There are some gardening tasks that I can’t do. When we built this house a dozen years ago, we planted a screen of bushes and tress to hide the view of the neighbor’s large yellow house and lawn. It was designed to look natural, but it still requires occasional pruning. I don’t go up ladders, but I know the best people who do. I’ve been using the crew at Rudy’s Tree for twenty years.

 

I asked them to give some of the branches to the goats.

I’ve got a huge stand of rhododendron in the front woodland. It’s a gorgeous plant that must be over seventy years old. The guys were trimming it, too. They know and love my animals, and decided to give them some rhodie branches because they know that deer like it, and thought it’d be a treat for the goats. It was my total fail that I didn’t tell them to not feed it. Rhododendron is toxic to goats. An hour or so after the crew left, I saw the rhodie branches in the goats’ enclosure. I tossed them into the woods. I wasn’t worried. The goats have walked by these plants numerous times and never nibbled at them. The guys had given the goats plants that are tasty and that they gorge on, like pine and birch. I didn’t think that the boys would bother with the rhododendron. That evening, Pip looked a bit off his hay, but I still wasn’t worried.

What I didn’t know that this plant doesn’t just cause stomach upset. It kills.

Steve opened up the barns the next morning at 7. He came and got me. Pip was vomiting. It was green. He was foaming at the mouth. I still didn’t know enough to be in a panic. He’s eaten things before that have upset his stomach. However, even bloat that doesn’t cause vomiting is serious, and I immediately drenched him with pepto-bismol, and then did an additional drench of epsom salts. This is done using an oral syringe. It’s messy, but effective.

I called my vet, Dr. Sarah, who has cared for these goats since they were two months old. What she said did send me into a panic. There’s nothing that I can do. The plant is toxic. If we’re lucky, he vomited out the worst of it, but it’s been in Pip’s system for 12 hours. His body has already digested and absorbed the toxin. You’ll know if he’s going to die by tomorrow.

It looked dire. Pip was lying down. He was not chewing his cud. His mouth was swollen. One ear dipped down, as if he was having a stroke. As always, though, the two brothers were together.

 

There was nothing that I could do about the toxin, but I could keep Pip as healthy as possible so that his body could fight back. For goats, that means keeping food in the belly and the rumen working. When the rumen shuts down, the goat dies. I hand-fed mint. He nibbled a leaf and stopped. I tried a peanut. He chewed and it fell out of his mouth. I thought that I was watching my goat die. I massaged his belly.

I put out hay and baking soda. Baking soda is very good for a goat’s digestive tract. They actually know to eat it when they have an upset. At first Pip was too miserable to touch either, but mid-morning I saw him lick some of the baking soda. It gave me a glimmer of hope.

As you can see in the photo, Pip’s eyes are half-shut in pain. Caper remains by his side.

 

Using Caper as a lure, I got Pip up. I let them eat things that they’re never allowed to eat, like the raspberries. Pip could not resist.

 

After a rest, I lured him back out to the strawberries. Even a goat with pink pepto-bismol in his beard, and pain in his gut, will eat strawberry plants. Caper could not believe his good fortune.

 

In between the eating, Pip would lay down in the sun and look miserable. I rubbed his belly some more.

 

Finally, in the late afternoon, I saw Pip chewing his cud. That was a sign that the digestive tract was working. Pip even head butted his brother out of the way when I handed over a peanut.

I avoided googling frothy bloat (which is what this is called) all day. I trust Dr. Sarah, and I didn’t want to see all sorts of “remedies” to subject Pip to. If he was going to live, it was going to be because of sheer luck that he didn’t ingest enough toxin to kill him. But now that he was looking on the mend, there were things to do to hasten his recovery. I did an internet search and set off for the pharmacy.

The tree guys were still on the property. They were as worried as I was. While I was gone, they massaged Pip’s belly and encouraged him to walk around. (I found this out later, and have no doubt that the TLC from Pip’s friends was an essential component of why Pip pulled through.)

I created a magic goat elixir.

 and  (to detoxify the system),  (to whish out anything bad remaining in the nooks and crannies of the goat’s gut), dried ginger (to settle the stomach), pepto-bismol to soothe, and water to hydrate a goat who hadn’t had anything to drink all day. By now, Steve was home from work. He held Pip and I dosed with the oral syringe. It wasn’t difficult. Pip said that it was tasty, and that the water was fine. He smacked his lips.

Still, the toxins might have been working silently. Were they going to kill him overnight? I woke at 5 and went out to the barn in my pjs. Pip was chewing his cud. Where’s my breakfast? he asked.

A day later, and I’m sure that Pip is fully recovered.

 

He’s wondering why the raspberry plants are again off-limits.

As expected, right on time, but much too early for my liking, one (or more?) of my hens  is going into the molt. I know this because I am finding hard outer feathers,

 

and soft downy feathers in the bedding.

 

Of my fifteen hens, three are broody – Pearl,  Florence, and Veronica.

 

That leaves twelve potential layers. But Jasper has issues, so she’s out of production. I haven’t seen an egg from Onyx in a month (I don’t know what’s up with her. She acts fine, but she’s never been a regular layer.) Misty lays only two eggs a week, Owly only one. Despite the slackers, the flock has provided me with an abundance of eggs this summer. That’s about to change. Have you noticed feathers floating around your coop lately?

I’ve been hearing from many of you concerned about how your hens can cope with the heat. I complain when the temperature here hits 80º F. That’s nothing compared to what my friends in the southwest are dealing with – triple digits day in and day out! You’re right to be worried about your hens. Heat stress kills.

Heat affects some hens more than others. If you live in a clime and are thinking about getting chickens, select a breed appropriate for your area. For example, as charming as the fluffy cochins are, this breed has too many soft feathers. It’s like if you walked around outside with a down coat on all summer.  Also, they go broody, which means that they’re more likely to hunker down in a stuffy coop than to find a shady cool spot to hang out in. I know. Here is Pearl. She has just roused herself from her broody daze and is having her morning walk-around before going back into the nesting box.

 

On the other hand, Misty, the Andalusian, is suited for hot summer weather. Her big comb dissipates heat. Her sleek body and few under-feathers protect her from the sun without unduly insulating her. I’ve never even seen her pant.

 

Twiggy, like Misty, is designed for handling hot weather. She’s a Leghorn. Despite the August temperatures, she continues to remain active and lay eggs.

 

But, even if you have an entire flock of these trim Mediterranean breeds, you still have to feed, water and manage the environment to keep your healthy and safe. I have a FAQ that provides lots of tips for easing heat stress, like this one about feeding watermelon to keep your hens hydrated. Please read and share!

Last week was a difficult one. It started with having to euthanize Opal, and it didn’t get much better from there. On Wednesday I went out to my vegetable garden to collect the first ripe tomatoes and got stung by a paper wasp. I’m not usually allergic to stings, but this time my foot swelled up… and then my hands… and then over the course of the day I watched as hives spread across my body. It was never so bad as to affect my breathing, but it was far from pleasant. I’ve been warned (by one of my readers who knows about such things) that the next time I get stung it will likely be worse. So, my garden gate remained open and the tomatoes and cucumbers that I threw into the air when I yelled and ran remained on the ground.

 

Steve was out of town, so there was no one to send in there to get the vegetables. But that didn’t mean that the yard had to be totally abandoned. I let the hens out.

Most of the girls stay on the lawn and scratch in the flower beds. Not Misty. She gets that gleam in her eye that I imagine she inherited from her Jungle Fowl ancestors.

 

Misty sped off to the pumpkin patch that has gone to weeds and flowers while I let the soil rest this year.

 

There she is. See her?

 

Now you don’t.

 

The problem is that while all of the other hens come when I call, Misty does not. I wasn’t about to wade into the weeds and chance upon a wasp nest. I waited safely on the grass. Finally, she remembered that she isn’t a wild thing and that the shaking of the scratch grain container means good things, even better than what her foraging brings.

I didn’t let the hens out again until this man came. Organic pest control. He suited up, bagged the wasp nest hidden in the vegetable garden and took it away.

 

I harvested tomatoes last night. And one huge zucchini that I gave to the hens.

I’ve lived with this complicated, challenging, hyper-aware, hard-working dog for twelve years.

 

I found her when I was looking for a border collie mix – something smart and athletic that I could continue to compete in agility with. A BC rescue posted a photo of her on-line. Supposedly her mother was a border collie on a farm in the South. Although Lily didn’t move with the border collie crouch, she was obviously smart. And black and white. And needed a home.

The more that I got to know her, the clearer it became that she didn’t have any herding dog in her. What could be her heritage? Lily is reactive to movement and has a high prey drive. She’s wary of strangers. She’s smart. Very smart. She looks and acts like a giant rat terrier. But that was just a guess. I decided to do the DNA test. It’s not entirely accurate (here is a good article explaining how it works) but I thought it’d be fun to do. Scooter’s test came back spot on, so I had hopes that Lily’s mystery background would be solved. The first glitch was that she’s one of the few dogs that the cheek swab

 doesn’t work on. I took her to my vet for a blood draw.

The results are finally in, and was I surprised! One parent was a cross of a Collie and Chesapeake Bay Retriever. The other was Dalmatian crossed with a Husky. No unidentified mixed breeds, no terrier, no Border Collie. Her purebred dog ancestry goes back to her great-grandparents.

Lily does shed like a Dalmatian (notorious for leaving hair everywhere.) She’s strong-willed and watchful like these breeds. But, really? Who knows?

There was no clear winner of my guess the breeds contest. However, three people did guess Dalmatian. So, Connie M, Lesley S. and JJ, please email me with your snail mail address and I’ll get a book out to you!

Update on the cruciate ligament tear: My excellent and practical vet, Dr. Craig, agreed that surgery wasn’t the right thing for Lily. Instead, she’s allowed to live life on her terms, but now with a limp. Lily is ignoring the discomfort. She’s ably going up and down the stairs and just last week she figured out how to get on and off the bed with some modicum of decorum. She is, on her own, figuring out how to do her work without stressing the right leg. Smart dog. We keep her activity level reduced as best we can (no being sent outside to chase the heron!) as we are trying to keep the other hip from blowing out. So far, so good.