Misfitmorgan's Journal - That Summer Dust

[misfitmorgan]

Last night I saw out black/white mule duck take an egg and roll it under herself in the nesting box. So i think we have a broody mule duck

Also noticed our chicken egg shells are really thin, so I need to figure out how to give them calcium. This is the group that are in the barn...with goats, sheep, and geese so not sure how.

I have called USDA 4 times now to get a new premises ID number but no return call yet. I really need to order tags but they are taking forever to return my call. Last year we tagged with our old number(naughty) but we only tagged i think 5 or 6 total so meh.
Now we need to tag the lambs/kids and the mutts because as soon as we shear there will be no real way to tell the 3 "brown" (black after shearing i am betting) mutt sheep apart. The only way to tell the 4th brown one apart is that she is the smallest and has the least wool growth cause she was last springs lamb. I am marketing the boy lambs so they will need tags before they can leave.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Also...anyone who does CDT.

Do you use a new syringe for each animal? Like if you are doing 10 kids/lambs, you use 10 syringes/needles, 5 adults 5 syringes/needles etc. I think they should each get their own, DH says he doesn't think thats how you do it and you should be able to use one for each session

 

[Mike CHS]

We use a different one for each animal for shots. For drenching with other things we will use the syringe several times.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

If you are reusing the same needle that means that after each injection you’re putting a contaminated needle into your bottle of vaccine. Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me...

 

[misfitmorgan]

We use a different one for each animal for shots. For drenching with other things we will use the syringe several times.

We only have one drenching syringe so we do reuse that.

If you are reusing the same needle that means that after each injection you’re putting a contaminated needle into your bottle of vaccine. Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me...

He doesnt want to put it back in the bottle. He means I ordered 5ml syringes with needles. He wants to fill the syringe with say CDT and give 5 injections to 5 critters then get a new syringe. He thinks it's needlessly wasteful to do one ml and toss the syringe. His other point is some of the (old style)auto-injectors reuse the needle on several animals so whats the problem, i told him well there is probly a reason they re-did them to use disposable needles

I'm on the once and done team but DH continues to try to sneak more then one critter per syringe/needle...esp since we are now running low.

 

[misfitmorgan]

I guess USDA must have been reading my journal i got a phone call and an email before 3pm yesterday so I have my new premises ID

 

[Bruce]

Seems like at the very least you would want to wipe the needle down with alcohol before using it on the next animal. That doesn't mean there can't be some "suck back" into the syringe from the previous animal. Can you get syringes with replaceable needles?

 

[B&B Happy goats]

I saw her whole post about millie. Ivy is not sharpening her horns they are just thin and have some sort of broken off layers on the ends from her fighting with the others over the years. Until this pregnancy she was not the herd alpha and was always picked on and beat up on. Honestly I think Phoebe is just to pregnant to care atm, she is normally the alpha.

Losing oreo sucks but we are moving forward of course. Thank you all.

So sorry about you loss of your girls, .....my goats are horned also, I cut the tips off them and file them for a "softer edge" it seems to help around here...just a thought you may want to consider

 

[misfitmorgan]

We did discuss taking off the ends of their horns....it is on the short list to get done.

 

[misfitmorgan]

We had a busy weekend.

We cleaned out the bottom of the 2-story and set it up better for the chickens. They have some roosts(old headgates), some nice nest boxes, a spot to dust bath, and their feeder and waterer are hanging from the ceiling.

Then we cleaned and scraped the whole barn floor except two pig pens which we will be doing today. The floor was a wreck from the flooding which has I believe finally stopped but the floor has had standing water on it for over a month that we just couldnt get to go away. We tried more hay, wood chips, trying to scrap it out the doors, opening the doors to let the wind in, i mean short of trying to take a mop out there nothing seemed to help. We gave the goats and sheep solid top pallets to stand/lay/eat off of to have a dry place.

Today we will putting down barn lime and then working on more pens in the barn. We also started trimming hooves, big Boys are horrible. He has had pretty much full access to shell corn all winter so they grew out crazy fast. Ivy needs a tiny trim and Phoebe will get a trim after she kids. The sheep will all get done when we shear but they still look good.

I bought a Hardy Kiwi to plant and hope it does well. I also have strawberry starts that i forgot about from last year...i dont think they are any good now and some Delilahs to plant. Rhubarb is finally crowning again after being killed back by frost/snow twice. We have decided to cut all the grapes back to just 2-4 canes each....because over the winter it seems all but about 8ft of the arbor collapsed/fell over.

You can see it in the background of this picture. You can also see the butt head goats stripped the bark off two branches on that poor apple tree.