The Goldens

My daughters raise and breed golden retriever dogs.  One of my daughters, Farm Girl, still lives at home along with two of those goldens.  Emma is the original and my personal favourite.

            

 

And obviously my favourite to photograph.  Mr. Knightly is her other dog. (Named after the Jane Austen characters).  He's very handsome and I would love to get a decent photo of him, but he's full of energy and barely stands still for more than 5 seconds.

Or he's got something in his mouth. 

Gagging on said thing in his mouth.

I'm not fast enough to change the settings on my camera while he is still for that 5 seconds.

There is always someone he must play with.

That tongue of his, oh that tongue of his has got in too many photos.

But eventually, after much patience, I get the shot.

Cozy

A napping pooch in front of a fireplace always makes a room so much more cozier.

Starting Over

The pastures stand quietly abandoned, the sheep's favourite tree looks lonely without the flock sleeping contently beneath it's shade.

The holding pen is still and empty while the shelter sits incomplete.

It was a hard decision to make selling the sheep, but I know when I have been beat and way over my head.  The lack of a perimeter fence and barn was far too much of a challenge to contain 80 something sheep. When they left the property and started heading up the road on their last escape, I knew I was done.  The liability risk of them running into traffic or onto other farmer's properties was too high.  I called a sheep buyer and he came and bought them from me.  In the end, it was probably a good thing as he informed me that the breed of sheep I was raising had little value in this area.  They were considered more as goats then sheep.  So I guess I saved myself years of raising a huge flock of the wrong breed.  It is our intention to make money off this business and the most dollar we can.  I had lost $75 per head on the lambs simply because they were Katahdin.  It was very disappointing.  I loved my sheep.  I took pride in the breed I raised.  It was a huge set back but one that I should be grateful could have been worse.  I could have been deeper invested.

But we are not giving up and will rebuild our flock.  Before then however, we will ensure the perimeter fence is in place.  If I took anything from this harsh lesson was that no matter how wonderful electric fencing may work, it does go out and you need something permanent in place to keep them from escaping further.  Meanwhile, Chase has returned to the farm and has an overnight enclosure in the sheep's holding pen preventing him from having any crazy ideas about visiting the horse farm down the road again.

And the miniatures are still here along with the billy goats.

And of course the pygmy goats whom Delilah has been reassigned to guard.

I am saddened that the sheep are gone considering they were our main reason for coming here, but I tell myself it again was in God's plans for me.  If they had never escaped, if I had never realized my limits, if I had not called in the buyer I would never had known I was on the wrong track.  So until the flock return, I guess I will enjoy being a goat farmer.

Blossom's Fate Revised, Goat Attack, and Flock Escape (Again)

Yesterday I was going to blog about Blossom's feet.  For a recap, read this post about her fate here.  I knew it was overdue but me and Farm Girl finally got around to brushing down the minis and trimming their hooves.  Blossom still has her baby coat on but we did the best we could to remove most of it so the heat wouldn't be so insufferable.

But it was her hooves that had us totally stunned.  She was standing on them rather than her heels.  It appears her lax tendon is healing.

Her right hoof actually looks completely healed.

While her left was in worse shape it is also starting to gain strength.  The hoof has been so deformed because of the lax tendon however I hope with proper trimming in addition to her standing correctly on it will benefit both her leg structure and the shape of the hoof.

I am feeling good about Blossom's legs and praying for a miracle because the idea of euthanization is unbearable.

The reason I wasn't able to do this post yesterday as we had another flock escape.  This time they found a way out of their holding pen but this time around I had help.  Both Farm Girl and my hubs were here to help round them up.  They are being held up in the electronet until the holding pen is secured again which hopefully isn't too long as it is pouring rain outside with the chance of thunderstorms.  

Sheep huddled under the tree during the downpour.

Hate to loose power and chasing sheep once again.  Though we did pick up a solar energizer yesterday but it will take a few days to fully charge.

The other big deal that happened yesterday was that we had to say goodbye to Samson, one of the livestock guardian dogs we recently brought to the farm to guard over the sheep.

Though Sam was a very sweet dog, he was also excessively timid, was far too sheep obsessed and showed signs of aggression at meal times.  That aggression finally resulted in blood drawn.  We are not sure how or why, but we knew he did not like our milking goat, Beatrice.  We had noticed him lunge for her a couple times and left small bite marks on her ears but we had hoped they were simply warning signs.  However, yesterday morning I glanced out the window and noticed him viciously attacking her.  We ran out to the pen and called him off which he did promptly, however the gashes he left in Beatrice were big.  He bit off one of her horns and tore a huge gash in the side of her gut.

Those huge orange stains are iodine which it makes it look worse even though it was certainly severe enough though Beatrice is fine today and walking around and grazing as per usual.  We had thought his dislike was toward Beatrice solely and began building the pygmy goat pen we had planned in the future as we needed to separate Beatrice from Samson.  However, at the end of the day after we had chased everyone back into the electronet, we discovered that Olaf, one of the kid dairy goats and Torch, one of the pygmy kid goats also had blood on them and had been attacked.  The decision to remove Samson from the farm was swift.  The hubs took him back to his farm where there is no livestock and where we will rehome him.  We are not certain if his aggression is towards goats only or not, however we are not taking the chance.  Attacking three goats in one day and causing so much blood loss will only lead to a certain kill in the future.

It really was too bad because he is an awfully sweet dog who craves human attention yet fears it at the same time.  Hopefully we can find him a home with a gentle, kind, patient and understanding owner who can see Samson for his good qualities.  Sadly, however, he has no place on my farm and had to leave.  That leaves the job of guarding the sheep entirely up to Delilah.  We are having some health issues with her right now, mainly her drastic weight loss and lack of desire to eat.  Not sure but perhaps Samson might have had something to do with that as well since he was so food aggressive.  Besides I had seen him attack her for no reason once or twice.   However, the loving personality of our pet dogs, have done Delilah a world of good and see her coming around slowly.  Now that Sam is gone, perhaps her full potential will be realized.

Respect the Power

Yesterday morning, I could hear Dr. Ellie Sattler's words from the movie Jurassic Park, ring in my head, "I didn't have enough respect for that power and it's out now" as I ran around my farm trying to catch loose sheep.  After just posting about how wonderful the electronet kept my sheep contained and a day after I posted about Chase escaping his "pen" in the middle of the night, I had yet another escape.

I had checked the fence line, made sure there were no down lines or anything touching the net to disrupt the circuit, let the sheep out for the day and had returned to the house to prepare breakfast.  Delilah was outside the electronets playing with Max, the Boy was slowly waking up, the morning sky was shining brightly over the tall grass, it was going to be a wonderful day.  

Then I heard the dogs barking.  Not unusual.  More so at night as wildlife doesn't come around much during the day.  So when the barking continued I glanced out my window.  I could still see sheep in the electronet, but Delilah was bouncing wildly through the line of trees that separated the wheat field and the abandoned pasture overgrown in brush.  I went outside to investigate and the first thing I noticed was the goats all outside of the electronet in the line of trees browsing.  And further down a huge group of sheep also outside of the electronet in the abandoned pasture grazing happily in the brushes.  The fence wasn't down, just leaning over, so they had literally just walked right over it.  I ran back to unplug the net so that I could get them back in and discovered it was already unplugged.  I either forgot to plug in the net which seemed highly unlikely or a more probable scenario, Delilah and Max had accidentally unplugged it while they were running about. 

It was only me and the Boy home but we managed to wrangle all of them back into the holding pen.  Except for a handful that I locked in the chicken coop as it was closer.  It only took us all morning, but no sheep left the property and we got our exercise for the day.  I moved the electronet to the wheat field directly behind the house so I could keep an eye on them which took me close to 3:00 before I was done that job. (I have to mow a path in the tall pasture in order for the electronet to be effective which takes up most of my time.)  

Just as I was about to go into the house to begin supper, two of the sheep in the chicken coop escaped.  My kids were expected home so I was waiting to move the sheep from the coop to the holding pen with a little bit more help than the Boy.  However, those two sheep had different ideas.  To make matters worse, the skies opened up and it started raining.  While I chased two more sheep and their lambs down, the Boy stood guard in the pouring rain over the chicken coop door making sure no others escaped.

When at last I recaptured the two mammas and their babies, the kids arrived just in time to help herd the remaining sheep from the coop into the electronet where it was set up and ready to receive sheep.

Though the electronet can be a wonderful helping tool, I must never forget or take for granted that power that keeps them safely contained.

Gone

"Cause nothing is worse than a missing animal."  Those words from my previous post couldn't ring more true.  There truly is nothing more frightening then waking up and finding one of your livestock animals gone.  Vanished nowhere to be seen.  The other morning this scenario happened exactly to me.  Farm Girl had just brought her horse, Chase, back home and was enjoying riding him out in the open pasture but at the end of the day we didn't have a stall or pen to lock him up in.  Heck, the horse's pasture hasn't even been fenced yet.

But Farm Girl assured me that Chase was so fully trained to the electrical wire that he refused to cross any rope resembling it including twine.  And she's right.  I've seen it and used it to my advantage before  Even if the rope or line were lying on the ground, Chase would refuse to cross it.

But that day, something didn't feel right.  You know when your gut is trying to tell you something is wrong or impending?  That was how I felt. Chase was new to the farm and surroundings and seemed awfully interested in the horses he could hear down the road at a neighbour's farm. I even noticed he was eating grass directly beneath the rope line, touching it several times.  I told Farm Girl she should turn it on and give him a couple good shocks to refresh his memory just in case he had any crazy ideas of escaping.

She brushed me off declaring, "Mom, it's Chase!!  He isn't going anywhere."  And he didn't for the first two days that she kept him contained in the rope enclosure.  Reason enough for Oldest to back up her sister and say, "When I got home late the other night, he was content and just grazing.  You are being paranoid."  Oh I am known to be overly cautious according to my kids.  I worry too much they say.  I say I have reason to be.

The girls left me that night with Chase in his rope enclosure to stay at their father's place for the weekend with reassurance everything would be fine.  At 3:30 in the morning I woke to the sound of the Samson and Delilah barking their heads off frantically.  I headed out in the dark only to find Delilah outside the sheep holding pen.  That was unusual as she is not a jumper.  Samson is however but I keep him tied to a tire to prevent him from doing so.  Not sure how she escaped, I brought her into the house for the rest of the night to prevent any more escapes.  I did not check on Chase.  Or so much as glance in his direction.  I completely forgot about his presence.

An hour later at 4:30 I was woken once again by Samson barking wildly.  Wildlife is plentiful around here so I waited a bit to see if he scared whatever it was away, however when he failed to stop barking I got up and looked out my window.  Dawn was just lighting the evening sky and I could see Sam barkng out toward the road, not the woods.  That was when I glanced toward Chase's "pen" and noticed not only was it missing (the rope) but Chase as well.

Cussing profusely I grabbed a sweatshirt and coat and ran outside.  It was light enough to see about a yard ahead of me but not in the distance.  I squinted against the darkness nevertheless scanning the horizon and property.  Chase is a dark horse and chances of spotting in the early dawn was next to impossible. I prayed I'd find him hanging out near the sheep pen where the miniature horses are kept but he wasn't there.  He was nowhere to be seen.  Gone. Vanished.

The downside to having such a large property is that he could be anywhere.  I wondered if he could have headed into the woods or perhaps simply grazing along the property line.  It was fenced along the western and eastern line of the property while the south side was semi-fenced.  If he had gone in that direction, there was a very good chance he could have gotten cut up or injured in the fence.  I stopped my train of thoughts and froze.  The horse farm.  He was so focused on it the night before.  The grass in the pasture was tall as I plowed my way through it soaking the front of my pajama pants.  I searched for the missing rope enclosure hoping it would lead a path to where he had gone.  I didn't find any.  I reached the far end of the pasture with no sign of Chase or the pen and hit the pavement and road and started walking toward the direction of the horse farm.

In the silence of the night, I heard calling.  And then crying.  The Boy had woken and found me missing as well as the horse and feared something horrible had happened. I knew I had to respond to him but had to reach the horse farm first to find my missing horse.  It was still too dark but I reached the corner of their pasture and first quickly glanced to see if any fences were taken down.  Then God there were not.  I could make out some horses in the distance on the horizon but certainly couldn't identify whether one was my missing horse.  Stupidly I did the only thing I could with a child screaming frantically in the distance, I called out Chase's name hoping he would come trotting up to me like an obedient dog.

Of course that produced no results so with the fear of my crying child waking the neighbours, I headed back home. When I was within earshot I called back to him, assuring him I was fine.  He begged me to come back home and since there really wasn't anything more I could do until the sun fully rose, I obliged and headed for my laneway.  That was when I saw the rope lying in the driveway, stretched out like a pointing finger toward the entranceway. At least I now knew he had not gone through any fences and made it safely off the property.  Where to was still a mystery.

It was time to call FarmGirl.  Just as I was waiting to leave her a message, a vehicle pulled into my farm.  I knew why he was there.  As he stepped outside his vehicle, I asked, "Did you inherit an extra horse this morning."  He laughed (thanfully) and said, "Was wondering if he came from here. He's been hanging around my stallions pen. I worried one of my own horse's got loose."  Yes, I knew exactly how he felt.  He drove me and the Boy over to his farm to collect my horse.  As I clipped his lead to his halter I automatically mumbled, "You naughty boy, Chase."  The farmer and his wife who was also woken both laughed and said, "How appropriate is that name!"

I walked Chase home without incident and locked him up in the sheep's holding pen where he stayed all day long until Farm Girl arrived later that night with trailer to bring him back to her father's farm where a barn with plenty of empty horse stalls waited.  Lesson learned:  (1) Don't bring horse home until his pasture is ready.  (2)  Make sure all perimeter fencing is in place.  (3) Add a laneway gate to prevent any more escapes.

Electronet

There are very few times in the day that I utter the words, "I hate my job".  But when I do you can rest assured that I am working on the electronet and not with the sheep themselves.  I move it every 2-3 days, depending on how big the area I give them to graze, but it seems every time I do, I'm cussing and cursing the inventor of the electronet.

Light green areas already grazed, darker green to be grazed yet.

Not that I hate it or think its a piece of junk because I don't, it works fantastic.

Once the animals have felt the shock of the fence, they rarely test it again. I do prefer the white fence over the orange fence.

I own both and as you can see, the white fence is more visible and noticeable by the sheep. It also has more rigid vertical lines which stand up better without extra support.

The orange fence blends in more with nature and though great for photo taking, does cause accidental run ins with the sheep.  It is made up completely of ropes except for the plastic posts and require additional portable posts I had to buy extra to help support it.

Both are cumbersome to handle, tangle easily, and rip easily.  When gathering them up, it is almost impossible as my hands are too small.  One hand is to collect while the other gathers.  One hand is not large enough to gather.  And without fail I get my feet caught in the net and find myself falling over on my behind.  Hence is my reasons for cussing and cursing the electronet.  But it keeps Samson and his sheep in and happy, so all is well.  Cause nothing is worse then a missing animal.

Awkward

During the peak of today's heat, I went outside and found most of the goats and sheep asleep in the most awkward places.

Farm Photos

Took a little time out of my day and my camera and snapped some photos from around the farm.

Guess who is back with us?  Farm Girl had the opportunity to buy back her horse, Chase, so jumped on it.  She missed him more than she realized she would.