Ugh! Well, Jerry had another doctor appointment, but all the way in Albuquerque, New Mexico. What a pain, as I have 3 does waiting to kid, chicks waiting to hatch, and all around stuff to do. So we got i the car on Thursday, and drove 500 miles to go to the doctor on Friday. Just for the doctor to tell Jerry to squirt salt water up his nose three times a day. Well not really, but that is what it seems like. I just know that my girls are going to have their babies while I’m gone, but, oh well. I know that nothing is going to happen on our property that God can’t handle all by Himself. We’ll be home tomorrow and we’ll see what new additions we have.
In all my ramblings, I have not said much about our dogs. We have had a heck of a time trying to find a couple of good dogs. Let me back up a little more. The first year and a half or so that we had animals, we kept losing them, we lost 38 chickens in one year, then we lost 24 chickens after that, not including the goats that we lost; all due to predators.
So, I got to doing some research on Guardian animals. Basically if you want an animal to guard your livestock, you pretty much have 3 options; Llamas, Donkeys, or Dogs. With all the research that I did I didn’t like the idea of Llamas because, well, some predators will kill them, then what’s the point? Donkeys may work great for some people, but I have heard a lot of negative stuff about them, too. I got to looking into Guardian Dogs. Now, there are several breeds that have been bred for hundreds of years, to specifically guard goats and sheep. A lot of breeds have not quite made a big impact over here in the United States yet, but are very common in other countries. A great place to start with research is lgd.org. They have a wealth of information, not only about the different breeds, but also about health issues, breeding issues, etc.
Well this years breeding of the goats started really well. The does that ‘visibly’ came into heat, got put in the pen with JR, and most of the time he did not waste any time trying to get her to be his ‘girlfriend’. Well that worked for about 5 or 6 of them. The rest just did not seem to be going into heat at all and I new that they were. Finally, poor Jerry was putting does in the pen and pulling them out, and in a few days putting them back in. Every time I turned around he was telling me a different doe was in with JR (I was on the road during that time).
So, while he was putting and pulling does in and out of JR’s pen, needless to say, he was writing it down on the calendar, at least most of them anyway. The first few are right on their due dates, almost…..
Geez, I don’t even really know where to start, there has been so many things going on here lately, so I will just let you look around and see if you can find anything of interest. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment or two and let me know what you think. I would appreciate any feedback, good or bad.
