Recap

I've been getting out of order lately. Looking back over my recent pictures, I realize I never posted in April about the Search and Rescue helicopter that didn't come, despite our very cool gear and good positioning around the edge of the landing field. At the very last minute, the crew decided the wind was above their safety limits and had to cancel.

 April 21 Search and Rescue helicopter drill

The first weekend of May, Tim, our friend Zac, Tilly and I headed east over the Cascades to Okanogan Barter Faire. Zac stole the show with an excellent fire-spinning show. Tilly wasn't allowed in the faire, so she spent the day in the woods with her Eastern Washington foster family. Though they took great care of her, she was happy to get back to our camp site on Curlew Lake.

I also didn't say much about our most wonderful Juneau/Whidbey neighbor finally returning to the island! Nancy's son, Zac, and I spent the morning at her house clearing out piles of horsetails from the yard so she'd come home to beautiful flowers rather than a sea of green.

I had the most excellent birthday on Sunday; waking up to a delicious breakfast (after milking Petunia) of french toast made with our eggs and Amanda's pumpkin bread thanks to Tim, going to Unity together, stopping by a farmers market, (milking again), and having friends over for an evening on the beach around the campfire (between milkings).

Tim has our car almost back together again after spending the last week removing, rebuilding, and replacing the transmission.

And I have succeeded at my potato project, I moved the finished compost to the potato bins to "mound up" the plants after adding more side board, then moved the second compost into the third bin, first compost into the second bin and the giant pile of stuff into the first bin. Hurrah! 

Potato bins now half filled with dirt after adding three more levels of siding.

 The compost shuffle! Turning the compost pile and adding water as needed helps keep the composting process going by mixing together the inside and outside, mixing in air, mixing the "greens" and "browns". Also note the potato plant growing out of the middle bin? 

First harvest of the year! 

For the first time in a long time, I actually cleaned up the ground all around the bins as well, throwing everything in for composting! Now it's all ready to be piled high with fresh weeds and grass clippings and coffee grounds and - time to clean the barn? Here I am just trying to take care of my potatoes and somehow it leads to turning compost and cleaning barns!

Zac is kindly using his arm and to measure the height of the nettles around the compost bins - over 8 feet?

 Tim took a little time out from fixing the car to fix the goat playground. They had a teeter totter for a while but it was becoming increasingly sad and broken. The new and improved structure is a kennel they are loving going in and on, with a raised walkway over to a second platform. They love having something to fight over!

The milking is continuing to be increasingly productive with increasing time between milkings and decreasing milkings per day. The result is my enduring resolve to continue with the milking program. If I had to go the other way, starting with one or two milkings a day and gradually working up to 10 a day, every two hours and waking up at 3am to try (and fail) to convince myself to milk just one more time... I would not have made it a week. Below is my magnetic refrigerator calendar clock milk scheduler as of Monday. The colored magnets mark milking times during the day, with little fuzzy chick magnets starting and ending the day. The white inner magnets with lines pointing to times are my goal magnets, which I march my milking times steadily towards in 15 minute increments every day. Today my markers are on those white dots - 5 milkings a day about 4 hours apart. Tomorrow the little rainbow markers will start marching towards 4 milkings a day about 6 hours apart. It gets better!

Manual Goat Freshening: Week 1

So normally goats need to have babies to start lactating (making milk), just like people. But in this day and age with increasing infant adoptions, I know many adoptive mothers choose to breast feed and are able to accomplish this by taking supplements, hormones, or simply by being really persistent with the pumping or hand expression. This last option is what I'm on about for my goats.

Day 1 (Monday the 11th): I was going to start after Search and Rescue on Sunday, but I was so tired after our weekend away with only 4 hours of sleep so... I thought 6 am Monday would be just fine. A little after 8 am Monday, I headed out to the barn with a bowl of warm water, my softest washcloth, and some sleepy eyed determination. The warm washcloth is like the wet warm mouth of a baby and is supposed to help, plus gets their udders and teats nice and clean! So, I did that. And then the milking part is like practice - low expectations, rhythmic milking while imagining something is actually coming out. Petunia got a bit sticky! Very encouraging. Nothing from Esther. Milkings continued every 2 hours until 10pm. Tim helped for one of them by trying to entertain the goats and Nancy came by for one to watch and help keep the food supply flowing to the patient beasts. I was going to milk at 12, then 2 or 3 am and so on, but at 11:45, yes, 11:45 pm - I couldn't wait another 15 minutes, I fell asleep. And opted out of that 2 or 3 or 4 am milking. That sort of thing is for crazy people! Besides, the girls weren't very impressive with the milk production the first day, so why should I waste precious sleep and get nothing to show for it?

Day 2 (Tuesday the 12th): Starting off not feeling very motivated. There was no miraculous appearance of milk in the (8a, 10a, 12n, 2p, 4p, 6p, 8p, 10p...) 8 attempts on day 1, then I slacked off for 8 hours and let everything go back to nothing so what's the point? It's probably not going to work anyway! Regardless, I dragged myself out of bed at 6 am, and again at 8 am to repeat the process. During the day, I got multiple (small) squirts from each teat during multiple milkings from Petunia - very promising! Still absolutely no sign of hope from Esther. I decided to trip Esther's hooves instead. It didn't go well. She kicked and I held her mostly upside down and cut off a bit too much and made her bleed and and and... So then I let her eat all the peanut butter and molasses and peanuts and goat treats and sunflower seeds and oats and alfalfa pellets it took for me to stop feeling guilty and for the bleeding to stop while I gave her a vigorous brushing. More milkings mostly on every two hours, though I can't set 12 alarms at a time on my phone so a time or two I was a bit late and the 6 pm milking turned into a 7 pm milking... Every three hours is still pretty good, right?

Day 3 (Wednesday the 13th) I had a milking plan. I lazy yet effective milking plan. I was going to have my goats bred, have them kid, then after a few weeks start separating the kids at night and milking in the morning, gradually separating the kids earlier and earlier in the afternoon until they are completely weaned and I get all the milk at 8:30 every morning. Instead I am doing this. I made the midnight milking on Day 2 and was delighted with the number of small squirts of milk hitting my arm and thought for sure I was motivated enough to get up at 3 am. At the actual 3 am? Not so much. The 6 am milking produced a good number of squirts from Petunia (nothing from Esther still), but also suggested she is either tired of the grain and routine or is getting sore teats from all my squeezing. Poor thing. She will get used to it and I am trying to be gentle, but maybe she's just not a morning goat? I'm thinking it may be time to upgrade my milking stand to include a clip to hook into their collars and remind them of the importance of standing still. By the end of the day, I did get 30 squirts from one teat from one milking! Still not a measurable amount in standard terms like ounces, but serious improvement. Also I gave up entirely on Esther.

Day 4 (Thursday the 14th) Is today day 4? It's all running together! So many milking sessions! So many days without a proper night sleep! Today I sat down and made a calendar - the future milking schedule! I am counting down the days until I can sleep more than 5.5 hours a night. It looks like it may be all the way through the end of this month and into the first week or two on June before I start pushing apart the 12 midnight and 6 am milkings. I am hoping not to leave my goat-sitter, Nancy, with too terrible a task, though she did want the goats to be in milk saying she was looking forward to it! By the time I leave for fishing, I plan to be down to 4 milkings a day at 7am, 2pm, 9pm, and 12pm, working towards three milkings a day at 7am, 3pm and 11pm. From there it will be up to Nancy to get Petunia down to just the 8:30am/pm two milkings a day. Agg! Day 4 and I am dreaming of when it will be over! Really, every two hours is pretty demanding and figuring out the proper transitional schedule is tricky stuff. I made a very cool milking time gauge on my fridge today to keep track of it all and visualize with. I've given up on Esther, Petunia has largely given up on food in favor of licking me and nuzzling me. I have been rewarding with a scratchy brush after milking to supplement the not-so-appealing food. I have been counting 300 squeezes a session on Penuia's Teats - not all producing full squirts of milk but the first few are now pretty solid and in tandem.

Day 5 (Friday the 15th) Day 4 was rough. Day 4 was a lot of milking and not much milk, though more than day 3 and day 2 and day 1, which is the important thing to remember. Day 5 is going much better, feeling more optimistic, feeling hopeful. I re-evaluated by milking schedule and decided to start stepping it up a bit sooner rather than later. The most dedicated bottle-feeding schedule I could find for newborn goats in the top 3 Google results suggested every 2-3 hours for the first week, then moving on to every 4, 5, 6 etc each week after until it gets, you know, reasonable. If that's how babies eat, then that's how I'll milk! They also said to do the 6 hours of sleep a night thing the second half of the first week, then quickly start moving towards 8, long before the rest of the day is yet in 8. Today is an every-2-hours-and-45-minutes day, which is nearly 3 and so much less like two then yesterday's every 2-2:30 schedule. I am tired, but milk is coming out! I estimate between a teaspoon and a tablespoon per milking x sooo many milkings per day. I mean... 10 milkings per day? I guess I'm down to 9 today. Anyways, that comes out to be nearly a cup of milk! It looks like it's about time to start aiming for a bowl and measuring it. Maybe I'll have milk on cereal instead of licking drops off my fingers. It is beginning to all be worth it.

Day 6 (Saturday the 16th) The whole milking thing is getting to be a comfortable and normal schedule with rewarding milk production. Today I made my first attempt to collect the milk. This meant holding the jar up close to petunia's body while milking with one hand at a time and trying to aim, then giving up after the first 20 squeezes or so and closing up the jar to resume my normal milking habits. Even missing a bit of each milking, I managed to gather about 4 teaspoons over my 8 milkings, which is pretty good considering a few days ago she had no milk at all! Milk production should continue to increase and in a few more days we will be down to 4 milkings a day, 8 hours of sleep at night, and maybe a cup of milk a day - enough for me to drink. I look forward to coming home at the end of summer to (hopefully) a reasonable amount of milk production, enough to make some cheese and butter and ice cream and yogurt and drink as milk - yum!

Wide-mouth mason jar with the day's milk 

Tablespoon full of milk

Brood Breaking: part 2

"Four little hens,brooding in the nests.

One flew up and joined the rest. 

Ariel took the hens and threw them out the door.

'No more brooding, not any more!"

I know, you've been waiting with bated breath to hear the outcome of the remaining chickens and their brooding. To recap, there were 6 and they slept outside in the rain, then there were 6 and I made them perch (some of them stayed up there anyways). The next night, last night, only 4 hens were attempting to sleep on their eggs and I chucked them out into the yard where they found their own ways to the roost. In the morning I opened the door to let all the chickens in and out of the hen house and yard, mingling together, broody and non-broody, layers and non-layers. They all seem happy! One hen, the first hen to go broody, now marked with purple (left over from keeping them from pecking each other as babies), found her way back to the nest boxes. I removed her and chucked her back in the yard where she seems to have stayed. The laying hens once again have free access between the yard and the nest boxes which makes me feel much better about the health of their oviducts. Hospital Chicken, who was attacked as a wee chick and never fully recovered on the back side had a ... prolapsed vent? the other day which I cleaned and ... re-inserted? It seems to be staying though in general she looks sort of sad all the time. The white broody chicken (who started this annoying trend and is being the toughest to break it seem) also got the ends of her flight feathers on one wing trimmed this week to try to stop all that fence-hopping. 

We'll see who's in the boxes, who's in the yard, and who's on the roosts tonight! 

Brood Breaking

"Six little hens, brooding in the nests.

One flew up and joined the flock. 

Ariel took the rest and threw them out the door.

'No more hens brooding in my nests!"

6 of our hens were broody last night, meaning they sit on their nests all day and night, hardly getting up to eat and blocking the nests from other hens. We decided enough is enough! I hear letting them sit triggers other hens to give up laying for sitting and creates an epidemic, and the longer it goes on, the harder it is to break. Because they are putting all their energy into hatching eggs, they neglect taking care of themselves. Also, I must be diligent about collecting eggs so they don't start to develop and, although fine for eating, look less appealing on the inside and are not good to sell.

Our poor perspective mother hens got the boot and were locked in the cold, wet chicken run over night. The idea is to let their breasts cool down and hormones cool off while they are distracted by being uncomfortable and having no where even mildly passable to nest. This morning, I am continuing to keep them out of the hen house full of tempting nests, but set them out on the pasture grass with a bucket of grain spread around to distract them. I also felt bad for the hens locked in the house and the 6 separated from the larger flock, so I let another 4 hens and the rooster out with them, keeping the other half of the flock in the now less crowded hen house and run.

By 1pm, I was feeling hopeful that maybe, just maybe, 18 hours of being cold and foraging and doing things other than brooding on the nest might be enough to break the spell and I opened up the doors to let the flock in and out of the hen house and run (barn still off limits). Several of the quarantined hens made a b-line for the nests. I intercepted and threw them back out, locking the small door behind them - I guess no one will be trusted to go in the hen house today! Every time I went in or out of the goat barn, my normally shy chickens were pushing past me and the goats to try to get in to the room full of soft bedding. I had to hold a chicken in each arm and block Esther with my foot to get in the barn!

Around 5pm I finally relented and dropped the ban, figuring it was nearly bed time and anyone heading back to the nests would soon be evicted again to the yard for another night anyway. Interestingly enough, the remaining (30 - 4 freezer = 26 - 8 chicks = 18 - 1 rooster = 17 - 6 broody = 11 layers) 11 chickens seemed to not lay out in the yard. I assumed when the time came their eggs would have to come out regardless of where they were, though they try to make it to a safe nest. Evidently they have a significant amount of control over that timing and waited until I let them back into the hen house to lay. Hopefully there will be no long-term damage from these experiments.

Sure enough, 5 of the hens were back in their nests, but the hen who previously was brooding in the goat barn seems to happily returned to the roosts with the other chickens. The 5 remaining brooders I have locked out for another night. Tonight it is not rainy and wet and cold and miserable like it was last night, so I have decided I must implement further restrictions to break the habit - not only are they to sleep outside, but they are also required to sleep on the outdoor roost, not huddled together on the ground still pretending to mother.

"Five little hens, brooding in the nests.

One flew up and joined the flock. 

Ariel took the rest and threw them out the door.

'No more hens brooding in my nests!'"