Force Majeure Farm

It's Official

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 20:58:00 +0000

The Admiral graduated from the University of Nebraska Independent Study High School (ISHS) last Friday. It was the road less traveled, but definitely worth the extra effort to get the classes and academic challenges she wanted. With her SAT scores and GPA, she scored some very nice scholarships to a private Catholic university and is well-prepared for the rigors of college-level work.

When I started out looking at home schooling options several years ago, my biggest concern was finding a curriculum that was truly challenging and balanced. There are a lot of programs out there and the marketing language is...squishy. When I stumbled across the notion of university-sponsored programs, I was delighted. These schools have an inherent interest in producing qualified graduates and are putting their own reputations on the line. Another benefit is that these programs are all accredited and issue their own diplomas -- no need to take a GED exam. I looked closely at university programs in Indiana, Texas, and Missouri before settling upon the University of Nebraska. All of them have an excellent curriculum and I strongly recommend them to anyone considering homeschooling as a substitute or supplement for local public school education.

160 kids from all over the world graduated, but only four could show up in person. The distance-traveled winner is the young lady second from the left: she came all the way from the Phillippines. The local Filipino community turned out in force to cheer her on, which was touching. The University did a very nice job in providing a commencement ceremony with all of the trimmings, and it was great to finally meet the staff and teachers in person. I have to particularly thank Debby Bartz, the academic advisor, for her continuing excellent advice and -- ok, I'll admit it here -- talking me in off the ledge at one point.

Now...onward to college!

Ah, Venice

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:49:00 +0000

The best 36 hours of my Coast Guard career were spent in Venice. I was working on port security stuff with some locals, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have a really good time. I got to stay in a hotel that has existed since before my own country was even discovered, just steps away from St. Mark’s Basilica.

Even if you aren’t a civil engineering nerd, I think you’ll find this video fascinating and beautiful to watch.

Venice Backstage. How does Venice work? from Insula spa on Vimeo.

Venice is not just a stage set. It is also a city with a resident population, which has productive activities, transportation and services. But how does the “Venice system” work? How do the tides in the lagoon behave? How are the canals formed? And the embankments? What’s under the buildings?
Directed by Nicolò Scibilia (www.teodolinda.it). Motion graphics: pholpo. Produced by Insula spa, operational division of Venice Municipality.
www.venicebackstage.org

The healthiest dead goat he'd ever seen

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 19:42:00 +0000

Mishap investigations are painful. The parties to the investigation usually involve good, otherwise competent people who are already suffering guilt and self-recrimination that no disciplinary panel can exceed. Major casualty investigations will take up to a year or more, which is a long time to have a sword hanging over everyone's head, but necessary because it often takes time to fully comprehend what happened. The cause of an incident rarely, in my experience, involves a single act (or failure to act) or a single mechanical or technical failure; typically it is a chain of events that could have been interrupted at several points along the way. The proximate cause, "failure to maintain situational awareness," is invoked often enough to be something of a sardonic joke. Countless procedures, policies, and cultural norms have been developed and refined on the basis of years of experience, in some cases dating back to the earliest navies. Experience, as the saying goes, is what you have right after you have made a mistake and many of those policies and procedures are written in someone's blood.

Almost two years ago, we lost three does because we were ignorant and because we lost situational awareness. It's hard to talk about it, but I'm finally prompted to share this story because of a young lady who lost a pet goat last night and is feeling some guilt and remorse this morning. We were called last night by her uncle, who was desperate to get some help for them until the previous owner could arrive.

As you read this story with the benefit of hindsight, see if you can pick out where the fatal errors were made:

The case:

In August 2009, we entered another kidding cycle. This was our fourth kidding cycle and we were relieved to finally be doing so in warm weather. Not only was the work more comfortable but there wasn't the same urgency to find the kids quickly in order to prevent or treat hypothermia. We had the routine down pat -- isolate the new mothers with their kids for the first few days, give some grain so boost energy for recovery and milking, treat umbilical cords with iodine to prevent infection, and otherwise give them some peace and quiet.

On the third day after kidding, one of the does went down hard. She lay on her side in the rain, her head thrown back. I ran through the possibilities in my head: over-eating? No, her diet was identical to what we had done before. Milk fever? Possibly -- she was unable to stand and she was shivering -- whether from lying in the rain or from hypocalcemia, I couldn't say. Ketosis? Symptoms matched. Called the vet and got some adivce. The main thing seemed to be to get her rumen going and give her supportive care.

The next morning, she was dead. Worse, a second doe was down with similar symptoms and had to be euthanized a couple of hours later. Now we were looking for something communicable. We called the vet again -- the position of the first doe's body suggested tetnaus, but two tetnaus cases in a row was hard to conceive. Meanwhile, a third doe went down. Now we were looking at some very ugly possibilities.

Veterinary farm calls are expensive -- $200 just to show up and then the cost of treatment. A typical production animal is worth less than the farm call and so goat producers generally have to live by their wits and some generous advice over the phone from the vet. We'd now reached the point where something was endangering our does, so we made the decision to get an autopsy on the third victim.

We euthanized our third doe, brought her in to the veterinarian, and stood by as she began her work, beginning with an examination of the mouth and eyes. No sign of worms. A healthy gullet. Pink lungs. A nice layer of fat underneath the skin of the belly, leading the second veterinarian to exclaim, "This is the healthiest goat I've ever seen!" In his experience, goats are very skinny creatures and he observed that we were clearly taking good care of our animals. The liver was beautiful. And then, the vet pulled forth a distended stomach and opened up an organ that was full of grain. Our doe -- and the others -- had died of a rookie mistake, overfed with grain.

We were in shock: these does had been handled exactly according to the standing procedure that had brought forth several healthy crops of kids. How could these does have overeaten?

The answer lay in timing. All of our previous kidding cycles had been in cold weather (temps ranging from 30's to -20F). These does, with plenty of fresh grass and warm weather, did not need the extra energy and were unable to process it. When the first doe fell ill, we failed to identify the change in circumstances and instead continued to look for more and more exotic causes for their illness. Had we been able (or willing) to re-examine the standing procedure, we might not have been able to withdraw grain in time to save the second and third does.

The challenge to maintaining situational awareness is that it's hard to correct for something that you don't know is wrong in the first place. Assumptions and standing procedures only work until something changes; older and more experienced hands learn to anticipate those changes. Weather, as I learned in the Coast Guard and now know as a farmer, requires a constant adjustment to procedures. It's written in blood.

Here's another case:

In June, 2010, my husband went out to do chores and found our purebred Kiko doe, Chevy, with her neck so tightly wedged between the corner of the stock tank and an ancient fence post that she was unable to open her mouth. She had ground her neck to hamburger in her frantic efforts to free herself. We were unable to push the post to free her; we quickly threw a chain around it and pulled it with the tractor. Our wildly skittish Kiko simply lay on the ground, to exhausted to object to being handled.

We carried her into the barn and examined her injuries. Large areas of skin on both sides had been abraded, deeply in some areas. She was able to move her rear legs in response to stimuli, but could not move her neck. Temperatures had been in the 90's, and our best guess is that she'd been stuck for at least 10 hours. Chevy lay on her side, clearly in shock but still willing to live. I administered an antibiotic and vitamins, gave her some oral fluid and electrolytes, and began cleaning the wounds. Again we had the conversation about the vet -- how much could we afford to spend to save her?

We got on the phone with the vet and discussed the situation. She was not optimistic but agreed that it was worth giving a few things a try. She prescribed a steroid injection and some Ringer's solution; the steroid was to reduce swelling around the spinal cord and the Ringers for subcutaneous rehydration. After that, it was a matter of time and nursing care.

I lived in the barn for the next seven days, consulting by phone with the vet once a day. I had to lift Chevy's head by a horn and tip her mouth into the bucket; she would drink. I had to feed her hay by the handful; she would eat. On the second day, I had to start regularly cleaning up feces and placing fresh straw under her; her rumen was working. She was unable to support her neck at all, which meant turning her constantly and then eventually propping her up between straw bales. Flies covered her wound and crawled in her nose, mouth, and eyes -- she was too weak to shake them off. I coated her exposed skin with wound coat and laid a mesh baseball cap over her face. All the while, her eyes stared out at me, traumatized but not hopeless.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she showed some slight strength in her neck and she would bicycle her legs. On the sixth day, we hauled her upright a couple of times. She immediately collapsed. On the seventh day, we hauled her up again and her legs flailed ineffectually. Later that day we hauled her up again and....she walked off a little ways and began to graze.

It was only after her recovery that the vet told us she'd never before seen a goat get up after a third day.

Never say never. I learned that in the Coast Guard and now I know it as a farmer. It's written in blood.

Chevy, about a month after her accident.

I don't know any livestock owner that hasn't made his share of mistakes in diagnosing or treating an animal. What separates the good owner from the bad is the desire to keep learning, to do better, to make those mistakes count for something positive. Read the web sites (Fias Co Farm is a good place to start), join a message board (GoatWisdom.com was a friendly and helpful community for our teenaged daughter) and buy a good book or two on goat care. Don't give up: goats are tremendously rewarding animals to raise and care for. Oh, and tell your parents: always have at least two goats. Everyone is happier that way. ;-)

These are three of our orphans from 2009 -- bottle fed babies that grew up to be very tame does.

Some days, like today, it really sucks to be a cow

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:38:00 +0000

The farm daddy is out feeding his herefords. They spent most of yesterday huddled up in the lee of the barn.

The truck is nearly buried, while the Admiral’s car has its own snow-garage. As you can see, drifts are six feet high in some places while the ground is bare in others.

Same with the roads. Local counties announced last night that they were suspending emergency response on rural roads, but 911 centers were staffed. I guess you could call them to tell them you were dying and get some advice about doing it in the least messy way possible. Don’t get all smug city people; I’d like to remind you that the same thing happened in New York City because the snow-plow union was on a work slowdown. Out here, at least we know to plan to be on our own for a day or two.

About a 1/2 mile down the road is a bottom (you know, that space between hills – we do have them in the Midwest) that’s about 20 feet deep. It’s completely filled with snow and the landscape looks flat. There is no picture because I’m not walking out there to take it.

On a personal note, our son-in-law was attending his first day of seminary in Kansas City, MO on Monday. He slipped on the ice, hit his head, and was knocked unconscious. When our daughter called to tell us about it, he was suffering from some memory loss and was headed for a CT scan. The Studmuffin packed up to drive into the teeth of the oncoming storm in order to be with them, but fortunately he was only an hour down the road when the test results came back okay. We’re thankful that his injuries weren’t much, much worse. Thirteen stitches to the temple should make for a sexy scar.

Let’s be careful out there.

Pupsicle

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 02:11:00 +0000

Poor Rosie. She and MasterChief went out for their evening “stroll” and were back inside within 5 minutes.

It’s 8pm, and there’s officially a blizzard blasting its way through the countryside. Snow is blowing by at 40 mph, leaving patches of ground bare and piling in drifts several feet high in other places. We still have another 12 or so inches to go.

Scenes from this morning are on the left; this afternoon on the right. It doesn’t look too spectacular, but when the Studmuffin went out to chore shortly after the second set of pictures were taken the snow was filling his footsteps within minutes.

Christmas Greetings

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:27:00 +0000

No, this isn’t our farm, but if you’ve seen one adorable goat kid sproinging about, but now you’ve got a pretty good idea of why we put up with all this aggravation.

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 22:36:00 +0000

Senator Boxer deserves a new title

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 15:48:00 +0000

Call Me Senator from RightChange on Vimeo.

Posting this vide because – well, it’s just so damn funny.

More seriously:

Ethics Foundation requests Justice Department investigation of Senator Boxer.

Despite the fact that Senator Boxer had an ownership in 854 Longridge Road [in Oakland], she failed to report this substantial real property asset on any of her personal financial disclosures between 2002 and 2010. She had also failed to report the mortgage on the property. Further, she failed to report the purchase of 854 Longridge Road in 2002. Each year Boxer was required to have filed a “full and complete report.”

The filing of false or incomplete disclosure statements is in violation of the Ethics in Government Act. The Act authorizes the Attorney General of the United States to seek civil penalties against Senators who knowingly and willy falsify or fail to report required information. The knowing and willful concealment of the existence of substantial amount of real property for a prolonged period may subject Senators to federal criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. paragraph 101. [other citations are available at the link]

Why it matters:

The senator reportedly paid out nearly $500,000 from her campaign contributions to her son’s public relations firm between 2001 and 2009. Those moneys could have been used to pay off the mortgage on the Oakland property, adding urgency to the DOJ investigation sought by The Foundation for Ethics in Public Service and further complicating the legal and ethical issues involved.

Indeed, ethical questions have been dogging the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics of late. According to an October 13 Washington Examiner article by Marta Mossburg (“It’s time for Sen. Barbara Boxer to come clean on her mortgage loans“), Boxer held no fewer than seven mortgages with Countrywide Financial, the company at the center of the mortgage scandal she was investigating as chair of her committee.

Despite the obvious impropriety, Boxer did not recuse herself. Instead she signed as “chair” the letter that exonerated Chris Dodd after the Connecticut senator got favorable mortgage rates from Countrywide. That letter — available at the ethics.senate.gov site — is worth reading now in light of what we have learned of Boxer’s own activities.

These voices don’t speak for the rest of us

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 02:16:00 +0000

Featuring two of our Congressmen from Illinois, I’m sorry to say.

Testify!

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 02:28:00 +0000

A Priest, a Pentecostal Preacher, and a Rabbi all served as Chaplains to the students of Northern Michigan University in Marquette. They would get together two or three times a week for coffee and talk shop.
One day, someone made the comment that preaching to people isn't really all that hard. A real challenge would be to preach to a bear. One thing led to another and they decided to do an experiment. They would all go out into the woods, find a bear, preach to it, and attempt to convert it.

Seven days later, they're all together to discuss their experience.

Father Flannery, who has his arm in a sling, is on crutches, and has various bandages on his body and limbs, goes first. "Well," he says, "I went into the woods to find a bear. And when I found him I began to read to him from the Catechism. Well, that bear wanted nothing to do with me and began to slap me around. So I quickly grabbed my holy water, sprinkled him and, Holy Mary Mother of God, he became as gentle as a lamb. The Bishop is coming out next week to give him First Communion and Confirmation."

Reverend Billy Bob spoke next. He was in a wheelchair, with an IV drip in his arm, and both legs in casts. In his best fire and brimstone oratory he claimed, "WELL, brothers, you KNOW that we don't sprinkle! I went out and I FOUND a bear. And then I began to read to my bear from God's HOLY WORD! But that bear wanted nothing to do with me. So I took HOLD of him and we began to wrestle. We wrestled down one hill, UP another and DOWN another until we came to a creek. So I quickly DUNKED him and BAPTIZED his hairy soul. And just like you said, he became as gentle as a lamb. We spent the rest of the day praising Jesus."

The Priest and the Reverend both looked down at the Rabbi, who was lying in a hospital bed. He was in a body cast and traction with IV's and monitors running in and out of him. He was in real bad shape.

The Rabbi looks up and says, "Looking back on it, circumcision may not have been the best way to start!"

2 weeks until we remove an unwanted Hare

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 19:36:00 +0000

BP Spills Coffee

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:59:00 +0000

"You guys are f*****."

Yep, that about sums it up.

deedly weedly deedly weedly deedly weedly deedly weedly dum dum dum!

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:11:00 +0000

At least that's what I think they're saying.

A Cappella metal: Oh. My. Gravy. These guys are amazing.

The band's site is here. Be sure to check out the FAQ.

A Moment in Time - It's Karmaaa-mmaaa

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:56:00 +0000

Lens is a New York Times photography blog that features images from all over the world. Last month, they asked readers to participate in a project called "A Moment in Time." Users were to take their photographs on the same date, at the same time and upload their submissions - at 1500 UTC, Sunday, May 2, 2010. Sure, this sort of project has been done before -- but the New York Times took those submissions and compiled them into an interactive site. You can spin the globe and select a location, even filter the results by broad categories. The results at the top of the photo stack are those that have been voted up by others.

I spun the globe, stopping over southern Europe, and this is the random image that came up:

Mircea Mitran, a 77-year old, plays with two of the kids in his herd, in a field in the village of Limanu, Romania, located east of Bucharest.

Meanwhile, in the field near a village in Illinois, located south of Chicago, the Studmuffin is playing with his kids.

We have got to get these two together!

See much more at A Moment in Time - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

Teat Tweet

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:41:00 +0000

Some things just have to be seen to be believed.... The Twitter feed is here.

Here's the background (bold italics are mine):

In collaboration with dairy farmer Chris Vandenberg, members of the Critical Media Lab (Ron Broglio, Marcel O'Gorman, and Pouya Emami) established a twitter-based application designed for the cows of Buttermine Farms in Brant, Ontario. Vandenberg's dairy is operated by means of a voluntary milking system (VMS). Each cow wears a RFID tag that is used to coordinate her activities with a central computer. As a cow approaches the robotic milking pen, the computer reads the tag and determines whether or not the cow is scheduled to be milked, based on her stage of lactation and average daily output. If the cow is ready for milking, she is allowed into the pen. Once inside, a robotic arm washes her teats, latches on, and extracts the milk while the cow eats high-grade feed to make her happy. The milk output and feed input is recorded by the main computer and stored in a database, along with the total milking time, time/teat, and total time in pen. The farmer enters additional information into the database, such as a when a cow gives birth, becomes ill, or is sent for slaughter.

In discussions with Vandenberg and other farmers using the VMS, O'Gorman and Broglio discovered that this technical process has radically altered the daily rhythms of the dairy, as well as the farmer's relationship to the animals. The cows are now able to literally milk themselves at all times, day and night, and the farmer is now primarily an information manager. As an intervention into this process, O'Gorman and Broglio sought to develop a mobile application in the Critical Media Lab that would allow the farmer to regain intimacy with his cows, and allow anyone at all to learn more about where their milk comes from. The primary goal of the project is to raise questions about how technology mediates the relationship between animals and humans.

Vandenberg selected his12 “favourite” cows, varying in age and in their stage of lactation. The team photographed the cows during interviews with the farmer, and prepared a profile for each one, which was used to develop Twitter profiles. They then created a “voice” for each cow and created a variety of tweet variables that would be used to flesh out data pulled from the VMS database. The result is a live and ongoing twitter feed for each of the 12 cows, which relay their milking activities in conversational terms, and sometimes quote lines of poetry from Virgil.

Some of you have some work to do

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:25:00 +0000

So, webcomic does a survey on how people perceive color and comes up with some pretty interesting results. Among them:

Women and men see color very differently. Men seem to see color in a utilitarian way (red, blue, green). Women express their color perception through association (cayenne, sky, fern). However, when forced to name actual colors, the sexes are able to agree on names. Well, there's progress.
"Puke" and "vomit" are totally real colors. Those of us who work with, erm, biological substances every day could have told you that. There are days around here when we spend hours discussing the color of various excretions and what they might signify to the health of the herd, the vet bill, and our plans for dinner.

Most fascinating (to me) was this color map. I think most people have got the green, blue, and red down (perhaps that's why they're such popular colors). Take a look at the boundaries of brown and purple, though. Seriously?

Some food for thought for my quilting buddies and those of you interested in visualization. Oh, and here's a nerdy article about color perception if your interest has been piqued: Cognitive Daily: Do we all mean the same thing when we talk about colors?

Wanted

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Wed, 05 May 2010 01:31:00 +0000

Tall Gunslinger, originally uploaded by monkeyworks illustration.

The town sheriff walks into the bar. There's a dead silence as the sheriff surveys the crowd impressively.

The bartender asks in a timid voice, "can we help you, sheriff?"

"Any o' you boys seen Brown Paper Jack?" booms the sheriff.

No response from the bar. Finally, the bartender asks, "what's he look like, sheriff?"

"He's wearing a brown paper hat. He has a brown paper vest over a brown paper shirt. His pants and boots are made of brown paper and he carries his gun in a brown paper sack."

Again, silence in the bar. The bartender says, "And what's he wanted fer, sheriff?"

"The usual" says the sheriff: "Rustling."

Is This the Way to Amarillo?

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:19:00 +0000

Many of you have already seen the 82nd Airborne's take on Lady Gaga, linked on Drudge today.

Cute but the British Royal Dragoons have set a pretty high bar:

Note that this 3 minute videos was filmed in one continuous camera shot. Pretty awesome stuff. Plus, the song is better. But maybe I'm just old.

SAR Dog: You don't have to be pretty, just smart.

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:31:00 +0000

"Our flight attendant...gives a nervous little shriek. I feel sure the young woman saw the puppy come aboard, but now Puzzle sleeps upside down in my arms, her round belly upward, feet akimbo, head limp and tilted backward toward the aisle. Gravity has pulled down the puppy's ears and lips and bared her fangs. Her eyes are open buy unseeing, rolled up in her head with the whites exposed. It's not a good look. It's not even canine -- more Hell-Spawn Bunny of the Undead.

"It's a puppy," says my seatmate, helpfully pointing to the paws, the nose, and the tail.

"I'm sorry," stammers the attendant. "F-for a second I thought I was seeing some kind of a a...a...mutant."

"She's going to be a search dog," I add. I exhibit the little green vest.

"Oh. I'm sure she'll be very good," says the attendant. But her expression is shifty. She hurries away.

The exchange has roused Puzzle a little. A couple of huh? what? snorts, and she stretches all four paws upward, trembling with the extension. She is briefly stiff as road kill, then relaxes. In less than a minute she begins to snore: a treble Skkkiiiiinnnnnnnnnk from just behind her nostrils, then a deeper Skkunnnnnnnnnnk further back in her muzzle. Her eyes roll slowly upward again, the whites staring dully across the aisle toward two other passengers. One grins. The other flinches and turns back to his in-flight magazine. I look down at Puzzle and consider that I've never seen a Golden puppy photographed from this unflattering angle. There are probably reasons for that.

"She doesn't have to be pretty," says the grinning man across the aisle, his voice kind. "She just has to be smart."

Scent of the Missing by Susannah Charleson is about the training of a search and rescue dog and her human partner. This is the sort of book where an author is easily tempted into self-dramatization or to supply lurid detail as entertainment. Neatly avoiding both pitfalls, Charleson is a wonderful narrator with a terrific sense of humor, an eye for detail, and the ability to translate the esoteric worlds of dog training and search and rescue (SAR) for the lay reader. These SAR teams put in a tremendous amount of time into choosing and training dogs for all kinds of specialized search: urban, wilderness, water, cadaver, live. Charleson's insights into how dogs (especially working dogs) think have me wondering why they are not used more often or sooner in missing person cases; certainly I'm eyeing my own beagle pups a little more thoughtfully.

Recommended for: SAR professionals of all stripes, police officers, dog lovers.

Not recommended for: serial killers, kidnappers, people who are afraid of Hell-Spawn Bunnies of the Undead

(This book was provided to me for review, with no obligation for positive content.)

What is celibacy?

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:08:00 +0000

Celibacy can be a choice in life, or a condition imposed by circumstances.

While attending a Marriage Weekend, Walter and his wife, Ann, listened to the instructor declare, “It is essential that husbands
and wives know the things that are important to each other."

He then addressed the men, “Can you name and describe your wife's favorite flower?”

Walter leaned over, touched Ann's arm gently, and whispered, “'Gold Medal-All-Purpose, isn't it?”
And thus began Walter's life of celibacy..........

She got another one!

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:30:00 +0000

Biggest rack yet (we say that every year) and dropped him with one round.

Will goats really eat tin cans?

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:03:00 +0000

No, but they will eat diamonds.

Goats are actually very picky eaters. They are very curious animals and will use their mouths to learn about an interesting object. They like the taste of metal, particularly copper. (Copper is an important nutrient for goats, so I suppose they will seek it out.) They nibble on the metal buttons and pull tabs of our clothes, pull the keys out of the ignition of farm machinery, and especially like to get hold of my wedding rings. One lucky goat worked loose a small diamond from the band and swallowed it.

The jeweler is $300 richer and I'm more careful in the barnyard.

(Photo by MinkeyMonkeyMoo)

Missing

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:13:00 +0000

The Coast Guard is a small service; it’s even smaller if you’re in aviation. By the time you’ve been in for a decade, you’ve run into the same people several times. By year twenty, every unit transfer seems like a family reunion. This was true when I was growing up as the daughter of a Coast Guard pilot and remained true during my own career. When a ship goes down, a small boat capsizes, or an aircraft disappears, chances are high that you either lost a friend or are friends with someone who is grieving.

Coasties are pretty special people – I’ll admit to only a small bit of bias in that statement. Our aviators are a particularly special breed. Remember the heroes of Katrina? What you saw was people responding in the way that is, for them, “ops normal.” The air crews are close-knit, highly competent, intelligent, and mission-focused. While they operate within the confines of highly-disciplined operational requirements, they also are some of the most compassionate people you will meet. Listening to a pilot talk a panicked boater through hoist procedures is a revelation in crisis communication.

Don’t take my word for how awesome our aviators are: this interview with Lieutenant Commander Che Barnes does a good job of representing the group. LCDR Barnes was the aircraft commander for the Coast Guard C-130 involved in a mid-air collision with a Marine Corps helicopter last Thursday. Nine people are missing.

Fair winds, shipmates.

Photo: evanflys.com

What we do, every day.

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:53:00 +0000

The Bonsai goats have figured out how to get through the fence and into the hay shed.....and repeat the feat several times a day. This is our life.

Circle of Life and all that crap

noreply@blogger.com (Sassenach) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 02:20:00 +0000

Kidding season started on Monday. To date, we've had 14 births and 12 have survived. I'm sorry to report that the kid in the last post died -- just too small to survive. It's twin is doing well, even though he's also pretty tiny. The second kid that didn't make it was a stillborn single, born to a first-time mother.

Things got really exciting on Thursday, when Shaggy went into labor. We went to check on her when we saw that she was standing off by herself, and sure enough we saw a little hoof peeking out. Ideally, a kid is positioned as if it were doing a swan dive, with both front legs and then the head delivering.

An hour later, Shaggy was lying on the ground and not visibly pushing. There was no sign of a hoof either. This was not good. After a quick consult with a fellow goat farmer and our vet to confirm the decision, we brought her into the "medical ward" pen for assisted delivery.

We don't have any pictures -- it took all three of us. The Admiral held her head and gave her a leg to push against. My husband (who has also had to do this on Monday) knelt beside her and talked with me through it. I eased my fingers and then a hand into the birth canal, trying to find a leg and the head. Closing my eyes helps to visualize, but was flummoxed when I found a leg but the head appeared missing. As I described what I was feeling to Chris, we realized that the head was actually tucked down toward its belly -- something like the lower left position in this illustration, but with the head down instead of to the side, and wedged under the pubic bone. I had to push the fetus back and down into the womb and then feel around for the underside of the neck down toward the head. Once I found the head, I had to push the body further back so that I could leverage the chin up past the pubic bone. At this point, my arm was buried nearly up to my elbow. Lining up the head and a foot, I delivered the kid just moments later. I was sure I had killed it, but it started breathing as soon as we cleared away the sac.

Feeling ill? You should have been there. Shaggy wasn't too impressed either. Thank goodness Chris was there, because otherwise I think I might have lost my nerve. The second kid was born on its own. When it came time for number three, my daughter and I repeated the process on our own. This time the kid's head was down and a leg was twisted over the head.

The brown goat is the firstborn; I'm holding the third in the next picture.

Shaggy is NOT grateful. In fact, she'd just as soon we didn't come anywhere near her kids. She is a very good mother and is also very territorial about them. I was reminded of this when she smacked me in the face with one of those horns shortly after delivering the triplet.

So...four lives saved. Meanwhile, I have taken on an ill-advised nursing project with 4 does from another farm. We don't really have the time or space for this right now, but I couldn't resist. We call them the Bonsai goats because, at the age of seven months, they are significantly undersized. Three seem to be responding to treatment, but the fourth was foundered and unable to walk shortly after arrival (she's the one on the lower right in the picture.) We capitulated to the inevitable today and euthanized her.

We have to take the bad with the good.