Rolling Dog Farm Blog

Well, we knew this would happen sooner or later. Blind Madison came across Dexter's sideways basket bed and found it very much to her liking. So she settled in for a long nap, leaving you-know-who to stare at the bed thief and wonder when he was going to get it back.

Dexter started having some leg issues a couple of weeks ago — his left front leg is kind of gimpy, and though he's been better with treatment, he still thinks he's just fine, of course, and doesn't know what the fuss was about. So we've been trying to make sure he doesn't overdo it, but some habits are hard to break … like jumping into his favorite basket bed.

Naturally, a little platform to step up on would be the obvious solution, but you'd have to convince the Dachshund that this would be the obvious and best way for a lame boy to get into and out of his basket. But Mr. I'm-Fine-Thank-You would, if it suited his fancy and frame of mind at the time, choose to try and jump into the basket anyway. So Alayne's simple solution was just to turn the basket on its side. This seemed to suit Mr. I'm-Fine-Thank-You just fine. 

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Yes, we got the haying done. It was a terrific learning experience, though some "learning" we could have done without — like struggling with quirky hydraulic fittings on the side delivery rake. Our draft horses, Bill and Bob, did great with the mowing, tedding and raking. Those boys worked really hard and we were so proud of them! After finishing loading one full wagonload of loose hay, Kate and I looked at the 10 acres of mowed hay in windrows spread out before us and realized that trying to put it all up loose was, well, going to cook our goose. So I conceded defeat and had our neighbor, Jim D., bale it for us. That was a lot faster and easier, but left us with 330 bales to pick up out of the field, stack on a trailer, and then unload and stack in the barn that afternoon. That was just the warm-up, though, because every day we unloaded and stacked the hay that Jim was baling on his farm for us. By the end of the week we had over 2,000 bales in the barn.

The beautiful girl framed by ferns is Gena. She was actually "on the job" when I took her photo this afternoon. Gena is a livestock guardian dog — a Maremma, one of several breeds developed in Europe over the centuries for protecting livestock from predators. Gena had spent her life guarding goats and producing puppies for a Maremma breeder in Vermont, and when she became too old (at the age of 7) to have any more litters, we picked her up and brought her to the farm last fall. 

We had established a small meat goat herd last year and wanted to have an experienced livestock guardian dog to protect them as they wandered our fields and forests. Ironically, we have more predator pressure here than we did at the ranch in Montana, with coyotes making themselves at home in our woods. (The first summer we were here, Alayne chased a coyote in broad daylight as it darted out of the woods to grab one of chickens — right in front of her!)

Why meat goats? Well, it's part of our humanely raised pet food initiative. We have some dogs who need "alternative protein" diets, and rather than continue to buy the (very expensive and highly processed) commercial products, we wanted to be able to produce our own, right here on the farm. Here's the herd of Boer goats in one of their paddocks today:

Having meat goats also is a perfect fit for managing the land, because a lot of what we have is woods. Goats are browsers rather than grazers — they eat a variety of plants, including leaves, blackberry brambles, weeds, ferns, and shrubs, in addition to grass. They actually prefer eating all that "other stuff," which makes them an ideal livestock for much of the habitat on the farm that would otherwise not be productively used. Because of their browsing, goats help keep woodlands opened up, which is healthier for the trees.

You can see how dense the undergrowth is — and this is goat heaven, with so many different plants to browse:

This is Sage, happily stuffing ferns into her mouth:

In that kind of terrain, you can see how vulnerable they might be to coyotes. Rather than trying to shoot, trap or poison coyotes, the humane and far more effective method is to have a livestock guardian dog on duty. The simple presence of a large dog — one who has been bred for exactly this kind of work — deters most predators. So generally what Gena has to do is hang out with the goats and enjoy the scenery.

We take the herd out to their browsing paddock every morning and return them to their pen at night, and Gena never leaves their side.

Alayne took this shot of Gena and me this afternoon, just before we led the herd back to their pen for the evening:

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Longtime blog readers will ask about Margaret and Daisy, our two Nigerian Dwarf goats who really didn't want to be goats but household pets. They were adopted in 2010 by a wonderful couple here in New Hampshire, who were recommended to us by our vet.

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Just a few weeks ago I had written a blog post about how Holly likes to steal Wilbur's food dish from his "apartment." She began by picking up his bowl to lick it clean, but only after it was empty. I had mentioned that we now have to put Holly outside while he finishes eating because we suspected she had started to help herself to his dish before he was finished. 

Of course, she would only do that if we weren't around, like down in the other wing in the dog room feeding the rest of the gang. We'd come back and be surprised that Wilbur had finished so soon. "Wilbur, how did you eat so fast?"

Oh, if only they could talk!

Anyway, we caught on and now Holly is banished while he enjoys his dinner at his own pace.

So that may be why she tried another approach the other evening — getting into Wilbur's apartment before dinner time and see if she can score that way.

Um, no.

We removed the Shar Pei mix and replaced her with the appropriate Chihuahua.

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The other day Alayne heard Wilbur start snorting and saw his blanket start moving, and then he popped his head out from under one end of his fleece blanket. His eye looks a bit peculiar because of the absence of the lens, so you're seeing the light from the camera flash illuminating the fluid inside the eye, with the retina in the back. And yes, that little tongue is usually hanging out to the side like that — actually, it's often sticking out a bit more. After he had his dental when he first arrived here and lost all but six teeth, his tongue sticks out on the right side of his mouth. He still has an upper canine tooth on the left side, which must be what keeps it from hanging out on that side.

Here he is with Pip, showing his more usual "tongue-look":

A couple of weeks ago when we were taking dogs to see specialists in Burlington, we had our internal medicine specialist look at Wilbur's mouth and tongue just to make sure everything was okay with it. And it is – the tongue is just one of his many endearing features!

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