Do goats quit eating when they are in labor?

This is another question I found on the toolbar, so I'll attempt to answer it. Every goat is its own little weirdo. I have some goats that will chew their cud up until it's time to deliver. I have some that will push a little a day or two before they kid. I have a couple that don't even bag up until it's time to burst. Some have huge bags a month before they go into labor. Every goat is different. I've had some eat grain while they were in labor.  When I discover a little lady in labor she gets put into a clean jug with water and nothing to eat.  The goal is to get the kidd(s) out alive, not to feed mom.  I'm not going to get into how to deliver a kidd, but the answer to that question would be yes, they do eat when they are in labor.

 I have read that you can help to determine what time of day a goat kidds. The literature stated that a goat won't kid on a full stomach. I haven't tried it yet, but you are supposed to pull their hay or grain so that they are on empty when it's time to pop.  Mine have 900lbs of free choice hay in front of them. They typically kidd during the afternoon or 3am. It's worth a try if you have an appointment and won't be around during certain hours. But I would not try it just to try it. 

Brownie, a month and a half before kidding twins

How do you warm up a cold kidd?

On my "stats" bar is shows me what search terms or words led you to this site. The title of this page is a pretty serious question and I would really like to address it. I've gone through it numerous times. I've saved kidds and I've been too late before.  The fastest way to warm up a cold baby is this method (or this is what I have found to be the fastest). I am not a vet, this is what I have found that works for me, if you have a vet whom you can call at midnight, they would be the more reputible resource.

I found a baby that had just been born, who was freezing and within minutes from death one cold December night. His mother came from the organic herd I had bought less than 12 hours earlier. She was starved to the point that she had no energy to take care of the kidd. She had nothing for milk either. So when we walked in to check on the new goats I found this very unexpected almost dead baby.

We didn't waste any time on this one. Immediately we took it to the utility sink on our back porch, filled the sink up with about 5 inches of water, so that the water would cover his spine.  We had put him in the sink while we were filling it up an attempt to not shock his system. We used water that was between luke warm and hot. You can gauge if it's too hot. If it's creating steam it is most likely too warm, you want it to be around their desired body temperature of the kidd. This isn't a quick fix it, I have spent 6 hours with kidds in that sink before.  I have read alot of remedies for this, a shot of dextrose (you can find it in the cattle section of your local coop) into the muscling of the neck will supply the kid with energy that they need to help overcome this. I believe the desired dosage is 5cc's, you will have to do some math conversions to get the right amount. You don't have to give them any shots I just feel that that shot helps.  Alot of people will attempt to tube them warm fluids or inject warmed up dextrose into their stomachs. I don't do either, they are struggling enough as it is. I wait until I get a shiver out of the baby and once he stops shivering I will try and feed them warm milk out of a 30 cc syringe with 1/2 inch length of 1/8inch diameter drip tubing. I try to get 45 cc's in them, depending on the size of the kidd. If the kidd isn't accepting the milk and you have tubing experience you may need to attempt to tube it.

Once the baby is shivering they are going to start trying to stand up or start moving around. That is when it's time to take them out of the tub, dry them off with an outside towel, place them in a box with newspapers and start the blow drying. The warmth from the blow dryer should raise their body temperature back to normal. Keep it about 4 inches away from them, the box will collect alot of heat.  Put your hand between the dryer and the baby, if your hand gets too hot the baby will most likely be too hot.  It's important not to make them too hot so keep putting your hand in there from time to time. Once the baby stops shivering you should have him where you want him to be. Turn off the hair dryer and find a heat lamp.

Place the heat lamp about 12 inches off the baby, so that when he stands up he can't knock it over or burn hisself. It's very important you have it secured, if it falls you can burn your house down.  By now he should have had some milk or electrolytes in his stomach and should be shaking his head or trying to stand, or trying to talk.  Leave him alone for a little while, but still check on him about every ten minutes to make sure you aren't cooking him.  In about 3 hours he will need to be fed. Every animal is different, if he's looking for milk or he is sunk in behind his ribs you need to feed him. It's important not to gorge him or else they can get sick and you have a whole different problem to deal with.

 You can return him to his mother to nurse in the morning, if you have access to a heat lamp, securely put one up in the jug that he should be in with his mom.  If he looks healthy and alert in the evening, leave him with mom. First you need to make sure he has eaten before you leave him alone.  I would go back out at 9 and check him. Make sure he has nursed, then go back out at midnight, and repeat the process. If he's shivering I would bring him back to the house and put him back in the box with the heat lamp.

I hope this helps, this time of year can be very stressful with new kidds.  Check your herd daily for lathargic kids that don't want to stand or are standoffish and shivering.  That's a good sign that you better get them fed and warmed up. If you have any questions feel free to email me, shall00@hotmail.com .  As I said before, I am not a vet, nor do I have any formal vet training. This is merely a suggested method that I have found effective. It doesn't hurt to check with your vet first.

Rocky and his mother, along with the spotted doe. One month after purchasing and rocky is one month old. Mother finally came to her milk after pushing the grain and alfalfa on her.  Don't do that unless you have talked to a vet, you can bloat a goat on grain and alfalfa.

Weather, kidds and pneumonia

It's been a while since I've written anything down. For my avid readers I apologize. After scanning facebook updates I keep seeing the use of antibiotics on cattle popping up. A lot of people are against them and accuse the farmers and ranchers of abusing our livestock and poisoning the general populous. Let me tell all of you a little story of when I abused an animal.

Currently, the goat count is 108 including 30, month old babies, or kidds. We've had some warm days and really cold nights. Every night and every morning and throughout the day I monitor my goats. I stand out in the rain, snow, sunshine and wind to make sure everyone is healthy and noone is sick. It also helps me detect heats so I know when to expect babies. One afternoon a good friend of mine, Shanee, came out to see her goats. She helps me out immensely and I thought it would be a great idea to let her run goats to help pay her back. So she comes out on the weekend and visits her goats and my family pretty often. She calls the place the second chance ranch, jokingly, because almost everything I buy is starved or "organic", another term for starved. We were walking around the hay bunker area and came upon a baby shivering and frothing at the mouth. Everytime I have seen this it has always been a poisoning from some sort of plant and I have always saved them with water and pepto bismol. So I went about the normal way of treating her, 30 cc's pepto and an equal dosing of water (they dehydrate when they are poisoned which is why they can die so quickly.) The next morning I noticed she hadn't made any progress but had gotten worse. She now couldn't stand without assistance. We were in a hurry that morning, we were running late to feed cattle. I put her in the hay feeder so she wouldn't get stepped on and hurried off with my husband to feed cows. I would have plenty of time that night to take care of her.

While at Dans (husband) work I mentioned to his boss what was happening. His boss used to run thousands of sheep. He immediately knew it was pneumonia. That took my breath away. From onset, you have 72 hours before they die and we were about to go onto day 2. I went to college for two years and somehow I naively mis-diagnosed a doeling with the most obvious of symptoms. So as soon as we got home we placed her and her mother and sibling in a jug (small pen) with fresh straw. She was very weak now and her bleating was strained. Pneumonia causes sores in their lungs which in turn rupture and fill the lungs with fluids. It's very painful to the point where they typically won't lie down because the added pressure on the chest cavity is very aching. Essentially they just give up and die. The only antibiotic I had on hand was LA200. It's not a very strong one, typically used to treat footrot. It's also recommended to administer Vitamin B when you give an antibiotics. The antibiotics wipe out the good bugs in the stomach and the Vitamin B puts them back. So I administered both the LA200 and Vitamin B injections. I knew that she was hungry so I called one of the dairy goats into the barn and milked her. The doelings (pneumonia kidd) mother is a meat goat and doesn't produce as rich of milk and as much as my dairy goats do. So we tubed her the milk by sticking a 1/2 inch of an 1/8 tube down her throat and attached it to a syringe which held 30cc's of milk. Those are all the drugs I had on hand so we had to call it good and hope she could make it until I got ahold of something better.

The next morning she was flat on her side, but still alive. I administered the shot of LA200 and the vitamin B. Both shots burn. So I have to watch the very baby I am trying to save cry out in pain for about 20 seconds. I also gave her some liquid baby aspirin for the pain in her chest and congestion (at this point I was willing to try anything). I then tubed her milk and placed her back with her very worried mother. I called up the neighbor boys and asked all of them what to do in this case since I found her when she was so far gone. All suggested the drug Nuflor. It's an antibiotic specifically for respiratory problems. It's also a couple hundred dollars for a bottle of it. I'm a stay at home mom running 108 goats and operating on a very small budget right now. If I buy this drug I can't feed 20 goats their pregnant goat grain or essential nutrients. So I had to make a hard decision to bypass the nuflor in order to feed the 20 other goats. I met up with one of the boys, Cody, who had on hand Dexamethasone which is a steroid that dries up the lungs if they in fact do have pneumonia and it is a pain reliever. He gave me enough for two days. Within 4 hours she started to feel better and could almost get to her feet unassisted. I breathed a sigh of relief thinking I had beat this thing. Wrong. The next morning (8:30am) I found her once again flat on her side. I went about the usual treatment, along with the Dexamethasone. Her next checkup (2pm) she showed tremendous signs of recovery and almost shook her head in play. So I sighed a sigh of relief and put her back with her sister and mother.

Dexamethasone is a very strong steroid which can wipe out an immune system, temporarily. Something you don't want to do when you have a goat in such a frail state. So I had to stop administering it and went back to baby aspirin. She went back to being limp and acted lifeless unless I picked her up. I called my mom and asked her if she had any nuflor on hand, since they were also battling pneumonia with bummer calves. They did have some and they gave me as much as I needed. Unfortunately it was too late. I administered the Nuflor that night hoping this would fix it. The next morning I found my doeling dead on the floor, her mom standing over her. I had waited and messed around way too long. To everyone thinking the Nuflor probably killed her, I can attest it didn't.

So I disposed of the body and for the next two days was followed around by a distressed, bleating mom who made me feel about two inches tall. The cause of her pneumonia was most likely the warm days and freezing nights. We vaccinate the cattle for pneumonia using a vaccination called bovi-shield. We administer it in the fall before the temperature changes so drastically and once again when we wean since pneumonia can be brought on by stress. We have done this forever. Unfortunately I didn't think to do it to the goats.

After the doeling died I was pretty diligant about checking every single baby in the pasture, making sure they were alert and with their moms. This is the first year I have ever had solid black, super cute and very soft babies. They are my favorites hands down. To be a smart ass, I named them after our first lady and president. It makes me giggle everytime I call out Michelle and Barack. I know, I'm simple but it's still pretty funny. So one afternoon Michelle wasn't keeping up with her mother and Barack was also lacking behind her. My mom noticed them before I did and pointed it out. Now these are my favorites. So they were immediately rushed to a jug. I would have done the same had it been any other babies. So I immediately started administering Nuflor and Vitamin B, I gave Michelle only one dose of Dexamethasone and Barack wasn't sick enough to need it. Michelle had a temperature of 104 and Barack was 103.7. So they were sick. 24 hours later they were dosed again. Since the first dosing they were standing upright, their hair was shiny and fluffy and they were alert. Thank god! On the second day it became a chore to catch them for their shots. By the third it was more like a little race. I had also learned via facebook friends you can give antibiotics orally. That was just the best thing ever. No more burning the babies! By day 4 they were almost uncatchable so it was time to turn them out, but not before they were administered Nuflor orally. Today you wouldn't know they were ever sick. Yesterday they were knocking other babies off the hill and bouncing around playing. I noticed a nanny breathing a little labored and not being willing to stand a couple mornings later so she got dosed with Vitamin B, and Nuflor. The next day, she was up and about no trouble.

Realizing I had an epidemic on my hands, I invested in some Inforce 3 ($100). It is a vaccination for pneumonia that helps to vaccinate even the unborn babies. It's not a guarantee that pneumonia won't rear its ugly head but it reduces the instances of it. So the next chance I was given I called up my buddy Shanee and in the pouring down, very cold rain, we spent 3 hours vaccinating 108 head of kidds, nannies, and billies. That was 3 days ago, I haven't seen any bad side affects, I haven't seen anymore pneumonia and the barn seems to be back to normal.

So you're probably wondering the point of this story. Alot of the comments I read on the articles published mainly on the HSUS site have posters calling people like me heartless, and a monster. This is only one instance of when I had to play a vet. I'll let you be the judge on wether or not I am a monster. I spoke earlier about my feelings towards organic animals. I am going to post a couple of photos. I want you to look at the roan, red and spotted goats. In these photos I have had them over a month. You cannot find any covering over their ribs (fat or muscle), from their spine to their rib cage. One actually died from undernourishment. The big spotted on was showing signs of arthritis due to no cover being on her joints (fat/muscle) in cold weather. They have been wormed by three different wormers, I applied an insecticide pouron and had been on grain for one month in these photos. I'm also going to post photos of my goats in the same pen. Bear in mind they are different breeds, but the organic goats are barely bred and the white, with red heads (boers) are a month from kidding. If you don't know anything about livestock I hope this helped you to get a perspective about why we do what we do.

Very pregnant Washington Boer goats, all had twins.

Shanee and myself weighing a buckling to decide wether or not he is worth keeping for breeding purposes, he was.

Michelle before she got sick

Michelle, sick, day 1

Notice how you can see their spine. Can you see that in any of my other goats?

No covering and their hair is starting to show a little sheen. One month after purchasing.

One month after buying.

The drop pen. Everyone loves babies so I added some photos. Nanny on the left is pregnant with triplets.

My little girl who died of pneumonia, 3 weeks before. I also delivered her when she was born, her mother was having difficulties.

Barack and my daughter

Brownies baby, haven't named him yet.

Babies playing on the bank

Barack, Michelle and nanny. Michelle is sick and on day one in this photo

Shanee looking very excited about working goats. We all share the same enthusiasm when it's time to work up that many goats. About every 4 weeks in the winter time.

 

Shanees goats, Aphrodite and Tom and Jerry.

 

Fresh out of the oven, about 30 minutes old

 

Modified Live Virus

So if you aren't personally familiar with myself, you should know that I take alot of pride in my animals health and well being. I don't screw around with organic disasters, I have yet to see any proof that their methods work (I buy organic goats all the time from different people). That said, I do my best to consult the locals and the vet whenever I have a question. When we had sheep we used to give a modified live vaccine for soremouth when the babies were born. It slipped my mind about giving it to the goats. Two weeks ago my favorite goat, Jill, came up to me with a mouth and nose full of sores. It has been very hot lately with alot of dust from logging. I assumed that she got into the honey bee nest up the road or into some yellow jacket nests. I made sure to watch her and considered giving her some childrens benadryl but it didn't appear to be that severe so I just left her to herself.

The next day it had gotten worse. So I brought her into the barn and gave her some antibiotics to prevent an infection from starting up. Following that she got a shot of vitamin B and thiamine (Antibiotics kill the bugs in stomachs so the thiamine counters that) and sent her on her way. I also noticed that my wether goat was also showing the effects of bee stings. I decided to be proactive with him and gave him the shots. The next day his bee stings broke open and became painful sores. My brother and I were discussing the bees and he thought that it sounded like soremouth. I passed it off thinking it was too hot for soremouth to become active. Most viruses and bacteria thrive in the wet, mildly warm spring months.

Another day went by and another goat was showing signs of not bee stings, but a sticker caught in his throat. So he got the shots. My husband came out and took a look and we both agreed sore mouth. After a trip to the coop we decided it was stupid to put off this vaccine, 1/4 of our herd had it.

So we waited until my husband and my friend, Shanee both had a day off and gathered up the goats. It was about 90 degrees, we had put it off for quite a while that day. Not everyone reading is a farmer/rancher and doesn't understand what a modified live virus is. The best way to explain these types of shots to someone who doesn't know is to think of it as a flu shot. I'm not sure if the flu shot is a modified live or a killed virus, but it is the same concept. The vaccine will give you an immunity to the virus. You will suffer very mild side effects, and in turn will be immune to any further infections. With the soremouth vaccine, you can't inject it, what you have to do is cut the skin and dab the vaccine in the cut. I'm not talking about taking a butcher knife to the ear, simply taking an 18 gauge needle and making a small cut will do. Even a razor cut will work, but in this type of situation an 18 gauge will do better. An 18 gauge is about 3 sizes bigger than the needles doctor use on you, so not very big, and you only need about an 1/8 of an inch length to work. So not a deep cut and not a long one.

I went through all of the explanations of how small of a cut is necessary and how little vaccine you need (a small dab, smaller than a drop of water) for a reason. When we are administering the vaccine, one of us has to scratch the ear (my job), one of us has to dab on the virus (Shanee) and one of us has to hold the goats head (Dan). Lots of hands and needles in this equation. Somehow the plunger on the syringe was pushed and a nice stream of modified live was shot onto my husbands face. So far no signs of the virus. Sore mouth is contagious to humans, but goes by the name of Orf. If you would like to get an idea of what Orf looks like, just google it and you can see what Dan may have in store for hisself. As a precautionary measure, we were wearing gloves when we did this, just not face suits.

To make matters worse, our primary source of water is from a spring. It's not a seasonal spring, but you can't water a yard on it, we use a pond for the yard. So after three showers, two loads of laundry and a two year old soaking in the sink with running water for about half an hour our water was zilch. It took about 6+ hours for the water to come back on. This isn't a horribly unusual day in the life of a rancher/farmer. It is somewhat unusual because it is the only week of the year my husband gets a vacation, and he spent it in muggy, hot 90 degree weather. I do hope this blog reaches people with as much ag experience as water we had. It might help to put agriculture into perspective. Just because you are on vacation, doesn't mean you are on vacation.

This is not my photo, the girls didn't come in tonight so I couldn't get a photo. I just googled Sore Mouth in Goats and found this image. Do not have permission and did not ask.

Farming, breed selection and video games

The first two are pretty straight forward, but you add in the third and they just don't go together, or do they?

Years ago I was working in Corvallis practicing our summer habitat surveys with EBAs from all around Oregon. I'm a rancher who was surrounded by meditating hippy girls and skinny jean wearing boys. I am manlier than some of those wimps. I did not fit in, but I didn't really want to. So I found the one other rancher there, amazingly there was one. He was from the East side of the mountains and was working for the ODFW while on summer break from college. I don't remember how we started visiting, but he had worked on some farm where he drove combines and had done quite a bit of work. We were discussing costs of equipment and I jokingly referenced "John Deere American Farmer". From that point on we were buddies. A friend of his had written an essay in college based on that video game. He received an A grade for it. Myself, my husband, and his roommates and just about any other ag student owned the original and the second version of that game.

As if ranching and farming isn't hard enough, we have all laid out $20 to buy a game that allows us to grow various crops, take out loans, buy equipment and face unforseen challenges. They include a Brittney Spears type singer boycotting beef, which causes the market to dive, a wave of locusts, droughts, poachers shooting your cows, and many many more. This game must have consumed at least 2 hours a day. We were in college, in a city and everything to do there did not interest us at all. If this blog prompts you to go buy JDAF, make sure you get the second part, you can run cattle and other critters, many more options. If you can get past the milk and egg one you are a god at video games.

I would like to say I have outgrown such video games, but that would be a lie. During the daytime when it is rainy, or just an unpleasant day out I stay inside with my daughter and watch spongebob or looneytunes. I can only take so much of Patrick star, so I started playing showcattle.com. If you aren't familiar with this game, it is the exact same thing as breeding real cattle, the epd numbers are just different. Sometimes your really expensive embryo calves die, sometimes your cows die, sometimes they come out deformed, it's basically like real life.

Tonight I was reading another article about a little weasel whose name and title are; Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. If you aren't familiar with ag, this little turds name is most likely unrelevant probably because you haven't heard of what he does. Wayne does his best to attack ranchers, farmers and their livlihoods by using examples such as the dairy one that surfaced last year. If you watch, he only uncovers things when one of his proposed ballot measures are about to come out. I'm not going to get into Wayne. He is the professional liar, I don't stand a chance next to him. The reason I reference him along with videogames is to point out that we literally love our jobs.

I get to pick out sires and dams, breed them together and get adorable little babies. I get to see those little babies go to great homes, or go to feed someones family. I get to pick out the management program that will go along with my livestock. Who wouldn't love this? It's a fulltime job plus overtime, but it's just awesome! I'm covered in poop, hair, afterbirth and whatever else everytime I work with my critters and love it. So the next time you see the little Wayne turd pop up on the internet or the television, or whatever other stage will best benefit him, please remember we aren't monsters, he's just a professional liar and is as good at his job as I am at mine.

*I'm not super proud of this post, there's a handful or errors and I should have gone into greater depth, but I've got a goat kidding and can't sit still too long. Here's a photo of the above weasel and Michale Vick, he's a responsible dog owner now, thanks to said weasel. I do not have anyones permission to use this photo, I googled the weasels name and this came up. Maybe we should have a captions contest, I can think of one or two.

Cival war up the hollar

Now that I have started this little blog it has had quite a few views. In fact, over 100 in a day. Some are from Germany, Russia and South Korea. Let me first apologize to the rest of America, I didn't realize I would be representing us when I took on this endeavor. Unfortunately I haven't blown anything up or wrecked anything lately so I thought I would just jot down something that happened a few years ago. I actually have alot of material to work with, I've actually bent a PTO shaft, tore the rear end out of the hay truck, collected road kill to get back at another girl (maid of honor story, she was my accomplice), ex laxed a boy, ex laxed the school (that didn't work I used the wrong kind), put coyote scent in the Junior halls air vents, and those are just starters.

A few years ago..........I decided to take up chicken raising. I don't eat very many eggs and I never eat the chickens, so the reasoning for this is unfounded. I just wanted some chickens. I went to the local cooperative ,and picked out 10 Black Sex Link chicks and three Rhode Island Reds. I just wanted red and black chickens. I spent a small fortune on my newly acquired chicks, making sure they had proper feed, water,and living situations (the previous chickens did not have such nice accomidations so I wanted to do it right this time). Not to mention a heat lamp and of course a heavy duty electrical cord. They were probably about $200 after everything was added up. I brought my new chicks home and set them into their special little pens with the glowing red light bulb. An hour later I went out and noticed they were all panting because I was cooking them with the heat lamp. So I adjusted that and went back inside. They all did pretty good for the next three weeks............until the jack russels came for a visit.

Mom and dad had three little jack russel dogs at the time, Spot, Lucy and Buddy. Spot and Lucy kept with you really well, but Buddy is the demon dog from hell on all critters. He'd circle a mile around you while you were driving down the road, searching for anything that would run. This particular day dad came up to do something with the fish logs, which meant he was close by. I came out of the house to find Buddy eating a corner out of the chicken house. After some persuasion he went back to dad and I went back into the house.

About 20 minutes later my cousins Dylan and Collyn came to the house. I believe they said "there are dead chickens everywhere!" The boys had gone into the chicken house to check out the baby chicks and Buddy had followed. I don't know the details of the slaughtering, all I remember was that one chick somehow made it all the way to the end of the field and the rest were no more. I think I had 5 when this was all said and done. Defeated, I went to dad and protested the chicken massacre (packing multiple peices of evidence)......where I got little sympathy, in reality they are chickens.

That afternoon I had made an appointment with a local 4H girl to go clip her steer up for a jackpot show. The steer looked great before and after the clip so there was little talk about what she needed to do differently. Instead the discussion focused on poultry and dogs. To my suprise, her mother was thinning the flock and she wanted to get rid of a white chicken, a black chicken and a red chicken. I was really excited, the co-op doesn't carry white chickens. She was deemed whitey, another blackie and another brownie.........I'm not very creative with names. They loaned me a dog kennel to take the chickens home in.

I forgot to mention I already had 5 older chickens prior to the chicks, I thought that like cows you should keep replacements every year.................I know...............so when I got home we (my husband and I) crudely built a little pen in the chicken house to keep the new ones from fighting with the old ones. Victory! I had new chickens and one was white. So I went into the house to make something to eat.

I don't remember why he went in, but Dan (husband) went into the chicken house to get something and accidently knocked over our chicken pen. He did this unknowingly. So I am sitting at the dinner table looking out over the driveway and all of a sudden these three chickens attempt to merge with my flock. If you have ever introduced chickens before you can probably visualize this before I go into detail. My old ones had whitey down tearing feathers and picking at her comb all the while she's screaming for her life, the other ones were attacking my red chicken who was running for her life. And the black chicken was having a solo battle with another hen. It was a disaster. Chickens flopping everywhere, white feathers flying in the air, my dog trying to kill the ones running away. The girl in me had had it.

I stomped down the driveway, right through the battle grounds, caught my dads horse and jumped on. My husband wanted to know what I had planned on doing, I tried to ignore him and take off................the only problem was that my horse wouldn't go forward. He would only go backwards....where the electric fence is. So I turned my head to see how far we were from getting fried on the fence and right then he hit it. Bam! The horse lept forward and I got my first taste of whiplash. Now injured and angry I whacked the horse, went for a ride up the canyon, took a breath and went home.

To end this day, I brought the horse home walked up the driveway, changed clothes and went to bed with a bowl of ice cream. And yes, the chickens all survived, though you would have never thought it walking past the piles of feathers. Dan had gathered them up while I was away pouting. Anyone considering buying chickens, just don't. They live past 6 years, or have so far, and they are just a pain in the (sentence enhancer) ass.

Out of Gas

I'm just going to steal this one from my Facebook page;

memoirs of a goat rancher: "It'll only be a 5 minute ride". So I get back from Newport about 12am. On the way in I notice I am missing about 50 goats (hard to miss). So I put alene down, knowing they are only about 5 minutes away. I hop on my not very trusty honday, cranking it to start (alene turned the key on one day and the battery is dead), after a while it started. Things were looking up. I p...

utted down the driveway with my dim head lights and my trusty LED mag light, which doubles as headlights. All the while knowing I am low on petro............I found the goaties on the highest perch of the hill 5 minutes away (about a half mile). So I rallied the troops, trying not to wake the neighbor, and 50 goats chased me down the hill. I got past the first turn and then "sputter sputter" "*&^#! I ran out of gas. Using my skills gained from experience (you would think I would have put some gas into that equation) I coast down the mountain in neutral thinking I had it made. I got to the bottom, cranked and cranked until she turned over and then drove like a madman towards the house...........not getting very far. Reserve was done about 100 yards down the road. She died in the middle of the road, with nowhere to turn off, I could not move her with slick shoes so there she lay. I valiantly hopped off, 50 goats still trailing, and walked home. By some miracle headlights were behind me. The neighbors were just coming home! Thank god! Not that I don't mind being cougar bait or anything. So they took me back to my not so trusty steed, I loaded her up with my 5 gallon jug (smallest one I have) and drove like a mad goat woman home. Moral of the story kids, when the husband isn't home and there is noone else to blame for you running your bike out of gas, you should probably bring the cellphone with you, so at least you can tell your brother it wasn't your fault :)