Recent content by High Desert Cowboy

Ruby is now a week old and doing well. I had my daughter help me band her tail. Now we’re starting to work on our pen for the goat. They got weaned Saturday and we’ll pick it up this week. Stopped at the feed store for dog food and somehow wound up with 6 chicks? Not sure how that happened.

Let me tell you the tale of Darla the Ninja Goat. February of last year I’m buying two show ewes from a lady who is going through a divorce and has to downsize. As money is changing hands she asks if I would possibly be interested in taking her last little Nigerian doe who might be pregnant...

My ram went in with my ewes during the first full week in November, so I was expecting lambs to start hitting the ground next week. Tuesday as I was running to grab some hay before work I noticed my oldest ewe, Heart, standing by the fence with a little white creature. Nearby was another...

I would be curious to see what a cross between a mangalitsa and a duroc would produce. Mangalitsa clearly have better marbling, but the slower growth and small litter sizes doesn’t make it the most attractive option to me. You’d need to charge a premium to justify the cost of raising them, but...

More cold and rain. My corrals were so close to being dry, just a little puddle was left. And now we’re back to a lake. My buddy sent me this picture yesterday. When we were raising our pigs last summer he decided he wanted to try a mangalitsa pig to see how it would turn out, as he’d heard...

I think it depends on the judge. We spoke to a lawyer a few years back because we had heard that before and she said while the child’s opinion would be considered it was a small part in the overall decision. Utah has the best weather. It was nice and warm and everything was drying out and...

Having worked with “Heading” and “Heeling” dogs, it would be interesting to work with these kind of dogs. I’ve heard that’s what German shepherds and malinois were bred for, a “living fence” that maintained stock in one area. How do you train them to maintain a specific area?

Things are starting to warm up and dry out around here. These last two winters have been incredibly wet and our sump pumps have been working like crazy to keep water out. My corrals look like a swamp. This year it didn’t get as cold though, last February we had temps down to -33 and it snowed...

I’ve seen that a lot in older sows but never in a young boar like that. How is he other than that? Does he eat? Drink? What’s his temperature? If you don’t have a thermometer, just get a digital thermometer from Walmart that you would put under your tongue. They work great for rectal...

I’m alive!!!! It’s been a long time since I posted, all I can say is life got crazy, then crazier, and I just got to realizing I hadn’t been on here for almost 3 years. There’s been a lot of changes at our place. Horses: I still have old Brolo, my kids love him and I don’t know if I could ever...

Working 6 days a week plus training horses four days a week has kept me busier than I ever intended to be! Some updates for our area. Dolly the lamb is doing great, after 4 weeks of the PVC cast her leg set nicely. She doesn’t even have a limp. Bad part is she’s as bad as her mother now in...

Funny how times flies. It’s been two weeks so today I checked Dolly’s leg to make sure everything was healing as it should and to adjust the PVC cast to allow for a little growth. Everything looks pretty good so I wrapped it it back up for another two weeks. She walks on it a fair amount...

Don’t worry I didn’t take it as critical. Part of the benefit of being on BYH we have this awesome community of people who care about animals and want the best for them. Got some cleaning done today, cleaned out the garage so I can actually get to my stuff and moved some of my animal equipment...

@farmerjan you are right she does need more than rolled oats but I was being a lazy typist. I keep rolled oats on hand for my horses when we’re doing some actual work (lots of riding in the mountains) and I was feeding it to Heart where she was nursing triplets. When Dolly broke her leg I...

I do need the sprinklers to keep my lawn green. We’ve been fortunate to have some rain lately but come June and July it’ll be pretty dry for a while. Even with more rain and snow up this way sprinklers are a necessity if you want a lawn. I just don’t have to water as much. Originally when I...