Another one, just to keep you from getting bored while I fish and swim. Also from 2012
Even though winter
has been fairly benign so far, seed catalogs hold a great deal of charm. Thus
there are piles of them at strategic locations around the house to fend off
gloom and empower dreams of brighter seasons.
However no seed
catalog could fuel the uproar that a livestock supply catalog in the hands of
our male offspring generated the other day. And all he did was read aloud the
names of some of the products offered for sale therein.
The first product mentioned
was a sheep chair. My mind was instantly filled with the image of an older
sheep, perhaps a bit grey around the temples, but quite distinguished, glasses
perched on his narrow, patrician nose, frowning self-importantly while he
perused the WSJ from the comfort of his recliner. He might be wearing slippers
(wooly of course) and be smoking a polished cherry wood pipe in his tastefully
decorated den. (I know you can see a sheep doing this too; they are such
mockers.)
Then I envisioned a
granny sheep, rocking comfortably back and forth in an old Boston rocker near
the wood stove in the kitchen, while she knitted wooly mittens for the little
lambs playing around her feet. They would be leaping and caprioling on and off
a blue and pink rag rug, their little hooves thundering on the wide planks of
the floor. I could see it clear as day.
However, reality was
much more prosaic. (What a letdown.) The sheep chair in the catalog was just a
little canvas sling thing used to confine sheep comfortably while their hooves
are trimmed.
And then there was the
lamb and goat chariot. Okay this one was easy. The only hard part was whether
the goats would be harnessed to a little wagon and driven by lambs in Roman
garb, or the other way around. Or maybe they rode together and had a pony to
pull the chariot. It could possibly even have referred to a low budget remake
of the 1959 classic, Ben Hur, sheep and goats being a bit cheaper than chariot
horses.
Ah, but no, the lamb
and goat chariot was “designed with the sheep showman in mind” (and not
Charleton Heston either). It consists of a two-wheeled metal cart (hence the
chariot part I guess) with places to halter either lambs or goats so they could
all be trained to lead at the same time.
Having had occasion
to attempt (and I use the latter term advisedly) to train sheep to follow along
politely on a halter, I truly understand the need for a chariot. You would
think upon observing a sheep, small compared to a cow, soft and wooly, not
usually possessed of great big horns or a long tail to batter you with, plus a
buttercups-wouldn’t-melt-in-its mouth-expression, that a sheep would be easy.
Not so much. With a low center of gravity, sharp little hooves for extra
traction, and a hair trigger panic button, sheep are tougher than they look.
And when something trips that panic button, if they can’t go around, they will
go over, under, and/or through anything that gets in their way. In retrospect I
can see many uses for that “four head” chariot.
The catalog also
features “Mother-Up” spray intended for grafting lambs, foals, calves and kids
(the caprine kind). No twigs, tapes, or ties involved in this operation though,
just something intended to convince reluctant mama animals to accept babies
that aren’t necessarily their own.
A llama chute, but
alas, no water park or slide, just a stall intended to facilitate clipping or
medical work. Stone tattooers. Waterers, weaners and weather stations.
Tweezers, twitches and six kinds of tape-duct, fencing, illuminator, measuring,
umbilical and weighing….. (The scary part of that is that we have and use all
but one of those here at Northview, and Alan uses the other one on his job in
the city.)
The best item we
found in the NASCO catalog was not a bit strange however, just wonderful. We
use a brand of automatic water bowls made by the Humane Company for the cows’
comfort and entertainment. They are shiny robin’s egg blue things with yellow
plastic paddles. Each one is suspended between a pair of cows, which, when
thirsty, press the paddle down to run fresh water into the bowl, then drink
their fill.
When they are
finished drinking they let the paddle spring back up and the flow of water is
shut off. (Except when springs break or dirt gets into the valve or the cows
bang on the bowls hard enough to break them off the water line. Then we find a
lovely flood the next time we go into the barn and emergency repairs and water
removal occur.)
However some cows get
bored, or even learn bad habits from other cows who got bored at some point.
They take their nice fresh drink, then spend hours and hours and hours licking
at the water in the bowl, flicking water out to splash on the floor. Determined
cows can create near-floods and big messes that require big clean up.
Just such a cow is
Bailey, number 155, who stands in my line and is otherwise a nice, unassuming
cow, who doesn’t bother anything. However, all day long when she isn’t eating
or sleeping or being milked she slaps water out of her bowl. Some days it is
enough water to flow down two stalls to the walkway, down the walk way and into
the gutter. It makes a slimy mess of any feed left in the manger too.
We have discussed
putting an individual shut off on Bailey’s bowl and turning her toy off when we
are not in the barn. We have never done so though because it seemed kind of
mean and not fair to the cow who shares that bowl.
And there in the
catalog was the perfect solution- a splash guard for a Humane water bowl, held
on with a simple muffler clamp.
Perfect.
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