Here are several of our animal stories for you to learn from and laugh at!
Goats
Our goats have probably given us more eventful days and job stopping moments than any other of our animals, likely because we raise more goats than pigs and the birds and rabbits don't NORMALLY cause events.
Probably the funniest thing our goats have done was when Nutmeg got her head stuck in a feed bag and walked into our window! Since then, Star and Pecan have got their heads stuck in a grain bag at the same time! Rose got the feed bag stuck on her head too.
We have goats who jump our 42-inch electric fence every morning when they want to be milked or moved to new pasture. The troublemakers are Blaise, our Nigerian buck, and Nutmeg. They cannot clear the fence when they jump, instead they leap into it, get their hooves caught, and yank the fence over. Then all the other goats gratefully hop over and join their buddies to enjoy the freedom.
I know what you're thinking, "why don't you put them in a taller fence?" skip ahead to our fence problems to see what happened to our taller fence!
A few years back when a few of our milking does were still kids, we got a snowstorm, the power went out, it was freezing, the wind chill was -29 degrees! (at the time we were in Texas). We were worried our 2-month-old kids would freeze with no heat lamp, so we trudged through the snow and brought them inside and put them in the bathroom :) ! As an afterthought, I think they would have been just fine snuggled up with mom!
One of our does, Nutmeg, had five kids. Her kids would only drink from one side of her udder. So, we had to milk the other side for several days until her kids decided to be normal and drink from both sides.
When she would feed them, they practically did not fit under her, when they would try, she would be flung in the air as they fought a war underneath her.
She was grateful when all her kids were sold!
Our most recent story involving the goats just happened today. Nutmegs 2-month-old buckling jumped up on to our ducks' house and seriously slashed his leg on the edge of the metal roofing.
The cut was deep enough to be able to see his tendons and possibly his bone. We brought him inside and dressed his wound, since he is young and doesn't seem to be in pain, we will just keep it clean and wrapped and it should heal soon.
No more leaving sharp exposed edges on metal roofs!
In the picture we are taking his old gauze off and putting new on and yes, he is in the house!
Oh, and something else that happened on the same day. We had recently finished planting our orchard, and we decided to let the goats wander around while we moved their fence (we do this a lot, it lets them to browse in the woods while we move their fence which will be on grass) well, they decided they liked pear, peach and apple trees better than elms.
Thankfully they did very little damage.
Star, our almost all black milking doe, as a kid got stuck in a netting fence, her mom (Pecan) was frantically yelling, we heard her and ran to see what the problem was. We rescued Star, but ever since she has been mostly unable to "maa" properly.
Several years latter Stars' buckling got his leg tied up in a string. Star ran to the fence and yelled she definitely got good mothering traits from her mom! Her kid was rescued and had no lasting effects.
Chickens
We recently published a blog on our chickens going on strike and not laying eggs. Well, we built them a really comfortable net box unit, (or whatever you want to call it) only to walk out in the morning and find that one of the chickens jumped face-first into the nest box and died with her feet in the air.
I cannot explain why she did that, or why the next morning a different hen shoved herself in between the nest boxes and also died. Maybe they were already on their way out and it looked like an inviting place to pass away!?!
And come to find out, our chickens can fly even with their wings clipped! So, they regularly fly over our fence or sleep in the woods and get eaten by coyotes, a problem we are working to resolve.
(they have a knack of sticking their heads through the electric fence and then getting shocked, pulling it out turning around and sticking their heads back through!)
The pigs
Our pigs have also visited the neighbors, as well as, dug through the trash, and jumped their fences! We thought a short electric fence would keep them in, nope they learned they can clear it if they want to, which they always want to do!
Our pigs also got into our garden and ate a few of our pumpkins, cucumbers, tomatoes and melons.
Once one of our piglets crawled halfway into a plastic jar and couldn't get out. We had to swing the jar pretty roughly to shake him out.
The pigs have given us more exercise than any of our other animals. When a pig gets out you have to get creative to get it back. Grain usually works for other people, but for us it often doesn't!
Honey, our KuneKune sow is "stick trained" you simply run a stick on
her head to get her to go forward, and on whichever side you don't want her turning you place the stick. As you can see our Border Collie tries to help, but pigs aren't very responsive.
However, our boars are more of a problem, it's hard to put a leash on a pig and even if you do get it on, they are so strong you cannot hold them. Several times we have just had to hold on to the leash and run!
Rabbits
You might think " what can a rabbit do wrong?" well, our rabbits would climb/jump 4-foot fences, dig holes under their cage, and come out at night and then go back in the morning so our dogs wouldn't chase them.
Once we had two rabbit bucks across the fence from each other, one of the bucks bit the others lower lip off. The poor bunny is fine, it healed fast, and he never seemed to be in too much pain. We learned our lesson, don't house male rabbits across the fence from each other.
We also had a rabbit who got crabby and would jump up and bite us! As well as having the problem that most rabbit raisers have, that is, our rabbits not having bunnies when we want them to, or having bunnies when we did not want them to.
Martinello.
Martinello, our mini guard donkey escaped one evening. We started looking for him, calling his name, shaking a grain bucket, walking up and down our neighborhood street, and texting neighbors to ask if they had seen him.
Turns out he had gone to our next-door neighbor's horse barn. The neighbor put him in a stall, fed him, gave him water, and then came to tell us. After we brought him home, he escaped several more times always going back to the same neighbor and receiving the same treatment.
In two of these pictures Martinello pulled free and is having a good time!
Martinello also learned how to open the door that kept him and our goat herd out of the barn. So, if we forgot to lock the door all the goats and the donkey would be out eating grain or enjoying freedom.
Ducks
Anyone who likes ducks will be glad to hear that we have never had our ducks create any events or problems. Swimming in our flooded backyard is about as problematic as they have gotten.
Fences
We have had some interesting experiences with fences. When we lived in Texas our soil was so rocky that the electric fencing posts would just twist and bend instead of going into the ground.
Therefore, most of our taller fencing has been ruined or partly ruined.
We have also learned that if you are putting a fence in rocky soil, placing the posts in the center of a clump of grass often results in less rocks. When we were putting up fences in TX, we carried a sledgehammer with us, it was our only option, the ground was so rocky.
We also learned in our early years of raising pigs that field fencing doesn't keep pigs in. We ended up running cedar boards (the kind used for privacy fences) along the bottom of the fence.
This kept the fence stiff and prevented the pigs from lifting it up.
Once our boar lifted a hog panel off the posts, as well as threw our gate off it's hinges.
We experience a lot of similar scenarios almost every day, if you have any stories you would like to share let us know!
Comments