The Thunder from Down Under

The livestock shows are over and it looks like spring is on its way.  We have three cows that are "open," meaning that they are not pregnant and ready to be re-bred.  For Benjamin's senior year of livestock showing, it is important that Clarabelle has calved in advance of the shows next year.  A cow's gestation is roughly the same as a human's - 9 months.

We figured it was time to look around for a registered Jersey bull that would be willing to make a conjugal visit.  I talked to a good friend of ours and he happened to have a new registered Jersey bull all the way from Australia that has a real good bloodline.  Our friend doesn't need the bull for his herd for about 3 months, so he told us he would come drop off the Australian bull...

No rules...  Just right.

The bull at first did not want to leave the trailer.  He was on new turf and seemed a little shy.

But as soon as the bull saw the cows, he boomeranged (get it?  ha ha) himself out of the trailer and began courting immediately.  Daisy, Rosie, and especially Clarabelle seemed apprehensive and not particularly thrilled with his exuberance.  He was like a bull in a china shop.

Sorry, this next pic is a little explicit.  The Aussie bull, in less than 8 minutes after leaving the trailer had already consummated his relationship with Rosie.  The young bulls were unsure of what to make of this lewd and public display of affection. 

Hopefully, Rosie is bred.  One down, two to go.  Somehow, I don't think this bull has to worry about his vitality or virility.  We'll keep him for 2 or 3 months to make sure the cows don't come back in heat, but I think the old boy will get the job done.

Keeping an Eye on Annie

We've kept Annie in her labor and delivery birthing suite (i.e. the barn) for over a week now as we have wanted to keep her out of the miserable weather.  Her due date is somewhere around February 20th.  She's been warm and dry in the barn.  Yesterday Tricia and I wanted to check on her progress.  She seems to be very swollen in her back end and her teats are swollen as well.  She's getting close.  In fact, Tricia and I listened as she sat and moaned.  We were thinking that she was going into labor, but as of this morning, no kids.

While we are talking about goats, I wanted to show you something that is truly interesting about goats - their eyes!  Check out this close-up of Annie's pupils.  They are rectangular!

In the animal kingdom, sheep, goats, and some other animals, have rectangular pupils.  Goats are seen as prey (as opposed to predators).  They are herbivores.  Predators (cats, snakes, alligators) have vertical slits for pupils .  The goats' rectangular pupils allow them to see 280 degrees around them, and that allows them to see predators coming and keeps them safe.  However, they don't have much vision vertically.

Annie will undoubtedly make use of her ability to see 280 degrees around her when she has given birth and has to keep track of at least one more baby.  We'll keep you posted as she progresses in pregnancy.  We have our eyes on her and she's got her eyes on us.

If You Break It, You Buy It

"If you break it, you buy it," was a quote I often heard as a boy.  I think it probably originated from shopkeepers who tired of young boys going in their shops, rough-housing and breaking the merchandise.  They wisely instituted a rule that made the parents have to buy the items that kids broke.

I hadn't thought about that in a long time until just recently.  At my last place of employment, I had a company car.  I figured since I was driving a company vehicle, I had no reason to keep the old "beater" that I was driving, even though it was paid for to save paying insurance on a car I wasn't driving.  So I let it go.  It seemed like a wise move until my employment came to an end after a year and I suddenly found myself shopping for a vehicle.

We scoured the Internet looking for a dependable used car and found it right in our home town.  On a recent Saturday morning, Tricia and I poured ourselves big mugs of coffee (this will be an important part of the story later on) and drove approximately 4 1/2 miles into town to the used car dealer.  And there she was: A pearl white 2017 Hyundai Sonata with only 31,500 miles on it and reasonably priced.  It was a rental vehicle like our existing car.  They must turn them in after 31,000 miles as that was the same amount of mileage that our existing car had.

We were pretty certain if we could get the price down by $400 or so, we'd make the purchase.  I sat in the driver's seat and turned on the ignition.  I heard Tricia open the back door on the driver's seat and lean over.  She may have said, "uh oh."  Or she may have said, "Doggonit!"  I'm not sure, but when I turned around, she had a funny look on her face and said, "I spilled my coffee on the backseat!" 

She went and told the car salesman what she had done.  He said, "That's okay.  We'll get it out."  I told him, "If we break it, we have to buy it?"  We laughed.  A few days later we went back and closed the deal.  Tricia's coffee stain still graces the back seat reminding us that it okay to laugh at ourselves.

No one else probably notices it, but we do.  Everyone always says after you buy a new car, that sooner or later you get that first 'ding' in the door that initiates a vehicle's rapid depreciation.  Our first 'ding' or coffee stain actually happened before we officially purchased it!

Last Year's Hay

It is the middle of February and a week ago the cows ate all of the remaining inventory of hay.  I called the gentleman that sells us round bales and delivers it, but he happened to be offshore working.  He works 14 days out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.  We supplemented with the square bales of bermuda hay that we keep up in the loft.  When our hay man hit the beach, he called me with some bad news, "I'm completely out of the hay from this year that I have been selling you, Kyle."

He did have some good news, though.  He told me that he had started feeding his cows last year's hay.  Last year was a very good year for hay and he had some still stacked up in the back.  He said his cows were eating it and he'd sell it to me at a discount.  I asked him to bring me 8 round bales and he delivered them to the house and put one in the pasture.  With all the rain, I immediately covered the 7 bales with a billboard sign that we use as a tarpaulin.

The hay looked kind of "iffy," but once the weathered outer layer was removed, the inside of the bale was fresh and looked like it was baled yesterday.  The cows loved it and absolutely devoured the bale that was out in the pasture.  All's well that ends well.  There is only one little problem.  Since the round bales are last year's hay, they've settled and aren't round any more.  They are flat on the bottom and as a result, they won't roll.  I had Russ and Benjamin help me and we couldn't budge them.

But we're not quitters.  Though we can't roll the bale, we can unroll it and bring armfuls of hay to the cows.  That's exactly what we did.  Obviously this wouldn't work with a herd any bigger than ours, but with our little animal family, this will work.

They hay ring is only about 60 feet from where the hay is stacked, so we don't have far to carry it easily to them.  The cows are happy.  We are happy.

Daisy, Luna, and Rosie are thankful to have the all you can eat hay buffet open.  Clarabelle and the little bulls are still in the barn, but they'll all be here soon.

These 8 round (flattened) bales will last about 40 days.  We will purchase some square bales that a buddy has stored up to use after that to tide things over until the spring grasses come in. 

A Little Room To Stretch Out

Winter time is a time where we eat a lot of gumbo with white rice.  It is warming and soothing.  And filling.  It is usually too wet and muddy and nasty to get outside and do any gardening or manual labor that I normally do for the sheer love of it.  Working outside provides another benefit - it keeps me in shape.  In winter, though, the weather isn't conducive to that and as a result, I eat too much gumbo and do too little work and thus, come early February, I always notice that my Wrangler jeans have shrunk for some reason.  It is the oddest occurrence.  Because as soon as the weather gets nicer, my jeans expand and are comfortable again.  Go figure.

I say all that because that is what I thought about when looking at our tomatoes.  They are growing and running out of room to grow in their seed pots.  Their roots have filled every centimeter of space.  Many simply clip the smaller plant and let the dominant one survive, but I look at that as a waste.  These tomato plants - all of them - are going to produce fruit.  I'm not thinning out a single one.

Running out of room to grow

This weekend, in a job that took a couple of hours, I carefully and tediously, used a plastic knife and spoon to dig the root ball of the tomato seedlings out of the seed pot.  Then I painstakingly separated the conjoined plants and placed them in their very own cup where they have room to stretch out and grow. 

I used some of the soil that we made IN THIS BLOG POST to put in the very bottom of the cup.  The composted chicken manure that makes up 1/3 of the mix ought to give the tomatoes some 'get up and go' and make them turn a healthy green.  They had run out of nutrients and had an unhealthy color to them.  I re-potted them in Community Coffee cups.  Perhaps there's some residual caffeine in the cup that will wake them up and rejuvenate them as well.

This is just one of our varieties of heirloom tomatoes called Black from Tula.  They formerly occupied a little four-pack and were root bound.  Now they have room to grow.  It's almost as if they loosened their belts a notch after eating too much gumbo and now can expand freely.

Here is the finished product after separating all the tomatoes and putting them back underneath the grow light.

This weekend I'll need to do the same with the pepper plants.

Annie's Time Is Coming Soon

Annie is our Nubian Goat that gave birth to triplets back in early March 2016.  We named the little trouble-makers Buckwheat, Darla, and Jane.  They are fun to watch, but like we always say, they are like having some bad little kids around.  They are always getting into trouble.  The little family of four has entertained us time and time again.

Tricia let me know that she noticed that Annie is "bagging up."  This means that Annie is pregnant and will be kidding again within the next few weeks.  During all this rain, we've kept her in the barn where it is warm and dry and there is plenty of dry hay to serve as bedding.  She's really not fat at all, so I don't think she's having triplets again.

The expectant Annie giving you "the eye"

But here's the proof of the pregnancy and soon delivery of at least one kid:

Goats are different from cows in their lactation equipment.  A cow has 1 udder with 4 quarters.  There is a teat for each quarter.  If you watch a calf nursing on his momma, it will go from teat to teat until all are empty.  A goat also has four quarters, but has only 2 teats.  1 teat drains 2 quarters as there is an opening in each quarter that empties into the teat.

Regardless how many teats Annie has, they are filling with milk and we'll have another little one on the farm soon!  We will keep you posted.

I Need To Get Busy This Weekend

Our Spring crop of tomatoes and peppers that I planted in early January are still under the grow lights in the utility room.  This weekend I will have to stop putting off transplanting them into larger containers.  As you can see, they are growing tall and are touching the fluorescent bulbs. 

There are two seedlings in each container that will have to be separated and placed in their own pot.  It is going to be a little tricky to separate them as their roots have grown together.  I usually use a plastic fork to help untangle as much as I can.  Some roots will be broken, but the plant will be okay as long as most of the roots are fine. 

The other thing I need to do is to begin watering them with a diluted solution of fish emulsion to give them some "get up and go."  Some of the tomato leaves are turning an unhealthy color and that means that they need some nutrients.  Fish emulsion, which is simply ground up fish that is dried and pulverized into a powder is just the ticket.  It doesn't smell good, but once that fish powder is mixed with water and poured on the young plants, they really like it!  They turn a healthy green and by the time they are ready to go into the garden, they are strong and vigorous.

I have a number of different tomato and pepper heirloom varieties planted.  Peppers take longer to germinate, so they are smaller than the tomatoes, but I'll put them in individual pots so they don't get root bound.

We still have several weeks (maybe a month) until we reach our average last frost date, so we still have a ways to go before the plants will be transplanted into the garden.  They'll need to be hardened off on the back patio to acclimate them to the cold and wind.  But, I'm wondering if we'll ever dry up enough to plant this spring.  Tricia remarked as she slogged through the mud out to the barn that it is the wettest, nastiest, muddiest that it has ever been.  Hopefully, we can keep these guys growing indoors healthy until the weather gets right outside.

These are farther along than they were last year.  However, my eggplant seed did not germinate, so we'll be buying eggplant from the nursery this year versus growing them from seed.  It is supposed to rain for the next several days, but I can get gardening done on the back patio where the rain won't bother me or the plants.  This weekend will be a busy weekend transplanting a bunch of seedlings into individual containers.  Then they'll go back under the grow light until conditions are right outside.