Goat Road Trips

This summer, my teenage daughter and I took three of her Nubian goats to several out of town goat shows.  We went to Torrington, WY, Douglass, WY and Pueblo, CO, in addition to several local shows.   For the first big drive, we took our truck and trailer but after spending $120 to fill my diesel pick-up truck with gas, I got to thinking maybe those 3 goats could all fit in my more economical minivan!  It certainly would be a quieter and more comfortable ride for us, be easier to navigate in parking lots and at drive-through restaurants, and the goats could enjoy the comfort of air conditioning while listening to music.  Sure enough, by taking all the back seats out and packing carefully, we were able to fit three large dog crates, a milking stand, a bale of hay, a bag of pine shavings, buckets, hay bags, grooming equipment and our suitcases.  We even had room for two folding chairs and a cooler!

Now I wasn’t originally planning on going to all these “away” shows this year, but I figured that with my daughter being so passionate about showing her goats and the fact that she actually wanted to spend time with me at the very peer-influenced age of 15, I'd better make time for these getaways with her while I still could.  It’s hard for me to fathom, but I really only have her home for 3 more summers before she’s off to college.

The great thing about these road trips is that they’re sort of boring.  What I mean by that is there is plenty of time to chat.  Any of you who have teenage kids know that opportunities to really connect with them seem to get more and more fleeting as they grow up.  Friends, homework, sports, cell phones, computers... these all compete with parents for attention during the high school years.  But sitting next to each other on a long, boring stretch of I-85 through Wyoming with no other distractions allows for some pretty good conversation time.  We talked about college and career choices, God and religion, goat breeding, driving laws, healthy eating, and lots of fun fantasy conversations about future houses and farm set-ups.  It was great.

The goat showing was pretty fun and successful, too.  When we started out with goats three years ago, we bought a small little Nubian doe named Skittles.  She was spotted, cute and compact.  Well, turns out “compact” is not highly desired in the dairy goat show world where terms like body capacity, height, strength and stature are frequently used to describe the winning does.  Once Megan began to get serious about showing beyond 4-H, I offered to buy her a show-quality doe, but she insisted that the only truly admirable and respectable way to get a better show goat was to breed your way there.  So, she selected a local breeder whose goats had the traits she was looking for and began to improve her line.  Imagine her thrill when Skittles’ third doeling took Reserve Champion Junior Doe at the Colorado State Fair this year.  Talk about a mother’s pride – mine and Megan’s (and maybe Skittles’, too!).

The only real downside to our summer goat road trips was the smell that was left in my mini van as a reminder of our journey.  In spite of laying tarps down under the crates that housed the girls, the distinct smell of goat still permeates our family car.  The vanilla scented car air freshener helps but now it just smells like we’ve been baking cupcakes in the barn.  A suburban friend of mine was recently lamenting the fact that her minivan was such a mess, with candy wrappers, Happy Meal toys and miscellaneous drink cups everywhere.  “Oh yeah?,” I said, “I bet you don’t have goat poop in your van!"   Do you think Toyota would want to make a commercial about that?

Life Lesson:  Look for unconventional opportunities to connect with those you love

Moovin' Cows

Last weekend, my girls and I took our horses to a nearby cow clinic.  If you’re wondering what that means, it’s where a small group of horses and riders learn how to do one of the most basic things that horses were meant to do, and that’s moving cows.  Most of us who own horses for pleasure never get to experience the task that a rancher and a ranch horse do every day, and often the inner cowboy or cowgirl in us just wants to come out and give it a try!

So, we signed up to take Chummie, Amigo and even good old Belle to work some cows.  Along with six other cowgirl wannabes (interesting that it was all women), we spent 3 ½ hours moving a group of 7 cows up and down and all around a two- acre patch of pasture. 

Now I can imagine the image that comes to mind for you is a bunch of whoopin’ and hollerin’ and rope throwin’, but quite the contrary.  You see, the art of moving a group of cows that are going to be marketed for beef is to stress them as little as possible.  That means that to get them from point A to point B, you want them to move as slowly as possible so that they don’t lose any weight in the process.  If you’re going to take a cow to market and sell its meat by the pound, you don’t want it to be running around losing weight before it goes!

The other factor to consider is that not all horses are familiar or comfortable with being around cows.  Most of the horses at a clinic like this are being used for lessons, trail rides or even showing, but none of them lives and works with cows on a regular basis.  So by taking it slowly and cautiously, we’re able to give our horses a chance to get up close and personal with an animal they may have never seen before, or at best, only from a distance.

To start out, the cows were in a little huddle in the middle of the pasture, and we fanned out in a big circle around them with each horse facing the cows.  Then we turned and circled the group at a walk and a trot before stopping, reversing and doing the same thing in the other direction.  This gave each horse a chance to see the cows from a distance and out of each eye, an important thing to do when introducing a horse to a new thing due to how their brain is wired.

Next, we each took turns riding right up to the little huddle and circling them closer before picking a spot to ride through the group.  By doing this, we got a chance to see how our horse would react to seeing a cow up close and out of each eye simultaneously.  Most horses take to this pretty naturally, but for some, it can be a little scary and intimidating.  Our three horses seemed to love it, arching their necks and pricking their ears forward as they sized up the cows.  I couldn’t help but think they looked like kids in a candy store!  It was especially gratifying to me to see my big old retired dressage horse, Chummie, acting like this was the most fun he’d had in years.  A nice change for him after his years of intense schooling and showing.  Equally fun was seeing my two girls and their trusty mounts taking to it so naturally.

Once each horse had a chance to move through the group, we each had to go back and cut one cow out of the herd, move it outside the circle of horses, go half way around the circle and then move it back in to the center.  Again, the idea is to do it slowly and with as little stress to the cow as possible.

Eventually, after we each had a successful turn at moving one cow, we started to work together in groups of 4 or 5 horses and riders, and then groups of 2 or 3, to move the whole herd of cows wherever we wanted them to go.  We moved them from one end of the pasture to the other, to a watering trough, through a row of barrels, over a small wooden bridge, and through a round pen with gates at each end. 

The final task of the day was to load the cows into a big stock trailer so the rancher who brought them to the clinic could take them back to his ranch.  Our instructor opened the door to the trailer and gave us a few basic tips and reminders, and then we all slowly moved the cows up toward the trailer, being conscious of what our individual role within the group was.  When we got the cows to the opening of the trailer, it was important to keep just enough pressure on them so they’d take the first step up into the trailer, without putting so much pressure on that they’d get scared and break from the group.  We never moved more than at a slow walk and there was no wild whoopin’ or hollerin’, so to the casual observer it probably didn’t look like much.  But by working as a team and taking our time, we had all those cows loaded up and ready to go home within five minutes.

It’s hard to describe the sense of satisfaction and just pure fun that came from our morning of moving cows.  From the feeling of teamwork to the companionship with our horses and the enjoyment of being outdoors in a beautiful location, it was an awesome mother-daughter outing!

Life Lesson:  Sometimes taking it slowly gets you there the fastest.

The Fair

When you have kids involved in 4-H, you find that the whole world seems to revolve around the week of the county fair, which for us is the first week of August.  It’s the culmination of a year’s worth of hard work and lots of practicing and preparing their projects to be judged.  Our local county fair also provides a chance for my kids to hang out with other kids who are interested in similar things, eat more sweets and junk food than I normally allow, and show off their critters and creations to the general public.  To say our family loves fair week would be an understatement! 

This year, in addition to bringing their goats and chickens to the fair, they also entered artwork, jams, cheeses, flowers and an artistic gardener creation.  I can’t participate in the youth shows, of course, but I do enter some of the open shows for baked goods, jams, cheeses and gardening, so I get to have some fun competing that week, too.

This was our third year of showing at the fair, and by now I’ve learned to clear the entire week prior to the actual fair to adequately prepare and get all the last minute things done.  We spend the week clipping and bathing goats, bathing and dusting chickens, baking, making jams and cheeses, and doing last-minute practices for showing the animals.  It’s amazing how much goes into getting ready for our week-long virtual live-in at the fairgrounds.

All the preparations were going along smoothly this summer and the anticipation and excitement were building as we got toward the end of the week before the big event.  Our 4-H club did a volunteer shift at the 4-H snack bar (aka the Dairy Bar) during a pre-fair event, we marched with our goats in the County Fair Parade, and we even managed to host a final poultry showmanship clinic at our farm to help prepare the kids and their birds.  It was the night before we were to start taking the first set of animals over to the fairgrounds and we were almost ready.

Then I got a phone call that threw a wrench in my careful planning and organization.  It was from the mother of a large family in our 4-H club calling with shocking, terrifying news.  Her 15 year old son, who we’d just spent much of the day before with, had had a freak, unexpected health crisis and was in a coma at the Denver Children’s hospital.  Understandably she was in a panic about her child’s physical condition and prognosis, but she was also concerned for her other children who were planning to enter their chickens at the fair for the first time and were in a tizzy about how they would be able to proceed.  As I helplessly listened to her tearful explanations about her son’s condition and tried to offer whatever support I could, I realized that the one thing I could do to help would be to make sure the other kids were able to participate in the fair as much as possible.  And even though her son was not going to be able to be at the fair, there was no reason why his hen and rooster couldn’t be there.   I assured her that we’d get the chickens ready and checked-in at the fairgrounds, and if needed we’d transport the other kids to and from the fair on show day.

So, the next morning my 4-H co-leader and I drove over to their farm, rounded up their 5 hens and the rooster, put them in cages and drove them back to my place.  My daughter and I then gave each of the chickens a bath and got them ready for check-in, before turning our attention to our own 12 hens that also needed to be prepped.  While I was matching the leg band numbers for their chickens to the paperwork showing which chickens had been entered, I realized that the boy’s rooster had not been properly registered.  I knew he had really been looking forward to showing off this fine bird, so I had to figure out a way to get him to the fair!  I called the poultry superintendent and after explaining the situation and the oversight, we finagled a “late entry” and the rooster was good to go.  Two trips to the fairgrounds with cages loaded with poultry, and all of our chickens as well as theirs were checked in.

Every day that week while we enjoyed our fair experience, showed our goats, and ate our ice cream and cotton candy, there was a part of each of us that felt the heaviness of the situation with our fellow 4-H family and their son.  Fortunately, we got a little more good news on the boy’s condition every day, and we were able to help his sisters get to the fairgrounds as much as possible so they could participate in the shows and fun.

My kids had many wins and got plenty of ribbons and awards that week, from Reserve Champion Senior Doe for Skittles, to Champion Dwarf Doe for Milky Way and Reserve Champion Best of Show for one of our hens.  We also got blue ribbons in jams, cheeses and even flowers.  But the happiest moment for all of us – the one that caused the most cheers of celebration - was when we watched the poultry judge award a Champion ribbon and trophy to our 4-H friend’s prized rooster!  Hooray!

This was topped only by the news a few days later that the boy was home from the hospital and recovering well.

Life Lesson:  Celebrate what matters most

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Most of my time and energy as a hobby farmer has been devoted to raising various farm animals and sharing my passion for them with local kids and adults through my classes, clubs and camps at Briar Gate Farm.   But I always feel compelled to attempt to grow a few crops along the way, too, as I cherish the idea of eating home-grown vegetables from my own back yard plot.  Problem is, I’m don’t have much of a green thumb so my success is somewhat limited and variable.

Oh, I start out the season with good intentions each year, looking through seed catalogs to get ideas for new varieties to try, drawing diagrams of my 3 raised bed garden plots and shopping at my local nursery to find a good assortment of organic and heirloom seeds and plants to grow.  I turn over my gardens in late fall and add a mix of compost and manure (have I mentioned we have a lot of poop around here?) and then turn everything over again in the early spring as I prepare to plant my cool weather crops.  Some years I actually plan exactly what seeds I’ll plant first, when they will be mature, and then plan a second planting to maximize my space and effort.  So you can see the initial efforts are admirable.

But every year it seems that for all my good planning and intentions, once the seeds get planted I seem to lose my focus or simply get occupied doing everything else that needs to be done around the farm in the spring and summer.  I put a lot of love into the garden initially, but after that, it’s on it’s own.  And because I don’t like to use chemicals but don’t know a lot about organic pest and weed control, my garden becomes a true example of “survival of the fittest.”  Some years the bugs win, some years the weeds win, but occasionally a few of the veggies win.

So, it might surprise you that I have been entering some of my vegetables in the local county fair each year.  I used to think that only expert gardeners and serious farmers entered their goods in local fairs, but once my girls started showing goats at the fairgrounds and I began spending the entire first week of August there, I realized that just about anyone with just about any talent or success could enter.  Everything from amateur baking, photography, various crafting projects, honey, home-made beer, wine and cheese – these are all things that can be entered by anyone at the fair. 

The first year I entered carrots, beans, swiss chard and zucchini and was thrilled when I took home a 2^nd, 3^rd and two 4^th place ribbons.  I also entered several baked goods and won a 1^st place with my pumpkin bread (my cooking skills are something I’m a little more confident and successful with).  The next year I got serious about the timing of my veggies and coordinated planting times and maturity rates to correspond with the vegetable entry date.  Imagine my pride when the veggie judge awarded my yellow beans with the blue ribbon!

But this year, between the late spring, three family vacations, summer camps, goat shows and 5 baby goats being born on the farm, my garden has once again taken the back seat.  I plan to enter a few things in the fair next week, but I don’t have much to choose from.  The bugs won this year in my beet rows, the weeds seemed to succeed over my strawberries and I don’t know what the heck happened to my zucchini plants.  But once again, I have some decent beans and a few nice carrots, so I’ll enter them and see what happens.    Wish me luck!

Life Lesson:  You can’t be the best at everything – just enjoy the ride

Horse Reflections

This morning I was watching the trailer for the new movie, BUCK – a documentary about the legendary horseman, Buck Brannaman.  I’m particularly interested in seeing this movie not only to see a great horseman in action, but because I feel a personal connection to the man.  I was lucky enough to be able to attend one of Buck’s horsemanship clinics several years ago and have incorporated much of what I’ve learned from him and others in the natural horsemanship field into the work I do with horses, kids and adults. 

The basic premise of the natural horsemanship movement is that humans don’t need to dominate, intimidate or strong-arm horses to get them to work with us.  We just need to understand how they learn and behave in their natural, herd environment and then use this knowledge to partner with them to gain their trust and desire to cooperate with us.  By considering their point of view and respecting what they are communicating to us, we can build a strong relationship and they’ll actually enjoy working with us.



Me and Amigo talking to Buck!

 One of the things Buck mentions in his trailer is how horses are mirrors, reflecting back to their handlers elements of the human’s personality, style and sometimes baggage.  I know about this concept and utilize it a great deal in some of my clinics with adults where I combine natural horsemanship and life coaching principals to teach important life lessons.  This is a concept I’ve helped others gain self-awareness from but I haven’t always thought about how it applies to me.  Now part of what Buck’s talking about is how a specific behavior from your horse at a given time may have to do with how you’re feeling or behaving at that moment.  But hearing him mention it this morning got me thinking about what my horses have to say about me in general.  Here are a few of the things I came up with:

·   *   My small herd is a close-knit family that gets along well most of the time, although squabbles do break out now and then.

·   *   Belle, my lone mare, is the leader and she’s usually pretty kind, except for when she’s in heat.  Then she’s pretty moody and snippy.   

·   *   Amigo can be kind of bossy and pushy but he’s basically a good guy.

·   *   Spirit gets into trouble when he’s bored.

·   *   Ringo is pretty agreeable most of the time unless you ask him to do something he doesn’t want to do.

·   *   Chummie is really reliable and trustworthy.

·   *   They all like variety but don’t want to physically work too hard.

·   *   They're all pretty spoiled.

* *   They’re good with kids.

Hmm, it sure sounds like there are some similarities between me and my herd! 

Life Lesson:  Take the time to reflect and you’ll sometimes be surprised what you see.

Cock-a-doodle-doo (sort of)

OK, so you know about the horrible chicken massacre that happened on our farm a few weeks ago.  A raccoon (we’re guessing, due to the carnage left behind) took out 7 of my mature hens and my little bantam rooster.  A sad day for all, and I have to say, not only am I bummed about having to once again buy store-bought eggs, but I also miss hearing the sweet, pint-sized cock-a-doodle-doo of my little Mr. Noodles.  And apparently I’m not the only one in the barnyard who misses his crow.

The other morning, I was out feeding the goats and chickens as usual, when I heard a rooster crow.  Now I wasn’t completely surprised by this as we have a whole chicken yard full of young pullets and as any experienced chicken owner can tell you, just because they came from the pullet bin, it doesn’t mean they’re all girls.  In fact, there’s a roughly 10% error rate in the sexing of young chicks, which means that approximately 1 in 10 pullets will actually turn out to be cockerels, aka roosters.  I already have my suspicions about a couple of the “girls” and I’m guessing one or two will start crowing any day now.

But the odd thing about the crowing I heard the other morning was that it seemed to be coming from the chicken yard where my 5 survivors of the chicken massacre are living, all of whom are mature hens.  At first I thought maybe one of the young chickens was crowing and the sound was echoing off the metal wall of the hay barn making it sound like it was coming from the back yard.  So, I watched and waited and within a few minutes, there it was again.  Only this time, I could see the source of the sound and by golly, it was coming right out of the throat of my 2 year old Sicilian Buttercup HEN!  Yes, I said hen, as in girl.  And I know she’s a hen because as recently as a month ago, she was laying eggs in the dog house we use as a shelter in the young chickens’ yard and being that she’s a flyer, I know she’s the only mature laying hen that had access to the dog house at that time.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I saw her throw back her head and let out what was clearly, although maybe not completely full-throated, a cock-a-doodle doo.  I have to tell ya, I about jumped out of my skin!  All kinds of things went through my head in rapid succession:  Am I that dense that I haven’t realized for 2 years that she was a he and not a she?  Did my neighbor’s rooster sneak into my hen yard and it just happens to look just like my old hen?  Is it possible to have a trans-gender chicken? 

So, I told my tale to a number of people and had an interesting conversation with my 15 year old daughter about Chaz Bono and his gender re-assignment, and then once my curiosity got the best of me (and my schedule freed up to allow me the time to), I did what I often do when I have a question... I “Googled” it.  I typed in the words, “can a hen become a rooster?” and voila, I had my answer!

According to Answers.com, the explanation is as follows:  “Not a fully functioning, sexually active, egg fertilizing rooster, but they can assume the characteristics of a rooster when the flock has no male to take on the duties of guarding the flock. The Alpha hen can guard, protect and crow (almost) just like a rooster under some circumstances.”

Well, I’ll be darned, I do believe Miss Sicily just misses Mr. Noodles as much as I do.

Life Lesson:  We all grieve and compensate in different ways.

Early Delivery

Two years ago our first kids were born on the farm, Snickers and Milky Way.  Their dam is a Nubian and their sire a Nigerian Dwarf, making them Mini Nubians, a relatively new and experimental dairy goat breed.  The goal of the Mini Nubian breed is to end up with the classic long ears and Roman nose of the Nubian in a smaller, compact size – easier for kids to handle and well, just cuter!  This year we bred Milky Way to a 4^th generation Mini Nubian buck in hopes of making good progress toward the ideal breed characteristics.  The timing of this breeding was tricky because we had a family vacation planned for the first week of June, and then summer camps starting June 13^th, so we were trying to have kids born somewhere after the vacation but before the camps started.   Goats go into heat about every three weeks and their gestation time is 5 months, so last fall we charted Milky’s cycles carefully and when she went into heat mid-January, we rushed her out to the breeder who is about an hour from our farm. 

Now to add further complexity to the situation, the breeder was getting ready to go out of town and gave us a 45 minute window of opportunity to get the job done before he had to leave.  Between the cold temps, the rush to get the deed taken care of, and the fact that this was Milky’s first experience with the breeding “facts of life”, I figured the odds of her conceiving were pretty low.  But what the heck, might as well try.  So, imagine my surprise when we had her ultrasounded two months later and learned she was indeed pregnant with a due date of June 13^th – the first day of camp!

As winter turned to spring, Milky’s belly got bigger and rounder and she began to develop an udder.  She’s always been a chubby little goat, but by the end of May she was a wide as she was tall.  She looked and acted great, with a healthy appetite and plenty of energy.  Pregnancy seemed to agree with her.  While we were on vacation in early June, the pet sitters who were milking our other doe, Skittles, each evening felt sure they would show up to milk and find babies in the stall, even though they weren’t due for another week and a half. Luckily, she didn’t have them while we were away.  I just hoped they’d come a day or two early as the idea of running camp while babies were being born felt a bit overwhelming.  Plus my brother and his family were visiting from Cincinnati and I hoped they’d get to meet the new kids before my brother and nephew had to head home on the 14^th. 

On June 9^th, four days before the official due date, I turned Milky out to pasture in the afternoon and she happily trotted out there and munched away on the grass as usual.  At 5:00, I brought her in for the evening and fed her some hay.  This is normally Megan’s job, but she was at an amusement park with some friends so I filled in for her.  Milky ate the hay with gusto and acted and looked as normal as could be.  I had to go to a 4-H meeting at 6:30, so Brian was in charge of milking and bottle feeding the other baby that evening, with some help from Molly.  He went out to do that around 8:00, looking in on Milky Way before he commenced to milking and all looked fine.  But a few minutes later he heard a loud, alarming bleat coming from Milky’s stall.  He ran to check on her only to find a tiny little kid on the ground!  In a panic, he yelled for Molly to grab some towels and frantically dialed my cell phone number.  It rang alright, but no one answered as it was sitting on my desk recharging instead of being with me at the meeting.  They were on their own!   Molly quickly got the towels and rushed to the stall in time to help catch and dry off a second kid while Brian again dialed my number and then called my mom.

By the time I got home at 9:00, I noticed the light on in the barn and found no one inside the house, so I moseyed down to the barn.  Imagine my surprise when I found Brian and Molly along with my mom, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew, and Megan and her friends (just back from the amusement park) all standing around the stall, with two kids on the ground and Milky still pawing the ground and looking uncomfortable.  Within a few minutes of my arrival, she pushed out a third kid and I quickly jumped in a started helping Molly dry him and the others off. 

When all was said and done, we had two new bucklings (Mikey and Charlie) and a doeling (Galaxy), a tired and bewildered but attentive new mom (Milky Way), and a reluctant but relieved first-time midwife (Brian!).  And Molly did such a great job in the midst of all the excitement that I feel certain she is ready to have her own doe bred next year and take care of her first kids.  As for me, although I missed seeing the first two kids born, it was great to know that everyone else could pitch in and take care of things so well without me.  And I got a kick out of listening to Brian’s frantic messages on my cell phone the next day.

Life Lesson:  You can only plan so much!