Field Day

Things have been crazy busy lately thanks to the UC Davis Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Field Day, which was held this past Saturday. Field Day is where FFA'ers (and 4-H'ers, although they're pretty rare) come to compete in one of 26 different contests, including things like Parliamentary Procedure, Ag Mechanics, Vegetable Crops, Floriculture, Public Speaking, and judging animals - including poultry, livestock, horse, and dairy cattle. Each contest has its own coordinator(s), tests, competitors and judges, and the degree of difficulty and time require for preparation varies as well. I was one of the co-coordinators for the dairy cattle contest, which is probably one of the most intensive contests there is. Not to toot our own horn or anything.

Here's the way animal judging competitions generally work: there are several classes, and each class has four animals in it, generally numbered 1-2-3-4. Contestants evaluate the animals and place them from best to worst - for example, if sheep #2 was the best, then sheep #4 was second best, and sheep #1 was the worst, the placing would be 2-4-3-1. The contestants' placing is then compared to placings which have been made by the official ("expert") judges, and contestants are then scored based on how close they are to the official placing. There's a customary method for scoring, too, but I won't go in to that. As if that weren't stressful enough, after placing each class, contestants will have to give oral reasons on one or more classes - go into a separate room with the official judge(s) and, from memory, recite the reasons why they put those animals in that order.

In most cases, the other side of the contest is fairly straightforward. Whoever is putting together the contest chooses a class of animals, maybe gives them a bath and/or a haircut a few days before Field Day, and puts them in a pen for all the FFA'ers to judge. Simple, right? Straightforward. Easy. To the point. I had to choose dairy cattle. *sigh*

Dairy cattle are all shown during the contest - not put in a pen, but actually paraded around on a halter and posed so that contestants can see them all at the same time. This means that we start putting classes together in January, then halterbreak all the animals that haven't been shown before (usually about half of them). Dairy cattle are also clipped for judging - and a holstein cow has a LOT of hair. Clipping works best if the animal is clean, and cows love to get dirty, so each cow gets probably three or four baths in the two weeks leading up to field day. We have five classes on Field Day - that's 20 animals that all have to be halterbroken, calm enough to show with a bunch of people staring at them, washed, body clipped and cared for. In addition, classes are run two at a time, which means that we have to have at least 8 people trained and available to show them during the contest while everyone else is herding FFA'ers, keeping cows clean, getting the next classes ready, taking care of the 3 official judges, and generally putting out fires.

The last few days before Field Day are especially hectic. During the last week, we take ALL the cows and heifers out to the show area to get them used to it, and finish clipping. We also go over our entries and put together the judging cards the contestants will use to mark their placings - someone else prints them for us, but we still have to tear apart the three-card sheets and bundle them into a neat little packet for each contestant. The day before, we put up the show ring, make posters for each ring and each reasons room, rearrange heifers, put straw in the barn where the cows will stay while they're not being shown, organize the show halters, and do whatever else hasn't been finished. Then on contest day - remember how they love to get dirty? - we're up at 3:30 AM to wash all 20 cows, get them tied in the clean barn with feed and water, and get ready for the contest to start at 8. Then we're off and running with cows being kept clean, shown and returned to the barn, FFA'ers and officials judging, lunch (which was delivered an hour and a half late), and running reasons. We had 86 contestants this year (!) and each of them had to give three sets of reasons - even running all three simultaneously, it still took about 3 hours to do Reasons. Once reasons are done, we bring the cows and heifers back out for the "critique," which is when the officials to tell the contestants the placings (and why they placed the class that way). After critique, the contestants scatter, we get the cows taken care of and put away and take everything down again, clean out the barn, and turn into vegetables.

This year's contest went extremely well, thanks to all the volunteer help we had and some herculean work from my co-coordinator Gretchen. The judges were great, none of the contestants cried/complained/got run over, the cows (mostly) behaved, we had Halley scanning all the judging cards and keeping up with tabulations so we could get done quickly, and in general everything just worked (with the notable exception of lunch, but what can you do). Here's hoping next year goes as well!

PS. Sorry this is so long! I could have written three times this much and not covered all of the details...but you get the picture.

In Good Company

Kidding season is in full swing! With the school quarter beginning to come to a close, UC Davis Field Day coming up next Saturday (more on that later), and 7 does due in the next 7 days, I decided several weeks ago to induce does to kid this weekend so that I could focus on other things in the coming week. One doe kidded early, and three of the does are still less than 146 days along (a normal goat pregnancy lasts ~150 days, and successfully inducing does to have *live* kids works best if they're at least 144 days pregnant - I prefer to wait a few days more so that the kids don't arrive too underbaked). That left three does to kid today - Fantasia, Trooper and Meadowlark.

Inducing usually results in kids being born between 11 AM and 3 PM, although there are the occasional exceptions. I wasn't sure whether Fantasia would wait, as she's always been a rather secretive kidder, and sure enough, she presented me with a lovely pair of clean, dry kids at 8:30 this morning:

Fantasia's twins - the doe, Johanna, is the one with her head up.

While I was glad that she had kidded quickly and with no problems, I was a little concerned because I had invited a few friends from school to come watch, and I was worried that the kids would all be born before anyone was able to get here! Thankfully, however, the other two does took their sweet time, and after everyone arrived and settled in to wait, there were plenty of snacks to eat and older babies to cuddle.

Haley and Katie make some new friends!

Both does were looking equally uncomfortable, but Lark was the first to throw in the towel (with much talking and attempted licking from Trooper, next door). She had a pretty white doe kid and a Sable buck kid with a really impressive grey "skunk stripe" and wattles.

Merganser, Lark's doe kid

Lark's buck kid. Sorry for the bad lighting, but check out that color!

Not to be outdone, Trooper decided to kid shortly after. She was bred to Rigsby, so I was expecting elf eared 1/2 LaMancha kids, but with the other half Saanen I was resigned to white kids (or light brown at best). Imagine my surprise when this little beauty showed up!

Lisbon, Trooper's doe kid - so pretty!

One of the reasons I've always had Saanens is so that I wouldn't make breeding and selection decisions based on color. Given how smitten I am with miss Lisbon, it's a good thing I didn't start breeding LaManchas sooner, or I'd have twice as many goats as I do now!

When half an hour had gone by without so much as a peep from Trooper, I started to get concerned. I knew there was at least one more kid in there, so I put an OB glove on and went in to investigate. (The second of such gloves - I popped the first one, trying to turn it inside out so as not to expose her to the dirty outside of the glove.) I'm glad I checked when I did - the second kid had his head firmly tucked back against his rib cage, and he was NOT turning it around, thank-you-very-much. 15 minutes and one bruised arm later, I managed to get him straightened out and delivered - thankfully, still alive.

Trooper's two kids. I'm not sure what Lisbon is trying to do.

With all of the kids on the ground, it was time to get the does some warm electrolyte water and kick back for the rest of the afternoon. I did, however, check on everyone a few hours later, to be greeted by Lisbon from her eyeball-deep nest of straw....

IT'S SO FLUFFY!!

I do believe she's going to be a bit spoiled.

Kidding Season Ups and Downs

(Alternatively, Saanens versus LaManchas.)

Kidding season usually has highs and lows. Kind of a 'you win some, you lose some' deal. Last year was particularly bad, with all but three of the 22 kids from the two-year-old does dying from Floppy Kid Syndrome. Floppy kid is a metabolic disease associated with a secondary bacterial infection - in last year's case, Cryptosporidium. However, last year was also one of the best for kid growth and I have some beautiful yearlings in the barn right now.

10 does have kidded so far this year, and it's been quite the roller coaster ride. Two of them were unplanned - the result of does getting bred by a very young buckling who hadn't yet been moved to the buck pen. Here's the breakdown:
Lily (LM cross) - buck/doe twins (doe was stillborn)
Kolea (Saanen) - twin does
Sitka (LM cross, not intentionally bred) - one slightly retarded buck kid
Reina (LM cross) - buck/doe twins (buck was stillborn)
Panda (Saanen cross) - twin does
Cristal (Saanen cross, not intentionally bred) - twin bucks, both with parrotmouths
Emma (LM cross) - buck/doe twins (doe stillborn, and she laid on the buck kid and killed it)
Stella (LM) - twin bucks
Kitten (Saanen) - buck/doe twins
Dreamer (Saanen) - giant single buck

Is anyone else noticing a trend here?

Cristal can be forgiven for the parrotmouths - she IS a very old doe, and older mamas tend to have kids with congenital issues. If that is the only thing wrong with these two boys I'll be happy, especially since her last kid was a cryptorchid with extra teats and a furry eye. However, the fact that only half of the kids from the LaMancha does have survived makes me wonder if I'm really meant to have LaManchas. Then again, Kitten was bred to a LaMancha buck, so her kids are LaMancha crosses, and they are two of the biggest, coolest, most curious little buggers I've ever seen. Go figure.

Learning curve

Dear God:
I just wanted to say thanks for the education I've been getting. I never knew just how little sleep I could get and still be a coherent being. Please help me remember to be careful what I wish for...while it was fascinating to see, it didn't occur to me that a gastroschisis kid would cause so many problems. If it's not too much to ask, though, I would be very grateful if the next doe who kids could be excluded from this learning experience - you see, I've almost forgotten what a normal kidding is like. Amen.

And so it begins

Once again, it's been way too long since my last post. However, I've realized that a large factor contributing to my lack of postage is a conviction that every post requires photos. Obviously, they don't. SO.

Since December, we've had a few more bottle babies show up, a fantastic Christmas, and a lot of pregnant bellies! A few, such as Trooper, are wider than they are tall (and Trooper isn't due until March). It's always fascinating to me to watch them grow and see who starts to "show" at what time, and then later to see how many kids were really in there. Emma, for example, is due in less than two weeks and has only just started to develop a suggestion of roundness around her middle, while Kolea (who is due in 5 days) can barely fit through the gate anymore. Fantasia has a big sound frame and tends to carry kids inconspicuously until a few days before her due date, and Violet is the same shape no matter what stage of gestation (or lactation) she's in - I think she does it on purpose, she's just that perverse. Then there are goats like Atlanta, who dropped her belly and started waddling instead of walking a mere two weeks after she got bred.

In the past few years, we've struggled with kids getting sick at a very young age - last year nearly all of the kids from the two-year-old does died from Floppy Kid Syndrome, due to complications with Cryptosporidium, and a few years ago we had some bad cases of E. Coli. scours. So, this year I went overboard with kid prep - we bought new panels and hardware, cleaned a section of the barn, drenched it in bleach, limed the floor - you name it, we did it. We're hoping that having the kids born in the clean pens will keep the new babies healthy and happy while their immune systems are getting their acts together.

The first pens were finished just in time, too - Lily suddenly (and rather impressively) filled her udder yesterday, so I knew she was close to kidding. Even though her due date wasn't until the 9th, she kidded this morning with a gorgeous set of twins! Unfortunately the doe kid was stillborn, but the buckling is adorable and doing quite well. Lily did the exact same thing last year (kidding early with a live buck and a dead doe) so I was a little disappointed, but these things happen. At least she and the remaining kid are doing well.

The next few kiddings are going to be interesting - Panda, a three-year-old who nearly died last year from gangrenous mastitis and lost her udder as a result, is due on the 9th and she is HUGE. It will be a challenge to predict her kidding without an udder; while it's by no means the only indicator of impending birth, "bagging up" (the udder filling with milk) is the most obvious sign of kidding and I tend to rely on it pretty heavily. Kolea, as mentioned previously, is also quite wide, and will actually be getting shots tonight to induce her into labor a few days early. Inducing labor has its pros and cons: it requires that the does kid a few days before their due dates, which can result in slightly underbaked kids, but one of the shots (Dexamethasone) is a corticoid and helps the babies' lungs finish developing before they're born, and being able to schedule kiddings so that I can be present in case of complications greatly reduces my stress load. Often it reduces the doe's stress level as well - I hand-raised the majority of my goats, and most of them get very anxious if I leave them while they're kidding. (Some do everything in their power to kid while I'm NOT there, but that's beside the point.) Kolea is a first-time mother; she's inexperienced, she's VERY wide which makes me think she's expecting multiple kids, and she's bred to a buck who tends to produce very large babies. Very big kids can cause problems, even if they don't get tangled up and the doe isn't a first-timer, so I'm hoping that kidding a couple of days early will keep her from growing her kids overly large. So, just to make sure she doesn't have problems with babies getting tangled up or stuck on their way out, and to ensure that the babies get cared for, dried off and fed once they arrive, I want to be there when she kids. Ergo, she gets induced.

With kidding also comes milking, however, and since Lily could easily feed three kids and only has one, I'm off to take up the slack...

You say ammonia, I say pneumonia

(I can do this. I can do this. I can SO do this.)

Once again, I'm cleaning the barn. It's not so packed full this time, but what is there is very wet and nasty and -literally- reeks of ammonia. My eyes were watering, and I've been having to take Advil congestion to be able to breathe at night...that's how bad it is. I'm so glad to have it out, though, because if it's bad for me, it's ten times worse for the goats whose noses are only two feet from the source. Ammonia causes lung inflammation, which leads to pneumonia. Having already dealt out one round of antibiotics when half of the babies got pneumonia after the sudden change from SUMMER to WINTER, I don't want to have to do it again. Not only is it detrimental to them to have pneumonia in the first place, the antibiotic costs money, and the lovely power-punch NuFlor may do wonders for pneumonia, but it also hurts like no other when you give them the shot. Their reactions are somewhere in the vicinity of it's-the-end-of-the-world, flinging their entire body onto the ground and writhing in agony before limping off into the mud making pitiful noises. All of this intended to garner sympathy from the shot giver - me - who now feels terrible.

So you can see why I want the pens clean. There's also a much simpler reason - it looks and smells nicer. It is so satisfying to see all of the goats blissing in their fluffy clean straw...

THIS is the life!

It's so relaxing to watch them when they're full, and clean, and happy. And entertaining, when they're down on their chests, rumps in the air and tails wagging, scooting through the straw to scratch their bellies. It's also entertaining, albeit frustrating, when you have a clever LaMancha baby who has figured out how to dump water buckets so she can wear them on her head:

Hello? Hello?

What a genius Sitka is. Too bad she doesn't do it with the empty water buckets...sigh. Speaking of bucket heads, we have calves! Two of them. For those of you who didn't know, I have a Guernsey cow - Sadie. She is the best cow in the world, even if she does think she's a goat. Anyway, she was bred to an Angus bull and had her first calf, Guerngus, on November 17th:

Sadie!

Who are you again? You look somewhat familiar...

He's rather a pain. Sadie has the maternal sensibilities of a clothespin, so Mr. Gus gets fed from a bucket and lives with his newfound friend Radar, a Red Holstein who arrived a week later courtesy of the dairy. (Look! Another reflection photo! I love it.)

Radar - named for his odd habit of sticking his tail up in the air whenever he's out and about.

Ironically, Radar looks a lot more like Sadie than Gus does. Both of them are slightly stupid. Not a lot, just slightly. They like to clean each others' faces after they drink their milk...by sucking on the other calf's nose.

I EATS YOU!

It's hilarious and weird at the same time. How can he breathe like that? I guess they don't ever do it long enough to cause a problem, but it's still weird.

And with that, I am off to milk my wonderful cow and feed some obnoxious babies. Including goat babies. Who will be introduced at a later date...

Well this is embarassing

This time it took me two months to update. Ye gods. It's been so long, in fact, that I had forgotten my password and had to reset it. Fail? I think yes.

So what's happening now? Not much. We finished the feeders and moved the goats in....a long time ago. They (and I) are enjoying the new feeders immensely. We designed them to be filled from the back (outside the pen), so I no longer have to go "swimming" through anxious white bodies to get the hay in the feeder, and because they have to stick their heads into the feeder to eat, they no longer drop loads of hay on the ground. (As soon as the food touches the ground, it's DIRTY and obviously no longer edible.) This, along with the feeder's solid bottom, means that they waste almost no hay and have food in front of them all the time. Even the anorexic Sensation is starting to put on weight! Some of them are getting a bit jiggly, but they're also supposed to be pregnant, so for now it's all good.

Speaking of which! I am slightly frustrated by the number of repeat breedings I've had to make this year. Almost a third of the does re-cycled at least once - two of them, Zi Zhi and Havana, have yet to settle despite having shown three and five strong standing heats. I would threaten them with the taco truck, but they know me too well. Sigh. Affair settled on the first breeding like a good girl, a breeding that I was extremely excited about and would have produced February kids, only to lose her pregnancy at 80 days. Double SIGH. All three of these does didn't kid this past year - Zi Zhi never settled (making this her second strike) and Havana aborted. Affair had 2010 off due to the trauma she lived through the previous year, which included being run over by a cow, a spinal cord injury, and re-learning to walk four months after being fully - albeit temporarily - paralyzed due to seizures from her injury. Hopefully they get the memo.

So. I have lots more to write about (including a baby cow!), but I am going to save it for next time in an attempt to get myself back on the blogwagon. Ciao!