Itty Bitty Hooves

A New Beginning

Well, where to start? There’s been a lot of excitement here at the ranch in the last few days. To start I’ll say we used to raise purebred Alpine dairy goats, but I stopped because milking was too painful due to severe carpel tunnel and not being able to find an affordable, or reliable milking machine built for small time goat keeping. Nowadays they are much easier to find, and somewhat more affordable.

Anyway a friend of mine still has Nubian/Alpine cross dairy goats and I’ve enjoyed watching them over the years. Last year she had the chance to breed her does to a purebred Boer buck and she jumped at the chance.

This Monday the first of the does delivered two beautiful doelings. One however was having a great deal of trouble latching on and getting the necessary milk, and was quickly fading.

After wisking her into the house it became apparent that little Annie was going to need round the clock care and bottle feeding…

so I took her.

Introducing Country Haven Ranch’s newest addition–Nubian/Alpine/Boer goat ‘Annie’

As you can see, over the last two days Annie has become quite strong, and bright. She’s doing really well. Bob came home from work today to see Annie for the first time. Later on after saying I felt sorry for her not having any other goats to play with, we’ll just have to get her another little doe to play with.

 LOL I guess we’re back in goats. I’m going to have to save for one of those milking machines though.

Weekend Lost

This weekend was such a waste. I was so ill on Saturday and Sunday, and still under the weather on Monday, but a couple of neat things did happen in spite of my being unwell. First my article on starting up your aquarium was published on Associated Content, check it out when you get the chance. And my new guppies should be here tomorrow so I have something great to look forward to.

I bought a new fish tank today. Yep, that’s right. A new 10-gallon set up. That makes 4 ten gallon tanks now. I saw my next one too. A 55 gallon set with cabinet. Super reasonable at Wal-Mart. The complete set includes the tank, hood and florescent lighting, heater, temperature strip, filter, net, and the stand.

Anyway, the new tank today is for the fish coming next week. I bought two pairs of red cobra guppies on an auction. They should be leaving on Tuesday and arriving here on Wednesday.

Fry!

Well, so much for getting pictures of my very pregnant females before they gave birth.

One of them gave birth to nine babies this morning. It was her first drop so that wasn’t too bad a number. The second will probably go tomorrow, but since we got hit with about a foot of snow and extremely hazzardous driving conditions due to drifting, there’s no way I am going to be able to get to the store in time to get new batteries for my camera.

Hopefully next time. At least one thing’s for sure with guppies–there WILL be a next time.

For now I’ll just be happy to enjoy these new babies. I will try to get pics soon of them to show you. Until then, here’s a pic of pappa to this batch:

Itty Bitty Babies

Well first of all, I have finally gotten my sidebar to look pretty close to the way I want it. At the very least I have figured out how to add elements to it. I’d like to mess around with changing the header, and may do that in the days to come.

I find it strange that it takes hours, sometimes overnight before a change actually appears on my blog. That makes it difficult to know if something I’ve done has worked or not, and makes all adjustments take days rather than hours since I have to wait for each movement before I try to change something I’ve done if it didn’t work.

On a happier note, I have two guppies about to drop fry. One is in the baby tank. She’s the mom of the current bunch of fry in there and they’re big enough that she won’t eat them. I like doing it that way when possible because it gives the mom more room to move rather than being confined in a breeder box.

 The second female is in the brooder box though because by the time she drops, probably a few days from now, the first female should have already dropped. I’ll take her out immediately so she doesn’t eat her new babies, but the second female would if she were in there. She seems to be adjusting to the confinment of the brooder box fairly well. I’ll try to post pictures over the next few days. First of the very pregnant females, then of the new babies and shots as they grow. It’s really amazing. They start out no bigger than swimming fleas, turn into swimming tadpoles, then begin to look more and more like itty bitty versions of itty bitty fishies.

I have several foals due this spring as well, but later than usual. I decided last summer that early in the year foaling just isn’t any fun, so I held off putting the mares with the stallions until a bit later. Of the three mares bred, one is due in late March, the other two in June. That will be much nicer weather, and the babies can go right out into the pasture rather than out into the snow for their first days out.

Oh sure… now they show up. Well it’s good to know anyway. See ya later (for real this time).

The Just One More Thing Trap

I fall into that trap a lot. I set out to work for an hour or so and pretty soon it’s dark outside. I’ve been telling myself for the last two hours to go get some rest (it was a long night on here) and run the errands I need to do today…

where am I? Still here.

It’s the ‘one more thing’ trap. I did add some links to the blogroll besides the PPP link, but they’re not showing up yet.

The Associated Content box finally showed up, but so small (to keep the sidebar from being pushed to the bottom of the page) that it’s hard to read so I replaced it with a AC button to my articles. That’s not showing up yet for me either. Hopefully soon… but I really am off for the day (or at least a few hours) to get some rest, and get some things done.

Still working, but getting closer

Okay the delay in effect, now the sidebar is showing up as needed, but one more fix completed has not shown up yet. Hoping it gives me more room so I can widen that Associated Content widget and make it larger.

As you can see… still not fixed. Working on it though. Getting closer. Close enough to touch. Not close enough to see though. Funny thing is that one of the changes made seems to have affected the posting style size. Let’s see if it changes the font size in the actual posts.

Creating this WP blog is a learning curve like no other I’ve ever experienced. It’s so much more complicated than any of the free blogs I’ve used in the past or am currently using. Now a regular blog is easy, and very simple to create, but I’ve never been satisfied with that. I like customized links, widgets on the sidebar etc. THAT is a headache. Blogger makes those things pretty easy. Even the old version of blogger, blogspot made it simple enough to add code to the sidebars–if it was even that simple in WP I’d be happy enough. I’ve also noticed a freaky sort of delay thing. Just adding simple links like the ‘my blogs’ on the side here which is standard application in the creation area of the blog has a weird sort of delay on it. At the moment of this writing only one link is showing up that I put up a few days ago. Today just a little while ago I put several more in and they’re still not showing up.

 The Technorati link above with the graphic I added manually to the sidebar yesterday. It didn’t show up until this morning. I have yet to figure out what causes that.