Killing holiday time

It's Texas and ya know yer holiday's gonna be fine when you start it off by killin' somethin'.

Thanksgiving, it was a goose. Yesterday, well, it was time to clean out the tack room and fill some holes in the walls so the rats couldn't get in. Well, they were already in. We already figured there was a rat's nest in the old cabinet, built with quarter-inch plywood and needing to be replaced. Inside this cabinet, we kept various things for the farm -- like bee stuff, oyster shell calcium for the chickens, extra heat lamps and old waterers. I pulled a bunch of the stuff out and when I located the stuff at the bottom of the cabinet - and keep in mind there's very little good light shining into the cabinet, I heard a squeal, or thought I did. I was making enough noise so that it could have been a squeak of a mechanical kind, but it wasn't, as I was to find out shortly. I was using a shop vac to vacuum all the paper mess that was at the bottom and suddenly I see this very thick, very long tail heading toward the corner of the cabinet that I'm NOT vacuuming.

Then the squeal came from me and Mike came running. I'm not usually that squeamish about stuff, but when the 'stuff' is live and possibly pissed, it's time for reinforcements. Mike came with a shovel and by that time, the mother rat had disappeared (the tail, the tail!) and we uncovered six babies. Mike whacked them all over their heads and killed them. They were the size of full-grown mice.

That was yesterday. Mike already knew that there were dead rats in the chicken water tank (an oblong, four-foot tank that sits on the ground) and today we checked it out, emptied it and there were five dead rats in it. Mike buried them in our pet cemetery area so Brisket couldn't eat them.

Today's adventure is all Mike's -- finding dead snakes hanging from a net under the joists under the house.

This past month, a few things have happened, some good, some, well, typical. Number 20's tumor is getting worse (she still sounds like darth vader) and we're thinking of culling her so that she doesn't suffer more and so that she doesn't eat more feed -- you have to think about these kinds of things because feed isn't cheap and we're about to have another set of kids here, soon.

In the goat arena, some goats have figured out they LIKE dried dog food and thus it's nearly impossible to feed Brisket (who stays in the barnyard) because the friggin' goats just bully their way and eat all his food. So often as not, one of us guards his food while he eats it (usually me) and the other one feeds the rest of the creatures.

The goats are heading into kidding season and a lot of them are getting huge with their pregnancies. Since this is the year we switched billy goats, these are still likely to be half-breeds because Billy Goat was in charge and had his work pants on when we sold him. Recoil, however, has definitely buddied up to some of them who rub against him in their heat. Since we now have a fine billy goat pen, we stuck him and 201 inside it for a few days and marked the day. It takes 155 days for insemination to produce a kid and it will be easier if we know which nanny and when from now on.

Recoil has just leaped up in size, as well, and his collar, once very loose around his neck, is not quite as loose, anymore. He's now about the size of one of our largest nannies. I suspect he will be in total charge this coming year.

The geese. Oh, the geese. Six left, still. They have to be fed in their own stall and getting them there is a challenge when you have 36 goats hanging around the tack room door. So as soon as the goats are fed, the hugely noisy geese get theirs, then the chickens, then the dog.

During this last freeze, we covered the water pipe that comes into the barnyard and up through the ground with one of those foam pieces meant for that kind of stuff as well as blue paper tape.
The geese thought this was amusing and proceeded to eat the entire thing, tape and all. So no protection for the pipe. Today, Mike put another foam thing around it and this time we put a short coil of hardware cloth around it, as well, so the stupid geese couldn't eat it.

The white chickens - the second batch of Cornish this year (since the first batch are tough as leather, we needed to have quality roasting chickens and bought 25 more, 25 of the kind we know and love), were mucking up their area so badly that when we had to catch them at night after the first rain, I almost puked. The area was muddy and full of crap and piss and felt like tar underneath my shoes.

So we moved the white chickens (not quite ready to 'process') into the backyard. It's been more than five weeks, so they're fully feathered and can take the cold without getting hypothermia. They all generally stay in a group and are closer to the killing station for when the time comes. But they don't know that, though. Usually, we would begin harvesting them and wanted to do this during vacation, but they're not big enough. They eat twice a day, but that doesn't seem to be enough to grow them to the proper eating size.

Our little barred rocks - the 25 or so we purchased along with the cornish cross, are doing great! Mike and I finished the inside-the-inside chicken coop early this month and that's where the little ones stayed. Mike opened their area up about a week ago and allowed them to come and go -- and they just happily and without incident (mostly) cohabitate with the other chickens and the guineas. We now have about seventy-five birds in the chicken yard and could probably raise another hundred in there, but this is enough and we don't like overcrowding creatures.

The chicken yard, by the way, is holding up REALLY well. One chicken got past Mike this morning (unusual, these days) and into the larger barnyard and the side yard. However, by the afternoon, the chicken voluntarily went straight back into the chicken yard when Mike opened the gate. That means the chicken yard is now their home and they WANT to be there. Yay.

Brisket, being a livestock guardian dog, had his first really bloody battle yesterday. We were quite worried about the little guy. Mike heard the dogs go off in the early morning hours and for a much longer time. There are places in the fence where other dogs can get in and we think one of them did, but probably didn't fare too well from the looks of the blood on Brisket's coat - it wasn't his blood. He seemed to be limping a little, but all that's gone today. We spoiled him with a nice large rib with meat on it yesterday because of the extra work he did in protecting the goats and the chickens and the geese, etc...