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We hit the county fair this last weekend and I petted ALL OF THE JACOBSES! Also, many of the goats, because they're rad.
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Aug 6, 2015 23:15
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Tendai posted:When I initially read that, I read "the baby Major and Ginger had" and got sort of What are you going to do with a farm if not indulge in a little mad science? 
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Aug 7, 2015 03:53
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Yup. Your threads are still my favorites. Until I get my dairy goats, I will live vicariously through your amazing fiber animal adventures.
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Aug 7, 2015 06:56
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Thank you, Jellyfish!! Great pics as ever, really glad to see everyone doing so well. Welcome home, Thistle???
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Aug 7, 2015 16:39
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Hey, fellow goat keepers, anyone ever have a dried off goat suddenly get full blown mastitis? One of Cinderella's teats has suddenly bagged up and is lousy with inflammation. I'm just starting the massage and milking it out, it's behaving like normal mastitis, but it's super weird. We dried her off almost 3 months ago when her baby weaned, we were way too busy with Summer Camp to do mad milk science, and she was already petering off anyway. Three weeks ago I checked under there while doing hooves, and she was totally dry. Cinders is fine otherwise, just trying to beat the heat and keep dry, same as the other goats in our swamp. She's got her baby with her still, but Mal's fully weaned. She's not happy about the new goats that are in with her, a 5some of two does and their kids we rescued, but they don't fight. I hope she's going to be okay, she's one of the stars of the farm.
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Aug 9, 2015 18:24
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Is she one of the CAE positive does? I've heard they are more likely to have mastitis even when dry because of the virus' impact on the immune system. I've also heard of it happening in heavy milking line and in does with hormonal issues. Hopefully it clears up ok for you!
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Aug 9, 2015 18:41
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I made lychee marshmallows and decided to be nice and share with the goat boys. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Ynvj-VDUQ
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Aug 10, 2015 15:13
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Instant Jellyfish posted:Is she one of the CAE positive does? I've heard they are more likely to have mastitis even when dry because of the virus' impact on the immune system. I've also heard of it happening in heavy milking line and in does with hormonal issues. She's not, at least that we know of. See, my boss elected to test only the parts of the herd displaying CL symptoms. It is not how I would do things, but we're on a shoestring budget. Is it feasable to do your own blood draws and send it to the lab for testing yourself? We love our vet, but she's always super-duper busy and it can take awhile for her to get out to us, as well as not cheap. Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Aug 10, 2015 15:14
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Yes! It's actually really easy and pretty affordable. I use biotracking but WADDL is a popular option too. There is one lab that is notorious for giving false negatives/positives so stick with the more popular labs. Here's blood draw instructions. It's not too hard once you get the hang of it. You just need red top tubes, syringes and needles. Let me know if you have trouble finding/affording tubes. My vet just gave me a bunch when I asked for some. I think I paid $5 per goat for CAE testing last year.
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Aug 10, 2015 15:27
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Instant Jellyfish posted:I made lychee marshmallows and decided to be nice and share with the goat boys. Interesting looking goat at the end there.
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Aug 10, 2015 16:27
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He eats grass and has intestinal worms like a goat 
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Aug 10, 2015 18:34
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Huh. Goats headbutting in competition for food. "My marshmallow!" wham
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Aug 10, 2015 18:34
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Thank you for sharing that video! The critters are all so adorable!
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Aug 11, 2015 01:04
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Instant Jellyfish posted:Yes! It's actually really easy and pretty affordable. I use biotracking but WADDL is a popular option too. There is one lab that is notorious for giving false negatives/positives so stick with the more popular labs. That's awesome info, thanks. We can get the tubes pretty easy, Amazon has packs of them for just 35ish bux. We're not THAT hard up, it's stuff like two grand for all the gravel and sand we need is an unwelcome expense we're really trying to get offset by donations. We've got a few good leads on that, though! Hopefully by November it'll get acquired. In sad goat news, Clark / Superman, our little rescue buck, passed away. Unfortunately, he was found by the campers. Everyone's heartbroken, Clark was a favorite. He was super calm and didn't mind being pet or approached. The kids are organizing a funeral. I mean, it is a farm, animals die. I suppose it's a better way to learn about and experience death then grandma or a parent passing away. They're all pretty sad but understanding of the situation, no one's scarred for life or anything. We're confused as well, because there was nothing wrong with him. He'd had a little diarhea, but we were treating for that and he was drying up. Eating and drinking fine. AGH. In better news, for anyone near Jacksonville, y'all can come out to our great Hug A Farm Animal Day event and see the animals! We'll be handing out fliers at a bunch of places. Gruff, our hosed up mascot, won the HuAFAD Popularity Contest last year, so he's headlining here. 
Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Aug 13, 2015 |
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Aug 13, 2015 00:32
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This year has been bad for worms in my area and people have been losing lambs seemingly overnight, usually to barberpole. If you lose more or are having more cases of scouring you should have a fecal run. If your vet is super expensive for that (mine is like $40, yikes) there's a place online you can have it done for $5 a sample. You just have to keep it chilled (I send it with a frozen sponge priority shipping) or else the worms grow too much in transit. I have the stuff to do fecals myself but I never have the time so I always just mail it off. Death on the farm is always sad but its an important lesson for the kids  Hopefully Hug A Farm Animal Day is much happier for you!
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Aug 13, 2015 01:41
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I would without any irony or sarcastic rear end in a top hat-ness go to Hug A Farm Animal Day and hug the poo poo out of some goots/ships/etc. I'd probably wake up early in the morning like I used to when I was 4 or 5 and the fire station would do an open house.
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Aug 13, 2015 02:52
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Instant Jellyfish posted:This year has been bad for worms in my area and people have been losing lambs seemingly overnight, usually to barberpole. If you lose more or are having more cases of scouring you should have a fecal run. If your vet is super expensive for that (mine is like $40, yikes) there's a place online you can have it done for $5 a sample. You just have to keep it chilled (I send it with a frozen sponge priority shipping) or else the worms grow too much in transit. I have the stuff to do fecals myself but I never have the time so I always just mail it off. Yeah we're getting the vet out anyway soon if Cinder's mastitis does not clear up. We really really like Cinderella, she's been around since they bought the property. We also have a microscope... somewhere, and could probably do the fecals ourselves.
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Aug 13, 2015 03:48
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It was a sad, sad week here. Fall is coming on faster than I'd like to think about so babby rams needed to be weaned and sent to live with the big boys before they started getting ideas about their moms and sisters. Even though they are all 3-4 months old and most of the moms are really over nursing them, the boys are acting like its the end of the world. I also re-castrated a few of the boys with the new ritchey nippers I splurged on because my old burdizzos were a huge pain to use and ended up missing testicles. All the babies got ear tags too because I forgot to do them earlier. The tags have an official USDA number that link them back to my farm and an individual farm id number that tells me what year they were born, who their sire was, and what number baby they were for the year. So the big white romeldale is 15G01 because it's 2015, his dad is Goliath and he was the very first lamb born here. Also each breed has a different color so the romeldales are fuchsia, the cormos are powder blue and the jacobs are green. The goats get tattooed instead of tagged because they are constantly getting their heads through things and tear tags out too easily. Boys get left ear tags, girls get right ear tags. I actually know all my sheep personally by sight and don't really need tags for id but it's good if I'm selling them or if someone else needs to handle my sheep for whatever reason.    I'm also trying to plan breeding groups and when I'm getting that started. I've been reading weather predictions and they're saying this el nino is going to cause the winter to be relatively warm and not have much snow so I might want to gamble on having lambs early, starting the beginning of march instead of mid-march to early april. Decisions, decisions. Finally, have a video of sad, sad lambs and their dumb teen boy voices. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQceTekicz8
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Aug 15, 2015 17:01
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Oh my god, who is that screaming like a hoarse human baby??
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Aug 16, 2015 01:38
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Instant Jellyfish posted:This year has been bad for worms in my area and people have been losing lambs seemingly overnight, usually to barberpole. If you lose more or are having more cases of scouring you should have a fecal run. If your vet is super expensive for that (mine is like $40, yikes) there's a place online you can have it done for $5 a sample. You just have to keep it chilled (I send it with a frozen sponge priority shipping) or else the worms grow too much in transit. I have the stuff to do fecals myself but I never have the time so I always just mail it off. Yeah, haemonchus would be my main differential too. Some kids are more susceptible than others....there is a genetic predisposition. Bummer.
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Aug 16, 2015 02:09
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Instant Jellyfish posted:It was a sad, sad week here. Fall is coming on faster than I'd like to think about so babby rams needed to be weaned and sent to live with the big boys before they started getting ideas about their moms and sisters. Even though they are all 3-4 months old and most of the moms are really over nursing them, the boys are acting like its the end of the world. I also re-castrated a few of the boys with the new ritchey nippers I splurged on because my old burdizzos were a huge pain to use and ended up missing testicles. Alright, I admit it...I watched this video five times The plaintive wailing was endearing and hilarious! The goat at the end of the video looking in that direction was funny! Thank you for sharing your critters with us!
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Aug 16, 2015 03:28
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I'm still hung up on the fact that $40 for a fecal test is considered expensive.  My cat had diarrhea last week and the fecal test was $200. Completely jealous! Instant Jellyfish posted:They've all been perfectly well behaved here where they learned real quick that yelling doesn't get you anything and you should probably just shut up and graze. What's going on with those horns?
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Aug 16, 2015 03:54
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Pile of Kittens posted:Oh my god, who is that screaming like a hoarse human baby?? One of the cormo boys. They keep that awful screech-y scream for like 2 years until their voice changes. It cracks me up. LoreOfSerpents posted:I'm still hung up on the fact that $40 for a fecal test is considered expensive. Everything for meat animals is crazy cheap compared to pet animals/horses/alpacas. I'm not sure if I mentioned it here but in july Ginger nearly died of listeria. It took over a week of antibiotic injections every 6 hours before she could even stand again. It was really hard on both me and her but she made it through. I was telling my dog's vet about it because she has goats too and she said when one of her goats had listeria she couldn't deal with that level of care and just dumped it off at OSU vet school for them to deal with and it was only like $250 for a week of intensive care. I spent more than that on my dog's visit that day and he just ended up having worms and needed some probiotics and fenbendazole (both of which I had at home for livestock actually). Other prices that non-livestock people are shocked by: yearly vaccines (otc): $1 a dose otc antibiotics: $20 for 500 ml sheep shearing: $5-7 per sheep, + $2 per animal if you want their hooves trimmed too surgical ram castration: $25 + the $75 farm call fee 50 lbs of feed: $12-14 50 lb bale of 1st cut mixed grass hay: $4.50 Sheep people won't spend a penny on anything they don't have to. Ol' dickhorn had a horn break when he was younger. The thicker part on top used to be the base of his old horn and now it's the tip of his new horn. It looks like a dick.
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Aug 16, 2015 15:33
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Hey, does anyone use FAMACHA? Do you have a spare card lying around I could buy off of y'all? My extension office AND my vet don't have them. I will send you nice smelling goat milk soaps as well. Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 02:11
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I don't think I've ever met anyone who actually has the card. I just pull up the picture on my phone if there's an eyelid I'm not sure about but the more you look at the more you recognize what is normal and healthy and what is too pale. Remember that FAMACHA is only a measure for blood sucking worms (primarily barberpole/Haemonchus contortus) and doesn't take into account other parasites that could be harming your animals that might only show up on fecals. Also some animals are just naturally paler than others. I don't think I've ever seen a jacob with a really dark "1" eyelid color but their fecals consistently have very low egg counts so I don't worry about them.
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Aug 19, 2015 16:04
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It's nice to have as a reference though. Have some frolicing goats I vectored today. We're making t-shirts! 
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Aug 21, 2015 02:01
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How goes everything with the fuzzybutts? Did the boys ever stop crying?
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Aug 28, 2015 20:35
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Asiina posted:How goes everything with the fuzzybutts?
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Aug 30, 2015 07:43
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Tendai posted:We need pictures or I might die Oh geez, it has finally stopped raining so I will do my best. Mostly I have been slowly starting to prepare for breeding season and winter. Planning breeding groups, cleaning up the barn, getting ready to put up 425 bales of hay in a few weeks, and making sure everyone is as healthy as they can be. We only got about inch of rain total in August so I've been having to keep everyone moving to different pastures to keep it from looking like the dust bowl around here. It's finally cooled off down to the 60s and rained a bit in the past week but it's supposed to be hot and sunny this week. Fall seems to be coming quickly though and soon I'll have hay again and won't have to be so worried about what the grass looks like. Here's a fun ad for you to ponder while I get some sheep pictures. Icelandic people seem to be confused about sheep reproduction.  Edit: Yes, the boys have mostly stopped crying except for a few moments of sadness when their moms walk past their field to come in at night.
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Aug 30, 2015 16:01
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LOL I think I got it, the last item listed on that poster ahahahahaha!
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Aug 30, 2015 16:35
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Alright most of the girls were in for their mid-day siesta but the boys were fairly cooperative. Rexy Rex who hasn't gotten himself all crusty yet. I'll give it a month before he's completely covered in pee.  Heath and his dumb scraggly beard.  Love this little dude! I might ignore his missing eyepatch and the fact that he's teeny a give him a couple girls this fall.  Goliath always impresses me with how huge and fat he is. He has not seen a bit of grain in ages but he knows his job is turning grass into meat and he takes it very seriously. He's the first one out in the morning, the last one to bed at night and is out grazing no matter what the weather.  I don't know where this dude's horns came from. Silly cormo, you're supposed to be polled.  Aster's girl who didn't want to go all the way back to the barn to nap.  One of Jazz's girls. She's so fluffy!  The boys like to organize themselves sometimes.  Aster's boy. He's pretty handsome with those nice wide horns.  No one compares to Mini Twofer thought. Seriously love him! 
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Aug 30, 2015 17:40
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Thank you for the new pictures IJ! They all look just fabulous. Rex and Health, WOW! I don't think I've seen them 'before' they do the scent stuff! Thank you for sharing! 
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Aug 30, 2015 19:00
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They are seriously adorable. I like how regal Aster's girl looks in her little shaded nap area.
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Aug 30, 2015 19:44
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Instant Jellyfish posted:Love this little dude! I might ignore his missing eyepatch and the fact that he's teeny a give him a couple girls this fall. He makes worshipping the devil not just practical, but also adorable.
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Aug 30, 2015 19:57
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PSA for Jellyfish: 
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Sep 4, 2015 19:52
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No need to worry, though - the sheep was sheared (89 lbs of fleece!)!
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Sep 5, 2015 01:43
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Ugh it's so wetttttt. We dug ditches on Saturday, ordering in gravel, sand, and leech pipe tomorrow. Gotta get it dried up for Hug A Farm Animal Day. Also trying to run a fundraiser to get funds for said sand, gravel, and leech pipe. We got a new mini goat and sheep though. Bob is a Khatadin, and a giant sweetie.  HillyBilly is a Nigerian Dwarf wether, and getting along great with the other Minis. Ignore Horace trying to make sexyface in the background there, they had just met and Horace is a bit of a freak.  Not gonna plug the fundraiser here, as that's probably rude, but feel free to check out my tumblr for more rescued farm animal pics and news if y'all want. http://cepheuscapricorn.tumblr.com/, and our farm facebook at http://www.facebook.com/CelestialFarms Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Sep 7, 2015 |
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Sep 7, 2015 17:56
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Ahh! I love Katahdin sheep! We have them at the farm here on campus and they're so sweet.
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Sep 7, 2015 22:51
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On the tee vee with a goat LINKS BROKE NEXT PAGE PLZ Had a fun time! Dolly was great, except for when she pissed on the couch. Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Sep 13, 2015 |
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Sep 11, 2015 22:49
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Suspect Bucket posted:On the tee vee with a goat Links don't work.
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Sep 12, 2015 15:06
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