Lou's Musings

Who Nose?

I just have to get this one down before I forget it. We have a behavioral problem in one of our chicken tractors: somebody is eating freshly laid eggs. The clues are a slimy yellow goo on the straw bedding; no sign of egg shells, so whoever it is eats it all.

I mentioned this to Jesus our Vineyard Manager, and as is his style he had a ready solution. Back home in Mexico they grab the culprit chicken and poke a straw up its nostril (yes, chickens have nostrils too). Seems it prevents the mischief either from the horrible embarrassment of having a straw up your nose, as in A Fish Called Wanda, or it hurts like hell when you peck anything.

So now how do I figure out who's doing it?

Water Buffalo School

Susan and I took a recent rare vacation, this time to Vietnam. It was a walking tour that took us into the countryside which I much enjoyed for its glimpse into traditional farming. One of the features that we noted was the use of water buffalo as draft animals, although we also got the sense that South East Asia is modernizing with fossil-fueled tractors, both 4 wheeled like ours and two wheeled walk-behinds.

Our suspicions were reinforced by an article in the Bangkok Post which we picked up courtesy of Bangkok Airways flying into and out of Vietnam. The story was about a recently established school in Thailand for training buffaloes to plough farm land. We've long forgotton draft horses; I guess they're hoping not to forget their water buffalo.

 

Lost Cause Kid

Our daughter Maggie says that if this picture (that she took) doesn't get me going again on my blog, I'm a lost cause. I guess that's a good name for "Boy", the one we are planning to eat.

Lost Cause is one of three goat triplets born in February to Trixie, a Togenburg dairy goat. Since there are three mouths to feed, mine--the fourth--is not yet one of them. Clio and Calliope are girls, all are cute as buttons although they are growing by leaps and bounds and are leaping and bounding all over us when we sit on the ground to enjoy their antics.