Little man, little boots

~Caitlyn

Sunniest state in the USA

Oregon is, by far, the sunniest state in the USA.

It's just that 87% of the time, we have what is called "liquid sunshine". ;)

~Caitlyn

Yum? Well, maybe not....

If you were to look in my livestock medicine drawer, you probably wouldn't find any 'Safeguard' dewormer in there; or any 'Ivermectin' for that matter. A few years back (last time I had dairy goats), I stopped using store-bought dewormers. Tired of the havoc they were playing on my animals, annoyed with withdrawal times, and frustrated that they really didn't work, I began using an herbal dewormer.

The difference is amazing! A test was done once on 29 goats (can't remember who did the test, right now) divided into two groups including milkers, wethers, dry does and bucks. The types of parasites that were being observed were thread worms, tapeworms and lung worms.

After treating one group with an herbal dewormer, and the second group with a chemical dewormer the following results were found:

1. Thread worms and tapeworms were found in 0% of the herbal test group, but 29% to 33% in the chemical group.

2. Lung worms were found in 33% of the herbal group, and 50% in the chemical group.

I have been really happy using my herbal dewormer; and so have my goats!! There is no withdrawal time, I can continue drinking the milk, and the herbs are overall very beneficial to my animals. But enough talk! Here's the recipe that many people besides myself have used and received good results from....

1 cup mustard seed powder

2 cups Thyme leaf

2 cups Wormwood leaf*

1 cup black walnut hull (powder, or just finely crushed)*

2 cups sage leaf

1 cup garlic*

2 cups Rosemary leaf

1/2 cup cloves

1 cup psyllium seed powder

2 cups Diatomaceous Earth (D.E.)*

The most crucial ingredients are marked by an asterisk (*).

My favorite place to buy herbs from would have to be from here.

Now! Directions! :)

Step #1: gather ingredients. Okay, that's obvious, but still...

I made a new batch of dewormer today, and ended up doing a simplified version of the above recipe. All I did was the black walnut hull, mustard seed, garlic and wormwood. But it still works very effectively!

Step #2: Dump all ingredients into a bowl and enjoy the nice layered look that results. ;)



Step #3: Mix it all up.

Step #4: put it into a container and then take it to the barn, or wherever you store your livestock medicine.


Step #5: Sprinkle this mixture onto their feed morning and evening for 7 days straight. A mature sheep, goat or alpaca gets 1 tablespoon per feeding; a mature pony, or llama, gets 1/4 cup per feeding, and a mature horse, or cow, recieves 3/4 cup per feeding. I usually do about 1/3 of the adult dosage for young animals, but I would suggest using your best judgment. you can also use this dewormer for dogs, rabbits... Really any animal. With dogs I can't really give a set amount, as they vary so much, but with rabbits just a pinch twice a day will do!

One more note:

Black walnut hulls can contain a fungus which is deadly to horses, so horse owners should probably omit this one ingredient if making and using. It should be noted that black walnut does not always contain this fungus. It just depends, and there is no good way to tell if it does or doesn't. Everything else in the recipe is perfectly safe for horses. and the dangers of the fungus apply ONLY to horses. The rest of the recipe is perfectly safe for other animals.

Are you asleep yet? I could do another post about all the latin names of herbs if you're not bored enough yet! ;D

~Caitlyn

Anyone still here?

Hmmmm, methinks I have neglecting a certain blog of the late.... Ooops! :-/

I want to give a huge thank you to everyone who prayed for sunshine!! So far we've gotten four sunny days in a row (yesterday and today are pretty overcast though), and the weathermen say that we are "supposed" to have more sun coming. The Lord heard your prayers, and a few busy farmers have gotten small parts of their hay in. The silage farmers were the lucky ones, and most of them got their crops in.

So now you expect a huge list of everything I've been doing that has kept me away from blogging right? Surely I've been so busy lately that I haven't been able to even look at the computer, right?

Ahem, well.... Let's just say that I'm human through and through.

Actually, I've mostly been busy with my goats. Feeding, milking, mucking, scrubbing the milk stall, trimming hooves, desperately trying to find a local farmer who has hay, taking the girls (my goats, that is) out foraging, fixing fencing. Etc...

Oh yeah, I sheared my alpacas!! :) Last time we had alpacas, it took three people to hold each thrashing animal down, while the shearer speedily attempted to get all that wonderful fleece off. I was expecting the same thing with these alpacas, so I had one of my sisters plus a friend come and help me. With fear and trembling, I cross tied my first victim, and brought out my handshears.... I was dumbfounded. She just stood there! I clipped away, rather slowly at first; and my dear little 'paca stood patiently all by herself! After a while a let my sister and the friend go, and finished the shearing up alone.

I learned some very important lessons that day.

1. You can't shear suri alpacas with handshears; only electrical. So the fleece from two of my alpacas is pretty much worthless. :(

2. Handshears start to hurt your hand after three hours. By the end of the day, my hand was so swollen that I couldn't bend my fingers and almost had to make Emily do the evening milking.

3. It is really hard to shear the neck with handshears, while the animal is standing up.

4. Shearing isn't hard at all, once you get the hang of it! :)

My white alpaca, Marina, did the best and I got 6 lbs. of usable fleece off of her, so that made up for the disappointment of the loss of two fleeces.

The other day, while transplanting some tomato plants, I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye. I turned and saw.... My fiesty goat 'Capri', gaily dancing outside of her pasture!! "Capri! What on earth are you doing over here!" She stopped as if she had run into a brick wall and gave a look that clearly said "uh-oh, I'm caught." ;)

She tried the oh-so-innocent look, but I didn't buy it. After marching her and Ivy into the barn and locking them in, my mom, big brother and I began working on fixing the low part of the fence that they were jumping. After about four or five posts, my memory on fence fixing was jogged, so I went ahead and fixed five more by myself.

After finishing, I had a "brilliant" idea (not very often that happens!). I decided to wrap bright orange, electric fencing tape around the top of the fence posts , so as to make it look more daunting, and to give the goats a visual as to how high the fencing was. It worked! My goats are subdued for the moment. :) The only downside though, is that my pasture looks like a WWII concentration camp now.... ;D

The one thing I haven't mentioned during all this, was that I somehow completely forgot to put some leather gloves on. :-/ Yeah, you'd think I would have been smart enough to go get some. By the end of working, my hands were pretty scratched up, and I got bit by a spider that was hiding in the wad of electric fencing. Ouch. Oh well, 'Tis the price I have to pay for being a country girl, and I am willing to pay it. :)

Well, I'm off to go trim some more hooves, make some phone calls about hay, and then take my goats out foraging. :D

~The Herdess, Caitlyn ~

Will you pray with me?

Alas, we are having an extremely wet spring this year! And this now being June, the farmers are finding themselves in a bind.

Their hay crops are ready to be harvested. But it's too wet to harvest!! Some people have ignored the wet weather and cut their hay... It now lays sopping wet in the fields. Others watch as their hay grows past its prime, and know that they can do nothing.

Will you pray with me that the Lord will send two weeks (or more!) of warm, dry, sunny weather? My dad and I just came home from buying a few bales from a local farmer who was telling us about how he hopes to cut his hay next week.... Weather permitting. That hay is also what will be feeding not only my animals, but the livestock of many other people who are anxiously waiting for this year's hay.

Again, will you please pray?

Nothing is too small for the Lord! So please don't think that he is "too busy" for something like this! In Matthew 10:29, we are told:

"Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will."

I love that verse. If God cares that much even for the tiny sparrows, how much more so does he care about our problems?

~Caitlyn

Trusting

I may not understand Lord, but I trust you.

About a month ago, as I was praying, the Lord asked me something that I was not prepared for.

"Child, do you trust me?"

"Of course I do, Lord!" Was my answer.

"I want you to give two of your alpacas back."

"Operator? Hello? I think we had a miscommunication, for a moment it sounded like He wanted me to give two of my alpacas back!!"

Give two of my alpacas back!! Which two?

"The two pregnant ones." Came the soft answer.

On that very same day, my parents came to me and casually said something like: "Caity, have you ever thought of giving your two pregnant alpacas back? I'm sure the former owner would take them."

Later in the day, I got an e-mail from the former owner saying that if I ever wanted to give the alpacas back, she would come and get them.

Triple Whammy! Ouch that hurt.

Well, that was a month ago. It's taken me this long to yield.... To surrender.... To trust.

I tried everything.... "Lord, I just got them!"

"But they were a gift!"

"But Salinda hasn't had her baby yet!"

"But I want to keep them!"

"I haven't sheared them yet!"

"I don't understand Lord."

"Why do I have to give them back?"

Etc...

His patient answer was always: "Child, do you trust me?"

My untrusting reply was always: Yes, but...

Finally, like a wayward lamb coming back to the fold, I yielded.

That's all I had to do.

Just trust.

For the first time in a month, I felt peaceful. It was that feeling you get when you know you did the right thing. I e-mailed the former owner, who came today and picked up Salinda, Altimira and my little baby 'paca.

Actually, 'baby 'paca', has a name now. My dad came up with the winning name of:

"Tumnus". :)

We finally gave up trying to think up a name that would look good on his papers, instead we went with a name that fit his personality.

He was a goofy, curious little fellow, and the name Tumnus just seemed to fit.

I may not understand why I had to give them back, but I trust the Lord.

~Caitlyn