The MarAUDer

Is this the face of an instigator?

Does this look like a ninja goat?

Could this possibly be a troublemaker?

I thought not.

We're Having a Heat Wave, A Tropical Heat Wave......

What did you have for the Fourth of July? 

We had Hot Dogs.

Oh yeah, and Roasted Llama.  We hear it is quite the delicacy in South America.

Let Freedom Ring Y'all

<<singing theme song>>

Annoying Man, Annoying Man,
If he can't Annoy you, no one can....

<<key change>>

Annoying Man, Annoying Man,
He drives you crazy with out a plan...

We join our story with Annoying Man and his trusty sidekick Obnoxious Dog--oblivious to the fact that it is a national holiday in which we honor our freedom and independence, as well as the nineteenth anniversary of my indentured servitude--jumping on the bed, disrupting my quiet reverie and Stephanie Plum mystery, insisting that they are both starving.  This is unusual because......????

At the same time, in another room....Grumpy Girl is trying to break down the door to the solitary bathroom in the Custome Cave.  Cranky Man, hearing the commotion, descends on the scene in a hail of rocks and dust to proclaim the bathroom his lair (well, he has to have a throne somewhere,) dispensing with the citizens of TUH by assigning various chores and other tasks of torture. 

As the citizens scatter, i emerge from my quiet, comfy corner and allow them to wait for the sustenance that will give them strength before performing their appointed tasks.  I prepare a full breakfast, including protein, potatoes and macadamia nut waffles with coconut syrup, because i am....Permissive Mom.

To be continued.....(when something good happens)

Whodunnit?

I just wanna know which one of you snuck into my brooderhouse with an air compressor last nite and inflated my ducks!!!

Isabell and The Bobs doubled in size overnight, and their little winglets are twice as long as they were yesterday. 

And why did you do it to the ducks, but not the chickens?  They are the ones i want to move on out!

Who is responsible for this??

Ellie May's 4H Poultry Story: Epilogue

So there you have it. 

Ellie worked long and hard on that story, and was rewarded with a first place medal for the district judging.  At the awards banquet, she also received a trophy for livestock judging (i forget the particulars,) then received the Silver Star award (only one recipient each year.)

Jethro received the Clover Kid award (one recipient each year for the kids that are active but ineligible for contests due to age) and the Outstanding Camper award.  He got that one for bravery.  At the summer camp that year, they had a contraption set up that was about three stories high.  They would strap the kids into a harness, have them climb up the three story ladder to a platform, then would sort of swing them out over the lake.  It was very scary looking.  I wouldn't have done it.  Jethro, being his mama's child, didn't want to do it.  The story I heard is that the kids and adults in his group spent a lot of time talking him into the harness and up the ladder.  He tried to back out before they swung him, but the signals didn't reach the operator in time, and he went flying.  As he was sailing out over the lake, he screamed, "I HATE YOU ALL!!!!!!"  I was mortified when i heard this, but the leaders assured me it was not a contemptuous scream, and they all understood he was just scared, and had laughed about it.  Several months later, Jethro conceded that it had been kind of fun, but he had no desire to do it again.  That's ma boy!

Note:  There was a fingers in the nose picture in the award picture series.  Uncle Boo strikes again.

Ellie May's 4H Poultry Story: Part III

After I stitched up Cherry, I became known as something of a chicken whisperer.  Friends would call me if they had a problem and I would tell them how to fix it.  One day I got a call from some friends that had a chicken with a broken leg.  I grabbed the medical bag and went to their house, and got to work.  I moved the bone back in to place and then splinted it with Popsicle sticks.  I remembered in horse club how they had told us that if a horse has a broken leg the horse would have to be suspended.  I figured it would be the same with chickens.  I mad a sling out of an old pair of boy's underwear, and suspended the chicken so there was no weight on her leg, then put food and water within reach.  In about one month the hen was healed and laying eggs again.

I had many other interesting experiences this spring.  One of our goats, Ren, had a hard time giving birth to her triplets.  I had to reach inside her to find the last one and pull it forward so my mom could get it the rest of the way out.  It was sad because the baby was dead and one of her two surviving kids got stepped on and died.  After Ren had her babies she was too weak to get on the milking stand and I had to milk her on the ground.  Mom and I would give her medicine every day and she was soon all better.  Ren's remaining baby was very sassy.  Ren gave good milk and Mom and I made lots of cheese, lotion and more from it.  (rerun here, sorry guys, forgot she told this story)  Also this spring, one of my brother's rabbits rejected her babies and all but one of the died.  He gave the bunny to me to take care of and I named the rabbit Stewy.  Since our cat had kittens the day before, I took the bunny to her and got her to accept it with her litter, and the bunny to nurse on her.  The bunny was thriving and growing for a couple of days, but was smaller than the kittens and got squooshed.  One other thing I did was when one of my chickens died, I dissected it and found out why it died, so that I could keep it from happening to my other chickens.  We had been loosing birds from a meat pen, which we usually didn't have trouble with.  Ellie asked, "Mom, can I have a scalpel?"   I said, "Um, okay, just don't use it on your brother."  She came back in the house about half an hour later and told me that the heart and lungs were underdeveloped.  After researching, she determined that we had a feed issue.  Changed the feed and quit loosing birds.

I have had a great time in 4H so far.  I have learned many things that help us every day on our homestead, and these experiences keep leading me in directions I never thought of.  For example, I recently tattooed my first goat kids, so maybe next year I will take a try at disbudding.  And Mom and I just got a microscope and are learning to examine our animals for internal parasites.  I have learned how to count Haemonchus contortus parasite eggs and to identify coccidia in goat samples, and will be learning about chicken parasites and protozoa next.  She now does about half of the fecal exams around here, and is able to identify parasites in all of our animals.  Doesn't mind running the slides, but isn't wild about collecting the samples.   I am also learning what medicine to treat the goats with to get rid of worms and other disease.  There is so much to learn, and I can't wait to find out what is next.  Some day, I might even be a vet!  Well, she got over that one.  But she has since spent a lot of time studying herbs and their medicinal uses. 

I was working on Part III the other nite when the storm hit.  I had loaded a series of pics Ellie May had taken of one of her broody hens and her chicks, that included hatching chicks and some antics as they grew.  Sorry, but it currently takes me about half an hour to load each picture.  Am just going to save that for another time. 

Will share this one, today, though.  Ellie's story had some great pictures and captions, am sorry i lost them.  Whirled Peas.  At the end of the story is a set of pictures in storyboard, like a cartoon.  We had this vile rooster--nobody liked him and he was just plain mean and aggressive.  He was a Black Crested White Polish, and Ellie originally named him Edgar Allen Polish.  When his true personality came out, i started calling him Crazy Eddy.  In the storyboard (captions in red,) the first picture is of Crazy Eddy attacking Ellie as she is walking by minding her own business.  Crazy Eddy makes his challenge.  The second picture is of Ellie grabbing him by his tail feathers.  Ellie May exacts her revenge.  The third picture is a very contrite Eddy in Ellie's arms, with no tail feathers.  Don't mess with the Chicken Whisperer.  

Ellie May Presenting Edgar Allen Polish

Truth of the matter is that Eddy with no tail feathers was a couple of days after the first two were taken.  The dogs don't kill the chickens, but that doesn't mean they don't smack the ones that need it.  When the roos get out of line, the dogs pull out their tail feathers.  Takes them down a notch or two until they grow new ones.  Apparently Eddy spurred the wrong dog.  We finally had enough of Crazy Eddy, and turned him into sausage.  Everyone cheered the morning i fried and served him.  I expected a major production when i went to butcher him, but oddly, he was very quiet, and didn't put up a fight. 

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming To Bring You The Following Update

Oh My Goodness, what a storm we had last nite.  Not Joplin bad, not a tornado, but the worst severe storm i can remember for a very long time.  So scary that the two legged kids and i spent a good thirty minutes in the interior bathroom with the cushions from the couch.  Don't even remember the last time we did that.

The interior bathroom in my "Custome Home" has been under construction for the past three years. I call this palace "custome" because everything in it was hand made.  Out of scraps.  None of the cabinets or shelves are the same length or width, or are level, for that matter.  Some day i am going to tell you some of the "custome home" stories, and why i am going to shoot the man that built it, if i ever see him.  But that is not for today.  The pertinent information today, is that the (fifth) toilet that Jed has tried to install in this bathroom is sitting over an open pipe, as new toilets are fitted differently than the toilets the builder had specially imported, presumably from an Eastern Block country during the cold war.  Or from somewhere in the Ottoman Empire, perhaps.  Lets just say there has been difficulty getting everything to line up.  At least it is sitting on a floor now.  The pier and beam inspections could be done from the bathroom for about a year, as the floor was nothing but studs and joists.  During that time, we had a farm collie mix that was afraid of thunder.  Every time we had lightning, Commando would go under the house and end up crying in the bathtub.  We would bring him a bowl of water and toss him a bone, and he would ride out the storm.  When Commando and Ruby started showing up in the bathtub looking for dinner, Jed got busy and put in the flooring.

Anyhoo, the kids and i are sitting in the bathroom, listening to the storm howl outside, and Jethro is really unnerved, shaking and praying.  Took me about ten minutes to figure out that what was scaring him the most was the sound of the wind traveling thru the exposed toilet pipe.  When i told him what the sound was, he did a visible sigh of relief.  Poor little guy.  He tends to shut down after and adrenaline rush, so when the immediate storm was over, he crashed and slept thru the rest of the events.

Of course the power went out, and was out for about 16 hours.  So the rest of the story takes place in the dark.  Storm lasted about 2 hours.  We went out in the dark to go check on everybody.  The poor goaties were traumatized.  I walked into the doe barn to find Moon Pie standing in the middle crying like she was dying (of course,) and from the pile of babies, Splendora looked at me and gave a weak, sad little questioning "maaaaa" like, "Is it over, yet?  Where were you an hour ago?"  Everyone was nervous but fine.  Same thing in the buck barn.  Did a head count of rest of animals, and saw everyone except Jesse and Owens.  Figured they got blown away, but this morning they were in the bovine hot tub, so all good there, too.  Isabell and the Bobs were flustered but fine.  The problem came when we got to the chickens.  Everyone in the coop was fine, but the chick pens were devastated.  We are running three pens of chicks, 34 all together, and there were three piles of bodies, with only two heads raised, doing the pre-death silent chirping.  I thought they were all dead.  Ellie called for towels and got to work sorting.  Jed was home by this time and helped us dry those that were still alive.  Of course there is no power, so no heat lamp to warm them.  We all had chicks tucked in our undershirts until we ran out of room.  I had been running two canners when the power went out, so i filled a hot water bottle out of one of the canners, and we put a bunch under towels with the bottle.  Ellie took some to the coop and stowed them under a couple of hens known to be broody on occasion.  I lifted the racks on both canners, we laid towels over the tops of the still warm jars, and put chicks on top of those.  We worked on the chicks for about two hours, and as of this morning, only one more died, so we only lost a total of 8 chicks, which is phenomenal, given what they went through.  But with our luck the ones that survived will all be roosters.

On one of the sorties, Ellie found a dove wedged in the fence, and came in with it sitting on her finger, doing a kind of Foster Brooks wobble (the dove, not Ellie.)  Suddenly, it straightened, got a "how did i get here?" look, and took flight.  No light in the house remember, and the poor thing hit the ceiling about six times before it realized it wasn't outside.  Ellie captured him off of a high shelf, and he spent the night in the brooder house with most of the chicks.  He was released this morning on personal recognisance.

Lots of limbs down, lots of flooding wash, some sheet metal loss, that kind of thing.  But the Custome Home still stands, and no animal loss except the eight chicks. 

We are feeling truly blessed, today

We now return to our regularly scheduled programing.