I read this article to Lamont, our boar, recently. He seemed mildly interested, sort of like when you hear that kids are starving on the other side of the world. It’s touching but it’s not right in front of your nose so it doesn’t seem real. He then sauntered over to Penelope and continued his courtship, immediately forgetting the plight of “normal” pigs destined for our traditional food system.
Lucky for Lamont, I’m not getting that personal with Penelope. She’s already bitten me once, and tried more than once. The idea of trying AI with her just isn’t appealing for more than the normal reasons.
Penelope, with piglets made the old-fashioned way.
So as you’ve likely noticed by now, everyone routinely talked about on our farm has some sort of nick name. A big part of this is SWMBO (my wife) does not like the kids names used in a public domain. I used to think this was overprotective but now it just seems to be common sense. No sense making things easier to bad people. But back to the nicknames. My son is “Spork”, my older daughter is “The Princess”, and my youngest daughter is “Bok Bok”. The issue is that Bok Bok now needs a new name. But before I get into that, let me share some history.
For some reason nobody really questions Spork but for back story, he was named by my neighbor when Spork was doing something somewhat slowly and not quite right. He was a really little kid and was doing the best he could but certainly wasn’t moving at adult pace. Anyway the frustrated quote was, “I don’t know what you’re going to be, you’re not quite a spoon and you’re certainly not a fork. I think you’ll just be a spork the rest of your life.” It was a strange statement but it stuck. Now with men, your nickname is supposed to be not especially flattering. My neighbor, who is a man, was saddled with Alice. If you’re wondering about how all this nickname stuff works, there is an interesting article here at The Art of Manliness website. You’ll note that there is quite a bit in that article about how nicknames are not flattering, and complaining about them only gets you in trouble but since SWMBO nor Bok Bok have or will read the article, they don’t care. They want a new name for Bok Bok.
Now The Princess is easy. My first girl, my little princess. Every father with a girl has his little princess but my girl isn’t a princess with a little p, she’s a princess with a big P. You see I had to do some research for work on my genealogy and in doing so I found that our line goes a LONG ways back, back to Scotland and specifically back to Robert De Bruce. Yes, that Robert De Bruce from Braveheart. So it turns out we are distantly related to Scottish royalty which is pretty cool, and why my little princess is my little Princess.
Bok Bok was given a name because by that time everyone had a name. I really don’t know what made me land on this name but I do know where it came from. That’s a commercial from when I was a kid. No she wasn’t born on Easter and no she doesn’t especially like eggs, or bunnies, or chocolate, no more than any other kid. However, she and SWMBO have decided that they hate Bok Bok and they no longer want her called by that name. The issue is what is her new name. I planned on waiting till she earned her new name by some action but that time frame is apparently not acceptable so I’m turning to you, my friends, to help name this young lady. Per the folkways and mores of traditional man interaction noted in the article above, she should get something horrible as punishment for complaining but she is my little girl and I do love her so, so I’m letting her out of her punishment and hoping to find her a good name. We have some preliminary draft names already, none of which are clearly ahead in the polls. I’ll detail them below along with pictures of Bok Bok.
Sugar (cookie) The Princess has freckles, which we call her chocolate chips. Bok Bok doesn’t have freckles, making her a sugar cookie. Sugar is more of a term of endearment than a name to me.Wild Woman is a name that was suggested and it does fit. Bok Bok is loud and tough and full of energy. She’s solid and if kids are crying it’s better than 50/50 that somebody got hurt and Myla did the hurting. Usually not maliciously, just because she bumped into them while playing crazy.Bar Fly is one that popped up in conversation. Bok Bok went with us to a local restaurant when she was still a little toddler. We’d shipped the other two off to a babysitter and all we had for date night was what was then the baby. As soon as we got into the loud restaurant with loud music, Bok Bok started going crazy, dancing and doing a jig on the table even though she could barely walk. The music really seemed to energize her and she’s always enjoyed a party ever since.The subject of our attention today.
She’s rough and tumble, sweet towards animals, the baby of our brood, and she needs a new name. Any suggestions? We could sure use them.
Ok, it’s actually their second day but the first day the vacuum pump was locked up so we just brought Dottie in and gave her a trial run. Pictured above was our first successful day of milking, day 2. For those of you who may be wondering who the new people are, The Clarks have moved into the house previously occupied by the Goldbergs who have moved away to another town although they do make an appearance now and then. Bar-B-Jew was in attendance for our beer and BBQ fest.
The Clarks and Dottie, first day of milking.
It takes two to get our milker onto the cow, making milking a two person job. I’m sure there is something we are missing in the instructions, one of these days I’ll stop and figure it out.
Our first milk harvest of the new milking season.
Dottie yielded 1.5 gallons of milk. We only milk once per day and leave the rest of the milk for Dottie’s calf Lightning. We don’t have to worry about maximizing milk production since this is just for our use so 1.5 gallons is fine.
Processing the milk and getting it into the fridge.
Straining and bottling the milk, then into the fridge for a quick cool down. Tomorrow we’ll have real milk again for our cereal.
I’ve been getting up at 4am as we get back into milking. By weeks end I should be back to 5am like normal. So far things are going well. Hopefully things will run smooth this week and having fresh raw milk on the farm is just another normal thing in a week or so.
The Princess, post cake creation and prior to gobbling it up
Having The Princess bake an independence day cake is becoming a tradition at our house. Fluffy cake, whipped cream, and fruit stars and stripes all put together by her Highness. This is a tradition I can get behind!
Spork taking a well deserved break while Miguel loads the last pallet of watermelons
Every day we go to two farmer’s markets to collect all the fresh produce that they cannot sell due to damage. We collect about 2500 pounds per day by my rough guess. That’s 365 days a year or over 900,000 pounds of produce a year to feed our animals which is pretty much their only feed besides what already grows on the farm. Here we are loading on the 4th. Yes that is three pallets of watermelons. This doesn’t show the heaping full truck bed already loaded with other produce. The next day we put FOUR pallets on the trailer and still had the truck full. That was a personal best for me for one day. Cows LOVE watermelons, as do pigs, and chickens, and kids for that matter. The cows are starting to figure out how to break open watermelons and it’s funny to watch them chase the round melons around the pasture. While all the rest of us (animals both in the house and out) still love watermelon, SWMBO is getting a bit tired of watermelon juice covering her counters. Looks like its time to switch to peaches.
Feeding the cows a pallet of food. This is one of three that day.
This pallet was full of sweet corn husks, watermelons, squash, zucchini, and I don’t know what else. By the time the cows were done with it, it was just a pallet and some cardboard. By the end of the weekend, I noted that the cows were looking mighty portly. A few are showing some signs that they may need to be culled but the rest are looking fat and happy with slick coats and not a lot of signs of parasites. Right now #23, #14, and #3 (all brood cows) all look like candidates for culling, along with #28 and #40 (steers) who both had bloat but are doing better now.
Spork shooting his sister’s 22. He went through about 30 rounds and never missed!
The beauty of a longer weekend is even on the farm it’s not all work and no play. I took a little while to take SWMBO, The Princess, and Spork down to the shooting range to get in some practice. Spork was phenomenal, knocking down every target with boring regularity. Since he did so well, we decided to put him to work on our squirrel menace. Every year we have squirrels strip our fruit trees of all of our fruit before it has a chance to be harvested. With Spork doing so well in his shooting, it was time to introduce him to hunting. Between Spork, myself, and Alice, we accounted for 4 of the little fluffy tailed rats this weekend, with more to come.
The Princess trying her hand at shooting.
The gun is still just a bit big for the Princess but she stepped up there and took some shots. She was nervous at first but very excited after shooting. I believe we’ll have her back again this fall when the weather is nice. By then the gun should just about fit her.
Dad and The Princess off to process chickens.
This weekend we processed our 25 freedom ranger chickens. We process on farm and despite being able to sell these chickens pretty much anywhere we want with such a high demand, in the end we are simply going to put them in the freezer and eat them ourselves which was the original plan. There is a difference between home raised chickens and store-bought chickens and we have another 50 on the way for another batch. The Princess was everywhere for processing and did every single job on the line.
The Princess did every job at least once, but this job she did all of the chickens, all by herself.
You never know when catching chickens will be a skill you need to list on your resume.
Miguel using our new killing cone. Miguel made the cones and they worked perfectly.
A quick bleed and the worst part of the job is over. Nobody likes killing animals but these chickens lived a good life on our farm and never had a bad day till this day. I believe you should know where you food comes from and all chicken ends up on the plate somehow. These chickens went from their home to the cone, with no scary truck ride or meat factory in between.
The chicken plucker in action. This is a home made version of the whiz bang chicken plucker.
Note the blood on the face of The Princess. For a minute that morning she said she didn’t want to be around chicken processing, but then she reverted back to her old blood loving self and was in the middle of the fray. Playing with all the blood is her favorite part, unless you count identifying all the organs, which she is quite good at.
Did I mention she’s quite ok with blood?
She’ll probably grow up to be a vegan, but she’ll know where food comes from and how it gets to the plate.
An overview of the process.
Concrete floors, bleach for cleaning, and plenty of water to work with. A pretty good setup. We need to switch to food grade water hoses and tweak a few other things but overall the processing setup is working nicely.
The Princess’s chicken puppet.
When we couldn’t keep enough work for her to do, she reverted to pulling a whole chicken from the ice bath and plopping it on her hand then proceeding to run around acting out scenes with her “chicken puppet.” It was very cute, and quite twisted which at least for me and Miguel was funny. I’m sure someone would say that she’ll have emotional scars from seeing chickens killed or any of the other things she chooses to do on the farm. Folks, playing with a recently deceased chicken couldn’t be more normal. Scarring comes from having the world hidden from children and then they learn reality when they are adults.
Chicken on the counter, ready to be cooked.
For those of you who were put off by the previous images, this probably looks more familiar. Our chicken, grocery store ready, cut into traditional cuts and ready for SWMBO’s magic act of turning this chicken golden brown and yummy.
Fried chicken, straight off the farm.
This chicken was walking and clucking this morning, now it’s our dinner. Thanks to SWMBO’s efforts in the kitchen we sat down to a healthy and hearty meal. Yes it was as good as it looks.
SWMBO vacuum sealing our chickens, getting them ready for the freezer.
And don’t think she’s a one trick pony, just working in the kitchen. Here is SWMBO, still in her workout clothes after having worked out for two hours, bailing us out on the processing line by taking the quality control and packaging station. She saved us because we were getting backed up with not enough hands to do the work. Thanks Honey!
This was just a small part of our weekend. Yesterday evening Spork was excited telling SWMBO about what he and dad were going to do tomorrow. She had to break the news to him that dad had to go to work tomorrow, that he would have to wait for the next weekend to spend the day with dad again. Broke my heart to hear that I was letting him down for today but I guess that means he had a good 4th of July weekend. I know that I did.
Sam, having some private grazing in very lush grass before being loaded onto the trailer
Today was graduation day for Samuel. He was loaded up and took the 1 hour ride to Chadhrey’s in Siler City, NC. Before getting on the trailer I gave Sam some time unmolested to enjoy grazing this small paddock. This is a paddock where we used to feed hay in the winter and now serves as a holding paddock for when cows are run through the corral. Effectively nobody is ever in here and the grass grows very tall and lush. Sam was pretty happy to enjoy grazing the sweet grass tips unmolested by me or other cows competing for the juiciest bits.
After a good breakfast, Sam hopped right onto the trailer and we had an uneventful ride to Siler City. Sam is the son of Spunky, our old milk cow. When we purchased Spunky, she was already bred to one of Dr. Sydnor’s Red Devon bulls so Sam has always been a little different being here with all the Ninjas. However he grew to be a very fine-looking steer and should make excellent meat. Now we begin the 2 week wait for aging and packaging. Hopefully July 17th I’ll be heading to Siler City to pick up all of our meat and we’ll switch over from the porkapalooza we had all winter to beefapalooza all summer.
And in case you are wondering, this cow is destined for our family. The way they eat, I have to be in the cattle business!
#40, back in the head gate awaiting his shave and trocar install.
I’ve written already about treating #40 for bloat. Yesterday we had to continue our treatment and expand what we were doing. Before we could do anything though, we had to get him in the head gate. Unfortunately, by this point he’s pretty aware of what happens when he gets in the head gate and we spent quite a bit of time chasing him around the barn yard. Usually a cow will go where you point him, or at least away from you however this particular cow has ninja blood in him and he decided that the best thing to do was to run straight through Miguel and I. After I landed on my posterior the second time I decided to go get the one cow implement I’d never used, the cattle prod. The batteries were old because it had been sitting in the corner for years, never opened, but it seemed to work well enough to get our little ninja back in the mood to do what we said. I don’t like shocking cows, but I don’t like cows that don’t behave either. So dripping with sweat we locked him in the head gate and went to work.
We tried to be minimally invasive on our previous treatments with our steer since we had had such good luck with the other cows. We only bled off the offending gas and did a small treatment of DSS. Then we monitored the steer for how he was doing and repeated the treatment if things were not progressing well.
Finally yesterday we decided that minimal care wasn’t enough and we had to install a trocar. The trocar holds the rumen and skin open and allows the gas to vent outside allowing the rumen a chance to settle down and pretty much guaranteeing no more bloat.
Our steer is still not feeling chipper but now we have ready access to his rumen to apply more DSS or whatever else we need to try. Hopefully tomorrow will see him feeling better and things beginning to progress towards him getting back in the pasture.
Lastly, a shout out to Summit Equine in Apex, our vet, who helped us through all these bloat cases and helped us with the gear to be able to treat the easy cases ourselves on farm. Being able to treat on-farm is better for us and better for the cow.
#40, in the head gate, being treated for bloat. He feels much better at this point.
About 10 minutes after posting yesterday’s adventure this morning, I received a call from Miguel that we ANOTHER bloated cow. This time #40, a year old steer. The steer wasn’t in nearly as bad of shape as the first two cows, a sure sign we are getting better at diagnosing the issue early. Fortunately and unfortunately we are getting better at this whole thing and we had the steer treated and in the barn in about 30 minutes.
Relieving the bloated gas. Yes that is a turkey injector. The old axiom is, “If it’s stupid but it works, it’s not stupid.”
A small incision and our turkey injector goes in. Again the pressure was relieved and the bull felt immediately better. We made up a bed at La Casa Convalescence and left our new patient to recover beside #9 who is fully recovered but still enjoying her spa treatment.
This afternoon our bull was showing some bloat again so we hauled him back out to the head gate to have the pressure bled off again and this time he received a treatment of DSS surfactant. He is back in the barn on a very limited diet of roughage and water. I will check him again tonight and again in the morning. If he settles down till in the morning he should be ok. If not, we might have to install a trocar to keep the vent open and give his stomach time to settle down.
I’m getting too comfortable doing this vet stuff. I think ignorance was bliss. I kind of miss it.
Our patient, cow #9. She has been pretty sweet through this whole ordeal, causing little trouble
Yesterday I received a call from Miguel that we had another cow with bloat. This time it was number 9. She wasn’t as bad as the previous 2 and Miguel was able to walk her to the barn with not much trouble. After two trips around the horn with the vet, I didn’t see the need for a third. If only I had a large diameter needle. I called a couple of quick sources and couldn’t come up with anything then our new neighbor recommended a turkey injector needle. Eureka! I called United Restaurant Equipment Company and asked them to hold the doors open for me (it was 4:58 and they close at 5). I hauled tail down there and picked up my stainless steel turkey injector. With that, along with scrub , alcohol, and topical lidocaine already on hand I was able to introduce the needle into #9s rumen and bleed off the offending gas in just a few minutes. The bloat quickly subsided and after some additional work we put her in the barn under a fan with plenty of water but no food. This morning she was bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready for breakfast. We are going to hold her until this afternoon to make sure she is ok but so far so good.
This was my first time doing my own surgery on a cow (if you don’t count butchering) so I was a but nervous. Fortunately I had started the day by castrating the piglets we bought Sunday so I was already in home surgery mode. I sure hope the kids don’t need anything. I may be inclined to do that appendectomy on the kitchen table. 🙂
