Sheba Gets Shot


Izzy and Sheba in the sunrise

Most of you know Sheba, she's one of our Livestock Guardian Dogs (LGD, for short). In fact, she's the head honcho when it comes to LGDs around here. As the Alpha dog, she runs the show and we rely on her a great deal. I'd go so far as to say that she's the most important animal we have.

Sheba is a "perimeter" dog, which means she has complete freedom and is responsible for protecting all the animals. The cows, pigs, goats, guineas, etc. She is the designated perimeter dog because she respects our fence and does not seem to have a strong inclination toward 'packing' with the goat herd. Izzy, our other adult LGD, has far greater 'pack' mentality with the goats and she does not respect the fence lines. That's why Izzy gets locked in inside the electric goat paddocks everyday. We don't want her running around causing trouble and we like knowing that a dog is with the goats at all time.

Sheba is also responsible for training Sophie, our puppy LGD. Just like kids, LGDs do best when they have a good role model. Sophie pals around with Sheba all day and night and only recently started staking out her own areas on the farm. Sheba is slowly giving Sophie increased responsibility as Sophie gets older. They also spar a lot. Sophie will start 'playing' with Sheba and it will evolve into a full-fledged battle. Sheba will let Sophie attack her for a while, casually tossing Sophie aside, and when she's had enough she'll pin Sophie on the ground and latch on to Sophie's neck.

So when Sheba went missing we were pretty nervous. She's not one to be gone for longer than an hour or two. She might make her rounds around the farm, but she's always back in time for evening milking. I can't remember when she's missed it. That's her chance to mingle with her sister, Izzy, and play bodyguard on the walk with the goats. 

Not only that, but Sophie was hanging around and seemed a little more alert than her usual puppy self. Sophie without Sheba is a rare occassion. The night Sheba went missing we called and whistled as we usually do when we need her, but no response. We went to bed worried, especially with hunting season recently opening up and wild animals on the hunt before winter.

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Lady Guinea Beats Octo-Mom By Ten


Lady Guinea with her tribe

Last week Lady Guinea and Sassafras were due to hatch their eggs. I wrote about their dueling nests here. 

And an eventful week it was. I'll start with the good news first. Lady Guinea, out of the 23 eggs in her clutch, hatched 18 rambunctious, baby guinea keets. On Tuesday we knew the baby birds were due, so we checked up on LG and Sassy in the morning. Both were dutifully sitting on their nest, business as usual. LG's nest, however, had some peeping coming out of it. We knew some eggs had hatched.

Stealing babies from a guinea is no small feat. Guineas are aggressive around their babies, just ask our mail-lady. Whenever the guineas have babies I have to be very careful where I'm walking in the yard. Just this morning I thought I was fine on the other side of our garden planter. Nope. Within a couple seconds I had Lady Guinea perched on my arm pecking at my face. She's lucky I hadn't had my coffee yet and was barely coherent enough to fling her back on her babies.

To extract the little peepers from under her feathered shroud Sweetbreads donned her thickest boots and timidly stuck her toe near LG's nest. Not wanting to leave her eggs, LG pecked and squawked, alerting the male guineas to the infiltration. While the charade took place I came from behind and grabbed LG. Sweetbreads deftly snuck 7 keets into a box, I dropped LG, and off we went. Guinea Cent and his pals, in the meantime, had come to LG's rescue and were on the verge of attacking us. Luckily, we escaped their talons. The remaining 16 eggs were still under her. She hatched 11 more by Wednesday.

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Electro-Netting vs. Polywire for Rotational Goat Fencing


Goat's-eye view

Fencing is what I spend the most time doing (and thinking about) on the farm. That's probably why I bore our readers with posts about fencing so frequently. My time is split between so many different things that saying one thing dominates another is hard to do, but fencing is a clear standout. So saddle-up for another fencing thriller: Electro-Netting vs. Polywire.

Since we rotationally graze the goats fencing is a constant topic of interest. It seems like I change how we fence the goats every few weeks. If we just had a single grazing area, or even just a few grazing areas, it wouldn't be such a big deal. Put up some posts, put up some fence, and then you're done. That's how 99.9% of goat farmers do it, and I can see why. Moving the goats every 3-7 days is a chore and everyone knows that chores aren't fun. However, I don't mind it. In fact, I enjoy moving the goats.

Why? Because the goats love it, and happy goats are the whole point of what we're doing. Happy goats = happy Scrapple. At least once or twice per week I get to see the joy on the goat's faces as they enter the new paddock and run around scrambling to find the best spots with the best forage. Over the subsequent days they enjoy their feast and when it looks like they're just about done I move them to a brand new spot. It's the same joy a chef must have feeding his diners.

It's also more cost-effective (lower feed costs), better for the environment (forage recovery periods, nutrient cycling, reduced carbon emissions, etc), better for the health of the goats (grain destroys proper rumen function), and better for the consumer (milk from organic, pasture-based diets is nutritionally superior to grain-fed, confinement based diets).

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