33 years & more critters than I can count
33 years & more critters than I can count
We've had lots of animals over the years, below is a brief account of some of the ones I remember
It’s my bday today! I was going over some old family photos and found some of these classics. While we were mostly a cattle family, when I was young, my grandfather wanted us to have experience with goats, sheep, and pigs. We also had a horse and some other critters.
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Growing up, my first two “pets” were some pigs and fainting goats. I really liked those pigs and goats! I loved going out to feed them and play with them when I was young. While I grew up around dogs, I def consider these pigs and goats as my first critters.
I haven’t had pigs since then, however I’m hoping to one day get back into them. We would have to rebuild some barns (tornados have a bad habit of taking out our barns at the ranch; we’ve lost as at least 2-3!).
Pigs, as I have learned, can be really good for regenerative ranches. They naturally till the land and can help improve the soil. We would have to keep them away from baby goats, however, as I have heard they can try to eat the babies. :(
Sadly I haven’t been able to find any pictures of our fainting goats. They were my favorite as a kid, though in hindsight I feel a bit bad for them. Fainting goats, once you scare them, they stiffen up and fall over. It doesn’t hurt them, but it does paralyze them for a bit. A lot of ranchers will put a fainting goat or two with their herd so that when a coyote, wild dog, or other predator attacks, they get the fainting goat and not the more expensive livestock. While not necessarily a “good deal” for the fainting goats themselves, it’s worked for a number of ranches.
Currently, we don’t have any fainting goats, and I don’t have any plans to go out and find any, at least not yet.
We really try not to bottle feed our animals, but sometimes you do what you gotta do. I don’t remember too much about these babies, but this one of the barns that was taken out by a tornado.
Normally, we feed our cows out in the pasture. Papa would have us drive the ranch truck as he dumped the cubes, or vice versa. We still feed our cows in the pasture, though we’re implementing some regenerative practices so we have to feed them less. We’ve had to sell about half of our cattle herd this year. Hopefully, once these regenerative practices are fully implemented, we can expand our herd once more!
We keep our cows pretty wild-ish. They def don’t like being petted! We do this because a 1,000 lb cow is stronger than you would think. They could send you flying without really meaning to — one cow almost tipped one of our vehicles once just by turning its head!
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