A new livestock guardian

Protecting livestock from predators is an ongoing battle. It seems like we can never quite get control of the situation. We've had an Anatolian shepherd for eight years, and he was doing a great job the first couple years until we started having problems with packs of coyotes. So, we bought four llamas, and a year later, we got two more. They were doing a great job working in pairs on three different parts of the farm until one of them died. He was 18, which is old for a llama, but alas, his partner was then left in a bad situation working alone, and we had our first sheep loss in four years this summer.

And as you might know, eight years old is old for a livestock guardian. I think Sovalye might be feeling the desire to retire too. When that raccoon got into the chicken house a couple of months ago, he walked in when Jonathan called him, and then he walked right back out again. A couple of years ago, he would have taken care of the raccoon in short order.

You might recall that we also have Porter, an English shepherd, and although he is a great guard dog when it comes to strangers, he only has the urge to herd raccoons and the like, which would be humorous if the coons were not interested in eating my chickens and turkeys.

So, we decided to add another dog to the homestead. Meet Lucy, a Great Pyrenees from Triple Creek Dairy --

She was living in the goat barn when I picked her up, and when we brought her home, she looked rather scared and nervous until she saw the goats. She immediately perked up and ran straight to them. Because she is a DOG -<gasp>- the goats were not terribly excited to meet her, but they are slowly starting to come around. She understands how to deal with them, and if she sees them coming at her, she drops to the ground so they can't butt her.

For the first week, we kept her in the barn in a kidding pen next to Carmen and her kids so that they could keep each other company through the hog panel partition, but Carmen couldn't beat her up. We let her out whenever we were outside so we could supervise her with the livestock, both for her protection and the other animals.

So far, she has shown absolutely zero interest in chasing any of them. I just love her personality and intuition about interacting with other animals. She has been spending the last few days in an interior pasture where a pig and a few turkeys live.

To help me remember that she was born in 2012, I decided to name her Lucy Burns because this is an election year, and Lucy Burns was one of the "baddest" suffragettes of them all. She worked for women's rights in both England and the U.S., and she was arrested more than any suffragette. She also led hunger strikes in the jails, and when they tried to force-feed her with a tube in her nose, it took five guards to hold her down. She was fearless, which is how I hope my little Lucy Burns will be when it comes to predators!

Birth and death and life goes on

The chaos has continued ever since my last post. We've had babies popping up everywhere -- lambs, kids, chicks, and "babies" hatched by a turkey! I took a quick trip to Wisconsin to talk about wool on The Morning Blend, as well as give a "Natural Home Dairy" lecture at University of Wisconsin-Parkside and a bread demonstration at the Chicago Green Festival. I'm also in the home stretch of edits for my next book, and my baby graduated from Joliet Junior College with high honors. And life has not been without its challenges as we had a brutal coyote attack, and two of our milk goats have taken ill. If you ask me anything about what I've done in the past two weeks, I have to look at my planner to tell you!

I am truly hoping I can find time in the next couple weeks to give a proper accounting of all that's been happening, but in the meantime, here's the short version. The funniest thing was when we thought the turkey hen had hatched poults. We saw her standing next to the pond, and the babies were getting into the water and getting wet, which is very bad! Baby turkeys could easily get chilled, so Mike went running out there to get them away from the pond, but the silly things just kept running farther into the water, so he backed off. Turns out the babies were ducklings! We actually thought this might work for us because whenever a duck hatches babies, she takes them into the pond, where they get eaten by turtles or big mouth bass. We hoped that the ducklings would stay close enough to shore that the pond monsters wouldn't be able to eat them, but that has not been the case. Mama Turkey started with three ducklings and is down to only one now.

She really threw a monkey wrench into our plans by sitting on duck eggs. It never occurred to us that we needed to be checking up on her to see that she was actually sitting on turkey eggs. We are not aware of any other turkeys sitting on eggs, and we have not even found any turkey eggs that we could put into the incubator, so I've just ordered some poults from a hatchery. This is especially disappointing because I kept three hens from last year, and none of them appear to be doing anything remotely related to motherhood. The turkey hen that hatched the ducklings is four or five years old, so maybe she's going through eggopause but still had the urge to be a mama and was just lucky enough to find a bunch of duck eggs. I wish I knew!

Cheyenne and two ewe lambs

We are up to eleven lambs so far, although I don't have an exact number on rams and ewes. Since the coyote attack, the sheep have been extremely high strung, so we can't even get within 20 feet of them before they freak out and just start running. And about that coyote attack -- when we were gone to my baby's graduation, a pack attacked Minerva, who was very pregnant and due at any moment. It makes me sick thinking that she might have been in labor when they attacked her, which is why she was vulnerable and couldn't get away. This is the first time we've lost a sheep since we got the llamas in 2008. And if you were reading my blog back then, you know we had a terrible problem! We lost nine of our ten lambs to coyotes in the summer and fall of 2007 and heading into 2008, so we know that once a pack thinks the buffet is open, we have to get very serious. We've moved the sheep into a pasture that is fully enclosed with woven wire. They had been in an area that was open to the creek, which is probably how the coyotes got to them.

The month actually started off with two of our goats giving birth. Jane, a yearling, gave birth to quads, and Pearl gave birth to twins. Our luck with does this year continues as there is only one buckling out of the six. Just remember that we had 29 bucklings last year, so don't think that we're that lucky! I really have to write a separate blog post about the goat births because it was utter chaos with the two of them giving birth only about ten minutes apart, but both screaming and pushing at the same time!

The two ill milk goats are doing okay. On Wednesday, Katherine came in from milking to say that Annie didn't have any milk. Huh? She was making three pounds a day (a quart and a half) the day before. I have only ever had two goats suddenly stop producing milk, and in both cases, they were dead within 12 hours, so I wasn't about to waste time with Annie. I rushed her down to the University of Illinois vet clinic. They ran every blood, poop, milk, and urine test known to veterinary medicine, and then they did an ultrasound and looked at every internal organ in her abdomen. Clearly she had some sort of infection as she had a fever of 104.5, and her white blood cell count was elevated. But beyond that, they had no idea what was really going on. She was starting to head into acidosis, probably due to the diarrhea that she'd developed, so they drenched her with a liter of water with baking soda and other things that were lacking in her blood and gave her antibiotics. Things did not look good for a couple of days as the diarrhea continued and her udder did not fill up.

Then this morning, Katherine came inside to tell me that Cicada has diarrhea and no milk. Ugh! I immediately told her to put Cicada in the other barn with Annie because it looked like whatever Annie had was contagious and now Cicada has it, but hopefully no one else gets it! I was getting really depressed, worrying about losing all of my milkers and thinking the worst. I planned to contact the vet clinic after coming back inside the house. But when we took Cicada into the other barn, Annie appeared to have a full udder! Katherine milked her and she had about two-thirds of a quart of milk, which is almost where she was before she got sick. Then I realized her poop was back to normal. So, we are really excited about her prognosis now and assuming that Cicada will follow suit!

There was one day in the past couple weeks that I thought the mama turkey had lost her babies, and I was worried about her udder filling up with milk. No, I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately!

That's all the time I have for tonight, but I'm really hoping to post more often and keep you updated on everything that's happening around here! And as I'm typing this, thunder is clapping and lightening is streaking across the sky. The radar looks scary, so I better hit "publish" before the electricity goes out. I think I hear Bette Davis saying, "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night."

A new predator

When I was doing chores Tuesday night, I discovered that the setting goose was gone and so were all of her eggs. I couldn't even find an egg shell. What kind of predator could have taken her without leaving any feathers? And what could eat eggs without leaving any shells? I mentioned it on the Antiquity Oaks Facebook page, and a few people offered guesses. A snake seemed the most likely egg thief because they do swallow eggs whole, but I couldn't figure out who could have taken the goose. The area is fenced, but I supposed some might have forgotten and left a gate open at some point.

Wednesday was one of those days that felt like a week. I woke up knowing that the final draft of my book would be waiting in my inbox. I'd be spending the whole day giving it one final read before giving the thumb's up for it to be put into book form. Talk about nerve wracking!

I was sitting at the computer, which is in front of a window overlooking the barnyard, and I heard our livestock guardian dog barking viciously. He was standing at the fence of the goat pasture looking towards the chicken house. I turned towards the chicken house and saw something large and gray on the other side of the fence. After a few seconds, I screamed, "Coyote! Coyote!" Mike ran to get a gun from upstairs but the coyote disappeared down the hill. Mike went running after it as I started to process what I'd seen. It was huge -- much taller than the chickens. Coyotes are only 40 pounds. It was very gray. Coyotes are more brown-gray-reddish. Could it have been a wolf?

When Mike got back, he started talking about how big the coyote was -- at least twice as big as any coyote he'd seen before. I asked if he thought it could have been a wolf, and to my surprise -- because he is always Mr. Cool -- he said yes. I googled "wolves in Illinois" and read an article in the Chicago Tribune that said a wolf siting was confirmed about 60 miles from here in March. Not good. We have two dogs, six llamas, and guns, but llamas are not effective guardians against wolves, only coyotes. The dogs can't be in every pasture every minute of every day and neither can we.

But I didn't have time to think about the predator because I had to finish reading my manuscript. So, while everyone else decided to spend a lot of time near the chicken house, I got back to work on my computer. We haven't seen the predator again, and as far as we know, we haven't lost any more animals. But if we've learned anything out here, it's that coyotes don't go far if they think there is a free meal to be had. I read that wolves will range over hundreds of miles, so maybe it would be lucky if this is a wolf. Maybe he'll move on?

Coyotes, coyotes, coyotes

This morning when Mike was in the woods looking for downed trees to use as firewood, he found a pile of bones that he assumed to be the remains of Snuggles, our sole Old English Southdown sheep that has been missing for several weeks. For the first few days that we didn't see him, we kept making excuses, assuming he was lagging behind the other sheep, or maybe he was in a brushy part of the timber, and we just couldn't see him. After a couple weeks, we started to quietly accept the idea that perhaps he had been eaten. The skull Mike found is a polled ruminant, and it is too wide to be a deer. Since Snuggles is the only sheep or goat to be missing, it seems obvious that it is him.

I have no doubt that without the llamas, I would probably have no sheep at this point. In August, Tuscany, my smallest gelding, was bitten in the knee of his right front leg. And a couple of weeks ago, Merlin, one of the older boys, was limping, although we couldn't find any obvious injury on his leg. He spent about three days kushed (that's what they call it when a llama is laying down) or walking on three legs. Both have made a full recovery.

Our mail lady said that someone a mile south of us shot a coyote and hung it up on a fence post by the road, which is a little creepy, regardless of how much I hate coyotes. The man who lives down the road said that a pack of coyotes had his dog (a German shepherd mix) pinned against his house about a month ago. He's lived here his whole life and said he's never seen so many coyotes as this past year. Their house is in the middle of a cornfield, and the packs come into his yard on a regular basis. The coyotes are probably a lot closer to our house than I want to know, but we can't see them because we are surrounded by timber and little bluffs and creek beds, where they can hide. The sheep are spending most of their time in the cow pasture. I imagine Bridget's horns are good protection. Someone else told me that there used to be a bounty on coyotes, so people would hunt them. But there is no incentive now for anyone to shoot them other than livestock owners whose animals are being killed. It's feeling a little like the Wild West here.

Trouble with Tuscany

No, not the city -- I'm talking about our llama. Maybe the llamas didn't think they were getting enough attention on the blog lately, but last week was a little too exciting for my taste. First, Big Mama and Little Man figure out how to squeeze through the goat door to get into the goat stall. Then Katy surprises us with her new baby. And then the boys had to get in on the act. Saturday, during our Open Farm Day, one of the visitors asked what was wrong with the white llama. At first I thought they meant the baby, but when I looked into the pasture, I saw Tuscany standing on three legs. His right, front leg was bloody.

Mike and I went into the pasture with a pan of grain and a lead rope, and then we realized that Tuscany was standing in the middle of the dung pile. Unlike most animals, llamas don't just let it drop when they get the urge. They always go back to the same spot to do their business. We thought, no problem, he'll come to us when he sees that we have grain. Nope! He was staying right there in that pile of dung. So, we walked up to him with the pan of grain, smooshing llama berries under our shoes, and Mike clipped the lead rope onto Tuscany's halter. But he wouldn't move. First, I pulled. Mike pushed. Then we switched placed. Mike pulled on the lead rope, while I pushed on his back end. It was a slow process, but we eventually got him into the barn.

And do you think that llamas like to have their legs examined? No, of course not. The way that llamas look at you, it's like they're thinking, "You are a mere human. I am a llama. You should feel honored to be allowed in my presence." The last thing Tuscany would want to do is stand there and let me look at his injured leg. Mike was holding the lead rope, and I foolishly put my head down towards the llama's injured leg. He smacked his head down on top of mine. Ouch! Instant headache!

I thought Mike was holding the lead rope tightly enough, but obviously not. So, we tied the lead rope up high enough that Tuscany couldn't whack me again with his head. Mike tried to hold him tightly against the wall, but that didn't work very well either. I squirted hydrogen peroxide on the bloody part of his leg, which was right on the knee. He kept jerking his leg away, so a lot of peroxide was squirted into nowhere as I worked to get his leg cleaned up. I used gauze pads to dab at the injured area. Finally, I got a glimpse of the injury. Puncture wounds. There were definitely three. There might have been a fourth, but since my patient was so impatient, I didn't get a great look. I sprayed some of my homemade fly spray on it, because the last thing I ever want to see again is maggots.

A couple hours later, I had an epiphany. Llamas are induced ovulators, which means they can get pregnant pretty much any time. I realized that Little Man needed to be moved out of the pasture where Katy and the baby are living. Perfect timing -- we'll put Little Man in the barn to keep Tuscany company. But apparently it just was not the same for anyone. Dolce was in the middle pasture staring at the barn, missing Tuscany. Big Mama was standing next to the barn, staring at her baby in the window. Little Man was in the barn whimpering.

And apparently Tuscany was not as content as he seemed, because Monday I looked out into the pasture to see him galloping across the grass. My first vision was a busted barn door. Then I came to my senses. We're talking about a very small llama here. He's probably not more than two hundred pounds. But could he really fit through the window? And would he really try? When I went to the barn to check it out, I discovered that the answer to both questions was obviously yes!

So, the good news is that his leg appears to be as good as new. Now, I hope the llamas have had enough excitement for a few months. I know I have!

But there is the question of the puncture wounds on Tuscany's leg. Only one thing comes to mind -- coyotes. Well, the llamas are here to guard the animals from coyotes. I know they've stopped several coyote attacks in progress, and I'm sure they've stopped coyotes before they had a chance to attack. Knowing what a hostile environment we were bringing them into two years ago, I was surprised they survived the first week. One injury in two years is not bad. Still, I hope Tuscany learned enough to avoid getting hurt again.

A hard lesson to learn

You don't want pictures today. Trust me on this. Today's post is about the worst things that nature can throw at animals -- coyotes and maggots. A bourbon red turkey hen hatched babies in the pasture, and a coyote attacked her. The llamas chased off the coyotes, but a good deal of damage had been done. Within a couple days, maggots started to hatch in the open wounds.

I told Katherine to put screw worm spray on the wounds. As soon as she did it, the maggots started wiggling like crazy, and the turkey hen swung her head around and started pecking at them. [expletives deleted] I grabbed the can and started reading the label very carefully. I didn't think the poison would kill the mama turkey, but I was definitely worried about the babies eating the maggots as they fell to the ground. The label had no warnings about using it around young poultry. In fact, it said it could be used for poultry lice, so I hoped the babies would be okay.

I was mad at myself for not thinking through all the repercussions before spraying the hen. We don't use pesticides on our farm because we know that bugs -- dead or alive -- are a favorite food for chickens and turkeys. Then two years ago, a lamb was infested with maggots. We brought her in the house and elevated her to pet status. She would never be eaten, so using the spray on her didn't seem like a bad idea. But, it didn't require an entire can to treat her, and the remainder sat in the storeroom. Once you have something at your fingertips, you think about using it. Mike asked about the safety of the spray when I told him my plan, but I responded that we would not be eating the turkey hen because, number one, she's four or five years old, and number two, her leg and back are infested with maggots. I didn't think about the babies.

Once I did think about the possible problem, the options did not seem very desirable. We could bathe the turkey hen and pick out the maggots by hand, but an adult heritage turkey is not like a cuddly lamb. If you've ever been smacked in the nose by a heritage turkey's wing, you understand my fear. Yes, fear. I'm emphasizing heritage here, because heritage turkeys can fly, and you have to have to pretty strong wings to lift 15 pounds into the air. It would have meant many hours of struggling to pick the maggots out with tweezers -- and then we would have had to put her in the house, so more flies wouldn't lay eggs in the wound. A dog crate is the only thing I have that would hold a turkey in the house, but she'd be cramped and unable to stand up straight. We couldn't think of any alternatives that weren't met with, "That's crazy."

You probably know how the story ends. Over the next two days, the babies died. As I started beating myself up about my stupidity, another voice in my head pointed out that's what happens when you have that crap within your grasp. I made the same mistake that's made every day in modern agriculture. They have antibiotics, so they use them -- daily. They have hormones, so they use them. They have pesticides and herbicides and GMOs, so they use them, whether they need them or not, whether there is an organic alternative or not. I can't believe how easy it was to just grab the can and use it without thinking about all the possible repercussions.

I need to learn to deal with maggots organically. It's obvious that they are an unavoidable part of farm life, especially when you have coyotes. This summer I discovered that Shaklee's Basic H works very well as a fly spray, so I can use that to keep flies off animals in the future. I think I've read that diatomaceous earth kills maggots, but I want to do some more research on that. Hmm ... maybe I'll have Katherine do an experiment.

Coyotes are makin' me mad

Of course, getting mad is not going to do one bit of good. But it seems like it might make me feel a little better to go outside and scream a few profanities into the woods at the coyotes that are no doubt hiding in there.

Monday night, I had just laid down in bed when I heard the most horrid, long-winded screech. I flew out of bed, screaming that the coyotes were attacking something, and I went running out the dining room door, barefoot, in my gown. Jonathan went running out the front door. He got a lot farther than I did, since he was wearing shoes. He went to the chicken house and said he didn't see anything. The chicken house was closed up tight, and there wasn't a predator inside.

As it turned out, Mike had just pulled into the driveway, and he and Margaret also heard the torturous sound. He asked me what it was. I said it sounded like a chicken, but Jonathan hadn't found anything. Mike thought it sounded like a goat kid, and there is a doeling in the pasture just behind the chicken house, so he went out to check on her.

Instead, he found a badly injured chicken just outside the fence to the goat pasture. Just as Mike found her, Sovalye the Anatolian arrived. He had been in the goat pasture when the attack occurred. I was surprised that the coyote dropped the chicken, but the only way out was past the house, so I guess the coyote figured it would be tough enough to get past us by himself, and he should forget the chicken.

The chicken was dead by Tuesday morning.

"Uncle!!!!!"

Confusion and a lost yearling

I'm so confused and frustrated. We've been fighting the coyote battle for two years. It was two summers ago when we started losing lambs. Since we had never lost an animal, other than poultry, we thought that first little lamb had been washed away in a flood. When we lost the second one, we started to think coyote. After the third, we knew it was coyotes. We tried changing some things with fencing and the guard dog, but after losing six lambs, we decided to start staying in the pasture all night. For a week, my oldest daughter and I took turns staying out there with a gun. But when the coyotes never came near, my youngest daughter started sleeping out there in a tent. Until the middle of October, she slept in the pasture with the sheep. By the time the cold weather forced her inside, the coyotes had moved on.

Last year, after we lost a 4-year-old ewe, we realized we were dealing with a bigger pack of coyotes than any dog could be expected to handle, so we got llamas. Although one ram was attacked a week after the llamas' arrival, he survived. We also moved the sheep from a pasture with electric wire to a pasture with woven wire. We didn't think that little lambs would be sticking their heads through the fence to eat -- but why not? Goats stick their heads through the fence all the time.

And that is confusing. We've only lost one goat to coyotes, but we've lost 11 sheep to coyotes over the past two years. And it's not like my goats are in a safer situation than the sheep. Until late last year, the goats were in a pasture next to the sheep with electric fencing. The goats are notorious for going through the electric and heading down to the creek to graze, which would make them an easy target for a hungry coyote. Do the goats have a guardian angel, or do coyotes prefer lamb to chevon, or is it just plain dumb luck?

My happy excitement over finding White Feather's ram was short-lived when only a couple hours later, Margaret was again only counting nine lambs. We haven't been able to find Naira's black and white spotted ram. And now we can't find one of the yearling wethers. For the past couple days, it has felt like school for sheep as we do morning and evening attendance, rather than simply counting the lambs. But then you ask, what's the point? If they're gone, they're gone. There is nothing we can do about it. We have the ewes and lambs locked up in the pasture with woven wire now -- along with two big llamas. And I know coyotes will attack during the daytime. The farmer four miles away has seen them attack his lambs in the middle of the day. We've seen them grab chickens and geese in the middle of the day.

Most types of traps and poisons are out of the question, because I'm afraid of my own dogs or cats being killed. Mike made a live trap last year, but in the morning, the meat was gone, the trap door was closed, and there was no coyote. Somehow they managed to free themselves after being caught. A couple of people have told me they know men who hunt coyotes. "Give him my phone number, and tell him to call me," I said. I'm desperate.

It was bad enough before we got the llamas. Lambs would just disappear. But the coyotes are not giving up. Now, I have to deal with injured animals. It feels like your insides have been ripped out when you see the result of a coyote attack. After the initial shock, there are days of worry, second-guessing, and guilt. Of the three attacks that the llamas stopped, two of the animals had to be put down anyway. I try to console myself by saying that at least the coyotes didn't get their dinner, but I'm starting to believe that doesn't make much difference to the coyotes. They know where the buffet is, and they keep coming back.

The worst of days

Where to start? Willie is dead, one lamb is missing, and another lamb is badly injured. It seemed like the worst of days when Willie ran out in the road and was hit by a car. He broke both his front legs and sustained nerve damage. After three vets said his prognosis was poor, we decided it would be inhumane to make him suffer any longer, so we decided to put him down.

I tried to make myself feel better about the decision. There are a lot of shepherds out there who need to sell lambs, and I'll be able to buy one now. But it's just so hard to feel like you made the right decision when you end an animal's life. The vets all emphasized that healing from one broken leg would have been possible, but he would really needed one good leg to support himself while it healed. When they learned that he had no feeling in the broken legs, that pretty much ended the discussion for me. I don't know why I didn't realize it sooner. He never made a sound -- not one sound. Here was this ram unable to support his front half, and he never made a single noise. He would use his hind legs to propel his body forward on his chest, sometimes putting weight on his right knee briefly, as if that were normal.

I had run out of the house in mid-yogurt-making to deal with Willie, so after a couple hours of getting all of that sorted out, I discovered my milk on the stove and decided to finish making it. I had it all mixed up and in the yogurt maker when Jonathan came inside with a lamb in his arms, her head hanging down. "What?" It took a moment to click. "Oh, no, not again! Not two in one day! Please, no!"

We put the little black ewe on a towel in the bathtub. She was unable to suck, so I gave her 25 cc sub-q fluids. I can't believe I just received my order from Hoegger two days ago, and it included a bag of lactated ringers. I also gave her a shot of antibiotics. Her head looks dreadful. There is a lot of dried blood in her wool, so I can't see the injuries at all. I've been trying to clean it with peroxide and cotton balls, but it's slow going because I don't want to get peroxide in her eyes. My clippers can't get through the wool at all. About half an hour after I gave her the fluids, she stood up. Now, she has stood up several times, which is a vast improvement, since she was completely floppy when she was first brought into the house. I am remaining guarded but optimistic.

Once Mike gets home, I'm hoping to get her mother and put them in the barn together. I think it would be really good for her to be with her mother. At the moment, she is laying in my lap, because if I leave her in the bathtub, she stands up and starts walking in circles, banging into the sides of the tub and falling down. I guess I should be happy that she has some energy now, but she is a long way from being out of the woods.

And I just realized that I forgot to mention that her brother is missing. It would be great if someone could wake me up and tell me it was all just a bad dream.

Here we go again

The coyotes are back. A goose was sitting on a nest next to our house, and she's gone. Her 18 eggs have been completely chilled, so the little goslings-to-be have perished. Jonathan found her head, neck, and a few feathers and bones in the woods, several hundred feet from the house. It had to be a coyote, as a raccoon couldn't carry a goose that far. Well, it doesn't have to be a coyote, but I'd prefer that to a wolf or mountain lion.

This was our last purebred female buff goose. We have three buff ganders, but they can't do much on their own. The rest of the geese are either embdens or crosses. This is terribly disappointing, since the guard dog has been sleeping on the front porch most nights. The llamas are in the pastures with the sheep and goats.

I started to get upset with us, thinking the attack could have been prevented if we'd finished that fence around the pond last fall, but last week, Katherine saw two coyotes across the road jump a fence with the ease of a deer. We will finish the fence, of course, but I am starting to think that I will just have to accept coyote losses as a normal part of life out here. Resignation is not my strong suit.

Walking in a winter wonderland

When walking through the woods, I found a few interesting things. Although the creek is frozen over in most places, water is still running beneath the ice. It's interesting that the ice is broken at most of the crossings. That makes it very inconvenient and difficult for us to try to get across, since the creek banks are six to ten feet deep in the places that have not been forded.

Joy and I also founds the remains of a deer. It wasn't that far from the sheep, so I'm glad to know that the llamas have been doing their job keeping the coyotes out of the sheep pasture.

And speaking of the llamas, they were very interested in meeting Joy. This was the first time I've ever taken her out there. She usually doesn't want to walk in that direction for some reason known only to her, but once I got her out there, she loved all the strange new smells and unusual animals she met. The sheep and llamas seemed very intrigued by her too.

First snow of the season

Katherine took the camera outside this morning to capture some of the beauty of our first snow. It's hovering around freezing, so the snow is very wet and sticking to everything. The pond is not even completely frozen. The forecast is for continued snow through the day and tonight.

And since I just posted about chickens yesterday, I thought I'd include some pictures of our chicken house. The door is opened every morning and closed every night, so the chickens have a safe place to sleep. Mike dug down and put cement blocks around the perimeter, so that it would not be easy for a coyote or other predator to dig under the chicken house and get inside. Basically the varmint would have to dig down eight inches then under the blocks another eight inches towards the chicken house, then several more inches to be able to get its body into the house. I really don't think your average predator is willing to dig a total of more than two feet for a midnight breakfast. We wanted a dirt floor in the chicken house because chicken poop would eventually eat away at a wooden floor and cause it to rot.

This is a design that was supposedly created by University of Illinois Extension in the 1920s or 30s as a poultry or hog house. They were originally created much larger than this. The windows face the south, so that the sun can warm the house during the day. The steeply pitched northern roof causes the north winds to easily blow over the building, and there are no windows on the north side. Driving through the countryside of Illinois, one can still see many of these houses, usually falling into disrepair or being used for storage. When I discovered the origin of the buildings, I told Mike this was what we needed to have for our chickens because of its passive solar design.

And from the pictures, I see that I need to send someone out there to close the windows! There is a small chicken yard (with a six foot fence) on the south side of the house, so chickens can go out there and get fresh air before we get up in the morning. There is a small chicken door under the window on the left, and we keep it open almost all the time.

Turkey attacked

Although I didn't buy the llamas to protect our poultry, we haven't lost any turkeys this year since the llamas are living in the pasture that surrounds the turkey house. And we know the coyotes are still here, since we had a turkey hen get attacked on Friday afternoon. The coyote obviously grabbed her in his mouth since her skin is ripped up on her right thigh and the left side of her back, and we can even see where it happened because feathers are scattered across the grass next to the goat pasture. As with the attack on Teddy the ram, I'm assuming the llamas didn't know the coyote was in the pasture until the hen was attacked, then they ran over and scared him off.

The turkey hen is so injured, unfortunately, we need to butcher her. She is one of this year's Thanksgiving turkeys that would be going to the processor on Friday, but it doesn't seem humane to let her suffer. Although she ran from us when we first found her, since we put her in the turkey house, she hasn't left. In fact, she hasn't even moved from the spot where we sat her down on the ground. And turkeys are not nice to one of their own that's injured.

I'm afraid we are going to be losing more goats, because they started going through the electric fence like it's not even hot, even though the fence tester says it is hot. Thursday as I was about to leave, I saw goats behind the chicken house, and I knew there wasn't anything I could do about it. I hate the feeling of helplessness. It started with four goats three years ago, and now they've convinced about 3/4 of the herd to follow them to greener pastures. You know, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. They get alfalfa hay morning and night, and there is still plenty of green grass where they are, but they think there is better food to be found closer to the creek. I can't put them in the inner barn pasture, because that borders the buck pens, and when they were in there a couple weeks ago, one of the bucks jumped the fence. I don't know if anyone was in heat, but I've marked the calendar, so if someone kids in five months, I will know which one is Daddy.

I have some fencing ideas, but that takes time and money, and it's not something that's going to happen very quickly. This weekend, Mike is working on the fencing around the pond so the chickens, geese, and ducks will be safe.

They're back

... assuming they ever left. When I walked out to the mailbox today, I saw a pile of white feathers at the end of the driveway. I didn't see any chickens anywhere, so I went back inside. A couple hours later when I was leaving, the eight young chickens were in the front yard without their mama, who is pure white. I've never seen the babies without her since the day they were hatched in July. I am, unfortunately, left with only one conclusion.

I guess this means the llamas are doing their job with the goats and sheep. We have been working on fencing in a large area around our house, the chicken house, and the pond, so that the chickens will have an acre or two to run around where the coyotes can't get to them. It's not done yet, but we know it's already saved a chicken from a coyote. The mama hen and her babies had been locked up in a movable pen until three weeks ago.

When we decided to let them completely free range, we put them in a small part of the hen house that we use for teaching young chickens that this is their new home, the place they can get food and water and where they can roost at night. Usually after a few days, they understand, so when we let them out, they keep coming back. But after we let mama and her chicks out, they did not come back to the hen house to roost most nights. We never could figure out where they were going, but they were usually in the front yard when we did see them during the day.

Somehow in the next couple days, we need to figure out how to get those young chickens back in the hen house before they become coyote supper. Everything around here has been a little harder than usual since Katherine has been down. Her wrist started bothering her when she was at Spanish camp and has been misdiagnosed and underdiagnosed for 10 weeks -- first they said tendonitis, then carpal tunnel. After seven weeks, they finally did an x-ray to find a broken wrist, but after the cast came off and she was in horrid pain, they said it must be a torn tendon, but she has to wait until the 31st for an MRI. In the meantime, she only has one good arm.

Coyote mystery solved

Many thanks to Melanie who responded to my post on goats. She mentioned the difficulty of keeping goats fenced in, and then I responded that our Shetland sheep have been just as difficult to keep fenced in, because they don't respect the electric fence. At about 5 a.m. yesterday morning, I woke up and instantly had an epiphany! I realized why after five years of no coyote problems, we have been inundated with coyotes coming into our pastures for the past year. Okay, all you Shetland lovers out there, now don't start throwing cyber-tomatoes at me, but it's the sheeps' fault.

In my response to Melanie, I mentioned that the sheep only respect the electric fence for about three months after they're sheared. Then their wool insulates them from the shock. Well, as they push themselves through the wires, a few fibers get pulled off and wrap around the wire. After several years of this, there are some places in the fence that are completely wrapped in wool! It looks like felt-coated wire. That explains why Katherine heard the coyotes testing the fence when she stayed in the pasture all night. They'd try to go through, get shocked, run down a bit, and try to get through in another spot. They knew that the fence only shocked them in some places!

Now the challenge is getting all that felted wool off the wires! Pulling it off would take hours. My husband suggested using a torch to burn it off, but I've heard that wool is naturally fire retardant. I'm afraid that trying to slice it along the wire would result in someone cutting off a finger. In some places, it's so thick, I don't think that would work anyway. Any suggestions?

Llamas and lambs

The llamas are moved! Yesterday, as Mike and I worked on moving the turkey mama and her poults to a new movable pen, we talked about how to catch the llamas. I knew Margaret was out in the pasture with them, but I figured she was just hanging out. Then I saw a llama walking in front of our small barn. I screeched and pointed because there is no fence between the front of the barn and the road. Just as I was about to really panic, I saw Margaret walking from between the barns leading another llama. She was talking sweetly to Sterling to come along and follow his brother -- and he did! Katherine was coming up the rear holding the halter and lead rope that should have been on Sterling.

Margaret recalled that Sterling and Merlin have been together their whole lives, and they're around 12, which is why the llama breeder wanted to sell them together. So, Margaret assumed Sterling would follow along. Unfortunately, my camera beeped that the memory card was full after I'd taken only two pictures, but the boys cooperated quite nicely and are now living with the sheep.

So, how did Margaret succeed all by herself where three of us had failed before? She went into the pasture and started following Merlin quietly and slowly, showing him the halter and explaining to him that she just needed to put it on for a short walk to their new pasture. "I complimented their intelligence," she told me with a smile. Mike and I were only briefly humiliated before we realized that she had just saved us a ton of work, and we should just be thankful that she had taken care of a job that we had all been dreading.

As for the coyotes ... This morning, Mike went out and climbed up a tree near the sheep pasture to see if they showed up again. Although he didn't see a coyote, he did have a chat with a sheriff's deputy. Apparently he saw Mike sitting up in the tree as he drove by, because he pulled into our driveway, turned around, and drove back over to the pasture to ask what was wrong. Mike just said, "Coyotes," and the deputy said that he had seen one at the pig farm two miles south of us. Mike decided to stay in the tree for another hour in case it decided to have lamb for breakfast, but it never showed up.

Now that the llamas are in with the sheep, I am hoping the lambs are safe. White Feather had a ram lamb a few days ago. So far, all five sheep that have lambed have had singles, so although they do ovulate in April, obviously they don't ovulate much. Newborn lambs look so cute and wobbly! In case you've lost track, we've have four rams and only one ewe so far.

The oldest lambs are so much fun to watch. They chase each other and push each other around. On Friday, they were using these two trees as their jungle gym. When I was across the pasture, they were running figure-eights through here. The two oldest lambs would jump up on the area where the two trees have grown together and then launch themselves into the air as if they were flying. Unfortunately as I tried to sneak closer, they got shy, so here you can see the little ewe peeking at me from behind her favorite play spot.

I'm certain now that the little ewe is brown. When I first looked at her pictures on my blog, I thought her wool didn't look quite black, but it wasn't until I saw her in the sunlight that I started to think she was brown. You can see when she is standing next to a truly black lamb that I was right. She is our only brown ewe, and we couldn't be more excited about it. She is actually Margaret's ewe, which is exciting for her, because she only has white ewes.

On a final note, I am happy to report that Teddy has improved dramatically since his attack in July. When talking to a couple of shepherds that have had similar experiences, they assured me he would heal and that he would even grow wool where the coyotes had ripped off his skin. And indeed, he has! The four-inch by six-inch area is almost completely healed and 1/4-inch wool is already growing on the new skin! If a human lost that much skin, we'd have to have a skin graft. The healing ability of animals is truly amazing to me.

Unwanted visitors

This morning, Mike and I were talking shortly before 7 a.m. when we heard Sovalye making a very strange noise. It wasn't barking or growling. I said it sounded like whining. Mike said it sounded like Sovalye was frustrated. Finally, Mike decided to head out to see what was happening. "Take the gun," I said.

A few minutes later, three shots sliced through the early-morning silence. I hurried to the window and saw Mike running down the road. "What is it?" I yelled.

"Coyotes!"

It was a long shot, probably much too long for a pistol, and the coyotes went running into the cornfield across the road from the sheep pasture. By the time Mike reached the pasture, there were no coyotes in sight. He counted four lambs.

This afternoon we were walking down the road and found a lot of coyote prints of various sizes. It definitely looks like a pack with pups. The llamas still are not in there with the sheep, but we need to figure out something. They need a guardian. This is the second time we've seen coyotes down there in the past week, but now that we have lambs, I'm worried about putting the llamas in there with them. I keep remembering the donkey that killed a young ewe a few years ago. It's the old Catch 22 my mama used to talk about ... damned if you do and damned if you don't. Sometimes you don't know what the right answer is until after you've done the wrong thing.

Sad day for Pocahontas

Yesterday Katherine called me when I was at the college. Pocahontas had lambed and was running around screaming. The lamb was dead. Katherine said it was probably born dead because the lamb's legs were still stretched out behind its body as if it never moved once it was born. It's sad when any animal dies, but it is especially heart breaking in this case because Pocahontas seems to experience nothing but sadness and grief in mothering. And she is such a wonderfully attentive mother.

Last year, she had twin ewes. One little ewe suffered fly strike. The ewe lamb, Princess, didn't recognize her mother by the time she was able to go back to the pasture, even though Pocahontas definitely remembered her baby. She came running to the gate as soon as I walked into the pasture. She stared at the baby and talked to her. Princess hid behind me, not remembering her mother at all. Finally, Pocahontas walked away slowly but continually looking behind her and calling her baby to follow. It wasn't very long until the coyotes ate her other baby.

Today Pocahontas looks very sad. She is laying around the pasture with her head on the ground. She stands up, turns around, and lays down again. I'm sure her udder is quite full and painful. I'd like to milk her, but she is not very friendly. Maybe ...

Lost kid

I've been hesitant to make this post. I suppose I've been in denial, thinking that it couldn't possibly be true. A couple days ago, I counted the goats across the creek, and I came up one short. I ran through the list of the goats that should have been there, and there was no little white buckling. We had several white bucklings this year, so I asked Margaret if Annie's little kid was still supposed to be there. Yeah, he was supposed to be there. But we couldn't find him.

Katherine went out there yesterday and started looking through the woods. She found a large intestine that was the right size to be from a goat kid, although she couldn't find anything else. No bones. No skin.

We've never lost a goat before, and Margaret suggested that the little guy had gone through the electric fence. I stayed with the goats longer than normal yesterday, and once they became accustomed to my presence, they walked off and started grazing. Lil, the little doeling that had a sucking disorder at birth, walked right through the electric fence as if it didn't bother her at all. I wanted to explain to her that it was a dangerous world out there, but she wouldn't understand. Today, Katherine told me she saw another kid go through the fence.

Last night, when I was driving home, a coyote ran across the road and into the cornfield a couple miles from my farm. I wonder what's caused their population to skyrocket to such a ridiculous level. When I ran into the sheep shearer a few days ago, he was telling me that a farm four miles northwest of us had almost no lambs this year, because the coyotes got most of them.

We have moved the goats from across the creek to the barn pasture where they should be safe. But we can't leave them there forever, or we'll wind up with parasite problems again. It is amazing how the coyotes' presence is like a pebble thrown into a pond. It affects where the goats can graze, which results in altered nutrition and heavier parasite loads. The weather this fall isn't nearly as nice as last year, so it's less comfortable for us to spend the night in the pasture, but if we don't come up with another alternative, we'll have to start taking the goats out to graze during the day ... or we may need to cut the herd in half. As much as I don't want to sell any, I'd rather see them go to another home than be eaten by coyotes or compromised by parasites.

Mystery unraveling and decision delayed

The call came from Animal Control. After the woman asked a lot of boring questions about my daughter and the dog (age of daughter, breed of dog, etc.), she asked, "Was the attack provoked in any way?" I said, "There's a rather long answer to that question," and I began to explain how Sovalye's behavior changed after he was treated for heartworms and how he didn't want to go into the pasture and how my daughter was trying to force him. She said the same thing that blog readers and people on my homesteading list have said -- it sounds like he was really scared to go out there, and she was trying to force him to do something that really scared him. It's hard to believe that anything could scare a dog that big, but I think that is what happened.

We were discussing this over lunch, and we've started piecing together a timeline of what has happened between the predators, the sheep, and Sovalye. We put him in the sheep pasture, and he stayed in there for three days, even though he could have easily gotten out. On the fourth morning, we found him in the barn. He's been refusing to stay in the pasture ever since then. In fact, he won't even go into the pasture by himself. He also had some scrapes and cuts on him back then, which we just attributed to him injuring himself trying to get out of the pasture.

"A couple weeks later," according to my blog on July 13, we discovered two ewes had been killed and eaten by coyotes. In my blog post on the attack we blamed the dog for not being in there when Princess was killed the night before and when Fee had been killed a few nights earlier. A coyote attacked our geese on May 23, and we saw a coyote trying to get through the fence to get our chickens on a Sunday in June, although I didn't blog about that, so we can't pin down the date. The point here is that we have what is considered a heavy predator load. Two nights ago, Mike saw a fox in front of the barn where a turkey was attacked about three weeks ago.

Now we are wondering if Sovalye was in the pasture when Fee was attacked or maybe he fought off coyotes before Fee was attacked but then decided we don't pay him enough to do such a dangerous job. When I asked for advice on an LGD list in July after the attack on the sheep, some people said that with a predator load this heavy, one dog was not enough, and it's possible that he is staying in the barn to save his own skin. The night after the attack, we put a horse halter on Sovalye's body (he can get himself out of a dog collar or harness) and tied him in the pasture with Katherine, who spent the night out there. As long as she was there, he stayed put, but when she left in the morning, he figured out how to wriggle himself out of the horse halter and went into the barn.

I just cannot view this dog as an aggressive animal. When we go out there, he comes up to us wagging his tail. After a bit of petting, he drops to the ground and rolls over for a belly rub. A dominant dog wouldn't do that, right? And I can't get it out of my head that he could have ripped Margaret apart. He didn't. He can crush a raccoon in one bite. When snapping at her didn't stop her from taking him into the pasture, he made contact, and instead of getting more aggressive with each bite, he gave up after four bites and rolled over on his back. He let her take him down, because there is no way my 5'2" daughter could have overcome him if he was really trying to hurt her.

Several people have mentioned the issue of trust, but one thing I've learned out here is that it's crazy to 100% trust an animal that is bigger than me or one that could conceivably injure me. I've heard it's always the friendliest rams that break the shepherd's legs, because the shepherd turns his back on him. I've had a huge amount of respect for Sovalye ever since I saw him kill his first raccoon at only eight months, and I remember saying that I'm glad he likes us.

I wish I knew what happened out in that pasture. I think that would explain a lot. I don't know if Sovalye's ultimate fate will be any different, but I want to understand what happened. If we made a mistake, I don't want to make the same mistake with another dog. However, we won't be doing anything for another eight days.

I was not happy with the vet's opinion yesterday, and even less happy that she had her vet tech tell me her recommendation for the dog without talking to me and knowing the circumstances behind the attack or why I wanted to have him checked out. Today, I learned that the vet tech had left out one little detail. When Animal Control called, I learned that if we have him euthanized before 10 days, they will cut off his head and send it to a state lab to be tested for rabies, which is "very expensive." (The fact that he has had his rabies shot is irrelevant in a bite case.) I didn't even ask the cost, because that is out of the question. We simply have to take him to a vet 10 days after the attack and have him certified free of rabies, and then the case will be closed. Of course, I will be looking for a new vet.

As for Margaret, she continues to heal. Instead of being solid purple, the skin around her eye is yellow and purple, and the swelling is almost gone. Her forearms are still quite sore. She tried penning a letter to her little sister at camp today, and her arm was quickly exhausted by writing, so I will be milking for a while still. In case you're wondering why a 5'2" person would try to take down a 115-pound dog, well, you have to know Margaret. She started college at age 13 and had her first associate degree with honors a month after her 16th birthday. She'd been accepted into five universities to finish her bachelor's degree, but since she couldn't pick a major, she decided to try some more classes at the junior college and completed two more associate degrees by age 18. Now at age 20, she owns a little shop where she sells yarn, roving, fabric, etc and teaches classes in knitting, crocheting, spinning, and felting. She is thinking she wants to finish a degree in biochemistry now, although not sure if she wants to do med school or vet school after that. In the ER Saturday night, she said she did not want to be a vet, but I'm not holding her to that statement. She has written one post on this blog -- back when she and her little sister swam across a flooded creek to save four goats from drowning.

I am thinking that I should never again stop milking completely. It has been quite an adventure these past few days, but through all the spilled milk and sore hands, I am remembering that special bond that you feel with the does when milking. This is one of the good things that has come out of this horrid situation. Another good thing is that my husband has learned to make jam, and I learned that I've been doing it wrong for the past six years.

Thanks to Susan and her boys for coming over this morning to help with milking the goats and snapping green beans.

Unexpected side effects of coyote attacks

If I lived out here 100 years, I think I'd still be learning. After losing two sheep to coyotes more than two weeks ago, we put all 17 sheep and all 40-something goats into one interior pasture where we thought they'd be safe. When we made the decision to do this, I thought the biggest problem would be that the grass would get eaten down quickly. While the sheep and goats were safe from coyotes, the grass was covered quickly with parasite eggs and larvae. I couldn't see the parasites or the larvae, but I could see the affect. The goats started losing weight.

The grass was eaten down quickly, and that made the parasite problem worse, because the larvae were concentrated on the lower couple inches of the grass. The lack of grass and the higher parasite load also meant that the goats were ravenous every night when we brought them inside to be milked. They'd gobble up all the hay we gave them to eat while their herd mates were being milked.

As soon as the llamas arrived, we moved the sheep back to their usual pastures with the llamas. The original plan was to leave the four llamas with them for a week, then move two llamas with the goats to the pastures across the creek. The grass over there is a couple feet tall, and it's free of parasites, since goats haven't been there since last year. While it does provide a lot of food, the nutrient level goes down when it gets that tall, so we've been losing on several fronts here. After Teddy was attacked, I was afraid to move the goats since I didn't want to split up the llamas. Would only two of the llamas have been able to chase off the coyotes?

Today we finally decided to take a chance. We moved 23 goats across the creek to taller, cleaner, greener pastures. We are hoping the electric fence will keep the coyotes from indulging at the goat buffet. We know it has deterred them in the past over there.

Another side effect of the coyote attacks is that we are now the owners of four llamas. After finding Princess's remains, I was desperate for a solution and started searching the Web for donkeys and llamas, both of which are supposed to be good guard animals. I have not had great luck with guard dogs, not to mention how much they eat. We have a 115-pound Anatolian shepherd, and he eats about two pounds of raw meat every day in the summer and four to five pounds of raw meat per day in the winter. (Raw food is a post for another day, but suffice to say he did not do well on premium dog food.) I really can't afford to feed two or three dogs that much, but several people have said that a single dog can't handle a pack of coyotes on his own. Since donkeys and llamas eat mostly grass, that makes them more economical, as well.

And finally, we have become neurotic about locking up all poultry mamas and their babies. The turkey hen and her eight poults are doing splendidly in the movable pen, and the adoption of the little black chick has been completely successful. Yesterday, we noticed a mama hen with seven chicks. As we discussed how we could catch them and put them in there before they become coyote supper, the mama hen took her babies into an open dog crate in the barn last night. Hallelujah! I quietly closed the door, and this morning, we took the dog crate out to the movable pen and put Mama Hen and her chicks in there with Mama Turkey and her babies. They seem to be getting along just fine.

I don't recall if I've ever blogged about my absolute dislike for movable pens, also known as "chicken tractors," but I really hate them. Today, however, as we were walking back towards the barn to finish chores, I said to my husband that we have finally found a perfect use for the chicken tractors.

This is my 201st post. Seems like I should have commemorated the 200th post somehow, but I was too distraught over Teddy to notice that I'd made 199 prior posts. So, does this make me a real blogger?