Bridger, where art thou?

Lorraine and I were recently reminiscing about some of the dogs that we've had in our lives.  A very short list of them were considered pets.  Several were pups from various litters produced by our pet dogs that include a variety of Border Collies and Great Pyrenees.  Among these was a litter that came from Chloe, a Great Pyrenees that died this past winter.  With her, we knew when she'd been bred and it was a stray that had crossed our property.  At the time that she was bred, and we knew that she had been bred because the kids were able to share in graphic detail the events that were involved (farm life sure won't leave your kids ignorant of the procreative process involving farm animals).  As far as we were concerned this was just a big, overgrown lug by the name of Bridger.  And we knew that because that's what his collar said.  Lorraine reminded me that I'd let loose some expletives when she shared the news.  We didn't need a litter of mutts. 

I was out of town when this escapade began as well.  Although big, like an over sized Golden Lab, Bridger was very gentle and, other than spending time with Chloe uninvited, was a real gentleman.  And he was certainly smarter than some of the other dogs we had at the time, including Uncle Chester, another Great Pyrenees we had at that time.  It was Chester that was supposed to breed Chloe, but he was too busy with other tasks I suppose, because he never got the job done.   Although Chester, for the life of him, couldn't figure out how to get through a closed gate, Bridger, who probably outweighed Chester by 30 pounds, virtually oozed sideways through the rails of the gates, to go visit our sheep.  He didn't bother them, but it seemed some instinct compelled him to be near them.

After several hours on the property it was clear he wasn't going anywhere.  Lorraine started calling around to see what could be done with this wayward, fornicating animal.  She tried the City of Earlham, but they said we weren't in the city limits so they couldn't help.  She tried the county sheriff but they don't deal with strays.  The local vet wasn't interested in taking him in.  For the moment, he was ours.

Lorraine told the boys to put him in our dog run.  That's the typical chain link fence run that's 10 feet long, 6 feet wide and 8 feet high.  A little later she yelled at the boys for not putting him in the run.  They said they had and put him back in.  She yelled at them again later for not latching the gate on the run.  They said they had and put him in there again.  It was a little later that they saw this 130# beast climb the chain link fence and jump to the ground.  From there they put him in the livestock trailer which held him until I got home.

I checked his collar and it said his name was Bridger and that he came from the Upper Clover Ranch which is located in Elko County, NV, equidistant from Battle Mountain and Winnemucca.  On the map it looks like one of those places that you can't get there from here.  The collar included a phone number.  I pulled out my cell phone and called.  The number was disconnected.

I then tried Google to see what I could find on Upper Clover Ranch.  There were some references in newsletters about somebody from the ranch speaking at a couple of different meetings.   I don't remember what the groups were that they spoke to, but the newsletters had phone numbers.  I called and left messages.  Meanwhile I called the Elko County Sheriff's office to explain my predicament.  They said that the ranch was about four hours from their HQ but that they had a deputy who lived and patrolled that area.  They'd get the message to him and have him call me.  The return call from the newsletter contact came a day or two later.  They gave me a name.  J.D. Radakovich.  I Googled J.D. and lo and behold, he was a local from Earlham.  But that didn't clear up the connection between him and Bridger's home address being in NV. 

J.D.'s parents live in rural Earlham, not to far from our house.  I called Steve and told him the story about Bridger and Chloe.  He said that J.D. had passed through Iowa on his way from NV to a new job in TX.  He'd left Bridger in the care of his parents who were experiencing the same frustration in confining Bridger as we had.  I told Steve we had Bridger and that he was welcome to come and get him.  Figuring that he wouldn't go anywhere since he'd already been with us a few days, I went ahead and let him out.  Steve showed up shortly thereafter and Bridger was gone.  On the road again apparently, seeking out new horizons.  Steve went home, empty handed.

A few weeks later I began to wonder what breed of dog Bridger was.  I called Steve, reminding him who I was.  He explained that Bridger was an Akbash, a livestock guard dog breed with a Turkish heritage.  In fact, Steve said he might be interested in one of the pups since the Akbash and Great Pyrenees are both livestock guard dogs.  I was elated.  I not only had a litter of pups on the way, I had a litter of livestock guard dog pups that would be worth far more than plain old mutt pups.

I did some research on the Akbash breed and was intrigued.  They had some variety in the way they looked with some looking like a short haired Great Pyrenees while others looked like a very large golden lab with over sized heads.  What I really liked though was Bridger's personality.  He was very gentle and tolerant of the kids and apparently very attentive to the sheep.

Lorraine nor I can remember how many pups there were.  We're guessing eight with seven surviving.  The pups were unique in that some of them would growl and snarl when you picked them up, even before their eyes were open.  This little growling routine continued until they were sold.  It was kind of cute, but I'm not sure if that evolved into an unpleasant trait as they grew or if it was just their way of communicating, albeit in a threatening sounding way. 

Not all of them growled or snarled.  The others were downright cute and we grew attached to a couple of them.    It was also fun to watch how Chester interacted with them.  He was very gentle with them as they climbed on him and pulled his tail.   That's when we started calling him Uncle Chester. 

The litter was eventually winnowed down to one who we simply called "Puppy."  We hadn't intended to keep him and never got around to naming him properly.  We really would have liked to keep him but in addition to him we still had two Border Collies and two Great Pyrenees.  We couldn't justify a fifth dog, especially since Chloe tended to wander, sometimes with puppies in tow.   Chester couldn't be confined to the pastures with the sheep either.  The two border collies were both worthless in terms of herding.  We simply didn't need another pet.

But, Puppy had a great temperament and reminded me a lot of his father.  A most enduring trait of Puppy's was his tail and back end wagging in unison as he walked up to you while smiling.  He would literally curl his lips up, but there was no hostility or snarling like some of the other pups.  He was actually mimicking our smiling at him.   The first few times I saw this it scared me.  He was probably 4-5 months old and already weighed over 50#.  This animal coming at me with bared teeth was intimidating.  But then he'd saunter up, tail wagging, and wanting to be petted.  It broke my heart when someone came to pick him up.  I hope they enjoy him as much as we did the short time we had him.

Epilogue:  We received word that Bridger was eventually located a few towns west of ours.  Steve found him a new home.   We'd hoped to use him as a sire again, but the new owners had him neutered in order to reduce his wandering ways. 

Baby Ducks

We've had one batch of baby ducks hatch.  Seven of the eight eggs hatched.  We have another batch from another duck that are due to hatch any day.  Looks like we have duck roast in our future.

Hannah and Emma are really excited about the new ducks.   Let's keep the duck roast comment quiet for now.

Our dog-herding sheep (as opposed to our sheep-herding dog)

A couple weeks ago Lorraine found an ad on Craigslist for a free Australian Shepherd/Border Collie mix.  She's been looking into getting a new puppy or dog for a few weeks now.  Interests included Great Danes and herding dogs.  The latter is particularly important on our farm since our current border collie, Rosie, serves little purpose in our home other than to keep the leather chair warm and to eat the food put in her bowl.  She's not a bad dog.  Actually, for a companion, she's very personable (around humans at least).  But, on a farm, personable isn't necessarily an essential trait when an animal is measured by their contribution to the overall farm operations.  Herding ability in this case would be far more preferable.

Rosie, you see, is currently twelve years old.  She has the prerequisite herding instinct which, years ago, she used to some degree.  Unfortunately, the guy that trained and used her (me-the not so smart farmer) was rather inept.  I learned over time that it's easier to screw up a good herding dog than it is to train them to be useful.   Somewhere along the line this fine canine specimen became afraid of our sheep.  Mind you, she's quite fierce when there's a gate or fence between her and the sheep, barking and spooking those that get to close to her.  But put her in a pasture with the sheep and it's a different story.  She'll walk up to some sheep and lie down, giving them the classic, border collie "eye."  But as soon as a sheep walks towards here she gets up and backs away.  I've seen our flock methodically walk her around a pasture (thus my prior reference to our dog-herding sheep).

I've also let fly many an expletive when trying to herd the sheep back into a corral when Rosie decides to "help."  Border collies by their nature seek balance.  That means when you have a group of sheep the shepherd is on one side of the flock and the dog "balances" to the other side.  Except Rosie must have a problem with her internal balancer.  The problems start when I'm trying to push sheep through a gate and Rosie gets between the sheep and the gate which stops and/or turns them away.  On the other hand, if I were to go through the gate she has no idea that she's supposed to stay balanced and push them towards me.  With Rosie, ying and yang aren't always opposites.  Sometimes she's more yingish than yangish I guess. 

Since we have a useless herding dog and we have close to fifty sheep, it make sense (for a smart farmer) to have a working herding dog.  Thus the mission for Lorraine to find a suitable candidate that didn't break the bank.  Now, I'll have to admit that I'm skeptical whenever somebody offers any animal for free, unless there's a compelling reason for them to relieve themselves of the animal(s) such as a move or they can't care for it anymore.  But those types of free animals are few and far between.  For example, we got a couple of "free" llamas a couple of years ago.  The first time they escaped I understood why we got them and the prior owners were smiling and waving as we pulled out of their driveway, trailer in tow with the the two llamas.  I would learn the an economic truth, "there is no such thing as a free llama."

As has happened dozens of times before, a gate was left unlatched.  I came out of the house to head for work and saw the two "free" llamas at the end of the driveway in the road.  Just to be clear, that's not where we usually keep them.  I quickly ran upstairs and woke Lorraine and my son, Evan.  I told Evan to go to the barn and get some grain in a bucket.  By the time we got back out there the llamas had advanced down the road about 100 yards.  I figured I'd walk to them shaking the bucket with the grain to lure them close enough to grab their halters.  Instead, they figured I was nuts and turned and ran the other way.  We ran back to the house and jumped into the Jeep to follow them.  About 1/4 of a mile up the road there's a T intersection that turns left which is the way they went.  The downside of this direction is that it's about 1/2 mile from Interstate 80.  To the best of my knowledge these llamas could jump a 42" fence fairly easily if they so chose.  I had visions of carnage involving swerving cars trying to avoid llamas dashing across the interstate.   How many people do you know that can say they were almost killed on an interstate due to a llama bounding if front of their car?

The llamas continued their dash down Jewell Ct. which dead ends at the interstate.  I was able to accelerate and overtake them, passing them on the right.  When I got far enough ahead I turned sideways on the gravel road to block them.  We were a lot closer this time, about 50 feet, so we tried the bucket idea again and we were met with the same skepticism as before.  The llamas turned and bolted back up the road.  We jumped into the Jeep and found that my prior pursuit had been a mere, leisurely jaunt.  They were running full speed this time.  I was in hot pursuit and right on their tails, well, hooves, since they really don't have much for tails.  I looked at my speedometer and I was doing 35 mph and my hood and windshield were getting sprayed with gravel.  We were quickly approaching the T intersection and I needed them to turn right so I accelerated more to pull along their left side and direct them back to the right which worked.   The next challenge was to do the same thing again in about a quarter mile and turn them left into our driveway which I was able to do.  From there they went through a gate into my hay field which wasn't ideal because the fencing wouldn't hold them.  I put the Jeep into 4WD and followed them into the bumpy, pocket gopher infested hay field.  The good news was that I was able to herd them with the Jeep towards a gate that went into our corral.  Evan jumped out, opened the gate and we pushed them through.  I was only 1/2 hour late for work and hadn't broken a sweat.

Anyway, I've digressed a bit, waxing on about "free" llamas so back to the "free" dog.   Lorraine and I travelled to a farm just south of Norwalk and met the dog for the first time.  The owner said he'd had her for a couple of years and didn't have the time to spend with her that he thought she deserved.  His son had moved out of the house and wasn't there for the dog.  She was spending a lot of her days in a crate.  He wanted her to find a home on a farm. 

We asked if she herded and he said he didn't know.  They have cattle and the dog wasn't afraid of them.  He said she'd recently blocked a cow from going through a gate.  That's hardly definitive to establish if the dog would herd or not but she seemed like a sweet dog with a lot of energy.  The only command she really responded to was "sit."  It was a gamble but we agreed to take her.  We go the dog and her crate which barely fit into the back of the Jeep.  We had Spencer with us and he made the trip home with a golf bag laying across his lap.

We arrived home around 11:00 p.m. and took her into the house on her lead.  She visited for a while and then we put her in her kennel for the night.  The next morning, after letting her take care of business outside, we brought her into the house to introduce her to Rosie the smiling dog.  We've had other dogs along the way and Rosie has always "smiled" at them, lips curled and with a low rumble emitting from her lungs.  The fact is, she has never liked any other dog that I'm aware of, frequently instigating fights with our other dogs.  Her relationship with our new, "free" dog would be no different.  There's a lot of posturing, staring, growling, smiling and other pack like behavior going on with the intermittment fight thrown in. 

Since bringing the "free" dog home the tide has turned against Rosie in terms of dominance.  Dally almost always ends up on top, yet Rosie continued to instigate brawls.  We've now seen the dominance of Dally emerge where she's constantly following Rosie and glaring at her.  Feeding must be done separately.  Getting out the door with the two dogs both there is nearly impossible since it may well lead to a fight.  Clearly we need some more insight on how to better manage this relationiship since it isn't improving, just changing sides.

We've had her three weeks now and have made good progress in house breaking her and with walking on a leash.  Lorraine is scheduled to take her tomorrow to a lady with herding experience to assess just what we have.  The question that we've discussed is, what if she doesn't herd?  Then what?  She certainly makes a nice family pet and companion.  But, what we need is a working herding dog which means finding yet another dog.  We already have Rosie, our non-working Border Collie.  We don't need another non-worker.  I guess we'll just have to see what tomorrow brings and figure out if we'll have Dolly (her new name) in our lives going forward.

There's a fox in the hen house...

Or maybe not.  I saw an email post from Lorraine yesterday that most of the chickens were outside the chicken tractor with the door askew.  Several were milling around the chicken tractor and several were missing.  One was a victim of the marauder that assaulted our chicken tractor and its contents.

Turns out it wasn't a fox, but our new Aussie/Border Collie that we recently acquired (need to post about that now that I think about it).  One of the little girls had gone out the front door and apparently Dally (we didn't name her) had escaped and promptly headed straight for the chicken tractor since that's the happening place for a dog to go on our property (followed by harassing ducks as a close second).  Lorraine said she wasn't sure how long she'd been out there terrorizing the birds but was guessing about one hour.

I traded some texts with Lorraine subsequently and learned that they'd found a few of the birds, but there were still 15 or so still missing by the time I got home from work.   Later in the evening we went out and found another dozen hanging around the chicken tractor.  We managed to get them back into the chicken tractor.  Even later we found four more and got them corralled and put back into the tractor.  I found the last one in the duck coop when it was time to put the ducks to bed for the night.

I made some minor repairs to the chicken tractor and placed a large piece of tin on top to keep the lid shut just in case. 

So, the good news is that we went from thinking that we'd lost half of our laying flock (before a single egg had been laid) to recovering all but the one victim.  The even better news is that they should be laying in just a few short weeks and we'll have plenty to sell to those of you who truly value a quality, pasture raised product.

My hands smell like fish and I haven't been fishing.

Saturday was nearly unbearable for working conditions.  I spent the day sharing time on a jackhammer working on my son's Eagle project for Boy Scouts.  He elected to demolish a limestone grotto at the Basilica of St. John in Des Moines, ostensibly because it was falling apart and a safety hazard.  Eight hours later we quit for the day with another four hours of work left.  Turns out the grotto was built to withstand a nuclear attack with it's 8" thick concrete wall w/ a stone veneer and a 24" concrete base.  This really has nothing to do with me spraying my field other than the similar working conditions.  Both days had lots of sunshine, humidity levels that left eyeglasses foggy and temperatures hovering in the mid-90's. 

My neighbor who has been doing my field work mowed a couple of my pastures last week.  As I've previously posted my tractor is down with no near term prospects of getting it repaired due to the anticipated costs exceeding our anticipated availability of funds.  That means I'm paying a per acre rate for a fair amount of field work that I could have done myself like the mowing and, if I had a sprayer, the spraying. 

Anyway, my neighbor called yesterday to see if I was ready to spray the pastures.  If you've followed my posts you'll recall an earlier one in which I described spraying my newly planted hay field with raw milk, fish oil and sugar.  Yesterday's batch of spray was similar but with some salt added.  Apparently microbes really like salt and sugar.  I can say that neither the salt nor the sugar enhanced the smell of the field (or me for that matter). 

We were spraying about 10 acres.  My formula called for 2 gallons/acre each of milk and fish oil.  I only had about 8 gallons of milk available so I used all of that.  I figured a little would be better than none.  I had plenty of fish oil and put that in.  I added about 10 pounds of salt figuring a foliar spraying rate of 1 lb/acre.  We left a strip down the middle of one of the pastures unsprayed to see if there was any difference.  We'll probably need a good rain to wash the spay into the soil for it to really start benefitting the microbial activity there. 

As with the prior spraying event the nozzles constantly clogged from a combination of sour milk globules, grass clippings that I didn't filter out like I should have and flakes of hose material from the aging sprayer's hoses.  A one hour project took closer to 2 1/2 hours.  Next time I'm going to use a screen honey filter on top of the bucket to filter my amendments.  Hopefully that will reduce my number of steps following the sprayer.

In the picture above notice that the boom is extended to the left but not the one on the right.  We found that the right boom almost immediately plugged with the left boom and center section had at least some of the nozzles spraying almost all the time.   We decided it would be more time effective to make more passes with the tractor than to constantly stop, clean the nozzles and head out again.  Wish we'd have thought of that earlier.

Needless to say, after 8 hours in the sun on Saturday and another 2 1/2 hours on Sunday, I was sporting an ever improving farmer tan, dehydrated and near exhaustion.   But, because I love my wife and she asked very nicely, I helped her move the chicken tractor, hauled two buckets of water for the chickens and then agreed to go for a one mile walk on the Earlham H.S. track with her and our new Aussie/Border collie mix (she'll be the subject of my next post).   Isn't farming glamorous and romantic?

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

So says Robert Frost's neighbor in his poem, "Mending Fences."  The author disputes this when there are no cows, suggesting that he would ask first what he is walling in or out.  I agree with Mr. Frost and his neighbor.  Without animals (and even kids in some cases) fences probably aren't necessary. 

But, since we do have cows, along with sheep, llamas, ducks, chickens, a goat, a dog and kids, it has become ever more clear each year just how critical good fences are to being a good neighbor.  Poor fencing on our property has alienated each of our neighbors at some time over the 12 years we've lived on our current property.  Some have been more tolerant but each has reached their limit of patience with us, depending upon the emotional or physical damage caused by our wayward animals.  The only neighbors we haven't upset with our animals are to the south of us.  But that's probably because they're a mile away due to crop land being between us and them rather than just a few feet across a property line.

Although nobody was upset that we're aware of, we once received a call from the City of Earlham telling us two of our dogs were lounging near the gas pumps at the Casey's store two miles away.   We also had a Great Pyrenees who found her way (once with part of a young litter of pups in tow) to the interstate a mere one mile away.  Another Pyr was seen two miles away in another direction.  Try as we might to confine them in our pasture with the livestock, where they belonged, they defied boundaries by squeezing through barbed wire, gates and other various efforts to contain them.

It was the long distance Pyr, Chuck, who started the problems.  When we bought our home and 38 acres we had no neighbors to the west.  Within two years there were two new homes built and an older home moved there from up the road.  Chuck routinely patrolled that previouslyvacant ground, sometimes with a pet turkey (ours, not his) following him along the way.  The new home immediately to the west had some nice landscaping and Chuck fancied them territory to be marked.  It wasn't too long before the bushes browned up.  Could have been the drought conditions, but the neighbors had a point.   Our dog peeing on their bushes wasn't neighborly.  In our defense, bushes continued to turn brown well after the untimely death of Chuck in 2001.

The prior tenants of the third house to the west, very tolerant friends I might add, mentioned that neighbor two to the west had told them he was going to shoot Chuck if he saw them on their land again.  Either he was a bad shot or didn't see Chuck again, but they eventually moved and Chuck sported no extra holes.  The new owners were quite understanding when another of our dogs tore open their garbage out by the road (on Christmas Day I might add).  My next door neighbor had already called to let me know that he was a victim of the carnage as well so the boys and I headed down there to clean it up. 

Neighbor one to the west has also been a victim multiple times of cows and sheep straying onto their nicely mowed lawn and leaving piles of bulk fertilizer.  At one point sheep got into their garage and ate newly purchased flowers and dog food.  A gift certificate to a nearby greenhouse was in order there.

Good fences would have prevented all of this heartache and aggravation for us and our neighbor.

We recently approached a full year since our animals' last incursion onto their property.  We were tempted to send them an anniversary card but, shortly before the one year was up we got a call.  A couple of our lambs had managed to sneek through somewhere.  Since the lambs were bottle fed the neighbor walked up to them, picked them up and dropped them over the fence.  When it happened a second time I got the call.  I told him about the anniversary card and, thankfully, he found that humorous.  I couldn't find the spot that the lambs snuck through so I we just didn't use that paddock for a while.  They must have grown too big to get through because we've used the paddock again and nobody has escaped.

Another neighbor gave an earful over the phone to Lorraine one day because of the dog in the road chasing cars.  We've had such a parade of dogs purchases and litters of puppies I can't even remember who the culprit was in that case.   Probably our Newfoundland, Daisy.  The final straw for that neighbor was coming so close to hitting the dog and feeling the need to swerve, almost going in the ditch with a child in her vehicle.  Once again, our failure to contain and control our animals was our fault and they were fully justified to let us know that our dogs trying to herd their vehicles was problematic. 

Good fences would have solved this problem.

More recently, I awoke one morning to hear the sound of sheep outside our bedroom window.  That's a sound we don't want to hear since the sheep aren't supposed to be in our yard.  In this case I'd had them in what I thought was a secure pasture.  They'd recently escaped from there and I thought I'd figured out where and had "fixed" it.  I rounded the sheep up (this is right before I'm supposed to be heading out to work for the day).  They went back into the same paddock they'd escaped from.  I was walking part of the fence to make sure there weren't other holes in the fence when I heard the sheep "talking."  When one finds a gap they must feel inclined to share the good news with the other sheep.  I turned to see the source of the noise.  They were headed to a spot in the fence like they were going to get out.  I ran over there and, sure enough, there was a gaping hole in what I thought was woven wire in good shape.  The hole was big enough for a sheep to walk through standing up.  Usually, at least they have to expend a little effort going under or over part of a fence.  This hole was low to the ground and in a shadowy area so I'd missed it.  Twice.  I quickly repaired it with wire and rounded up the sheep that had just escaped again.  Even later for work.

What I didn't know when I'd herded them out of my front yard was that they'd already spent some time in my neighbor's garden.  This is a neighbor that is right across a driveway that we share.  Now, this wasn't the first time that I've found my sheep in my yard, or even their's.  But this was the first time they told me that the sheep had damaged their garden.  Apparently they'd been there awhile before I woke up because they told me the damage was extensive.  They're now not talking to us which is not a good thing.  These are good people.  They deserve much better.

So now, as I've reflected on "Mending Fences" a bit, I'm inspired to be a better neighbor and focus more time and effort on my fences.  The bad news is that kids (and even adults) sometimes don't latch gates.  Sometimes the weather is cruel and damages fences.  Sometimes age creeps up and the fences just plain fail over time but don't declare their fatigue out loud.  But I know I don't want my neighbors having a reason to be upset with us.  I also don't want my own animals eating our own raspberries and other veggie which they are wont to do on their way to annoying my neighbors. 

If Mr. Frost were still alive today and I were to meet him, I would assure him that, in fact, good fences would certainly contribute to being good neighbors.  In his absence, we'll continue to work towards repairing the relationships with our neighbors.

Hell hath no fury like...

You thought I was going to say, "a woman scorned."  While certainly true, I had a llama feeling a bit scorned yesterday and there was some fury involved that came a close second.  The picture above includes the one year old (white) and the two year old (white and brown).  The "scorned" llama is not pictured here.

Periodically (about every 3-4 weeks) we have to worm our sheep (I'll get to the scorned llama later). Wet weather is a fertile breeding ground for intestinal parasites that can have devastating affects on sheep.  They'll look fine in the morning and you can go out in the afternoon and find one or more dead or dying.  These parasites infect their guts and, at the risk of being a bit gory, suck the blood through their intestinal walls.  That can leave the sheep anemic to the point that they collapse and die.  In order to prevent this we take certain measures to reduce the impact of the parasites.

In a perfect world we would have about a dozen smaller paddocks to graze the livestock in.  By resting the paddocks after grazing, the parasite load is reduced.  It's further reduced by sunshine and a lot less rain than we had in June.  But the weather is something we can't control.

Lacking enough fenced paddocks with access to water our livestock end up grazing the same areas for too long. The parasites they consume lay eggs which they pass out in their manure.  Those parasites hatch, climb up blades of grass and are consumed by the livestock.  The cycle continues.

Since we don't have enough paddocks that means our sheep are getting reinfected by parasites.  In order to control these we have to treat them to kill they parasites in their system.  That can be accompished using garlic and diatemaceous earth for lighter parasite loads.  We much prefer that approach since it doesn't rely upon chemical wormers.  Unfortunately, we're just not there yet from a fencing standpoint.  As a result, we use a chemical wormer.  It's a purple liquid that gets "drenched," or poured down their throats.  I use a little device that looks like an oversized syringe that has a metal tube that gets inserted between the teeth and gums of the sheep.  The syringe holds 4-5 doses which are measured by the weight of the animal being treated. 

I generally procrastinate the worming event since I'm pretty worn out (not to mention cranky) by the time we're done.  It requires rounding up the 50 or so ewes and lambs and getting them herded into a single stall.  That's sometimes an adventure in itself since they don't all want to squeeze into that small stall  If I were a "smart farmer" (see my post about the frickn' cow) I'd have a nice chute system with a head gate to handle the animals.  Since that takes money for one of those set ups we make do with what we have and that means putting them into a stall.  Having them crammed in there actually makes it a bit easier to manage them since they can't run away.  One of the boys grabs a sheep and brings it over by the gate where we check their eyes for anemia. 

There's a particular parasite called Humuncous which causes anemia.  We have a neat little laminated card that has pictures of five sheep eyes with various shades of pink ranging from almost red down to white.  We assign a score based upon the color of the sheep's eyes.  A 1 is the best and a 5 means you're lucky they're still alive for you to treat them.  We had a lot of 4's and 5's yesterday but we weren't too surprised.  We hadn't treated them in over four weeks and the rainy weather means a higher than average amount of parasites lurking in the pastures to be consumed by the sheep.

We proceeded to check all 50 ewes/lambs and treated probably 60% of them.  With proper pature management we could probably reduce that level to below 25%.  What's really amazing is that we have a very small number of sheep that we never need to treat.  They are naturally parasite resistant which is a desirable genetic trait that can be passed on to subsequent generations.

Those that get treated can still have some serious side affects.  One of them is their blood chemistry getting very alkalyn as the parasites die off.  We learned a neat little trick a couple of years ago that we believe brought one of our best rams back from the brink of death.  We treated him with raw apple cider vinegar.  That simple ingrediate helped to neutralize his ph sufficiently that he actually recovered fairly quickly.

Anyway, after we completed treating the ewes and lambs it was on to the llamas.  Now we get to the "hell hath no fury"part.  But, first, a little explanation about the difference between sheep parasites and llama parasites, at least as far as our flock goes.  Our primary concern with the llamas is something called meningeal parasites.  These little varmints are dropped into the pasture by deer passing through our property.  Interestingly, llamas can't pass these on to other llamas.  They can only get them by eating pasture that's been exposed to deer droppings where the parasite eggs hatch and latch on to blades of grass.

Once consumed these little buggers move their way through the llamas system and deposit themselves in the spinal column.  They then begin to grow and cause nerve damage.  Eventually that leads to partial or complete paralysis.  Unfortunately we learned about these the hard way when we lost one of our llamas to them this past winter.  She got to the point that she could no longer stand and could only sit up if we propped her up.  She still ate but lost weight.  It got to the point where it was necessary to euthanize her.  That was heartbreaking.

In order to prevent the ravages of this parasite we treat the llamas with an injectable wormer call Ivomec.  In order to inject  this you have to hold the llama still enough for someone to slide the needle under the skin just behind a foreleg.  Easier said than done.

With some effort and the help of Seth and Spencer who combined are outweighed by two of the four llamas, we got them done.  The first two were a two year old and a one year old.  Small, but still pretty spunky.  The third was our adult male and the largest of the four, weighing in at well over 200#.  He was probably the easisest of the four ironically.

Now, this is really where the "hell hath no fury" part of the story comes in.  Our fourth patient is a female who is the alpha of the four.  She's about 50# less that the big male, but she has a real attitude.  When a llama get's annoyed enough they spit.  It starts with a sound sort of like a phlegmatic clearing it's throat.  Then you hear the hiss of the spit.  If you're lucky it misses you.  If you're not so lucky, you're sprayed with a gooey mist of partially digested green stuff. 

We managed to grab the female llama.  Seth and Spencer held her but her ears went back and the throat clearing commenced.  The ears going back are the first clue you're about to get sprayed.  The throat clearing just confirms it.  Not unlike that signficant other in your life when she's "spittin' mad."

I bent over for the injection when I heard the first of the spits.  Fortunately, (for me anyway) her target was the boys.  I felt the air from one spit go by my arm but the contents missed me.  Seth is yelling,"yuk, that's disgusting," but I couldn't tell at that point what he was referring to.  While Spencer was spared, Seth caught a shoulder full of the green stuff but dodged the others.  I quickly finished the injection and they turned her loose still trailing the rope around her neck which quickly came loose and dropped to the ground. 

Can't wait until thet last week of July to do it all over again.   This was our first time injecting the llamas.  They're pretty smart animals, so it may be the last.