Sometimes Farming is Hard

Let’s face it – farming isn’t always fun.

If you raise crops of some sort, there are problems with the weather, fuel costs for heating greenhouses and running equipment, and a sometimes fickle market, to name a few.

When you raise animals, you have all those problems and then some. And it’s easy to get attached to animals, especially the little ones. Babies of any sort are cute! It’s great to look out and see lambs or kids or calves or colts or any little critters frolicking around in the fields.

Yes, it’s great — that is, IF the moms are taking proper care of the youngsters and everyone is doing fine. But it isn’t always like that. Sometimes things go wrong. That’s when farming really tops the charts in the “not fun” department. That’s where I’ve been this week.

You can raise the same sort of critters for years, using the same husbandry practices, and then all of a sudden, one year it all goes wrong. Sometimes you can figure out the cause and adapt or change things. Sometimes you have no idea what the problem was, so there’s just not much you can do about it.

When our little twin goat kids were born this spring, I was a little concerned. The mother is getting up in years and had a difficult labor. Worse, she was NOT supposed to be pregnant in the first place, but was bred by one of her sons. One of the kids had a deformed leg, but that eventually improved. Overall, they seemed healthy enough.

At least, they seemed fine until this week. Then one get sick, and within 24 hours was dead. Then the second one got sick, and within 24 hours was dead. I worked over them until I could barely straighten back up, giving them antibiotics, dextrose, vitamins, and every other therapy I could find that would pertain to the problem.

Nothing helped.

I knew it was a slim chance going in that I could save either kid. It didn’t help that I read even though they’ve had vaccinations, once in a while, some kids still get sick. They were in my care, and they died.

That’s hard.

This morning Son #2 and I had burial detail. The ground is too hard and rocky here to dig down very deep, so we opt for an above ground burial. It’s easier, but not easy. It has to be done right to make a hot compost so the body is broken down quickly and with no odor. We had 5 big carts full of stuff we put in the pile: some below, some above the bodies. It was hard work. To make matters worse, it was raining.

While we worked the llamas hummed and the mama goat cried. Their mournful dirge made a hard job even harder. I’d moved them as far away as possible from where we were working. It didn’t matter. When we were finally done and I let them out, that mama goat made a beeline to where we’d buried her babies and cried some more. It was heartrending.

Sometimes farming is hard.

Llamas, Together at Last (Sort of)

It all started last night when The Farmer and I went out of do chores. We have a routine, and things get done just fine as long as we stay with the routine. When it gets interrupted… no guarantees what happens!

We have much more fun off playing by ourselves than always following after Mama!When the older goats ran in last night, only one little kid followed, but we could hear the other one bawling loudly somewhere. When we finally located him, we saw he’d gotten himself into a real predicament.

He’d obviously been playing on The Farmer’s lawnmower. Little goat kids LOVE to climb and play on anything they can find. The only trouble is when he jumped down, he managed to catch his foot and was stuck fast.

I must say, it took real talent, because as you can see in the picture to the right, he had to jump down at just the right angle for his foot to go in there. The only trouble is that once he was down, his leg was at the wrong angle and he couldn’t get it back out.

But then, neither could we!

The Farmer finally had to get a pair of pliers and pull back the metal far enough to get the little rascal’s foot loose.

Needless to say, our usual routine got lost in the rescue operations. That’s probably why when I went out to do chores this morning, this is what I saw:
Uh-oh! Two llamas in ONE pen!

Well, surprise, surprise! I guess I forgot to walk over and shut the gate to Samson’s pen last night after putting his feed bucket in place. Instead, I was homing in on the distress call from the little goat kid, and my routine came unglued.

The good news is they don’t seem to be fighting. The bad news is I don’t know if they’ve gotten romantic either, and I feel a little guilty not being there to keep check on them the first time they were both in the same pen.

If I were a betting woman, I’d guess Samson is still looking for love, cause Keira keeps her distance. Whenever he gets within a few feet of her, she skitters off in another direction. She’s still not sure what to make of this new furball who thinks he wants to get up close and personal!

It’s still a game of hide and seek – Keira hides, and Samson keeps seeking!

Kids at Play

Goat kids are like people kids – if we’re talking about super-charged, high-energy, and probably ADHD affected sort of kids.

Yesterday they crawled under the gate to the chicken pen, and found something to jump on and have a great time playing.

The penhens couldn’t figure out what those strange new chickens were!

And the biggest trouble with their new playpen is that they couldn’t remember how they got IN there, and couldn’t figure out how to get back out. Their Mama was walking around and around the chicken pen and aviary bawling for them, and what did they do?

They just kept playing.

Llama vs. Goats

My little llama girl likes to hang out with the goats. She usually ignores the sheep, and sometimes just does her own thing, but mostly, she’s with the goats. It will be interesting to see what happens when Samson, our soon-to-be-delivered male llama arrives.

However, at present, it’s Kiera and the goats. As much as she likes the goats, she has one pet peeve. She does NOT want to share any feed with them.

I’ve told you and told you, leave MY feed alone!!!

If they persist in trying to eat her food, she finally lets them know in no uncertain llama terms, “That’s it!”

I spit in your general direction!

Ahhh, llamas, they know how to get their point across!