This weekend was busy as always.
We took our sick little kid to the vet. This is the first time we've taken a goat to the vet. In order to "make" (not lose too much) money on the goats we have to do our own veterinary care. We have had successes and failures in that area. We took the kid in because we were second guessing what we were doing. Turns out we were doing okay. The problem was that the kids wormload had gotten too high. We had wormed him twice in the previous eight days, but he was not getting better. When we took the kid in, we could see his poops (please excuse my language. It's the milder form of what I *could* have said) had worms in them. We thought the wormer hadn't worked. The vet did a fecal exam and found there were no worm eggs so the worming had worked after all. The kids system was just pushing out the dying worms that remained. The vet injected the kiddo with anti-biotics and cortisone. He also gave us 3 syringes with more of the same for the next 3 days. We were to keep him isolated with lots of food and water. During the days we'd let the kid out in one of our "goat free zones" the front yard. There are plenty of weeds for him (Alas!) to eat and he wouldn't be knocked down by the other goats. He would crawl around on his front knees with his back legs fully extended. Looked kind of like a caprine wheelbarrow, and eat until he'd fall down. We'd go reset him and he would eat until he fell down. Lather, rinse repeat.
We got our replacement pump working for the sprinklers and watered the gourd field with creek water. There was much rejoicing.
Saturday another portion of the gourd field was readied for planting. Meaning that the topmost surface was scarified to loosen it up and the weeds were scraped off.
We lost a lot of time because of our stove in the morning. We have a 6 burner Jenn-Air stove that has been declining in ability for some time. We were down to one working burner and THAT burner would only work properly on high. After much research we decided that we'd replace it instead of getting it repaired. There were many things wrong with it and if we spent hundreds on it to repair it we'd still have an old stove of dubious value. So we spent some time doing research and it is decided that we'll replace the old stove with a modern version of the same thing. Unfortunately the new stove is 45 inches wide and the old one is 47. So I'll have to get creative with a solution. The new stove should be delivered Friday.
Late Saturday afternoon Kristi came banging excitedly on the locked door from the back yard. I yanked it open and she was squealing about a snake. Well it was two snakes! They were mating under the shed roof. They are corn snakes, both at least 5 feet long. They cared not a bit that we were standing there watching them. After about 15 minutes they left and we didn't see them again. Or so I thought. Sunday night I went out to close the chicken coop, this gets done every night to protect the chickens from predators. As I approached the turkey, guinea pen there was one of our snakes stretched out on the ground before me. It must have been heading for the chicken coop to hunt for eggs. I picked it up and took it back to the house, knocked on the window for Kristi to see it, then I released it on the other side of the house. The fun we have. Corn snakes are beneficial, they can eat rats and mice. Of course they also like eggs but we're willing to sacrifice the few eggs we lose for the rodent control. They also keep the cats stirred up and they can use some agitation from time to time.
We also got some work done on the downed fences. We now have roughly 2/3 of the road frontage fence back up. There are probably about 10 more T-posts to set and then we can figure out how much more 6 x 6 fencing we'll have to buy. Then we can work on the creek side!