Broken Fences and Alpaca Breeding

We have had a growing hole in one stretch of of our interior cross fencing for a while now.  I have patched it up a few times but the LGDs and goats keep working at it until it splits open again.  They do this so they can gain access to another pasture without the effort of going all the way around the fence line and through the gate.  It is a short cut they are resistant to let go of so I have just let them have it.

Then it happened a few weeks ago... I found one of my female alpacas, G.G., out in the cow pasture.  There was no other way for her to get there but to have squeezed herself through the "goat hole".  Every day I would find her in the other pasture waiting to come back for her grain.  Then one day I found her two year old daughter, Abby, in the other pasture with her.  Then a few days later Fiore joined them in their nightly romp in the cow pasture.

One of our alpaca studs, Peter, lives in this pasture as well (along with our mini donkeys, cows, llama and the sheep and goats that can come and go).  Up until this morning I had seen no interest from Peter in the wandering girls.  But this morning when I stepped out the front door to go down to the barn I could hear the noises from Peter as he was chasing one of the girls around trying to get her to cush for breeding.  It was Abby and after a bit of running around she cushed for him and stayed down for a breeding.  So, if it takes then Abby will be a first time Mom next May.

Farm Happenings

Neil spent the morning repairing garden hoses and running some of them to the automatic waterers in the barn. So, now we don't have long hoses running along the ground everywhere. He also had the time to fix the water pump that has been leaking out in the pasture.  Once he fixed the underground connection he installed four t-posts around the pipe and ran electric fencing around it to prevent the cows and donkeys from rubbing on it and breaking it again.

This afternoon we all went over to Neil's parents for dinner.  I made a beef stroganoff from our farm raised beef to take over.  It was really good.

Today's mail brought two postcards from Memphis, Tennessee...

Also, Flat Hannah arrived from Texas.

You can follow Flat Hannah's visit here on the farm here.

Fencing

Neil and I spent the whole day tightening the 6' woven wire fence that encloses our alpacas. We hung this fence in April of 2007 with only one temporary staple at the top of each post so we could move the alpacas to the farm. We fully intended to tighten and attached the fence properly soon after.

Well, two and half years later the task finally made it to the top of our to do list. The wire has been drooping for some time and even curling up at the bottom a bit. It was this bottom curling that hurled this task to the top of our list. Emmie, our LGD,will always find the weakest point in our fencing and get out overnight to wander the neighborhood. Our quick fixes weren't fixing that problem anymore so we knew we had to bite the bullet and do the job properly.

When the day was done we were impressed with how well the fence recovered from it's drooping state and looks nice and tight now. Like we know what we are doing :)

Cows on the loose... again!

Sometimes it is a blessing that I am a night owl.

It was 11:15pm last night when I started walking around the house turning off lights and locking up. When in the kitchen I happened to look out the window over the sink and was surprised by the sight of Cherry Blossom, one of our Irish Dexter cows, grazing on the freshly mowed lawn in front of the house. I had an immediate feeling of dread!

So, after slipping on my boots I headed outside to see what was going on. I walked right up to her and took her by the halter (this is the exact reason I do two things with the cows 1. they always wear halters and 2. I routinely give them treats when they come up to me so they never run from me). Only after I had my hand on her halter did I happen to notice the other large dark objects moving around closer to the road... all the cows were out having a midnight snack. The great thing about me having Cherry Blossom in hand is that she is the boss cow of the herd. As she and I walked down to the barn I could hear the cows behind me running to catch up with us. I was expecting the gate in the barn to be open as their way of escape but it was closed up tight. In fact our donkey Inora was on the other side quite unhappy that she was left behind. I secured CB in the cow stall and could see our bull Chuck coming in the barn door and Riona, our other cow, stick her head in behind him. I grabbed a few leaves of hay and enticed Chuck into the stall with Riona coming behind him and Nick, Riona's 10 month old bull calf, fast behind her.

With all four back in the stall happily munching on hay I walked around the barn (in the dark as I didn't think to grab a flashlight on the way out of the house) to check the gate by the goat barn. Unfortunately, that gate was secure too! That really only left the electric fence as the weak link in the fence. Back up to the barn to get the electric fence tester then back out behind the barn (still in the dark) to check the fence voltage... it had none! We run our fence off of a solar panel with a battery backup. Normally the system works great as the solar panel keeps the fence running during the day and charges the battery and then the fence in charged by the battery at night. It is a system that for the most part works on its own and I don't think about it at all. So, at almost midnight I had to figure out what to do for tonight. At first I thought I would just move them to another of our four pastures, it didn't take long to think that through and realise it wouldn't work for reasons different for each pasture.

I needed to get this fence up and working again. I went back up to the house to get a flashlight so I could see what I was doing. First I tried our backup battery with no results. I ended up taking the vehicle booster pack out of the Suburan and hooking it up directly to the fence charger. Immediately I heard the familiar snapping noise of a fully charged fence. Tired, I headed back up to the house and just hopped the cows would still be in the fence come morning.

So, thanks to my night owl status I managed to fix a bad situation... gosh knows where they would have been by this morning if I hadn't noticed them last night.

One thing off the "To Do List"

As with all small farms our To Do List is never ending it seems. But there are some jobs on it that are so miserable to even think about that they just keep getting pushed down the list. Today was our day to get one such job off our list.

In early Spring of 2007 Neil removed hundreds of feet of 5 wire electric fencing wire so we could install our new six foot woven wire fence for the alpacas. The wire was still fine to use but we had no immediate need for it so we left it lying on the lawn to roll up another day. (At this time we were not living on the farm yet and were only here on weekends. We couldn't use our limited time here to roll up the wire when there was so much more still to be done.) Then of course as things go we didn't get around to rolling up the wire and the grass under it needed to get mowed so the wire was pulled up into a tighter area so most of the lawn could be mowed at least. After a few months of that I got tired of the tall grass along the front of the pasture that is visible from the road so I hooked it onto the backhoe of the tractor and towed it down to the future garage platform so it wouldn't be on grass anymore. There it has sat for another 4-5 months untouched.

But yesterday, Neil decided something must be done with it finally. He spent several hours yesterday afternoon and most of today untangling the five wires from each other and rolling them up on a spool for later use. What a hot, miserable, tiring job that was. One we are very happy to finally have off our To Do List!

Oh, and Neil pointed out that one of the turkey hens was setting on a nest of eggs over by the tool shed again. I went to check her out and she seems safely tucked in among the items stored there. Hopefully, we will have more turkey chicks in a few weeks.

Yeah... new turkeys!

As I was getting ready this morning to go out to do chores the kids had already headed out to play outside. A few minutes later McKayla comes running in the house to tell me that the turkey eggs had hatched into turkey babies!

Wow! I had only discovered that the turkeys were setting on eggs in the blackberry bushes less then two weeks ago now. When I went out three of the turkey hens were over by the kids playground. The kids had taken some bricks and made a circle nest and filled it with hay. One of the hens was squatted over the nest and I could see several little poults sticking out for under her. As cute as that was, I was not willing to loose these poults like I had the few that were hatched out this past spring. I needed to move them and the hen into one of the brooder pens in the chicken coop.

I had my Wulsummer hens and rooster in one of the pens and I first needed to move them out to the hoop house instead. Once everyone was shifted around I collected the poults... there were five... and put them in the brooder. Then I got the hen and they all quickly settled into there new home.

Neil was home today as we had an appointment in Durham this afternoon. While I finished up morning chores, he took the weed whacker and cleared out from under the electric fence (it was turned off) all around the pastures. He then went back with the tractor and mowed around outside of the pastures to keep the weeds down. The tall weeds can short out the fence and make it so it doesn't work as efficiently on the animals. It looked really nice when he finished up.

We had just enough time to clean ourselves up and take the over an hour drive to the city for our appointment.

I'm back, hopefully...

One of my regular egg customers (and now friend) told me today when she stopped by for her eggs that she stumbled across this blog and really enjoyed reading it. She noticed that I hadn't had an entry since the beginning of May and wondered why.

Why? That is a good question. Let's just say that is has been a very busy summer and more then a bit stressful. The first month I found that I just didn't have the time in my day to do any blogging. Then it just fell out of my normal routine so I stopped thinking about what I would blog about. After about 6-8 weeks of no blogging I started feeling a bit guilty about stopping. When things worthy of noting happened around here I would think "I really need to post that on the blog tonight." but still I would never get around to actually doing it. So, I am now determined to get back to my former habit of blogging at least 3-4 times a week.

Meanwhile, just to recap a few major highlights over the past few months:

We have had lots of ducklings and chicks born. We have sold many of them but still have many that will need to be butchered in the coming weeks.

We had a cria born to our alpaca Gritona on May 22nd. He is a light fawn that we named Seamus (sounds like Shamus). He is a very bold young male so we have had little contact with him as he wants to "play" and this would lead to disrespecting of humans and possible agression in the future. We have left his correcting to his mother and herd mates.

Neil and I got a good bit of cross fencing up and created two new alpaca pastures. In one we put the males Peter, Sidney and Finley. Into the other went the male Novio along with the females GeeGee, Abby, Celtie and Joy. Moving the pacas to new pastures has greatly improved the condition of the grass. I still am mowing the pastures to prevent the thistle from growing up but the pastures are so much better then last year. I can only hope that they will improve every year. Our Nigerian dwarf goats gave birth for the first time. Pepper had a single doeling that we will be keeping. We named her Mary Jane.


Gabby had twin bucklings that we sold to a neighboring alpaca farmer so I know that will be well cared for.

I have been milking Gabby (I let Pepper raise Mary Jane herself) and have made some fresh goat cheese, a batch of Feta that is still in the brining stage and some whey ricotta.

The wild blackberries around that property ripened and we made a batch of Blackberry jelly with them.

And finally, and sadly, our cat Sweet Pea that I brought home from the feed store last Fall went missing the first week of July. I have owned a lot of cats in my life and I have to say she was one of my favorites. I wish I knew what became of her; car, fox, coyote, stray dog? I miss her every morning as I go down to the barn to do chores and she is not following behind me or riding on my shoulder. The farm is not the same anymore.

More fencing

I am pleased that Neil and I got the major run of cross fencing finished this weekend. The job included installing the last of the angled cross braces on the end posts, installing two 12' gates and run about another 100 feet of woven wire fencing. But we now have an additional pasture in which to purposefully separate our livestock! Yeah!

We also got a great start on installing the woven wire on the section of fence line that will split this new pasture we just formed into two pastures. There is only about another 150-200 of fencing on that run and a single four foot gate to install and I will have two pastures in which to put the animals.

The last bit of work we did for today was to get a watering system set up in the new pastures. In the large trash/junk pile out in the woods that we inherited with the farm has been an upside down cast iron tub. I wasn't sure what condition it was in but I had in mind to move it up to the pastures as a water trough. We got the tractor down to the pile and using chains moved it up to the shed to evaluate it. This was not the "loins foot" type but a newer style that would fit like a modern tub today. That meant that three sides were exposed and only one side had a face to it. But, besides being baby blue in color it was in perfect condition still. Not a chip on it. Neil installed a new drain for me so it would hold water again and I could easily drain in out to keep it clean. Once that was done we took it out to the pasture and set it up on some bricks to level it and keep the drain off the ground. For now I will have to fill it a few times a week from a 50 gallon drum that fits in the bucket of the tractor. In future we hope to get a gravity feed system worked out.

With the fence done and water available the new pasture is now ready for some livestock. That will happen tomorrow.

Fence progression.

Finally, we had a weekend with no rain so we could continue work on our new pasture cross-fencing. Yesterday, we finished drilling the holes and setting the posts. Today, we got about 300 feet of woven wire stretched and installed. I know it doesn't sound like much but it involved a lot of splicing. Neil was able to get the "end rolls" free from the fencing company working at his job site right now. The rolls are only between 50-75 feet long. It defiantly made for longer labor time to install but without this fencing we wouldn't have been able to cross-fence at all this year so we don't really mind.

We would have finished one whole run but we were driven out of the pasture in the late afternoon by a sudden thunderstorm. So, now we will have to wait until next weekend to finish up and move some of our alpacas around.

Another canine visitor.

This morning while doing chores Emmie and Berk, our LGDs, started barking like crazy out in the pasture. I was in the chicken coop so I came out to see what was going on. Up by the house was what looked like a golden retriever. It was moving over to the fence line to checkout Emmie and Berk even though they were absolutely nuts and trying to climb the 6' fence to get to him. I called out and when the golden saw me he came running over. Again, it turned out to be a young dog, somewhere between 6 months and year old at the most. I had no problem catching him by the collar. He had a tag with a phone number on it so I put him in our dog kennel and had Neil call the owners to let them know we had their dog.

Neil had to leave a message and as it was Sunday we figured the owners were at church. After calling the golden's owners several more times we finally got him home around 3pm!

For a good part of the day Neil worked on the electric fence so the animals would stay put in it again. Our Anatolian dog Emmie has been getting out most nights and this morning our bull calf was out wandering about for the third time this week. Neil changed the fence from a grounded system to an alternating loop system where instead of each line being "hot" the animals must touch two of the five strands to be shocked. This will work better in our drought conditions we hope.

It was cold outside so I made up a pot of French Onion soup for dinner and I made homemade bread bowls to serve it in. Boy, didn't that hit the spot after being outside most of the day!

Farm work day.

Since Neil works hard all week at his job I try not to work him all weekend around the farm too. We try to work one day and relax the other but sometimes that doesn't work out. We have too many partially finished projects done that all center around the barn and the pastures that we worked all day today too.

We put up some cattle panels that had been left here by the pervious owners from the barn stretching along the woven wire fence of the chicken run. At the end of that run we installed a 14 foot gate (that we also found lying on the ground at the back of our pasture) so we could get the tractor in and out of the cow pasture without having to take down the electric every time. Then using the fence post on the non-hinge side of the 14 foot fence we installed a 4 foot walk through gate at a 90 degree angle. From that 4 foot gate we ran 4 foot woven wire to the front of the goat barn and from the other side of the goat barn Neil ran five strands of electric to connect with the electric that runs around the cow pasture. So, with our new perimeter secure we took down the T-posts and woven wire that was temporarly running from the barn to the cow pasture. This gave the animals a lot more room up near the barn and gave us much better and easier access to the pasture and back of the barn (which we never had before). The area that was created by doing this will later be divided into three catch pen areas leading to three different stalls inside the barn. One for the female alpacas, one for the male alpacas and the third for the cows and donkeys. But that will be for another weekend...