Hot Sauce

Fall canning is in full swing around here!  Unfortunately I am not what you call a great gardener, so what I have to can is somewhat random.  This year the bumper crop appears to be habenero peppers, and there's exactly one thing to do with those: make hot sauce!  If you have an abundance of hot peppers like me, here is my favorite recipe.

• 10 Habenero peppers (or similar volume of other hot peppers)
• 2 large yellow peaches
• 2 medium tomatoes (I use romas)
• 1 medium onion
• 1/2 cup lime juice
• 1/2 cup white vinegar
• 1/2 cup water
• 8 cloves garlic
• generous dash of salt

Peel and quarter onion.  I use yellow onions, but other kinds would also work.  Pit and quarter peaches.  I prefer yellow peaches because the finished sauce is prettier than the white ones.  My husband is always after me to try apricots in this recipe but I haven't gotten around to it yet.  You can increase the volume of fruit as much as you want, but do not decrease.  Peel garlic.  Cut the stems off of peppers (WEAR GLOVES).  You can decrease the number of peppers if you prefer milder hot sauce, but if you increase them you might want to check the pH of your sauce to make sure it is safe for canning.  Quarter tomatoes (no need to peel or core them).  Put everything into your powerful blender (we have a Vitamix) or food processor and set to "liquify."  Work in batches if needs be.  Dump all your proto-sauce into a heavy bottomed pot and simmer for half an hour.  Pour into sterilized jars (I like half pints for hot sauce) and process in a boiling water bath canner for half an hour.  Sealed jars keep as well as anything home canned, but should be kept in the refrigerator after opening.

Note that this is pretty darn hot sauce, and while it is simmering your kitchen will smell like burning and it may make your eyes water.  The "simmer" stage is however necessary for making the flavors blend, and making it thicken up a bit and get "saucy."  We usually pour opened jars into an empty clean sriracha bottle for easy dispensing.

Things that cause Cedar to forget how to use a milk stand:

• Moving.  It took nearly two weeks after we brought Cedar home to convince her that yes, this really is a milk stand, and yes, you really do use it just like the ones back home.  There is grain involved if you cooperate, girl!

"Like this, right?"

• Turning the milk stand to face the other way.  She cannot find the grain.  It is gone.  Clearly this is some kind of witch craft.
• Cleaning the milk room.  All the trash and dirt was clearly vital to her process.  Now that it is gone she can only get two feet onto the milk stand at a time.  Life is very tragic.

Hey, what did you do with my trash?

• Presence of chickens in the milk room.  Chickens are sneaky and it's very naughty for them to sneak into the milk room, so apparently Cedar gets to be sneaky and naughty too.  Sprinkles' grain looks tasty.  Surely no one will notice.

• Presence of human kids in the milk room.  They need a good sniffing and lots of kisses.  Again, it is impossible to get more than two feet on the milk stand at a time.  Cedar whines because her tongue is not long enough to reach the grain this way.

Ponchos might also secretly be snacks.  Forget the snacks ON THE MILK STAND...

• Removing a doe from the milk line.  Clearly it is not actually the milk room if Sundae doesn't threaten her on the way in/out.  (Sundae is in the barn recovering from an epic case of found something bad for her and ate a whole lot of it.  She is fine but needs to convalesce.)  Attempts to crawl under the milk stand to find out if the trash can is full of used wipes yet.

Nope not yet.

• Mom put the teat wipes at the wrong end of the milk stand.  Clearly it is a trap.
• Mom put something new on/under/next to the milk stand.  Also clearly a trap.  Unless it's treats.  Cedar attempts to eat the new thing.

I am beginning to see why Sundae hates Cedar so much - she is a bit daft.  I can only imagine it's worse if you actually speak goat.  I'm rather fond of my little Cinnamon Bun goat, but enough is enough, girl!

Sometimes I give up.  You win this round, goat...

The Great Johnes Scare of 2016

What're we going to do tonight, Sundae?  Same thing we do every night.  Find new ways to drive our human out of her ever loving mind...

One thing that is really, really scary, is when your goat suddenly has goopy sloppy poop like a cow.  This is both because a key reason why I got goats instead of cows is because cow poop is several orders of magnitude grosser than goat poop and because it is a sign that something has gone very, very wrong in Goat Digestion Land.

The first thing you always suspect is parasites.  Some vets will tell you that stomach worms don't really cause scours, and some will tell you what are you talking about of course stomach worms cause scours.  I don't really know which it is, but Sundae also had moderately pale eyelids (read: moderate anemia), which is definitely a sign of stomach worms, so I gave her medicine.  Which did nothing, so I gave her different medicine.  Which also did nothing.  Noting that her eyelids were actually starting to pink up by this point (which wouldn't happen if she were still fighting stomach worms), I called the vet.

Our vets are really very good.  We use the Virginia Tech veterinary school and have nothing but good things to say about them.  They are nice and calm and extremely knowledgeable about goats, and understand that "calm" is not something I'm capable of a lot of the time because I'm super high strung and have an anxiety disorder.  The first thing in a situation like this (assuming the goat is eating well, which she was, and reasonably energetic, which she was) is run a fecal float test.  Which revealed zero coccidia and very few worm eggs.  Sundae was about as parasite free as goats come.  Which means that the next most likely scenario was that she had somehow gotten Johnes.

Johnes is usually a disease of cattle, but sheep and goats can get it to.  It is bacterial, and infection is transmitted via the fecal-oral route.  The bacteria can live in the soil for up to a year, and it generally takes two years from the point of infection for animals to become symptomatic, during which time they have been shedding bacteria in their feces, contaminating the pasture and infecting their herd mates.  The symptoms of Johnes are scours due to mechanical damage to the intestines, rapid weight loss, and death.  There is no treatment except a bullet.

Needless to say there was much panicking.  Much, MUCH panicking.  Fortunately I had already sent blood to the lab for our annual testing, and had decided to add Johnes to the usual CAE testing this year.  While the blood test isn't great, it is a screening tool, and people ask about it from time to time.  The vet agreed that the blood test isn't the most accurate of tests, but in clinical cases it should turn up positive.

If you follow me on Facebook you know that the tests all came back negative, and in fact I had locked Sundae in the barn with a wether (I don't care as much if the wethers get sick) and her poop had gone completely back to normal by then.  Turns out she had in fact developed a taste for horse nettles, which are super poisonous, the chief symptom of which is scours.  But I have put together a list of things you can do to keep Johnes out of your herd, because once you have it, it's kind of an end of the world scenario.

1. Do not run your goats with cows of unknown Johnes status.  This is apparently the main way goats get Johnes.
2. Do not feed your goat kids unpasteurized cow's milk from cows of unknown status.  Transmission via milk is fairly well documented.
3. Quarantine all new arrivals (goats, cows, sheep, everything!) until you have negative Johnes tests in hand and it's been at least a month.  Three months is better.  I personally know a farm that narrowly avoided a new cow infecting their whole herd with Johnes because they had her in quarantine.  SAFETY FIRST!  This will also protect your herd from nasties like infectious hoof rot, CL, and sore mouth.
4. Consider annual or semi-annual testing.  Many dairy herds are already testing for CAE - if you do your testing through WADDL, they can do a Johnes test too, from the same 5 ml red top tube of blood even.  It's only $6.50 per test as of this writing, the same as a CAE test.  Our current plan (which our vet agrees is reasonable) is to test for CAE yearly (using BioTracking for non-Johnes-test years, since it's cheaper there) and Johnes every other year.  Since Johnes is a slow-developing infection, and the blood test will not detect it in its early stages, every year might be a bit over kill.  Put if you're paranoid it's a small price to pay for peace of mind, and testing new stock is always a good idea.
5. Do not let people walk around in your pasture.  Poo on their shoe becomes poo on your pasture becomes germs in your goats.  If you need to show an animal bring it out to the people.  The people will understand.  Or if they don't, screw them, because your animals, your rules!
6. Do not wear your barn shoes off your property.  I am really bad about this, but the same principles as above apply - you don't know what germs you are walking through, especially at places like the feed store.  I actually have a special pair of feed store shoes that NEVER EVER EVER go in the barn.  Because feed stores are fun but their floors are kinda icky.

So in closing, BIOSECURITY.  It's important.  Also GOOD WORKING RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR VET.  We are very fortunate that this escapade in paranoia only cost us one fecal float (which are cheap) and one set of blood tests (which we were going to do anyway).  After Murphy and his meningitis of doom there is not a lot of money left over for the vet.  Or rather, not a lot of money that the vet hasn't already taken.

Kidding check list

That time of year is rolling around again, that magical time where baby goats are born and I completely loose my marbles.  So with that in mind, here is my personal check list of everything I do to get ready.  It is also a convenient list of why you might not hear from me as much as usual until about mid-March.

Thirty days before the does are due, put everybody on the milk stand, trim their feet, and give them CDT vaccines.

A couple of days later, remember that I was also supposed to give them their annual selenium (I use oral gel) and semi-annual copper bolus (think really big vitamin).  Wrestle with the goats because they think I'm trying to poison them.

Put together my goat midwifery kit.  Contents:

• OB lube (I just buy whatever water based personal lubricant is cheapest at the grocery store.  In large quantity.)
• Vet-strength iodine
• Large numbers of towels
• A tube of oral selenium (in case the kids need it)
• Molassas, corn syrup, and CPMK (a calcium supplement)
• Tums (For the goats, not me.  Ok sometimes also for me.)
• Injectable Penicillin (kept in the fridge), needles, and syringes
• A big pile of empty feed sacks, which I have yet to actually use
• Bottles (the empty soda kind) and nipples (the black lamb kind), just in case

Two weeks before the does are due, I start them on their late pregnancy ration of grain, and start feeding alfalfa again.  The goats think I am God.

One week before the does are due, I start feeling tail head ligaments.  One of the surest signs a doe is about to kid is she "looses her ligaments" - ie, they become impossible to feel.  This is also about the time I start fiddling with their udders, which they hate, and trying to feel the babies move, which they hate even more.  The goats think I've lost my ever loving mind, except for Emerald, who will do anything to have her cheeks scratched.

I continue in this holding pattern until all the does kid - they are all due the same week this year, and goat due dates are plus or minus five days, so worst case scenario I've got about two weeks of absolute wackadoo.  I'll let you know how alive I still am when we have a head count and everybody is eating.

Roosters

So I've figured out why Punky Rooster (silkie) was Head Bird around here for so long, in spite of being a bantam amongst full size chickens.

One third the size.  All thirds the attitude.

It all came about because I brought home a new rooster - now don't think I'm super crazy, because he came with a hen, and they are French Black Copper Marans.  Extremely fancy birds and I would have been crazy to pass them up.  I put a small pen in the corner of the coop for new arrivals, so that the old chickens can get used to them without being able to beat them up.  My main concern was Chick Jagger, the Wyandotte rooster, who has supplanted Punky as Lord of the Barnyard by dint of being huge and a jerk.  And I wasn't concerned, because while the bantam hens can get into the introduction pen no matter what I do, Jagger cannot.  Everything would be fine and nobody would get destroyed.

Then I went into the coop to check for afternoon eggs and found Punky jumping on the new rooster's head.  Apparently I can't keep him out of the introduction pen either, and not only does he fight dirty, but this larger rooster was clearly confused why this tiny bird was shoving him into a corner and jumping on his face.

So in conclusion, silkie roosters (or at least my silkie rooster) are devious little bastards, and Marans roosters have excellent calm temperaments.  With luck, Punky is done trying to destroy the poor new guy and there will be peace in the coop again, but I would not count on it.

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!

Goats: occasionally too smart for my own good

Now I love my goats.  They make me laugh every day.  They do however tend to develop some behaviors that also make me want to scream.  The most frightening at this time revolves around these kinds of latches:

And the fact that goats can open them any time they wants to.  Let's just make this clear: any time she wants to, a goat can get into 2/4 of the kidding stalls, the coop, the stall off the milk room, and THE MILK ROOM.  Did you know I keep feed in the milk room?  Fortunately none of them have figured out how to get open the twist top bins I use, even by knocking them over and jumping on them.  I am also grateful that, generally speaking, they only want in when I'm in there (they know I can get the feed cans open).

So now all my doors and gates have hook and eye latches higher than the goats can easily reach, too.  Or close with a carabiner.  Heaven help me if they figure out how to operate a carabiner.  This is also conclusive proof that goats are smarter than sheep - the previous owner of our property ran Katahdins, and found all these latches to be perfectly adequate.  He also kept several of the tube gates shut by hanging the chain on a nail.  Yeah, goats figured that one out in about five minutes.