farm

Our new boarder – Puddles

/ gardengoddess17 / 3 Comments

My friend is going away for three months and while she has a very reliable house sitter, she asked if we would like to baby sit Puddles the goat while she is gone. Puddles is due to kid in about three weeks, and she is seven or eight years old, so she could do with a bit of TLC.

We bought her home in the back of the Rav4 (they are such great little cars for moving stock) and introduced her to the sheep.

She took it all in stride and remained calm and friendly through the whole thing. We will make her a comfortable bed of hay once she lets us know where she prefers to sleep and give her a nice lick to keep her mineral content up.

She seems to get on alright with the sheep, but would obviously prefer to be with other goats. Unfortunately, we can’t put her in with the billies we have here (they would just be too rough), but we hope she will become closer to Frieda the sheep with time. The big horned boy below is Mendes and the white boy is Merlin (both magical).

I will try to post updates of our adventures with Puddles as we go. I hope we can keep her healthy and happy until it is time for her to go home.

Spring – Shearing time

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Today was shearing day, we usually shear the sheep when the nights are warm enough for everyone to stay warm and the days are beginning to be uncomfortably hot. This Spring has been wet so far, which means that our sheep run the risk of being damp and warm for long periods of time (flies love that), so we messaged Karl, who shears our sheep for us, early this year.

Peri relaxing while she is shorn
Kracken losing her Winter wool

Karl came out and the sheep were shorn in no time. He always does a great job, treating them with care and respect and talking to them the whole time. This year they all behaved themselves, which is unusual, in previous years we have had to lasso escapees and even tackle one or two as they run past. Luckily, Karl plays football and takes it all in his stride. He seems to find us amusing, and laughs at the lengths we go to to keep our babies comfortable. We set up a shade gazebo for Karl to shear them under and then leave it up for a few days so they don’t get sun burned. We spray every little graze with antiseptic spray (the pink splotches) and give them a soothing feed of hay after their shearing ordeal. At the same time, he takes the time to make sure they are comfortable while he is shearing and they seem to just lay against him or on the ground while he works, and he talks to them like we do, so we count him as one of us, and so do the sheep.

Chloe and Karl leading Kracken to the shearing spot

I now have a bag of lovely wool from Eli to process into wool and knit or weave into something lovely. I could have saved more, but I have plenty of fleece to spin in my craft room already.

Eli after his shearing

Our newest family member – meet Shaun the sheep

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WARNING: This is a very word and picture heavy post.

We have had a heartbreaking few weeks here, with an early lambing season coinciding with freezing conditions and some ill considered nutritional decisions. I have been letting my girls out to graze freely right into late pregnancy this year to reduce the cost of buying hay for them, so they have been eating a lot of lantana and when the freezing weather came two weeks ago (on the 16th July to be exact) Kracken went into labour three weeks early. I can’t find any evidence that the lantana is to blame for the early labour or the low birth weight of the babies, but my instinct tells me this is the key.

 I was away for the day and didn’t get home until 10.30 pm, my long suffering partner dutifully called the girls in, fed them and shut the gate in the afternoon, all without realising that Kracken was in the throes of labour. When I got home I went out to check the girls (the usual night time tuck in ritual) and found that she had given birth to twins, one looked to have been born dead and was very small, the other was also tiny and was struggling to even sit up. I took the live baby to the shelter and nestled him into the straw bed with his mum, hoping that he would get stronger and be able to stand to feed.

This is Shaun at 12 hours old in the lambing shelter.

In the morning we let her say goodbye to her dead lamb and buried him, then began the fight to save the living one. He still could not stand, so I mixed up a small bottle of Divetalact (milk replacement for animals) and fed him before work, hoping that would give him the energy to stand and feed alone. Kracken was very worried by this time as her baby wasn’t doing normal things. By the time I got home from work she had decided he was a lost cause and walked away from him, so I knew it was time to take over.
He was whisked inside and put in a box beside the fire wrapped in a towel while we tried to milk his mum to get some colostrum. This activity fits firmly into the ‘don’t try this at home’ category of extreme farming; she kicked and butted, she refused to let down her milk all the while calling out in combined anger and fear to her sisters who crowded around and tried to offer advice. Eventually we gave up and decided to do our best with commercial products.

All wrapped up in towels in a box

He took to the Divetalact well and fed hungrily every bottle (every three hours) and won my heart by cuddling up against me with a contented sigh after each bottle. He was peeing and pooping well so we knew the inside bits worked, but he still couldn’t stand up. As he weighed in at 1.4 kg (a normal twin weighs about 2 kg) I decided it was because he was so premature and gave him time to learn to stand. Thanks to the kids at school (and my boss) he was named Shaun the sheep.

On the third day he managed to struggle to his feet for a short while and after that there was no stopping him. He is now two weeks old and weighs just over 2 kg. He lives in the humpy with us (of course) and is still having three hourly feeds. I am suffering badly from lack of sleep and washing overload (he uses ‘nappies’ made from ripped up old towels), but am completely in love with him. He is resting on my bed under the covers (wrapped in a towel) as I type this. He has suffered some shortening of the tendons in his front legs, but regular exercise and massage will cure this I’m told.

Shaun’s attitude to my writing. He loves cuddles though

On his nappy towel beside the fire

In his coat being examined by Dr Bandit

Meeting Rabbito, who weighs more than he does.

Spending some time with his biological mum

In his new permanent house (well, until he grows out of it)

Tucked in for the night

Lounging in the dog beds

This is how we weigh Shaun

This lambing season has been terrible; Nut lost her lambs earlier in an early miscarriage, Kracken had twins and lost one and Snow White had twins but both died (despite our best efforts), now only Gaia remains and I’m beginning to think her belly is just pudge (what can we expect naming her after an Earth goddess) as she has no udder development to speak of and would be due in another two weeks if she is pregnant. Peridot is too young for babies as yet so has been spared the sadness. Next year I will be bringing them into the lambing paddock a month before due and damn the expense of feeding them all. However, Shaun has been a blessing and has inspired love, joy and kindness all around him. A good friend of my eldest daughter’s who is in her last year of a veterinary degree, sent me a lecture on tendon shortening in lambs and offered to have a look at him for us, my youngest daughter spent her precious time off from university feeding and cleaning up after him while I worked and my partner (who refuses to touch animals and only grudgingly pats the dogs) has donated several days to caring for Shaun while I work (and yes he does have to touch him as he won’t sleep without a cuddle). A friend of mine (Graham) has offered Shaun a home when he grows up and insists that he needs a mate for him so he won’t be lonely, is building him a shelter and fencing in his property in anticipation.
Shaun has reminded me once again that the simple love of a child is the real treasure in life (he is my child, even though he isn’t my species), the in-the-moment joy of being warm, safe and full is so evident in his whole being that it can’t help but make everyone around him happy too.

Short drop toilets

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This may be a bit of a taboo subject in polite society…but it is a very important subject for those of us who choose to be responsible for as much of our own lives as possible; toilet designs.
Until recently I have been happy using a short-drop toilet design on our block; this consists of a vase shaped hole about 1.25 meters deep, 60 cm wide at the bottom and tapering to about 40 cm wide at the top. On top of this pit is placed a movable pedestal made from half a plastic live barrel with a toilet seat bolted on top. A tarp stretched over a poly pipe hoop frame completes the set up. We ‘flush’ by sprinkling a can of lime over the contents to lower the pH and make the contents more worm friendly and less fly friendly. This kind of toilet means that I have to dig a new hole every school holidays.

Lately I have been experimenting with adding compost worms to the mix. Once a new hole is dug and in use for a week or so, I tip in one container of compost worms from the worm farm at school. This makes the hole last roughly twice as long as previously; presently 20 weeks is the record. This means I have to dig less and can avoid the deconstructing and reconstructing of the toilet for a bit longer.

My new plan consists of digging a big enough pit to hold a year’s worth of…well….contents, and adding worms to that. I am hoping this will allow enough time for the worms to reduce the contents to worm castings and baby worms, which will then burrow away to seek a new life in a far off place, thus keeping the pit level to an acceptable level permanently (or at least a very long time). Then I can build a more permanent and attractive structure over the top of the pit.

According to the World Health Organisation Pit Latrine Designs, when digging a pit toilet you should allow  0.06 m3 per person per year. In our house that equates to (0.06 x 4 = 0.24 m3) to allow for visitor usage as well. This isn’t a huge hole really. I have calculated this to be about the size of a 240 liter fridge.

I am currently digging away at the pit for this toilet and will post more photos as I get to each stage. The ground is very hard at the moment due to the dry weather so going is slow. The next question will be “What do I build the toilet shed out of?”

Do you take responsibility for your own waste?
Would you like to?
Any ideas or comments welcome.

A semi permanant fencing solution.

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http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/iWQ13GCgc-M&source=uds

I love this idea!!! My partner is a solar installer and technician (and TV and computer guy) so he has pallets come in all the time, we have used them for flooring (temporary at best) and fire wood (D’oh) but this design looks good. I think I will trial it as a small paddock first though.