Category: Goats

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Dogs and more dogs…and more

Dogs are an important part of our life here at Ancient Ponies Farm.  We arrived here with Oscar and Pumpkin, neither of whom are useful as farm dogs, though we love them dearly!  
Last May, Elka joined our family.  She’s now 7 1/2 months old and is starting her training as a herding dog.  In the video below you can see her first encounter with sheep.  She is showing some good instinct here, which hopefully we will develop over time….and with our soon to arrive sheep.  Yes, Maybelle, Oliva (Leicester Longhairs) and Mary Agnes (a Gotland- shown in picture) are being picked up, by Zoe and me, in two days time.  Since Jasmine, Jessica and Jade are all pregnant and due in the spring, likely with twins or triplet baby goats, we thought we’d wait to breed sheep until next year.

With all of the prey animals we are now responsible for (3 sheep, 3 pregnant goats, 15 chickens and 3 ducks), we’ve been thinking a lot about getting a guardian.  A fox already took one of our ducks in broad daylight while I watched.  We tried two lamas but they didn’t work out.

So meet Nel.  This photo is Nel at 4 weeks so you can imagine what she will ultimately look like.  She is a Maremma, which is an Italian dog, bred to guard livestock.  She will ultimately live in the barn with the animals and guard against fox and coyote.  As we are learning to train Elka for herding, we are also reading up on how to help a livestock guard dog be the best and happiest she can be.  She comes next week when she is 8 weeks old.  

She will look something like this:

 

 

 

 

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Little Jessica

Our little Jessica, one of the twin goat girls almost died the other night.  Oy Vey!  How distressing.  She ate some poisonous weed, we think deadly nightshade.  I got home from a ride and saw her in the stall with green slimy foam around her mouth.  She was clearly in pain, grinding her jaw and bleating plaintively.  Her ability to stand was wobbly.  We got advice to give her activated charcoal from Danny Botkin, the man we got the goats from.  Zoe was on her way home from his farm and stopped to get some.  In the meantime, I also called Rachel from Little White Goat Dairy.   I have gotten pasture maintenance advice from her husband, Bruce, in the past.  Rachel insisted on coming right over, bringing activated charcoal gel, syringes, milk of magnesian and goat electrolyte powder.  She drove all the way to Orange at the drop of a hat and then examined Jessica.  She had gotten worse.  We learned how to squirt the charcoal, milk of magnesia and electrolyte water down the left side of her mouth so it was less likely to go into her bronchial tubes.  The charcoal is meant to absorb the poison.  Milk of magnesia helps coat the stomach and push the poison through.  Zoe and I then drove to the Tractor Supply in Greenfield to buy our own supplies for her.  When we got home she was worse.  She could not stand up and was looking very out of it. Continue reading “Little Jessica”

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Baby Goats = Happiness

Okay so I introduced Charlotte and Nell on this blog, but then they didn’t work out.  They were born last November and, because of the cold winter, the owners did not go out to handle them.  The lack of contact with people made them quite feral, at best, uninterested in humans and, in actuality, afraid of humans.  They were constantly looking for ways to get away and escape.  Goats are smart, or at least clever, and they found ways – EVERY DAY – to escape the pasture.  Then they were so hard to herd back in.   At any rate, we gave them back to the original owners, wishing them a good life.

Enter Jasmine, Jade, and Jessica…

Jasmine is the nursing mom and Jade and Jessica are her babies.  The twin girls were five days old when we got them, and now they are about a month old.  We were going to rename them, but Danielle told her niece, Jessica, that we had a goat with her name, so we were stuck..and we’ve come to know them as Jasmine, Jade, and Jessica.  They come from a line of J names.  Aunts are Janice Joplin, Jonie (Mitchell), etc…When we breed them, we will have, of course, Joan and Josette, Jay (Mascis), Jennifer (Drinker), Jalopy, Jerry, Jupiter, Jinny, Juniper…

Jasmine, the mom, is a year old.  She was held as a baby by her owners, Danny Botkin and his wife, Divya.  She is so gentle, and she feels more secure when people are around than when she is alone.  Jade and Jessica are complete cuddle-buns.  As you can see.  We got them for friendship as well as for milk and pasture management.  They like to eat invasives like poison ivy and bittersweet, leaving the grass for the horses.  They have not tried to get out once as they feel more secure around their stall.

Several mornings a week, we go to Atkin’s Market in North Amherst to get their gone-by vegies for the goats.  They love all of it except cucumbers, parsnips, and chard.