Our youngest Blackbelly Ewe gave birth early this morning to two chocolate twin lambies! One boy and one girl! Mama was hiding them in the rocks during the day for the first week or so, so I had to get night pics. Need to get more pics now that they are older and out more. They look like goats and hop around like bunnies.
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As some of you may have read a few pages back; we recently relocated the whole farm, and my rabbit cage stands were old and falling apart, so we were in the process of making new ones and only had a couple built. The rest of the cages were still sitting on the ground. Well last week a rattlesnake got into TWO of my cages, (the ones with my most recent litters, they were about 6 weeks old), and was repeatedly striking at the babies (I'm assuming it wanted to eat them, but the snake was too small). It killed four out of six in the first cage and three out of four in the second cage. The last baby in the second cage was also bit, but I didn't notice any affects until two days later. Actually I thought at first it didn't get bit, but it did. I won't get too graphic, but the side of her face and neck swelled up and popped. I thought she was a goner, but she never did die. I gave her a bit of baby aspirin and some sub-q fluids and some penicillin. Now almost a week later she is eating and drinking and on the mend and acting just fine. I can't believe she lived! She must have gotten just the smallest dose of venom. It's amazing a baby bunny can have that happen and live while humans, thousands of times her size, die. I just wanted to share the story as I thought it was really neat and unusual. She had two healthy baby doelings! TWIN DOELINGS!!! WOW! And one has spots!!! The only spotted one I got this year. So my total for baby goats this year is 6 girls and 2 boys! WOW! So happy! Been catching up on my to do list, plus I'm still fighting this cold. We think my DBF cracked a rib too so I have been picking up all the slack while sick. :/ I think it's keeping me from getting better... been trying to rest in-between chores, not the easiest thing to do! Unfortunately, Ghiselle got severe mastitis within 12 hours after her kidding, but I'm treating her aggressively with a full 5 day round of penicillin and it's almost completely 100% gone now. It was the WEIRDEST thing ever. (I milked her out right after she had them, and again every 6 hours). Within 6 hours of having the babies a long skinny "lump" developed in her left udder and over the next 6 hours it grew and grew until I can only describe it as a "snake" in her udder, about as big around as my ring finger. In the mammary tissue right above the nipple. WEIRD. Then within another 6 hours the whole bottom of her left udder was ROCK hard and the nipple was becoming hard too, making it nearly impossible to milk her. As soon as I noticed the hardening she got her first dose of pen-g (penicillin). Within 6 hours the whole thing had softened up and every 6 hours it just kept getting better. Now, about 24 hours later, the "snake" is almost completely gone. Well it's been a hard couple of days and we still can't believe she is gone, but everything is getting back to normal around the farm. No other major disasters. I did the math and my baby goats are 8 weeks old now, and my new LGD pup is 15 weeks. He outweighs them by far, weighed in at 47 pounds yesterday! Ghiselle is due to have her babies in only 4 days! Wow I cannot believe time has gone by so fast! It took sooooo long for the first two! We cleaned out the baby barn today in preparation for the new little ones. Tonight will be the first night the older baby goats sleep in the big girls pen. We've had them in there several times during the days without any problems, but tonight will be the first full length night. Diego the new pup will also be in there with them! He has lots of toys and bones and a bowl full of yummy food to help distract him. He is such a good pup, he is great with the goats. Tries to play with the babies a bit, but overall wonderful. Very respectful of the big goats and I think that by having them all in together he will be on good behavior. I will get pics tomorrow of the whole group together. Sad sad sad day on the farm today. I went up to milk the goats and my mastiff Maya didn't come out to greet me like usual. I went over to her dog house and she was laying on her bed outside of it sleeping- and not breathing. Maya died last night in her sleep. I have never ever in my life just had a dog drop dead like this. She was acting fine except for limping a little from a cut pad on her foot, she was just up and chasing coyotes two days ago. She didn't eat much dinner last night but that's kinda normal for her since we free feed her she doesn't wolf it down. I just don't know what happened. She was all up to date on all her vaccines, de-worming, everything else. She seemed fine and healthy in every way. I've heard that Mastiffs can have heart problems, but we had her heart checked by the vets when we got her and no murmurs and she used to go hiking and running with us all the time. She loved dogs beach. She was only 3 years old. RIP Maya. We love you and will miss you. I am devastated. I loved that dog. I wanted to breed her and keep a couple of her pups as property guardians. She was a really amazing dog. It has just been an extraordinarily crazy day! You guys will not believe this; after we went out and buried Maya, I was taking care of the rest of the animals and there was a 3' RATTLESNAKE INSIDE my rabbit cages! He was in with the baby rabbits obviously looking for a meal- only problem was he wasn't big enough to eat them. So he bit and killed 4 of my baby rabbits. So this morning we buried Maya, four baby bunnies, and a rattlesnake. That makes 8 rattlers we have killed so far this year. We initially did think of a snakebite as a first explanation for Maya, but she was fine last night, and I looked her over really well; no swelling, no puncture wounds, nothing. And I used to work as a vet tech so I have seen A LOT of snake bites. And not saying this is fool-proof, but she was up to date on her rattlesnake vaccine. We also thought bloat too, but again no symptoms, at all. We talked about getting a necropsy all morning, and I called two different vets to get pricing and procedure. As it turns out it's roughly $200 for a necropsy because she was so big (160 pounds). We debated on wether or not to do it, but after talking to one of my friends that runs a Saint Bernard rescue and posting on the Mastiff forum I am on, it seems the logical explanation was her heart. My friend that has the Saint Bernards says that she has SEVERAL friends who's YOUNG (<5 yrs) dogs have died in their sleep, and the Mastiff forum says it's very very common for them to die young because of heart problems. I just can't believe it happened to Maya. And well, as much as I would love to KNOW that that is what happened to her, we've decided that we should save the $200 so we can use it towards another LGD pup to try and help replace her. Wow time flies when your having fun! (And even when your not!) Ghiselle, my last goatie to have babies of this year, is due in only 12 more days! Her udder is definitely getting bigger and I think she has twins, her belly is the biggest I've ever seen it. (Not as big as Minyette was though! ) Also, this might be weird, call it woman's intuition or whatever you want, but somehow I KNEW after she was bred that she was pregnant, I mean immediately. We tried three different times to have her bred but she just wasn't settling. But after the last time, after the last breeding, when I was putting her in the truck, she just looked at me and laid down. She is normally pretty fidgety, but she just sat there calmly and looked at me and I KNEW that she was preggo. I can't wait to see what she has! I'm hoping for twins!!! ALSO one of the sheepies I got is pregnant and will be having babies too! Two of the mammas already had theirs. One had twins one was a single, and now this one left. I love spring. Puppies, baby goaties, lambies, baby chicks, baby bunnies.... does it get any better? NOPE! We got sheep!!! Eek! Never thought I'd be a sheep owner!!! So far they are COMPLETELY different than my goats. Like polar opposites. So the previous living situation; no minerals, vaccines were a couple years ago, never been dewormed, and their hooves are horrible. I wish they were a little easier to handle so I could get them all fixed up easier. We left to go get them at 10 am and finished at 11:30 last night. I feel like I got run over by a train. At least no one got hurt and I think the sheep are OK. It was a nightmare to say the least- if you ask my BF. I didn't think it was so bad, thought it went pretty well actually! Worst part is is that they are wilder than a rabid buffalo. It was a nightmare getting them INTO the trailer at her place, we had to half herd them, half catch them and half drag them into it, and then it was even worse getting them OUT of the trailer and into our pen here. We had to catch/ lasso them one at a time, drag them out the trailer, flip them on their sides and tie their feet together, lift them in the back of my pick-up and drive them up to the pen. (We can't pull the livestock trailer to the pens). And we had one week to get everything ready so we've been busting our butts getting the corral put up. Finally finished getting it up on Friday, and was supposed to pick up the chain link on Saturday and wrap the corral, but due to unforeseen circumstances we weren't able to pick the chain link up until Sunday; the day we ALSO picked up the sheep. So they sat in the livestock trailer for a couple hours while we finished the fencing. And at least they are here now and I can start taking care of them properly! After my nap of course! We made a proposition our farm partner/ property owner, that if she purchased an incubator for all of us to use, that we would process as many meat birds for her as she wanted, and well, she took us up on the offer! I am in love and this thing rocks! No really, if I put a rock in it, it would probably hatch it. No temp or humidity fluctuations and it has all kinds of neat features like auto cooling. The only, and I do mean only, bad thing about this incubator is that the water tray is TOO small for it! I know we live in the desert and so probably go through more water than is probably normal, but I have to fill it TWICE a day sometimes, and getting the humidity up past 55% is a real chore. Fortunately it hatches babies at 40-50% and I never have a problem with them shrink wrapping (getting too dry). Overall a success!!! We are on our first incubation right now, only have had it for three days. SO FAR I absolutely LOVE it. I have had zero problems with it holding humidity. I can keep it wherever I want by filling up the well and adjusting the vents. No problems there. AND it comes with a surface area increasing sponge thingy to put in the well during hatch. I haven't hatched in it yet, that's still about 18 days away (and I will report how it goes). But there is only one hatching tray on the bottom, so I set-staggered my shelves, each one hatching at a different time, so I only have to put one shelf's worth of eggs in the hatcher at any given time. Well I finally did it! Got a "real" LGD pup. He's a Pyrenees, Maremma, Anatolian, Akbash, Ovcharka cross. (That's a mouthful!) 11 weeks old, and he's wonderful! Very normal puppy like in some ways, but I can tell he's going to be a good guardian already. I think he has really bonded to me, he follows me around everywhere, and gets really happy to see me. He sits outside the milking parlor while I am milking and just watches everything. He is doing really well here even though it's only been two days. He sleeps in the baby barn at night with the baby goats (with a gate between them) and has already claimed the baby barn as "his territory". Yesterday some people came up to buy rabbits and as soon as he saw them he started barking! What a good boy! That's what I want; I don't want just anyone to be able to walk in with the goats (so they don't get stolen!) He goes in the baby goat yard with me and also the big goat yard, and he is good, but I still have to convince MY goats that he isn't going to eat them. LOL! He did try and mouth the baby goats a little bit and I've just been giving him a firm "no". He is picking it up quickly. I did have to give him a little bop on the nose and a loud NO when he put his whole mouth around one of the baby goats legs. I know he is just playing though. But I won't leave him alone with them until I know he knows not to chew or chase them. The baby goats still have to get used to him too, they aren't too sure what he is, lol. He also dug out of the baby goat yard when I walked away because he wanted to be back in the baby barn, lol. I may eventually have to get hotwire to teach him to stay inside the goat yards. Every day I am moving him all around to all the different areas so he gets used to them and recognizes them as his territories. He also gets to see my two other big dogs and is just fine with them. He also met the turkeys and the rabbits today and wasn't quite sure about them but with my showing them to him and reassuring him he was fine after just a couple minutes. He's here to stay!!! |
AuthorsIn 2009, we moved to a rural rental on the outskirts of San Diego to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and to get away from the chemicals in our food and in our life. Little did we know that just a few years later we would be real farmers; growing fruits, vegetables and herbs, as well as many different kinds of chickens, ducks, turkey, bunnies, guineas, quail, goats and more! We left the suburbs for "Green Acres" and haven't looked back since! Categories
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