Latestarter's ramblings/musings/gripes and grumbles.

[greybeard]

So I emptied, de-algified, and re-filled their water trough (the tub) this morning. When I flipped it over there were 3 huge black widow females under it. That was rather neat. Gotta remember not to put my hands/fingers/toes underneath it when working around it.

I moved some empty lick tubs yesterday, and both under the tubs and under the top rim of the tubs were covered in black widows.

Unless it's dirt work, spraying or mowing, I try to work rain or shine. I was born wet, same as my calves, and they have to stand out and take it, so I do too. I just walk off the porch into it, get soaked and that is the norm for the day. Monsoon isn't new to me.

 

[Latestarter]

Not allergic to wet by any stretch... end up soaked from sweat in any case... not allergic to dirt or mud either really. Do feel it's probably not in my best interest to be out pounding T posts in a lightening storm however. Something about holding a perfect grounding rod yaknow... Being out of sight of the road, and neighbors, it's no biggie to strip down to the birthday suit on the back porch, rinse off with the hose, and put the wet/dirty clothes directly into the washing machine. Having said all that, can't see much sense in getting into that condition if there isn't any good reason to do so. Nothing here is really all that important or "life & death" necessary... It can wait till the rain stops and till it dries up a bit.

 

[Alaskan]

Dot has dropped off in milk production and is down to a bit less than 1/2 gallon a day.

Why do you think she has already dropped off so much?

 

[Latestarter]

I'm really not sure. She's been in milk since May 4th or just shy of 14 weeks, and the most she ever milked out was shy of a full gallon. For the past several months she's been milking about 1/2-3/4 of a gallon. I've started weaning CC and she's down to 2 bottles, morning and evening now, so thankful I am not missing the extra milk for feeding. Another week or 2 & I'll drop CC down to 1 bottle/day. It seems they've all become much more picky about their grain as well. I don't know if they changed the formulation or something. They move it all around with their noses choosing the choicest bits and then pawing through it to find more. Pisses me off because a lot of it gets wasted being pawed out or dumped out on the ground where they then won't touch it. I did take a break from providing them tree limbs as well after the 2 bonfires. I started that back up again today. That may have contributed to the drop off... They really don't like change too much. After this round of wet weather goes through I think I'm going to do fecals on all of them again as well as a re-do of Bang's CL blood test. This time I'll use the university vets rather than the local and get actual EPG counts.

After their dinner I took Dot and Bang out and hooked them to 25' leads so they could eat some (more) greens. I stayed out there with them so I could move them to wherever they found the greens they liked best. They weren't out but 10 minutes and I heard this "POP" and look around to see Bang walking around free with no more collar. This is the second one she's busted/ruined. The next one I put on her will be chain link Luckily she's become accustomed to me enough that she would follow Dot back into the pen when I held the fencing open. It was a challenge to keep all the kids from running out while getting those two in. I need to get the fencing finished so I don't have to screw around with it anymore and can just let them out in the morning and put them away in the evening. That will save me a lot of work cutting limbs/trees, money on hay/feed, and time.

Looks like another round of storms headed this way for later tonight/early morning. They've issued flash flood watches through tomorrow evening for my county. Nice to be near the top of a hill. Reports are that some areas around me have already had 3-5" of rain but personally here I've only had about 1/2". It's looked much heavier up near the red river basin and up into OK and over into AR, then east over into LA earlier. Then there's another huge band about to hit I35 from Waco south.

 

[Alaskan]

Yeah
.... disappointing on the milk.

It would be nice to see if there is a cause...or if she just isn't up to snuff.

I know with our first milking cycle, it took us awhile to do everything right...so I don't think the girls milked as much or as long as they could have...if we had been better.

But I still got rid of the one doe who dropped off fastest in regards to milk production..her teats were also a bit small and harder to milk so I saw no reason to give her a second try.

My Feta, who is producing 1 to 1.5 gallons a day kidded in March. She also has nice easy to squeeze teats, and stands to milk very nicely.

 

[Alaskan]

By the way, yes, I agree that it sure is nice to have your house on a hill.

Flooding is bad!

 

[Baymule]

We didn't get any rain today, but it looks like we'll be getting rain tomorrow and this week. Hopefully there won't be any tornado spewing storms. Joe, you'll be getting rain too.

Yeah, you need to get some more fencing up so it will make it easier on you. With the rain coming, the dirt ought to be a bit softer for your T-post pounding pleasure.

 

[Alaskan]

Just don't pound 'em during the lightning storm.

 

[Bruce]

Sounds like you are where @Mike CHS was a year or so back. Got the animals but having to bring feed to them until you get some fencing done. But as his example shows, it CAN be done

 

[Mike CHS]

It gave me some good incentive and I think Joe is there right about now.