Vacation Checklist

Our annual vacation to Mexico to visit family (postponed lo these last three years due to straitened circumstances) are fast upon us. We leave in something like three weeks. I have managed, thank the Lord, to hire a seemingly competent babysitter for the farm (Farmsitters (Just Whose Expectations Are Too High Here?)). Other farmwives will understand when I say there is no level of certainty that will allow me to relax and enjoy the vacation as I should: specters of mastitis, wormy anemia, and footrot will haunt me no matter how far I may wander.

That being the case, all I can do is my best to prepare for the worst. Here is my list of "things that must be done" divided into two categories: House and Farm:

House:

1) pay bills. We don't want the electricity shut off (or the water, or the phone) while our house-sitter is here.

2) Clean the shit out of everything. If I were housesitting for someone, I wouldn't want to discover a moldy refrigerator drawer or a smelly secondary toilet. I would want plenty of clean towels and sheets.

3) Make a set of keys. Currently, I don't even own a set of keys for my own house. 'Nough said.

4) write instructions for everything - how to use the washer and the dryer, the TV remote, et cetera. Plus such things as how much to feed the dogs and where to put the food for the elusive cat.

5) work up a set of emergency numbers - which means contacting a bunch of shirttail relatives and begging them to be available in case of emergency. If they were readily willing to be available, I wouldn't be hiring a stranger, now would I?

Farm:

1) stock up on animal food: full 50 pounds of goat food and chicken food, three or four bales hay, ditto straw for bedding.

2) make stop-gap repairs on barn floor: the floor is totally rotted out but a permanent fix is beyond our means at the moment, so a temporary fix would be something along the lines of:

a) break up and remove rotted plywood flooring

b) scrape and clean out subfloor as much as possible

c) lay cheap-ass treated particle board over studs

d) lay in a supply of straw for bedding

3) set up an account with both the veterinarian and the farm-store, so that any emergencies can be addressed by the farm sitter without a personal outlay.

4) Fix the lawnmower (again - don't ask) and do a final mow of both the lawn and the evil weeds. More to say about the weeds - next post.

5) Trim goat hooves. A long overdue task that haunts me in my dreams.

6) Write a detailed instruction booklet for milking and feeding. I know it sounds easy - "squeeze tits until milk stops flowing" but actually there's just a bit more to it than that. Things like "Goats will most likely jump up on the milking stand alone, but to get them off you must sling your arm around their neck and use the crook of your elbow to haul them down and guide them out the door..." as a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure instructions like the preceding are better demonstrated than explained via the written word, so I should

7) schedule a practice run for the farmsitter (compensated, of course) .

That's about all I have time to think about right now. No doubt there's a great deal more, which I will most likely heartily regret failing to address when I am on the beach in Huatulco and my farmsitter is sending me messages marked "urgent."

The Fickleness of Memory (I got the Wormy Wormy Blues)

We had milk goats when I was a child. It was my job - along with my younger brother - to feed the goats and water them every morning before we went to school. I remember many a frosty morning lugging plastic milk jugs full of warm water before the sun came up. The hose didn't reach. One early morning (must have been the dead of winter - it was full dark) my brother and I saw a very strange thing in the sky. It looked like a satellite - just a star moving slowly in a straight line - but it had a trail of red flames bucking rapidly up and down. Remember that, bro?

I remember milking - though not as a regular chore. It was more of "when we felt like it" thing. I remember the cats lining up for squirts of milk whenever I milked. I remember the feeling of hot foamy milk squirted directly from the teat into my mouth. I was a generous (not to say wasteful) milker. One for the the bucket, one for the cats, one for me; one for the bucket, one for the cats, one for me.... I remember the one time Dad made cheese and being very upset that I didn't get to taste any before it was all gone.

I even remember when Lily the goat - our first ever - was attacked by wild dogs or coyotes and had a big muscle in the back of her rear leg torn out. She survived, but was never the same. I remember when Peanuts the buck was attacked by dogs while staked out in the blackberries. He was killed. After that my Dad (or Mom?) sat out with a shotgun for a few nights and peppered the dogs with birdshot. I remember when Daisy got out and ate so much rhododendron she was poisoned and how we found her lying on her side, horribly bloated.

I remember lots of frolicking in the springtime with baby goats, and how they leaped and twisted in the air. I remember there was one baby goat who could climb the ladder up into the hayloft of the barn. I do not remember how we got him down. I remember that all our goats had botanical names - Daisy, Fern, Clover, Dandelion, Bachelor's Button. I remember that I tried for years to see baby goats being born, and I never quite made it. I remember one year waking up in the pre-dawn light (my room was the closest to the barn) and hearing soft bleating sounds. I ran downstairs and out to the barn without my shoes on. Daisy ( a white Saanen) had given birth to triplets just moments before and they were just beginning to try and stand up. That was as close as I ever got.

Here's what I do not remember:

Anyone trimming any hooves.

Taking any goats to the vet, ever.

Problems with birthing.

Medicating the goats with anything at all.

Now, I was a child. I was only eleven when we moved off the farm. My mom put an ad in the paper for "free goats - first come, first serve" and we gave all the goats away in fifteen frantic minutes. It's entirely possible that a lot of things happened that I just don't have any memory of. But I think not. My mom does not remember having any problems with sick goats, either. Her memory isn't much more reliable than mine, but put our recollections together and they do begin to add up.

Most likely, we were utterly irresponsible goat owners. Mom was working seventy hour weeks after the divorce, and I'm sure the goats were the last thing on her list of priorities. For all I know, our goats were walking textbooks on parasites. But that's not what I remember. I remember vibrantly healthy goats, when they weren't being chewed on by dogs or poisoned by bad plants. I suspect that thirty years ago there were not the problems with CAE, CL, and parasites that exist today.

Today, it's a given that all goats have worms. The best you can hope for is that the worms are not resistant and can be controlled by relatively benign medications. My goats have worms. Lots of worms. I've had lungworms, stomach worms, and worms that don't even have names yet. My feeling has always been that a complete lack of parasites isn't possible: instead I should strive to have healthy, well-nourished goats who are capable of harboring a reasonable number of parasites without becoming symptomatic. My vet agrees with me.

Well, that road has closed. Despite my best efforts, despite using de-wormers strictly according to my veterinarian's directions, my goats have developed resistant worms. My does were wormed after kidding - as per instructions - with Ivermectin. At that point in time they were asymptomatic. A few weeks later I noticed that they all had diarrhea. Bad, green, liquid diarrhea. I took fecals to the vet. Stomach worms - a heavy load. Since they had been wormed recently with Ivermectin, I used Safeguard this time - again, on the advice of my vet. I wormed them all thoroughly - using a high dose and repeating it for four days.

Repeat fecals two weeks later revealed a virtually unchanged number of stomach worms. They were resistant. How did the resistance develop? I don't know. I did rent a buck from another farm last fall, but we coordinated worming schedules and both sides should have been worm free at the time of transfer. Other than that my herd has been closed for more than a year.

Oh shit that's not true. Just remembered, I also rented out Cloud for a month as a buck to a nearby farm. But Cloud is the only one who has remained asymptomatic this whole time! He is fat and glossy, pooping pellets and leaping around like a racehorse. The does, in contrast, are skinny as rail fences (poor Django is trying to feed triplets!). Petting them feels like petting a barbed wire fence. I feel like the world's worst goat owner. I can't let anyone see my goats right now or they would assume I am starving them to death. In actual fact, I am feeding them free-choice high quality local hay (orchard grass/alfalfa mix) plus eight cups of grain daily for the milkers, and nearly unlimited browse on grass and blackberries.

Today - again on the advice of my vet - I wormed them all - does, buck, and kids - with Quest. Quest is a whole different class of dewormer and my vet says she has had good luck using it with resistant worm populations. I hope it works. Quest has a month long meat withdrawal time, and an unknown milk withdrawal time, but probably at least two weeks. That's okay - my does will need at least two weeks to gain weight and get healthy before I start to milk them again anyway.

So no more milk products for now - no milk, yogurt, or cheese. Just wait. Just wish them luck.

Worm Plan Update

All adults wormed with Panacur 6/14. Will move to smallest pasture tomorrow - when Homero finishes fixing the fence.

Worm Plan

Okay, this post is just for my own reference, y'all, it's probably not going to be very interesting to anyone else.

Today: worm with Panacur (everybody but Clove) and day one Corrid. CDT shots for everybody. Hoof trim, everybody.

(holy cow, this is going to be a long day)

Corrid through 5/27, everybody but Clove

5/26 a.m., move goats to large field (hereinafter field #1). Stay on large field 4 weeks.

6/26 move goats to small field (hereinafter field #2)

7/26 move goats to field shelter field (hereinafter field #3).... repeat.

New fecals end of June if no new Sx. 

repeat fecals every 4 months if no Sx.