My blog entry area here is all whacked out this morning for some reasons. The joys of rural country Internet I guess. I had photo's to share of all sorts of things, but I have no buttons whatsoever along the top here with which to add anything.

Maybe later today I can come back and put them in. For now, the story behind the subject line :o)

Our pigs are most obviously not bred. If they had, um, shall we say, 'met up with' the big strapping male on site the day we bought them, they would have had babies last week. As there are no babies in my barn, its time to butcher these beasts and be done with them. And no more pigs for this homestead. Well, not until we are much better prepared for them...with a concrete room or something.

These ladies have been a thorn in our side since we got them. Didn't want to load at all, wreaked havoc from day one here, played tug-o-war with some of my wayward hens, destroyed every feed bin, water trough, you name it...

...and then Sunday evening, they tore out of our fence. No idea what was on their minds, they were just suddenly in the yard and not the barn. Emily saw them first, calling them 'piggie dogs'. Yes, we will enlighten and correct her on that :o) Knowing that these ladies are just plain evil nasty creatures with a taste for blood, every child outside scattered like the wind. Jennifer loaded the 22 and off she went, I got with Dewey -- poor man, sitting in Arkansas, listening to what sounds like some frantic 911 call or something from us -- and found out for sure how to load that SKS. All I could see was dogs being chased and children bobbing about. I knew we weren't a good enough shot to do much more than irritate the ladies with a 22, although I'm assured now we could have handled them with it well enough.

Dewey called a couple friends from church and they headed over to help us...either load the pigs back into the barn somehow or shoot em where they were. Didn't make a difference to me either way. Here we were, guns loaded, moving around the barn with frantic dogs, frantic hogs and spooked children...5:30 on a Sunday night, dark enough to not be able to see diddly out behind the barn and off into the acreage at all, and do you think we had a flashlight? Of course not. A half a dozen DeWalt and Black & Decker batteries sitting here yet not one had been charged! The one light we found was about as promising as simply holding matches out there.

Yes, we had some rather stern and serious discussions about why those batteries need to be charged and ready at all times now.

We ran those stupid hogs everywhere. One minute they are running after one of the children who are screaming looking for shelter, the next, the hogs are chasing after the dogs trying to bite them. The dogs were trying to keep them wrangled near the barn at least...seems they aren't quite as useless and stupid as I thought. Our friends finally arrive and I'll be slapped silly if those blasted hogs didn't stand still and find contentment in eating the 5 gallon pail of corn we had been trying to entice them with the whole time. Between the two men, they shooed and sue-y'ed those ladies right back to the barn and rigged up their fence again. Just slick as could be.

Here we had a comedy of errors running amok on the homestead and they show up, seasoned farm wranglers, and it all proceed smooth as frog hair.

Yes, the wild "amish woman with the military rifle" was probably the topic of quite some discussion up at Dry Creek Monday. The old timers all sit around up there at the hole in the wall 2-pump gas station and grocery store. It's very Ike Godsey's General Merchandise up there on the mountain. When I passed to go to the feed store and get more corn, it was packed with 4-wheelers and trucks. I thought about stopping and getting something to drink, but I figured they could have a better conversation without the wild amish woman.

I suppose some prayer requests were sent up for us at church as well that night. City folk in the country and all that. LOL...yes, I imagine we will be talked about for a good week after all our escapades here. Guess that's part of living in the county like this. Everybody knows everything, and they all have their opinions as to why this or that happens to the outsiders :o)  And with all that went on here with those hogs, I imagine we are the current object lesson for the youngers as to why City and Country don't mix well and why you should be very selective in your marriage selection :o)

Do you doctor your animals?

I'm not necessarily talking about 'serious medical' sorts of things, but just day to day general stuff...maybe some chickens with plucked feathers or some pecking wounds or some such. 

There are some folks who don't take homesteading as serious as all that, and that's fine.  Personally, I believe that if we are going to set ourselves up to be homesteaders on any level and keep livestock or whatever kind, we really should be prepared to treat and tend all of their needs. 

To me, this all runs hand in hand with feeding them properly and regularly (which my children have issue with from time to time, especially with this onslaught of heat lately), making sure they have adequate housing (something else we still need to improve around this homestead), and at least basic medical needs met.

We have, over the years, doctored several animals of the homestead....we have 'defrosted' the feet of a great laying hen in the bathtub and kept her in a box in the bathroom for several days for the added heat.  Would it have been easier to just butcher her and be done with it?  Sure, I imagine it would have been, but she was a favorite layer of ours, and it certainly didn't do us any harm by taking some time to tend to her issues. 

We have, on the homestead now, a blind goat.  Not of much use rreally, but she is a sweet spirit and has grown to be a good friend to each of the children.  We got her when a friend was going to simply allow her to fend for herself -- this meant starving her as her mother would not nurse her -- because of all the kidds born that spring, she was the only one with issues.  She was barely 2 weeks old and had a bad case of pink-eye.  The thought it foolish and a waste of money and time to treat her -- a very simple thing to do, really, and hardly time-consuming in the least -- neither did they feel like wasting time in putting her down.  She would have been left to herself, ignored by the flock and left to go hungry until she died.

That is just cruel, imo.  I don't believe there is any excuse for that mentality at all.  If you are going to have animals, you are accepting the good and the bad alike.  There are culls in every crowd, certainly, but you don't just toss them out and wait on nature to take its course, as it were.  Be responsible.  Either man up and put the beast out of its misery, or out of your own...or take some time to tend them as best you know how. 

Would I have taken this goat to the vet?  No, I wouldn't have even considered it.  It's a goat.  She isn't registered, she isn't some pricey animal of the homestead and we don't have money invested in her future.  However, treatment was simple and it would either work or not.  In our case, she had been untreated her entire 2 weeks of life, and our treatment was too late to help.  She went totally blind despite the bottle of meds we doused her eye with.  She may not ever wander the full 20 acres out here, but she has fared very well, blind as a bat, nonetheless.  She knows when we are outside and she knows when its meal time.  She knows...she fans out those droopy ears like The Flying Nun   We probably won't breed her -- honestly, being blind her whole life, she'd probably freak out if we threw a buck in there with her.

Why the critter pondering today?  I don't know. Someone mentioned tending their animals on a list I get, and someone else commented on how they are 'just animals' and it's ridiculous to put money into 'just an animal' that may or may not make it.  It isn't that I disagree with that statement completely, but I do disagree on the level the commenter was taking.  You obviously have to weigh the cost...the price of the animal, the price of it's medical needs, the price of its future and so on.  But, there is just something deeper with the animals on a homestead vs some large farm operation or even household pets.  A chicken is cheap livestock (LOL...or cheep livestock as my son just giggled over my shoulder...) and in the long run, maybe it just isn't feasible to treat an injured bird from a cost point of view.  We have here, as I said above, but it was a good laying hen and a favorite of ours.  It didn't take money to treat her frozen feet.  Just a bit of our time and some space in our bathroom.  We didn't lose anything by trying to save her.

i don't know....I'm just mumbling out loud today while we gather some school needs.