Dry off is coming.

I whine about winter a lot.  It is cold, it is often wet.  The hoses freeze, so I have to haul water in buckets.  I have to feed a lot of hay, and therefor worry incessantly about running out of hay (even though I never have).  So when Game of Thrones hit my radar, that "winter is coming" thing came out of my mouth a lot.  Gotta get the hay up - winter is coming.  I don't know if I have enough buckets - winter is coming.  Or better yet, why are the handles on my buckets breaking?  Winter is COMING!

But you know what I hate more than winter?  Dry Off Day.  Every goat needs to be dried off (ie, I stop milking her and her milk dries up) two months before she kids again, so that she can rest and rebuild her udder.  If you don't, lactation quality and quantity goes way down, particularly colostrum quality - and that stuff is liquid gold.  Literally the difference between life and death for those baby kids.  So Dry Off Day is super important for the goats.

But it also means no more milking, and chores without milking are just depressing.  It means no more milk, and the kids always cry the first week of store cow milk because it's just not the same.  It means I have to pay really close attention to my yogurt and cheese making cultures or they're going to be dead by the time I have milk again.

So down with winter, sure.  But next year, I'm staggering the breeding of my does so our dry season is as short as possible.  If I'm going to be out there freezing my buns off in the barn, I want MILK, dang it!

And the lesson is...

So this morning two of the roosters were fence fighting. I have the silkies shut in the new coop with the khaki campbell ducks for population balance (if any of you speak duck, tell the khakis THE CONFINEMENT WILL END WHEN THE BABY MAKING IMPROVES). Today I opened the old coop yard so the chickens could get in there and clean up the weeds, so of course Chick Jagger (Wyandotte) decided that this was the best possible time to try to fight Punky for the title of Lord of the Poultry Yard. Now roosters fighting isn't usually funny, what with all the violence. But with a fence in the middle it looked more like a chest bumping contest, and was kind of hilarious... especially since Punky wouldn't back down from a bird literally twice his size! That is also worrisome of course because if they could really fight, Jagger would destroy Punky. I happened to be standing there filling the waterer in the yard. Slowly, slowly I moved around to the side. And sprayed Jagger with the hose. He of course ran away because DEAR LORD THIS ROOSTER ATTACKS WITH WATER! And Punky just stood there strutting and crowing, because Jagger ran away = I WIN. Which is good for me because having a small rooster that respects me well as top dog is better for me than Jagger, who is doing that crazy adolescent rooster thing. But the lesson here is that I am a jerk, at least to roosters. But for once me breaking up fighting poultry actually worked out for the best. I hope.