Our journal of what we pray is our sojourn of life along the narrow way, even the old paths, submitting to the Bible as a light unto both.
Once again, the Lord graciously granted new kids to be born to one of our goats Betsy, who’s full Nubian; and with our full Nubian billy Shatner, the kids are full Nubian as well.
And here they are: please meet Rhett (on the right) and Scarlett (on the left):
Here is some live-action resting 🙂 . And actually, as of this video, we had 15 goats:
We are again very grateful to God for allowing us these provisions, and pray these kids become productive members of the herd.
— David
A few months ago we did a blog post about our goat kids graduation, where we put all the does with the bucks we had planned for them, the first generation offspring does to be with a buck for the first time. Well, a couple of days ago, the Lord graciously granted our first second generation kid, a buck, to our Nubian doe Marie. His sire was Eastwood, who I recently mentioned had died during the winter. But, he apparently helped bring along Marie’s first kid; and in honor of him, we’re calling the new kid “Woodrow.”
He has his father’s colors; and he sure seemed large for a new-born; but I have a feeling we’re used to twins and triplets, who probably end up a little smaller than a single kid might, although I can’t be sure. It appears he’s doing pretty well:
Here he is in action. The whining goat in the background is Pammy, who recently gave birth as well:
We are thankful once again to God for His graces and mercies in granting this healthy new provision to us.
— David
I was looking out our camper this last week into one of our fields, and saw something black behind one of the cows. I wondered what it was (and thought maybe it was a plastic bag…or maybe even a new calf!). Sue and I slowly made our way toward it, still trying to make out what it was that was behind her. Well, we got within 30 feet or so, and finally realized indeed it was a new calf, and that the cow was Rosa, one of ours. We hadn’t noticed Rosa showing signs of immanently giving birth, but there it was.
And so, after discovering it to be a little bull calf, and continuing with our Spanish naming convention, Sue was looking in Spanish for things black, and looked up the word “crow.” And with that, we decided to name him Cuervo:
Here are a couple of pictures:
And a video:
The larger bull we show in the video was not the sire, even though he has the same colorings. We think one of the other younger bulls, which has black and white colorings, and is penned away elsewhere right now, but happened to get out for a few days some time ago (9 months perhaps?) might have gotten to Rosa; although there was another bull, a grullo (grey) one, running with the herd at the time, but he would have had to have gotten to Rosa right around the time he was removed from the herd; and even then, Rosa was a few days late in delivering beyond that. At any rate, I guess we’ll have to see how Cuervo’s colors end up, although evidence is pointing to the younger black and white bull.
Also, even though in the video he isn’t doing much, and he typically doesn’t move around a lot during the warmer days that have been occurring lately; but at night, he’s literally running circles around his mother.
We are thankful to the Lord for granting this provision of the calf, and we pray for God’s continued guidance with the animals.
— David
For our breeding scheme this year, we previously discussed our separating out our older does to be with our main buck Shatner, and the younger does, his female offspring, to be with Eastwood, a goat we traded one of our triplet bucks for. Well, there have been a couple of updates: first, Eastwood died during the Winter; so we borrowed a buck from our neighbor. He’s apparently pure Spanish, and we call him John Buck (think what you might call an unknown female goat 🙂 ) :
We had put the bucks with our does in the beginning of November so they would give birth no earlier than April, where they should be mostly out of the cold. Well, Sue was out near the goats the other day, and she heard a very young sounding bleat. Umm…huh? She went to see what was going on, and lo and behold, our doe Pammy had given birth to twins! While quite surprising, we were both very thankful to find out God had granted us two new goats — a male and a female. We decided to call them George and Gracie, and here is your introduction to them:
And here is a video:
As I briefly mentioned in the video, last year, when Winnie had her triplet bucks, the middle one, Porthos, seemed to often have physical problems, from pink eye to swollen front knees. And he was smaller than his brothers, and so we kept him with Winnie much longer than we did the others, so he could continue to have her milk. Well, apparently we kept him in too long, as nearest we can figure, he is the father of the new kids. Porthos has grown up to be about as big has his younger brother now, and seems to have also matured normally. 🙂 Even though this is a possible situation of some in-breeding, which we were trying to avoid, since it’s Pammy it’s not too bad as the worst Porthos might be is Pammy’s nephew; with Betsy, she’s of a whole different line, so if Porthos got to her as well, it’s fine. However, he may have gotten to his mom, Winnie; we’re hoping not, but I guess we’ll have to see what happens. And now we know better for the future.
We are grateful for the Lord, in His graces and mercies, granting us these new provisions; and we pray that He might grant they be productive members of the herd, according to His will.
— David
This is a follow up to the first post on the procedure we did on our chicken with peritonitis.
The week following the first two weekly procedures, her abdomen was filling up again; and she was starting to waddle and stand up straight. And so I went in with the needle, and pulled nearly 70cc of fluid again. This time though the hole didn’t leak anymore. I tried to extract some more with another needle insertion, but nothing came out.
She seemed not too bad after that; but over the next several days, she was still walking quite a bit upright; and on the third day after the procedure, she lost her appetite. It is my experience when chickens get like that, the end is soon. Regardless, I force-fed her some goat milk; and in the evening, she was eating some food scraps on the ground and chicken scratch from my hand, and even drinking the goat milk, all on her own. However, as I said, they’re usually in a bad way when they generally stop eating; and by the next morning she was dead. The Lord was merciful in allowing it finish quickly.
I’m not sure what happened: perhaps I punctured something internally in her; perhaps I introduced bacteria or otherwise during the procedure; perhaps her immunity was low and she caught something; perhaps none of those. I tried to be as antiseptic as possible during the drainings, but perhaps something still got by. (Please also see some of the comments about using an antibiotic/silver.)
It’s sometimes a little difficult when you try to care for something, and it doesn’t work out the way you had hoped, or worse, you worsen the situation. Also with this chicken, I used to be able to “talk” to her by making chicken sounds; and she would respond, which was fun to hear. And it is just an animal, but it’s also God’s provision. Still, it was her time according to His will, and we’re thankful she went quickly; for the allowing us the provision of her; and for what the Lord would teach us, spiritually as well as temporily.
Death — eternal, spiritual and temporal — are a result of sin, and my sin; and I try to be reminded of my sin when I’m around death. And that reminds me to plead the blood of Christ for His atonement as He is the only way of redemption from the wages of our sins.
May He continue to teach us, and we pray and are thankful for His guiding hand in our earthly pilgrimage.
— David
Recently, one of our hens started walking upright like a waddling penguin instead of the horizontal way chickens typically walk. I thought one of our chickens might have had something like this in the past; and so in this instance, I tried to do a little research on the Internet. I discovered that there is a condition called peritonitis, which in general is a swelling of the abdomen; and in chickens, it can be caused by a yolk missing the “funnel” (called the infundibulum) that “catches” them as they move from the ovary to the oviduct. They fall into the abdomen, which causes the peritonitis, and a build up of fluid in the area. Thus, the condition is called egg yoke peritonitis; and there are two kinds: sterile, where bacteria hasn’t developed in the swollen area, and the chicken still has an appetite and doesn’t die quickly; and septic, which is the opposite.
Besides our chicken not having a problem eating (which basically required that we lift food up to her), I examined her abdomen; and it was much like a water balloon; and so I suspected we had our diagnosis. Here are a couple of pictures showing her condition. At this point, she had one foot back and would sit on the other foot, and all she was able to do was slowly scoot around in a circle (we kept her isolated in our mini chicken tractor, to keep her from being picked on or hurt by the other chickens, which they will do to weak ones):
But then, with the problem identified, what to do about it. Some of the articles I read talked about draining the abdomen with a catheter, but that seemed pretty complex and involved. I did find a video though, which shows a person draining a chicken with peritonitis using just a needle.
It so happened that some friends of ours had just given us some large syringes and needles a few days before; and so, I decided to “operate.” The needle I chose to use was 1/2″ long and 1/16″ in outside diameter. Here is a photo summary of the procedure. I made very sure that everything, from the syringe, to the needle, to my hands, were as sterile as could be, including cleaning the syringe and wiping it with, bathing the needle in, and wiping my hands with rubbing alcohol.
Here I’m just getting her into position:
And then I flipped her onto her back:
I cut away the feathers around the area where I was planning to insert the needle:
And then I did so. I tried going at an angle parallel to the skin as much as possible to avoid puncturing her internal organs, but couldn’t seem to pull anything out with the syringe; so I found I needed to insert the needle at a steeper angle. Once I did, the fluid extracted pretty easily; and I was glad it was clear and didn’t have pus in it:
I pulled about 40ccs worth before stopping. One of the articles I read said to only pull half of the fluid out because the loss of too much could cause shock:
When we were done with the draining using the syringe, the hole continued to leak fluid; and over night, she lost quite a bit more. However, after it was all done, first, when I would pick her up, she was noticeably lighter than before; and second, she was able to bend over and eat and drink by herself somewhat, and was actually walking around. This went on for a few days, but her underbelly seemed to start to grow again. I decided to try the procedure again, and was able to pull out around 70cc. I tried going in again a couple more times, but couldn’t seem to find any more fluid — I tried keeping the needle at a flatter angle again, because there wasn’t nearly as much puffiness to her abdomen as before, and I believe I might not have been getting past the fat layer as it was basically impossible to extract anything out. However, I didn’t want to puncture any organs; and so I stopped; but it ended up that at least one of the needle holes continued to leak similarly to first time we drained her.
The next day she was doing much better, and was almost walking around like a normal chicken. Here is a video of her (the “other one [that] was only a still frame” that I mention refers to the fact that the “before” pictures were only still photos — the ones shown above):
A couple of days later, I took a pair of toe nail clippers and clipped the tip of her beak as it had started to grow past what looked to be normal as compared to the other chickens. My guess was that it had grown more since she hadn’t really been able to use her beak normally for some time.
I don’t know what will further happen with this situation, but it was neat to see her act like a chicken again and be able to “do chicken things.” It does seem that the liquid starts to collect in her abdomen again as the days go by, and perhaps we’ll have to continue to try draining it. However, we are thankful the Lord granted us this opportunity to learn about and care for the chickens, and that I didn’t apparently infect her myself when performing the procedure, nor poke her internal organs; and hopefully, if God is willing, she will once again become a productive member of the flock.
— David
(Please see our chicken peritonitis update for more information.)
So that they don’t have any kids until after most of Winter has past, we waited to put our bucks Shatner and Eastwood with their respective does until now, as the gestation period of goats is around five months.
And so, this past Lord’s Day was the time!
We put Shatner with Winnie, Betsy and Pammy (shown back to front):
And we put Eastwood with their daughters Minnie, Tapioca and Marie (shown left to right, with Eastwood between Minnie and Tappi). Any kids God graciously grants will be their first ones. They’ve now graduated into being a part of breeding process! (They grow up so fast! 🙂 :
And here are Aramis and Porthos (left and right), and Donny (center), which, with Shatner being gone, are now kings of their castle:
We pray the Lord perpetuates the herd, in accordance with His will and divine wisdom; and we thank Him for the opportunity and resources to be able to set apart the goats for breeding.
— David
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