Old Dogs And New Tricks

[sheepdog 10]

Last week I added another skill to my long list of animal husbandry talents. I learned how to ear tag goats. I have had dairy goats for many years, but they all have unique colors and all look different, but since we are now crossing them all back with Boer goats, many of the kids are starting to all look just alike and I can't tell any difference in them. Heck, when I had just dairy goats I had them all named and new each one personally, since I hand milked them all. That of course, is not the case the the Boer goats. So I figured it was time to identify them so I can keep better track of their age, production, etc. I thought about tattoing, which I am very familiar with, but the only way to read an ear tatto in a goat is to catch the critter, wrestle it to the ground and try to hold it still enough to read the dang number in it's ear. Not an easy task at all. With the ear tags I can see the numbers from a pretty fair distance away. Luckily, I had to make a trip to my vet's last week for a puppy health certificate, and since he has long been not just a vet but a sheep farmer too, I got some good tips from him before I took the plunge. It's not really all that hard to do, but it is rather tricky getting the tags in just right so they are turned the right way so you can read them, and they have to be located up high on the ear so they don't catch in thing that goats are always sticking their head threw. My tagging job was somewhat complicated, as I have goats with both pendulous ears and upright ears. The goats with big down ears have to have the number on the outside of the ear, since it hangs down and that is the part you see, but the up eared goats have to have the number facing out from the inside of their ears so the number faces towards you when you are finished. Ear tags don't do much good if you can't read the numbers of course. I was a bit concerned about the ears bleeding, ears have big veins in them, and though it doesn't bother me in the least, my hired man who helps me can't stand the sight of blood. My vet assured me that he had done thousands of ear tags and had never bloodied one, and sure enough, I got threw all the tagging without a drop of blood being shed. Of course, the same could not be said for the casteration part of the job. I only ear tagged my doe kids, but we casterated all the buck kids, and wormed the entire herd. There were a few of the buck kids that had gotten too big to use banders on, so those I had to surgicly casterate. We just held off the bigger buck kids till the last thing we had to do. Hired man just had to look the other way while I did those. Poor guy was sure gritting his teeth. Though there is the possibility that it had something to do with something other than the sight of blood.......We finally got threw my whole herd, and when we were done we loaded them all up, Komondor dogs and all, in my old horse trailer and drove them across the yard, instead of driving them like we normally do. I was just afraid there would be a few split away from the herd going across the yard and ravish my flowers and trees before we could stop them. The only sad news about the days work was that only 2 days after moving the goats, and their protectors, my Komondor dogs, my favorite hen, one of a pair of Cuck coo Morans that I had bought a few months ago, got killed by a opposum or some such varmit. I can't believe they moved in that quick after the kom's were no longer here to protect the place. I was really upset over that one. They are rather rare chickens, and I have been trying to get a good start in them, I have several chicks from her that I hatched out this summer in the incubater, but with my luck the majority of them will be roosters. They are a really nice chicken, they lay HUGE DARK brown eggs, and are prety good productive layers. I borrowed a live trap from my vet, but so far haven't caught anything in it. The live trap is not to spare the life of the critter, I'll shoot the damn thing right in the trap if I catch it, but this way if I accidentally catch something else, like one of my other chickens, I can turn it loose. I am really starting to get disgusted with wildlife. After loosing all our apples to those damn squirrels, and now my favorite hen. And by the way, we finally did kill 2 of those things, but there is a grand total of ONE apple left on our tree.