|
April Farm Update
April 1st Journal started with one word -
COLD! Spring flowers and April showers were replaced with wind
and snow in April! - not the ideal weather for Easter egg hunts!
Lambs are starting to arrive, the second one,
a little jet black ewe lamb, on April 6th on a clear sunny day.
We were also busy setting up for the arrival of our meat
chickens, with inches of sawdust on the floor and a nice warm
heat lamp in our well insulated workshop.
My time on our farm has had a few
interruptions as I've been going down to the coast to babysit
our twin baby grandsons while Kristi is back at school at the
beginning of the week. Consequently when I get back, there are a
few things I have to check on, i.e. are all the cats present!
About mid-April on my return, they weren't,
one was missing. However, I was pretty sure I could hear it and
following some extensive searching, nothing showing up on the
ground, I started to look up and there about 40' up a dead pine
tree, was the fifth cat! There was a huge amount of trunk with
no branches, and the first branch was way above the furthest
extension of our longest extension ladder. Even had it not been,
I doubt success would have occurred if Norm had tried the rescue
as the cats are afraid of him, and it would have just gone
higher!
|
Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings still showed that
the cat wasn't hungry enough to climb down the tree. If he had looked at
the world from his tail end first, he might have been prepared to give
it a go, but he always looked down head first! By now I have already
missed the first bus to the coast and Karen's idea of putting a chair on
the end of the ladder was a no-go as it was still miles from the first
branch, so as the tree was dead, the decision was made to take it down!
The stallion and mare who live at the bottom of the
tree were really interested in all that activity, so they had to be
moved first in case the tree fell in the wrong direction! We didn't want
a premature foal due to shock. As the tree was dead, it wasn't too
responsive and despite the large chip cut into it, didn't wish to fall,
so had to be encouraged by a rope on the tractor! It was observed that
the cat was in full flight before the tree hit the ground and was too
upset to eat for several hours!
April 23rd we had great excitement as the first
humming bird of the season arrived! We had meant to track their journey
on the Internet, because there is a website to do this, but hadn't got
to it, so we were thrilled to see the 'scout'! We have some feeders
under our clematis arch, which, at this time of year, is still a mass of
what look like dead twigs and the fact that the humming birds go
straight there, and the feeders are pretty well hidden, makes us think
the same humming birds come back.
On April 25th we had our first goldfinch sighting for
several years. We saw two that day, but none since so they must have
been on their way through! They appreciated our birdbath!
We received lots of pictures of the Eylafallajokull
volcano in Iceland and had great concern for the farmers in the area
affected by the volcanic ash, which fortunately was blowing south and
not affecting as many fields as would have happened had the wind changed
direction. Jumping ahead there was a message on our Icehorselist
yesterday morning that there had been 62 earthquakes to a magnitude of 3
on the Richter Scale in Iceland in the last 48 hours and this morning on
the news it showed that the volcano had erupted again. I understand the
fields are ruined for some years where the ash has fallen and it is
extremely dangerous for animals to inhale or ingest it.
Maria and her family of her little heifer calf and the
two guest bull calfs are doing well. As there's lots of grass around at
the moment, they are roaming free and enjoying themselves a lot. Well
one wasn't, because my husband saw him busily chewing on a knotted set
of two pieces of baling twine that he'd managed to find somewhere. We
rushed them in to retrieve the baling twine, which had vanished by this
time, The following morning I retrieved it, well chewed up to the centre
knot, which fortunately had proved too much for him! Our German Shepherd
Heidi and I went on a long trip to round up any other baling twine that
might have gone blowing in the wind!
Chicken house construction has come to a halt, due to
the breakdown of the skill saw!
|
March Farm Update
March did not come in like a lamb! It came in
like a mud bath, which resulted in my great relief that we still
had a mountain of shavings left from our fall delivery, which,
on arrival, usually looks a bit larger than our house. Where we
keep one of our stallions and his companion mare, the area is
divided into two sections, the upper one that we move them to in
May when the lower one gets very muddy, as it's higher and on a
slope and drains well. They were moved there at the beginning of
March!
Tildra started moving a lot better shortly
after our farrier trimmed her hoofs and rasped across the front
of the front feet, giving room for expansion if needed. We had
our vet out to check her, also because this is her first foal,
and on palpation he got his hand on one leg, which was quickly
withdrawn! So hopefully all will be well with her foal and we're
fortunate that she expects her new arrival about the middle of
this month, so that we were able to give her some Bute when she
was the most uncomfortable about moving. Had there been the risk
of it being early in her pregnancy, we wouldn't have wanted to
take the risk.
The weather was still wet and miserable and
Maria was bagging up, so left her inside to await the birth of
her calf. Lo and behold on the morning of March 12th, there was
a lovely little heifer calf. When we were looking to build up
our herd of Jerseys, we had one bull calf after another, but now
we've had three heifer calfs in a row! We called the Jersey
farms in the area and neither had a bull calf but both were
expecting calfs the following week, hoping for heifer calfs of
course, and on the same day they both phoned to announce the
arrival of bull calfs.
We set off the following day to pick them up
and arrived back only to find that Maria wasn't pleased about
tne new arrivals. We'vebeen very fortunate in the past and our
Jersey cows have willingly accepted new additions to their
family. Initially Maria did her best to shoot these two little
boys through the wall, but they were quite quick and she soon
gave up. The following morning we tied her up and hobbled one
foot - drinking started quickly and with great enthusiasm, and
very few problems occurred after that.
One interesting thing had occurred when we
picked up one of the bull calfs - we were looking at their
heifer calfs when Grendell noticed some scour-like droppings and
said he must give the calf some eggs. We hadn't heard of that
but he said it coats the stomach and clears things up really
quickly. We've used boluses and other medication in the past and
even then had more success with plain yogurt. We had one sign of
scours, so used the eggs, and I gather since that some people
who are bottle feeding calfs mix the eggs in with milk replacer.
Anyway two eggs to the one calf certainly did the trick.
|
March was a disastrous month for our
well pump. The day after the arrival of the two bull
calfs, no water! The pump had fallen to the bottom of
the well, which is well over 200 feet deep. We had to
have a new pump installed and lo and behold a couple of
days later, it also shot to the bottom of the well! The
safety wire had broken and by the time all was in order
to use again, the mud accompanied by small pebbles that
arrived in the kitchen sink left a bit to be desired.
Well a few days later it plummeted again! The only
advantage by this time was the increase in skills
required to get it up. I don't care to make any further
comments in case I jinx it. |
|
It has been an interesting bird winter. With
no snow in February, different birds started arriving much
sooner than usual. We had hundred of Pine Siskins and this was a
worry as they like to feed off the ground, which is extremely
interesting to our five outside cats. We rescued one tubby
little baby one and put it on the flake of hay in the kitchen
windowbox, where the sun shines in the morning. Lo and behold,
every morning it was back to sit in the sun and pick at the
black oil sunflower seeds in the hay. We hope it survived to
live a happy life.
Our twin baby grandsons visited in March and
would have happily spent all day unloading and reloading the
kitchen cupboards. Toys were completely unnecessary. They also
enjoyed giving our donkeys, Arthur and Tosca, carrots,
particularly since they didn't have to get too close to their
mouths to hand them over!
March ended with cold winds and snow! Also the
purchase of a great new cart with many uses for me - picture
coming in April.
|
|
February Farm Update
-1 for February 1st is almost unbelievable!
Based on the fact that it was still snowing in May last year, I
put forward by a lot putting the ram in for breeding, so the
lambs will be arriving late this year! At least there will be
some grass showing for them.
This winter has had the least snow since we
moved to Chase in 1994. Aside from about a week when the
temperature was -24, and succeeded in killing a number of
outdoor plants and bushes even though they were well mulched
with fleece and straw, the temperature hovered around zero for
quite a lot of February. We have heated water bowls for the dogs
outside, also the chickens, but a lot of the time we didn't
really need them.
This year we've decided to try and produce an
additional item for our own consumption, rather than wonder what
growth hormones might have gone into feed, so we are expecting
two dozen meat chickens on April 13th. We tried meat chickens
our first summer at the farm, but lost quite a number for
various reasons and read that genetically the higher you are,
the more potential problems they can have. As we are at about
3,000 feet, we decided not to do this again, so it will be
interesting if the same problems arise, or if genetic
improvements have been made.
We had an experience with one of our mares
that we've never had before. We noticed how very slowly she was
moving and how stiff her legs seemed. Other than that everything
else was normal, eating, drinking and eliminating. We checked
with our vet, who couldn't come right away but prescribed a
small regimen of bute, which made a very quick improvement. Also
our farrier came and thought she might have foundered. We had
associated founder with lush grass, which of course since we
were under snow, we had ruled out, but both our vet and farrier
advised that sudden change of feed, stress, could bring it on.
We had changed from grass hay to hay that had
a lot more alfalfa, so have to believe that was the culprit. As
soon as our vet saw her, it was what he diagnosed and our
farrier came back to trim her hoofs very carefully and rasp off
some of the front hoof wall so that if there was swelling going
down to the white line, there was some room for expansion.
Fortunately no signs of slowness are showing now and we've found
some grass hay, so she gets a mixture.
We certainly did enjoy the time we took off
during the day to watch the Olympics - one great plus of being
self employed, although that does also include working 365 days
of the year with no regulated hours!
We have reached the point where our Eurasier
Sundog's Hayden, call name Hadley, has had his hips and elbows
x-rayed and patella examined, all results being forwarded to the
OFA for scoring. Later in the summer our female Eurasier,
Braegate's Enya, will have the same checks. Both the Eurasiers
and our Icelandic sheepdogs are booked for their annual CERF
tests in April. If all health checks are satisfactory for our
Eurasiers, we hope to breed them at Enya's next heat.
As we are getting towards the beginning of
March, the arrival of Maria's first calf is approaching! It's
hard to imagine prettier calfs than Jerseys. Even the little
bull calfs look like deer, who, by the way, are still busy in
our various fields.
Different species of birds have already
started to arrive - way before their usual time. We've heard
that the humming birds are also on their way, so must check the
website that tracks them.
It's hard to believe some of the spring bulbs
are poking through. Our snowdrops usually arrive about the
beginning of June! So March is really a month to look forward to
this year! |
|
Farm Update January 2010
Happy New Year to Everyone
January 1st arrived with some flurries and -4 - little did we know that flurries were just about all we would see through the entire month of January. We had about three feet of snow at this time last January, with the snowblower hardly having any time to cool down. We haven't needed it this January.
Our bird visitors have kept us busy. The grey jays love the dog crumbles more than peanuts, but there are many peanut visitors and it's hard to keep the black oil sunflower seed feeders full. This year we've had flocks of pine siskins and since they seem to prefer to eat off the ground, a complete cat watch has to happen when the pine siskins are here. We've had all different sizes of woodpeckers at the suet blocks and even the grey jays have enjoyed them.
I can never understand why the Icelandic horses, even though three sided loafing sheds are available for them, prefer to stand out in the wind, the snow and even the rain.
The temperature did drop turning everything to a sheet of ice and allowing me to make luge runs with hay on the toboggans. As the Coquihalla was frequently bare, most unusual for this time of year, two of our granddaughters were able to visit at a very unusual visiting time for them. They enjoyed the chicken house with the heat lamp and were always ready to collect eggs, feed the cats and the dogs and throw flakes of hay out wherever needed. It's really great to have helpers!
January is a great tennis month! - the Australian Open, and now we're looking forward to the Olympics!
|
|
