarkably a Jersey cow drinks on average 30 gallons of water each day.  Apart from needing water for hydration just like you and me, she needs to drink 2 gallons of water to make one gallon of milk.  

At the water fountain

Looking at the cows lined up in front of the water fountain reminded me of standing in line at the water fountain in elementary school.  We'd come in from recess from playing football and we'd be all sweaty and smelling like dogs.  We would rush to the water fountain and stand in line waiting patiently for our turn.  The cool water was so refreshing.  I can remember it to this day.  We had three types of water fountains - one had a button that you would push down on to make the water come out, one had a foot pedal that you would stand on and another had a knob that you would turn to the right.

Some fountains would squirt the water higher than others and some fountains had water that was colder than others.  Those were the fountains that you wanted to drink from.  In other fountains the water would barely shoot above the nozzle, leading some people to almost put their lips on the nozzle.  Gross! We learned to steer clear of those.  Sometimes some uncouth people would spit their gum or other things in the drinking fountain drain, clogging up the works.  For some strange reason, and I guess it came from drinking long sips from the fountain while staring down into it, I can still remember the name of the drinking fountain as it was imprinted around the drain: Halsey Taylor.

Here is what I learned from the Halsey Taylor website (http://www.halseytaylor.com/about-ht.aspx):

In 1896, Halsey W. Taylor lost his father to typhoid fever caused by contaminated water. Years later, as a plant superintendent for the Packard Motor Car Company, Taylor noticed dysentery spreading quickly through the workers, and again suspected drinking water.

These personal experiences inspired Halsey W. Taylor to dedicate his life to providing a safe drink of water in public places. In 1912 he developed the Puritan Sanitary Fountain and began producing it at the original manufacturing site in Warren, Ohio.

That is very interesting.  Mr. Taylor had witnessed traumatic events caused by lack of clean, refreshing water and made it his life's work in supplying fresh drinking water for people, including young, sweaty boys waiting in lines after recess for a sip from a Halsey Taylor drinking fountain.  Thank you Mr. Taylor, my hat's off to you!

Now notice in the picture below, it is Rosie's turn to drink and she's standing there, no doubt annoying Daisy. She's also got some back-wash action dripping back into the trough from her mouth.  Not polite or sanitary, Rosie!

Gimme some water

When it gets above 85 degrees, the heat really saps the cows' energy.  You can watch them sitting in the shade panting.  They only eat in the early mornings and late afternoons after it has cooled off.  This will cause their milk production to fall off somewhat.  The heat really takes its toll on the old girls (me too!).  That is why it is so important to keep their water trough full of clean, fresh water.

Thank you for the water!

We make it a priority to fill the trough first with rainwater as long as we have it. We've experimented and believe it or not, the cows prefer rainwater to tap water and we theorize that they don't like the chlorination in tap water, so we sequester rainwater to fill the trough with.  Although they're not going to get the opportunity to drink from a Halsey Taylor drinking fountain like I did, we want to give them the next best thing.