Adopted

This story that I have at last decided to write about has some sad parts.  It also reveals how little we know about farming, and how gullible we were, unfortunately.  But I promise it has (at least for now) had a good ending.

Last fall we bought a new Jersey cow.  The man who sold her to us seemed really nice.  He had a whole story about it being his daughter's 4-H cow, and he was selling her now that she was in college.  We've always been so lucky with getting livestock - on the rare occasions we do buy new animals.  We couldn't get very close to the cow because there was another crazy cow in with her.  But she looked okay, and he was even going to drive her to our farm, which was so tempting because it is such a pain to rent a stock trailer.

So we did buy the cow.  We called her Freya.  She was pretty, one of the darker Jerseys.  A few months later, the same fellow stopped by with another Jersey cow.  He had some story about his brother having a micro-dairy, but he had all sorts of tragic things happen and now had to sell all his livestock.  He dropped the cow off and wanted us to send him a $1,000 check (it was a "drive-by cowing").  But that cow didn't really work out - I might get around to writing how we got him to pick her up again, but I still have the emotional scars (for the 18 hours she was at our farm, we called her Igor.  Don't worry, we didn't give him another $1,000 for her).

When he came back to (eventually) get Igor taken care of, I asked him a few questions about Freya, and he had totally different answers than when we came to buy her.  I realized then that he had totally lied to us.

I had mentioned before that a calf was born this spring.  That was Freya's calf.  Unfortunately, right after the calf was born, she became very ill, and lost a lot of condition very quickly.  The vet looked at her, and we thought perhaps it was a virus that dairy cows will get in the winter.  She was still up and eating, so we increased her ration, as per the vet's advice, and tried to get her to gain some weight.  It was hard to get her to eat enough.  After a month, she was getting better and better, and had gotten her appetite back.  Then we got a sudden cold rain storm, and she relapsed and ended up going down.  We called the vet and tried to get her back on her feet, but she was too weak to even hold her head up.

When the vet came to look at her, she said she had pneumonia and was struggling to breathe.  She looked in her mouth -  something we had not done (to our cost) before we bought her, and realized that she was a very old cow, and really should not have been bred.  The vet advised us to put her down, which we did.  It was a very, very sad day for us.

Her calf (Sampson) was a month old.  We put him out with the other cows.  He was glad to be among them, and Matilda was very glad to finally be able to give him a good kick.  Every time I took her down to be milked, she would stop and shake her horns at him through the fence, and he would be saucy back and kick his heels at her.  The first thing he did when he got out was to go try to nurse on Matilda.  She sure showed him.

Since then, we noticed he was following Flora around.  I've heard her mooing and mooing, not realizing it was because of him.

They will often get out of the electric fence together and go eat all the good stuff before the other cows get to it.  The other day I was watching him, and realized that she is treating him like her calf.  She's looking out for him and grooming him.  She's been mooing when he gets "lost."

I thought it was so sweet that she is so motherly towards him.  She's only 18 months, and has never had a calf of her own.  She was there when he was born, and I wonder if she had bonded with him then, because she was so upset when we moved her out away from him afterwards.

So he is not motherless after all!

Twilight Sparkle

I didn't have a chance yet to mention that Nougat had her baby on Tuesday, and it was a girl!
Mirin and Rose are thrilled to have a Twilight Sparkle at last, but Ethan is shockingly opposed to it.  He's put up the biggest stink about the name.  He wants to call her Becky Thatcher--B.T. for short, like the bacterial toxin they genetically engineer into plants to kill things that eat them.  Mirin and Rose had a poll going around the family with signatures in favor of Twilight Sparkle, but Ethan has been unmoved.  I am surprised he cares so much about what names the goats have!  He and the goats have a subtle war of wills going on at all times.  He tries to have as little to do with the goats as possible, and the goats misbehave for him whenever they get the chance.  When I pointed out they could have wanted to name her Pinky Pie, it didn't cheer him up any.  Actually, he almost gagged a little.

So among ourselves she is Twilight Sparkle, but around Ethan she is Nougat's baby, and if you ask him she is Anything-Other-Than-Twilight-Sparkle.

I think she kind of looks like a Twilight Sparkle.

Wait, there's another one!

June Bug was due yesterday.  Her mama is May, who was Ellie's baby, born on May 1st.  June Bug was born on June 1st.  And it so happened that she was due on April 1st.  Ethan had his hopes up for an April, to add to the collection--if her baby was a girl.

Well, when we got out yesterday June Bug was still huge and pregnant, and didn't appear to be in labor.  We laughed, and said, "Of course it wouldn't be today.  There's no way she would also kid on the first of a month."

I milked everyone, which included wrestling with Nougat on the milking stand.  She was not used to being milked anymore, and was extremely badly behaved.  I have the hoof-marks to prove it.  Then I let them all out into the lush rye grass.  They were so delighted.  It was like the people walking into Willie Wonka's beautiful candy wonderland.

After I was finished milking Matilda, I noticed June Bug stop eating and find a good spot to lie down.  I thought, well maybe she's having her baby today after all.  I kept my eye on her, and she seemed to be watching me, and I thought perhaps she might want me to come over.  When I went to check on her, she looked like she was stretching her back legs a bit.  I sat down with her and said encouraging things.  Ethan was close by, so I alerted him with funny hand signals (I didn't want to shout and disturb her).  It wasn't long at all before the baby was born!  He made a little squawk and she immediately stood up and started cleaning him off.  I could tell it was a boy right away.  Ethan was disappointed he wasn't going to get to name one April this year, but I told him we could name the boy April--why not?  Or Neroneus, maybe. (Nero tried to re-name April Neroneus, but it never caught on).

June Bug had him almost all clean when she laid down again suddenly and pushed.  I thought it was the afterbirth, perhaps, and she stood up immediately and seemed to be eating it (as is the habit with most animals).  I went to get her some water and cider vinegar and something to eat while Ethan came over to bring her some nice hay.  Then he said suddenly, "Wait, there's another one!  It's twins!"

Sure enough, and the next one was a girl.  So there was an April after all.  June Bug was such a good mother.  She had them all clean and was nursing them in half an hour.

I think we are going to name the boy March.  He did come before April.
It was so amazing to be there for a birth.  It's only the second goat birth I've attended.  I think June Bug wanted company and she seemed glad I was there.  I think the rye grass inspired her.  I would have wanted to give birth in the rye, too.

Missing

Over the weekend we went out to do the milking, and saw two of the baby goats (Huck and Sid) playing rambunctiously together.
"Where's Tom?" I asked Ethan, who was in the paddock with me.
We walked all around the paddock, which is fairly small, but there was no sign of him.  May suddenly realized she couldn't find her baby and began to bleat (before that she was lounging around chewing her cud and didn't care).
"Could he have gotten out and been eaten?" I wondered.  Ethan didn't think so, but he was not in the paddock that we could see.  The goats began following us around.  May started to kind of freak out a little and was calling loudly now.
Then we heard a tiny little goat bleat from somewhere.  We followed it, but couldn't tell just where it was coming from.  It seemed to be in the direction of a rusty old green barrel we need to throw away (Ethan: "It's not trash, it's a 'cow toy'").
Then Tom pokes his little head  out.

Much to our relief and May's.  Now it's not trash, it's a "baby goat shelter."

Two New Kids

May's baby was born last week.  He looks just like May!  And he got the long Nubian ears that are so adorable.  May has tons of milk this time.  Mirin and Rose are bitterly disappointed that all the babies so far are boys.  They were both hoping to name them after My Little Ponies.  (I am sort of embarrassed to say.  We don't even own a TV, but they've watched the cartoon on Netflix at their grandparents' house.)

We've been reading Tom Sawyer aloud on our drives to the farm and back, so we are calling them after the characters in the story.  This one's Tom.  He seems unusually photogenic for a baby goat.  Or maybe he was too freshly born to jump around crazily.

Firefly also kidded last week.  It was another boy!!  So much for the dreams of calling him Twilight Sparkle!  Nope, he's Sid.  He wasn't even born with the weird African Pygmy goat waddles like the other two.  It's so entertaining to watch them playing.  Two more mamas are due this week!

Bunnies, Eggs and More

 

We discovered last week that Lily had a new litter of babies that are cute and furry in time for Easter!  I didn't notice them in the nest at first and thought she wasn't bred after all, and they were pretty big before I could see them.  Lily is such a neurotic animal I didn't want to upset her more than necessary, so I didn't poke around or anything.

The pictures don't really do them justice for how incredibly cute they are.  There are six of them this time (six!!!).  Their eyes have just opened and they have been moving around the nest box.  There is one bold one in the first picture who was peeking at me.

As we primarily celebrate the pagan side of Easter, there was much egg-dyeing on Saturday.  We've been saving our little white pullet eggs for weeks.  We did the natural dyes again this year.  We used blueberries and red cabbage for the blue this year, and a good thing it was, because the red cabbage was a failure for some reason.  I can't remember how I got it to work so well last year, and I didn't have time to look it up again.  We used beets and turmeric again for red and yellow.

They were particularly pretty when we added some crayon designs before putting them in the dye.  I couldn't find our lovely beeswax crayons, so we used the regular ones.

We had so much fun trying different color combinations.  The natural dyes don't mix the same way that the regular food colors do.

The turmeric was such an intense color.  It stained my pot that I used to cook it in.  The next morning, after giving the pot several good scrubbings, I warmed up some milk for breakfast that turned out to be yellow!  The blueberries were also very potent.

They turned out so lovely again this year!
I love the soft springy colors you get with the natural dyes.



On Easter morning I woke up early and set out plates for everyone of home made treats.  The photo isn't very good (I'm still trying to figure out my new camera and my house is very poorly lit).  My friend and I had gotten together on Wednesday to make marshmallows  that I cut into bunny shapes with a cookie cutter.  We made the Nourishing Traditions macaroons, and later I baked the Czechoslovakian Easter bread my grandmother always made for us for holidays.  I made the walnut and the poppy seed version.
There was also a cloth basket of strawberries and a hand-sewn felt chick.  To be extra silly, I scattered raisins on the table, and told the kids they were rabbit droppings from the Easter Bunny.  They laughed and started eating them.

We did the traditional egg hunt later that morning.
We found all but one!
It is lurking in the yard somewhere still.