Elusive Blue


Blue

Not everything goes as planned on the farm. Before moving to Tennessee we put in over a year’s worth of research and planning to make the start-up as “smooth” as possible. Since then lots of stuff has gone according to plan, but just as much has not. Things not going according to plan is what we spend most of our time figuring out, fixing, and trying not to do again.

With the dogs we’ve been very lucky. Our three girls, Sophie, Sheba and Izzy, all stay within the perimeter fence, they love the animals, they love us and they hate anything that tries to get inside the fence. So far they've been fantastic and we haven't had any predator problems. However, because of our property's layout and the amount of land we’re managing it will make sense for us to have more guard dogs as we expand. We’ll be running goats in different paddocks. Bucks will be separate from Does. Kids will be separate. Cows and pigs are all run separately. In addition, the land is split between three (or four, depending on how you look at it) distinct parcels. It’s too much to ask of three dogs and we don’t want to set them up for failure.

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Dog Coat Blowin' In the Wind


This past week it started to get hot out here. Consistently above 90, somewhat high humidity, but still kinda dry for Tennessee because we haven’t had much rain. The dogs have been going nuts at night with the coyotes all around. Sheba has noticeably lost some weight, so we’re feeding a bit more than we usually would. Sophie is still her playful self, but you can see it in the dogs, they’re much more on-guard than they've ever been. Instead of sleeping in the shade during the daytime they’ll regularly move back and forth between the pastures, sometimes pausing for a while in the middle. We found scat around that appears to be coyote, but tough to know for sure. No animal losses yet, but I think we’ll get a few more dogs...

But I digress. The point of the whole post is that the heat is leading to the dogs blowing their coats. Well, at least Sheba and Izzi are, Sophie’s not quite yet. And what exactly does “blowing coat” mean? It’s kind of obvious, but I didn’t know the extent of it until our dogs started. It’s literally what it sounds like. All of the long hair on the dogs blows right off in big clumps. When we got the Great Pyrenees girls they had big fluffy coats. Especially on their rumps. Big fluffy butts, kind of like our Silkie Rooster, Elvis. Now the Pyrs have trimmed down substantially. 

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Getting Started With the Goats and Dogs on Pasture


Happy goats in a fresh paddock. Dogs go explore, goats find nearest rose bush and devour it

Over the past week we finally worked it out to where the goats can be out on pasture nearly 100% of the time. Day and night, night and day. Goats like to graze and browse at night and we want them to be able to. We've read that they can spend up to 6 hours per night grazing. Talk about party animals. I guess when you nap and chew cud throughout the day you don't need a sound night of sleep. Besides, it's a lot cooler at night and the dogs are awake then too. Who can sleep with all that barking?

That wasn't the situation for the first few weeks though. When we originally started with the goats we only had Sophie, and while she has proven to be a great guard dog at a young age (at least so far), we couldn't trust only one dog (and a puppy at that) to defend the goats. She wouldn't stand a chance against a pack of dogs or coyotes. So we had to wait for the big girls before we could leave the goats far away from home all day and all night. Once we got the big girls, however, we needed to acquaint them with the goats and our farm. We didn't want to put them out alone with the goats in the middle of the field right away. We couldn't trust them yet and they weren't accustomed to us and their new home. So we had to wait longer. 

 

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