Heat Stress is Hard on Everyone- man and animal

August is coming and it's supposed to be the dog days of summer- so hot you want to lay around like a dog and just sleep and stay cool. July was hot for us in increments. Those increments were enough to cause real problems.

I have an outside job (a/k/a off farm job) at a factory about thirty miles from home. As metal buildings do, when the temperature outside reached into the nineties and the humidity made it feel like it was above one-hundred, I got sick. There didn't seem to be enough to drink, even though I was drinking plenty. I sweat until I stopped and I got nauseated and a headache. Those are signs of heat exhaustion. I've had it before and it is no fun at all. In the days that followed my stomach was upset more often than not and I was so tired I could barely do the chores, but of course they had to be done.

Now, my cows don't seem to be all that bright. During all this heat, the bugs (flies, gnats, mosquitoes, etc) really did a number on those big beasts, but would they go under the back rub with the insecticide that would have kept them bug free? No. They went around it and even broke the fence several times to prove they weren't going under it. They had several pastures available with lots of trees to get shade out of the hot sun. They chose instead to stay out in the field under the sun. We have a cow water fountain that every time one cow takes a drink, it refills with cold (ours gets really cold too) water, but they didn't drink as often as they should have. This puts tremendous stress on animals even when they do stay in the shade and drink that life-giving water. By the time we got them to come up to the barn yard where we could do a good inspection (the barn is where the water is) they were pitiful and in only a couple of days. Since I was down and out, too sick to do much more than lay on the couch, my husband and his brother got the cows in the barn where they could be fed grain (it was time to worm them anyway), get a good dose of that insecticide sprayed directly on them ( they didn't like that) and get plenty of water, and of course there is a big fan in there. One of my prized heifers just keeled over dead. I had just seen her a few days earlier and she was fine, so it hits really fast when it hits. We had a few that had pneumonia over the last winter and the stress caused it to come back on them. The rest of the cows were turned back out after a couple of hours and those sickly ones were left in the barn. They had dropped half their weight already. We nursed them back to health and are giving them lots of hay and grain and the fans are always running to keep them cool. The rest are doing very well out in the pasture since it cooled down a bit, but those others are staying right where they are for now.

I once had a dog that wouldn't let us cut his hair or brush it (not speaking dog- no really, I don't- I have no idea why). One week it was extremely hot like this year. He had a heat related event and wandered off. It rained and cooled things down, but he was gone for about four days before someone got him caught and figured out who he belonged to (thanks to his dog license!). They came to see us and we went to get him. He barely recognized us and weighed under fifty pounds, about a ten pound loss for him. We got some protein into him and a lot of water and eventually he snapped out of it, sort of. That was when his health did a down turn and he started losing his hearing and sight. Every change in the weather seemed to do something bad to him. He got arthritis and found it difficult to walk at times. Before he finally passed away, he was nearly completely deaf and blind, but somehow he recognized me whenever I petted him or gave him a hug.

The bottom line is, in the extreme heat, you need to check on everyone, young or old, usually healthy or not, and keep an eye on your animals. You may not be able to tell until it's too late that they are suffering; just assume that they are. Me? I bought a rain bird water for a garden and I will put it on a post so that when it gets really hot my cows can get wet a little bit and maybe cool off. It isn't practical to put fans out in the field, and they really don't want back in the barn; they're more comfortable outside. At least now they are going into the trees like they're supposed to.

Chicken Butchering Time

If you don't know where your food comes from, really, then you probably don't want to read this post. If you do, and you understand what a small family farm is about, then go ahead. This is for you!

I got baby chickens in May specifically for butchering. I keep seeing on the packages in the store that the chicken has been 'enhanced with a ___% solution' (fill in the blank). For what?  To fatten it up and make you think you're getting more than you are, because when you cook it, all that 'enhancement' cooks out and you have a much smaller piece than you started with. And, you don't know what is  in that 'solution' other than water (a lot of water) and a lot of salt. I don't mind raising my own meat. I have a cow in a pen right now just to get butchered and if I figure out where to put a pig, I'll get one of those too. Yes, it is expensive, but I know what went into it so I feel safe eating it and I'm not paying for any extra 'enhancements' (thinking of pink slime here).

Yesterday was time to butcher those chickens. I got out my turkey fryer (a gas burner on a stand with a tall aluminum pot) and a large tub with a lot of ice. I am the chicken wrangler, and my husband is the chicken slayer. I caught them and he tied them upside down and then beheaded them. If you don't tie them somewhere, they will fly, headless, all over the place and make an even bigger mess. It is very surreal. We had water boiling in the turkey fryer to scald the chickens. Holding them by the feet we dunked them in the boiling water a couple seconds and then the feathers came off pretty well. Rinse with the water hose and remove the guts, rinse again and remove the feet and toss them into the tub of ice water. We took them into our butchering room, a/k/a the old milk house, with the stainless table (all cleaned with bleach, I assure you) and then cut them up and put them into a fresh tub of icy bleach water. Rinse again to get rid of the bleach and then bag it up and freeze it. Why the bleach? To kill any salmonella. We're pretty particular about that. Aren't you? 

Sequence of the chickens' lives:

 

Baby chicks arrive very hungry. 

                                                          Yep, same chickens, all grown up.

                                                       Finished product, ready to freeze and eat.

Hey, at least I didn't take pictures of us killing, cleaning, and cutting them up!

 

 

If Rocks Were a Cash Crop, Farmer's Would Not Be Poor!

We've been working like crazy trying to get our planting done. Every time we get the field ready, it rains, a lot, and then it has to be done all over again, or it rains and washes away all the seeds. One thing that seems to grow without mercy (other than weeds) is rocks. I'm not talking about the smooth stones people use to adorn the outside, and sometimes inside, of their homes; I'm talking about fifty or sixty pound boulders and sometimes larger. The really big ones somehow get planted around, but the others have got to be either smashed back into the ground or picked up, and the really big ones do not smash back down. I spent six hours on a tractor today running a rock roller after we planted (finally) the soybeans. My husband has picked so many buckets of rocks prior to planting he has lost count and I still had to get off the tractor to pick more that were just too big. Rocks are evil things out to destroy harvesting equipment so they have to go. I sometimes wondered why I didn't just lower the bucket and roll a few of them, but then the other ones would have fallen out and I would have had to re-load all over again.

It's not just us. There are huge rock piles all over the country where farmers have had to pick those things up, and they just keep multiplying. You'd think they'd run out at some point, but no, they always find their way to the top, usually just in time to destroy a combine head or a silage chopper, or a hay mower or baler. So, if rocks were a cash crop, farmers would never be poor, which would be good since it costs so much to repair the damaged equipment. Anyone want to come help pick rocks? I have plenty!

Silly Bulls and Rascal Rabits

The funniest thing this morning... I went to the barn to do the chores and I found the silly bull in the water tank! I guess he needed to cool his heels a while. We have a set of head locks out there too. Those are where the cows stick their heads to get to the feed trough and they can be set to lock so that the cattle can be vaccinated or sorted, (or castrated- but he got away when we did the other bulls), or any other assorted things one would need the cow to stay in one place for. Their heads can't come out when in the locked position but the rest of them sure can move. We didn't have it set to lock but we had the adjuster bars in it (so that smaller cattle can be caught) and he somehow got his head in it and I like to have not been able to get him out. Sometimes you can say, "I bet he won't do that again," and sometimes not. Time will tell with him. He doesn't learn all that well, so I imagine I will be dislodging him again the next time he decides cool off in his water tank.

After all the rain we had this spring and summer, most of my garden had to be replanted and every time it rains the weeds grow like it's raining Miracle Grow. My strawberries are a lost cause (one plant survived) and the sweet potatoes were DOA except for three and they died shortly after planting. I don't get it. I have run that tiller more this year than any other and the season is just getting started, mostly because of the replanting, but I usually can get by with only a couple rounds of the tiller and I've already been through there four times this year. I had a nice stand of peas the last time I tilled it; the operative word here being 'had'. Last winter we had rabbits for the first time since we moved here in 1998. I suppose we've had some, we just didn't see them; but this year they are really making their presence known. They get on the porch via high steps, and climb some other ones to get onto our deck and look through the glass doors taunting our poor dog. They ate the strings off of about ten bales of grade A alfalfa hay in the machine shed and of course left 'gifts' everywhere. I told my husband he needed to nip it in the bud and get a small gave permit and then go hunting. He said they weren't hurting anything other than the taunting of the dog of course. I had visions of my garden being nibbled to the ground. Yep, my nice stand of sweet, sugar snap peas are all but gone. They are working on the lettuce and the green beans now.

Just wait until small game season rolls around again. I'll get the permit. Can you say hasenpfeffer?