Oh... shoot, that's right... I forgot all about that loss with everything else she/they've been dealing with...
Misfitmorgan's Journal - That Summer Dust
- Thread starter misfitmorgan
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misfitmorgan
Herd Master
That is correct.
Pilgrim the llama was the guardian for our sheep/goats and a very excellent guardian he was, we literally watched hi chase off 5 coyote's one night. The pack was between the old house and our old barn and he went over the fence and chased them off of our property. I woke up to odd noises so i looked at the window and saw a coyote's run by and pilgrim hot on their heels. DH ran out with his gun but by the time he got out there pilgrim was at the back of the property and the coyote's were gone. Pilgrim heard DH walking and came back full speed huffing and puffing and was going to attack DH until he realized who it was. After that DH said he had a home with us for life. We never saw coyote's again, heard them but didnt see them on our property.
Rosie is ment to be a poultry guardian. She seems fine with the sheep in the shop but the sheep don't like her as of yet. I would try to put her out with them but one the fence is way short to keep her in atm and two i am worried the sheep and goats will attack her. Esp the new moms, they seem very concerned with our house dogs when they are outside. While she is suppose to guard the poultry, she seems not at all interested in them. She is very interested in the sheep and lambs...in a good way. Whenever i am spending time with the lambs she is right there by my side sniffing all over them. The momma's take exception to this and rush her but no contact has been made that i have seen. The rushing is mostly 308..who has no lamb but is 310's full sister who does have the ram lamb.
I also found out rosie likes pig & sow feed....a little odd but meh. We are thinking of getting another LGD after we have fencing up, maybe around fall. That way we have an LGD team since we lost Pilgrim.
Pilgrim the llama was the guardian for our sheep/goats and a very excellent guardian he was, we literally watched hi chase off 5 coyote's one night. The pack was between the old house and our old barn and he went over the fence and chased them off of our property. I woke up to odd noises so i looked at the window and saw a coyote's run by and pilgrim hot on their heels. DH ran out with his gun but by the time he got out there pilgrim was at the back of the property and the coyote's were gone. Pilgrim heard DH walking and came back full speed huffing and puffing and was going to attack DH until he realized who it was. After that DH said he had a home with us for life. We never saw coyote's again, heard them but didnt see them on our property.
Rosie is ment to be a poultry guardian. She seems fine with the sheep in the shop but the sheep don't like her as of yet. I would try to put her out with them but one the fence is way short to keep her in atm and two i am worried the sheep and goats will attack her. Esp the new moms, they seem very concerned with our house dogs when they are outside. While she is suppose to guard the poultry, she seems not at all interested in them. She is very interested in the sheep and lambs...in a good way. Whenever i am spending time with the lambs she is right there by my side sniffing all over them. The momma's take exception to this and rush her but no contact has been made that i have seen. The rushing is mostly 308..who has no lamb but is 310's full sister who does have the ram lamb.
I also found out rosie likes pig & sow feed....a little odd but meh. We are thinking of getting another LGD after we have fencing up, maybe around fall. That way we have an LGD team since we lost Pilgrim.
Bruce
Herd Master
I wonder if Rosie had 4 legged charges before you got her. Could be that or her genetic instinct to want to protect them. I think with some supervised introductions they might figure out she is OK.
The people that gave us the alpacas had a herding dog and a GP, neither were working dogs nor were they ever in the same area as the alpacas and 3 goats so the alpacas didn't have reference to the dogs being their guardians. Rather they were noisy things in the next yard over.
When Merlin came the boys were a bit worried but his initial interest was in sniffing their noses, then the poop pile then their butts (to make the connection I guess). Then he wanted to check out the fenced in area.
At first there was still chicken wire on the gate across the barn alley. Boys on one side, Merlin and chickens on the other. Of course the gate is only about 3' high and when the south barn door was closed and he was "trapped" inside, he just scaled the gate and went out the alpacas' always open door. They figured out pretty fast that he wasn't a danger. Of course they didn't have babies to protect like some of your animals. I'm sure that will make them more wary for awhile.
The people that gave us the alpacas had a herding dog and a GP, neither were working dogs nor were they ever in the same area as the alpacas and 3 goats so the alpacas didn't have reference to the dogs being their guardians. Rather they were noisy things in the next yard over.
When Merlin came the boys were a bit worried but his initial interest was in sniffing their noses, then the poop pile then their butts (to make the connection I guess). Then he wanted to check out the fenced in area.
At first there was still chicken wire on the gate across the barn alley. Boys on one side, Merlin and chickens on the other. Of course the gate is only about 3' high and when the south barn door was closed and he was "trapped" inside, he just scaled the gate and went out the alpacas' always open door. They figured out pretty fast that he wasn't a danger. Of course they didn't have babies to protect like some of your animals. I'm sure that will make them more wary for awhile.
greybeard
Herd Master
I actually was able to mow 3/4 of my yard yesterday, tho I did leave some ruts in places with the lawn tractor. I also got my pickup stuck out by the shop but it wasn't too bad..got out without pulling with the tractor, but again, ruts in the yard.
Beautiful weather again today, green grass everywhere. Feeding hi-mag mineral for now so I can turn the cows out on the new lush grass in the next couple of week without worry over tetany.
https://stockmansfeed.com/blog/20042/treatment-and-symptoms-of-grass-tetany-in-cattle
It can also affect sheep and goats. Watch out for it. Treatment must be given quickly once hypomagnesmic tetany has begun...you won't have much time.
http://www.merckvetmanual.com/metab...ism/hypomagnesemic-tetany-in-cattle-and-sheep
Beautiful weather again today, green grass everywhere. Feeding hi-mag mineral for now so I can turn the cows out on the new lush grass in the next couple of week without worry over tetany.
https://stockmansfeed.com/blog/20042/treatment-and-symptoms-of-grass-tetany-in-cattle
It can also affect sheep and goats. Watch out for it. Treatment must be given quickly once hypomagnesmic tetany has begun...you won't have much time.
http://www.merckvetmanual.com/metab...ism/hypomagnesemic-tetany-in-cattle-and-sheep
Baymule
Herd Master
Good links Greybeard. I appreciate the posting of that information. I have some lush pasture right now, rye and clovers. I haven't put the sheep on it because with all the rain, I figured their hooves would cut it up. And I wanted to get a good stand before I let them mow it down. LOL The way I've done it in the past was to make sure they have a full belly of hay, then let them on the pasture for an hour or so, then back to the dry lot. Each day I lengthen their time. I always bring them back to the dry lot for the night. So far, so good.
greybeard
Herd Master
Feeding good hay and only letting them graze the new grass intermittently does help, but if the hay itself is low in Mag, there's still a risk. High quality mineral is cheap insurance--not the hard red blocks. An animal would have to lick on one for a couple hrs or more to even get one ounce.
Soft blocks or loose minerals are the best. If nothing else, learn how to top dress feed with loose mins. If you only have a few head, and have a neighbor or friend with livestock, share the cost and use of it.
A soil sample can tell you a lot about what is in the growing forage, and there are plenty of places to look to tell you approx how many ounces of any mineral a particular species might need. Remember...milkers need more mag than meat producers or dry animals.
For my mommas with a calf by, it would be 4-5 ounces per momma per day.
I would not feed hi-mag year round unless a soil sample/forage sample indicated the need to.
Goats/sheep/equines, someone else would have to chime in.
(There are some tetany threads here from the past..some are in reference to non-cattle species)
https://www.backyardherds.com/threads/spring-grazing.28398/#post-359381
https://www.backyardherds.com/threads/goat-minerals.2489/#post-49855
Baymule
Herd Master
I give them a sheep mineral free choice. They also have Azomite, a rock dust from an ancient lava flow in Utah, free choice. And I keep out dolomite lime free choice. Today I looked on the bag and the dolomite is 10% mag. This is what I've done since buying the first sheep a few years ago. I started offering the Azomite after observing the lambs licking fresh dirt kicked up by gophers. That told me something was missing, so I offered them Azomite. They ate it like candy. I bought the Azomite to put in the garden, but more of it goes to the sheep. They pick and choose what they need.
greybeard
Herd Master
most often, the mag in any livestock mineral is dolomite.
The trace mineral elements %s in azomite are quite low.
Magnesium for instance, is less than 1%
The trace mineral elements %s in azomite are quite low.
Magnesium for instance, is less than 1%
Baymule
Herd Master
They eat the heck out of all of it.
- Thread starter
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misfitmorgan
Herd Master
Sara's piglets are doing well. They are all sold except the ones we are keeping.
Over the weekend i got the lilac bush out front pruned, we got 90% of the grape vines pruned which might mean we get little to no grapes this year but it had to be done. The arbor needs to be rebuilt and there is no way we could do it with the way it was. Here is a before picture....i forgot to get an after
Obviously the arbor has completely fallen down on the right side. We also found 3 newly rooted vines that we will be replanting in line where a few apparently didnt make it. The tree branches are from the apple trees...and our pruning.
We also got 9 of the 18 apple trees mostly pruned. Heavy pruning, our apple harvest this year will be affected by the heavy prune but again it had to be done. The 4 smaller apple trees produced apples but they only ever got crab apple size and were all wormy and covered with stuff that looked like algae. The small trees themselves were covered in liken. They definitely had an air flow/sunlight problem and simply over producing apples. Several of the large trees produced nothing at all this past year because of how badly they needed pruned. We still need to do the granny smith which is the oldest tree and in the worst shape, the honey crisp, the mac, the transparent, and the others are mystery trees because they had no apples. We also noticed the trees were planted to close together, so a lot were growing into each other. Some of them will be ok for production this year most will likely take a year or two to recover.
Our rhubarb bed is also already budding/crowning(??) I was raking out the bed and saw all the bright red new growth coming up. DH raked the asparagus patch out really well and burned the extra grass. This spring we will burn the patch itself to get rid of the turf growing in it.
We had a big event with Rosie over the weekend. DH wanted to see if she would run off again so we let her out with us while we were working in the orchard on both days. I'm happy to report she seems to have accepted us a her people and the farm as her new home. She wandered all over and disappeared for 15-20 minutes several times but always reappeared to see what we were doing....aka to make sure we were still alright and she wasnt in trouble. Every time she came back we made a big deal and rewarded her with lots of pets, so hopefully that will help her confidence. She did try to get in with the herd and found out that fence bites.
We are temporarily watching a pet mini pig from one of our litters. The owners can't take care of her for a few weeks because they need to re-do their backyard fence, so we have her for awhile.
We still have two big flower beds to take the turf out of, then we need to plant and mulch them. I have not even looked at the other beds because they still have ice/snow because they are in the shade.
We will hopefully be working on cleaning out the barn this week between other things now that the sheep are not in there.
Now the not so good news. Saturday night my mother's tumor ruptured. She went to the hospital across the state yesterday, they got the bleeding stopped and sent her home. She is scheduled for a mastectomy tomorrow. I do not know if she will accept any cancer treatments, obviously the stuff she was trying to use to treat it is not working. If she does not accept treatments, she probly won't be around to much longer as surgery usually enables cancer to spread quickly. We shall see what she decides.
Over the weekend i got the lilac bush out front pruned, we got 90% of the grape vines pruned which might mean we get little to no grapes this year but it had to be done. The arbor needs to be rebuilt and there is no way we could do it with the way it was. Here is a before picture....i forgot to get an after
Obviously the arbor has completely fallen down on the right side. We also found 3 newly rooted vines that we will be replanting in line where a few apparently didnt make it. The tree branches are from the apple trees...and our pruning.
We also got 9 of the 18 apple trees mostly pruned. Heavy pruning, our apple harvest this year will be affected by the heavy prune but again it had to be done. The 4 smaller apple trees produced apples but they only ever got crab apple size and were all wormy and covered with stuff that looked like algae. The small trees themselves were covered in liken. They definitely had an air flow/sunlight problem and simply over producing apples. Several of the large trees produced nothing at all this past year because of how badly they needed pruned. We still need to do the granny smith which is the oldest tree and in the worst shape, the honey crisp, the mac, the transparent, and the others are mystery trees because they had no apples. We also noticed the trees were planted to close together, so a lot were growing into each other. Some of them will be ok for production this year most will likely take a year or two to recover.
Our rhubarb bed is also already budding/crowning(??) I was raking out the bed and saw all the bright red new growth coming up. DH raked the asparagus patch out really well and burned the extra grass. This spring we will burn the patch itself to get rid of the turf growing in it.
We had a big event with Rosie over the weekend. DH wanted to see if she would run off again so we let her out with us while we were working in the orchard on both days. I'm happy to report she seems to have accepted us a her people and the farm as her new home. She wandered all over and disappeared for 15-20 minutes several times but always reappeared to see what we were doing....aka to make sure we were still alright and she wasnt in trouble. Every time she came back we made a big deal and rewarded her with lots of pets, so hopefully that will help her confidence. She did try to get in with the herd and found out that fence bites.
We are temporarily watching a pet mini pig from one of our litters. The owners can't take care of her for a few weeks because they need to re-do their backyard fence, so we have her for awhile.
We still have two big flower beds to take the turf out of, then we need to plant and mulch them. I have not even looked at the other beds because they still have ice/snow because they are in the shade.
We will hopefully be working on cleaning out the barn this week between other things now that the sheep are not in there.
Now the not so good news. Saturday night my mother's tumor ruptured. She went to the hospital across the state yesterday, they got the bleeding stopped and sent her home. She is scheduled for a mastectomy tomorrow. I do not know if she will accept any cancer treatments, obviously the stuff she was trying to use to treat it is not working. If she does not accept treatments, she probly won't be around to much longer as surgery usually enables cancer to spread quickly. We shall see what she decides.
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