Eggs (week ending 8/12): 16Friday morning while letting the chickens out, I couldn't find the little black buck that was born on Monday. I went into the milking room and found its mother, and then I found the buck dead on the ground between the milk stand and the wall.
Eggs (year to date): 57
There was no sign it had been attacked or outwardly injured. It was just dead. Perhaps something internal, like a bad heart, killed it. We don't know. Or maybe, like in the old preacher's story, The One That Brings Death came by for one of us, and God let it have the little buck instead.
My daughter was distressed by this, but said, "Farmers have bad years, and this one is mine." In a word, yeah. Two runty does, a bred doe that miscarried. The goat that delivered the little buck was part of the herd she wanted to show in competition, but now due to the government health agencies managing scapies (a mad-cow related disease that goats and sheep can get - pardon the lack of a link, but I couldn't find a good one), she probably won't be able to take her because she kidded less than a month before the fair. She bred this doe specifically so it would have a kid at the fair because the board paid a premium for does with newborn kids on display for visitors - but the rules suddenly, and apparently recently, changed. So not only can she not display this pair because of the buck dying, but the government would have kept them out of the fair anyway.
And now is appears that this same doe is going into heat again - even though it is being milked twice a day. Go figure that one out. Or, my oh my that was a fast recovery. Take your pick.
Aside from being late to work for burying the little buck and consoling wife and daughter on Friday morning, I also spent too much money at the local Tractor Supply - all the food ran out at once - dog, cat, rabbit, chicken (feed and scratch), and goat (goat feed, sweet feed, and oats for the kidded doe).
Killer. Sometimes it's killer.
But it's still worth it, in an odd sort of way. I think I'd get suspicious if things went perfect all the time.
Oh, and a week ago Saturday we went to the State Fair so my daughter could take her knot tying project. It was just like the county fair, only bigger.
Here's a look at what I needed to accomplish this weekend, and what I actually did.
Oyster shell for the chickens (this means finding the aluminum dog food bowl I was keeping it in and a trip to Tractor Supply).-
More scratch grain and layer feed for the chickens (as long as I'm going to Tractor Supply). Plus sweet feed for the goats and oats to "clean out" the doe that just delivered. Unless my father-in-law beats me to these latter two. - Taking down what is left of the repaired goat gate on the milking room - it was repaired at one time but goat interest tore it down again. Bring in the ready-made too-big gate and make it fit somehow.
- Mucking out both the goat stable and the milking room. And the concrete part of the barnyard.
- Pull a scur off of the head of one of the cart goats so he's presentable for the fair.
- The usual maintenance stuff, like changing the fly paper in the coop.
