Farmers daughter down for the count

As a few of you know but most don't I had a routine vaginal hysterectomy on June 20th.  The plan was I would be off work until July 11th when I would pass the first of 2 post opp visits and be allowed to return to work at a casual pace not doing anything that required heavy lifting.  Then on July 25th I hoped to be released to start doing more around the farm eventually working back to doing everything I did before but without the monthly debilitating pain.

Dillon Sayer 

So we worked out a schedule to reduce the milking herd to once a day milking there by making it easier for my husband, son and daughter to do the milking after their work day.  The goats were really champs about this an have slowed production down to accommodate our needs.  My son Dillon stepped up to bat and took all the weeknight milking as long as he could have his weekends to do what he wanted with friends.  My husband and daughter Amelia have took over the weekend jobs. Which do seem to entail more work in that they make sure hay is over at the pens for the week and that the old unused hay is scooped out an dispensed to the dairy cattle or some group that will eat it.

Amelia Sayer

The plan was going great until 10 days post operation when I got sick as all can be and ended up back in the hospital for a 4-5 day visit with high fevers and a post opp infection that was threatening to send my body into septic shock.  So much for the great plan.  Thank God for good doctors and a great nursing staff.  I am back home and taking my time recovering.  I feel like I have been hit by a truck and any energy I had post surgery is now gone.  I do some light housework and then have to take a couple hours rest. Which is very out of my comfort zone
.
I did get to go out and visit the goats this evening and give them all scratches and love.  They are doing great and I have my family to thank for this blessing.  However I really miss them and can't wait to be able to return to a normal schedule for me.  And I will admit 3 hours at the farm basically doing nothing has kicked my butt.4

Andrea and babies this spring

In the mean time I have signed up to take an AI course this fall which I am very excited about.  I have also made all my breeding plans for next year.  And I have a date to take my weathers and cull does to the sale at Colby Livestock later in the month.  I will be adding a few of Dillon's unneede
d young bucks and kids that were born too late to make the last sale.

This has been a wide awakening to me as to how much my "job" with the animals is a full time responsibility that really burdens others when I get ill and have to rely on them.  However, I am thankful they are stepping up to the bat and not going with Amelia's plan of just sell the goats because she hates them and really has no desire to have them on the farm.  Then again she is a teenager and could change her mind but I doubt it and that too is okay.  Not everyone in your family is going to love what you love, however everyone in your family should love you enough to make things work when life take a turn and shit hits the fan.

My loving family on a work vacation to Grand Canon 

Looking to make a full recovery in time for breeding season.  In the mean time I will plug along at the pace I can and hopefully I will stay out of the hospital.  Until we meet again...........God Bless the American Farmer.

Desire to learn something new

Well it took Buddy dying this past week for me to realize I won a semen tank with goat semen in storage but I have no idea how to do my own AI of my does.  I have some wonderful bucks and amazing bloodlines in storage but no way to utilize them.  Well not any more I have taken my time off to recoup from surgery to find a location that I can attend a class to learn to AI.  They will teach me and allow me to actually try to AI goats all in the same day.

buddy and I on our first meeting

Reproduction Enterprises Inc out of Stillwater Oklahoma will be the destination for my training.  The super cool thing is they will also collect my bucks if need be and even AI my does the traditional way or Laparoscopic for me.  This is something I will do if my scheduled class doesn't take place before I want to start my breeding season.  I hope to learn all I can from this class and to be able to make improvement in my herd by using better quality bucks to improve my program in a positive way.  I know I could just keep purchasing bucks and see if they give me the offspring I desire or I can use the great semen I currently own to see if I can take my goats forward in a positive way.  I own semen from the countries top breeding bucks in the current market and from those bucks we have walked away from but they founded what we started with.

My good friend Kayla who helped me the first time and we got one litter

So with careful consideration as to who to breed who to and also using my live bucks as planned or as cleanup bucks for when a doe doesn't settle with AI I am opening my farm up to world of possibilities.  I know I will have the opportunity to be breeding and raising goats not many others will have in their herd. This makes me very excited as I will be working with genetics older than me in some ways and some that are on today's cutting edge.  I have bucks collected and stored that were born in the late 70's early 80's up to the early 2000's.  This array should give me the opportunity to create some fantastic milkers with some fabulous show potential.

Kastdamur's Most Wanted our successful breeding sire

I realize when you start a plan like this some will call you crazy and even insane.  My over all goal is to see what I can breed DJ's Creek Nubians into.  Will they become the go to goat?  Or will I end up with more misses than successes.  To me the fun part will be watching each litter be born.  Deciding if they are keepers or cull animals and then to watch the keepers to see what they become hopefully in more herds than my own.  I owe my ability to have this semen tank to all the people to had the foresight to collect there bucks before me and to those whom used what they wanted from the tank to make their herd improvements but left enough behind to be passed on to another willing individual.  I just know that some how God has lead me to meet these great people and that the goats I will breed will lead me to meet even more wonderful people.

 Bissberry Vino Trust died before he could be collected

 Jodi Veite and I = Goat sisters for life!

 Keeble a pet that grew into something special

Goddard Farm Big Al a buck that died before he was collected

As you can see from my view point this decision is going to greatly impact my herd and give me the chance to have great genetics for years to come and to help others successfully use them in the Midwest.  I pray God give me the ability to learn this and to be able to offer this service to others.  I have the desire now do I have the ability.  Only God knows but I will put my faith in him.

Compassionate about your Passion

Hello,

Hope this finds you all having enjoyed your Sunday a day of worship and rest.  Now before you start laughing and rolling on the floor please remember that this is what most people use Sunday's for.  A day to catch up on thier rest and to unwind from the long week they had at work.  Some still attend church and most do not but this is not going to be a blog about religion.  It is however going to be enhanced by the message I was inspired with this morning at my home church.

Today's message was that there is a difference between being passionate about something and being compassionate about it.  Both come from the some root.  Your passion and desire to do what you do.  Well this hit me as interesting and I began to ponder if I was passionate about my job and work with my farm or was I compassionate?  Did I do everything with a gust of passsion that can't be stopped?  Well of course not but by the same token my passion to love and build this farm is what gets me out the door each day and keeps me going when the bills are too high and the depths of sadness or work load are too heavy.

I started out to raise Nubian dairy goats as a fluke.  It was simply a project for Dillon to get involved with and to have fun with after we lost Tyson.  I actually allowed both Dillon and Amelia to pick the animal they wanted to purse and we would take it from there.  Never dreaming anything of the full time job I was getting myself into as a mom and farmer's daughter.  Amelia choose pigs and though you all know from time to time I do blog about our pigs they have never become a passion of mine and over time Amelia's passion for them has waned to now we have just the one pig soon to be none.  She did however become passionate about her dislike for the goats and eventually talked grandpa into getting her a Jersey dairy cow.  So I guess you could say we are all a bit passionate about dairy and if you know agriculture we couldn't have picked a bigger way to lose money if we tried.

And over the past 7 years I have come to love my dairy goats with a passion I never dreamed I would be blessed with.  I mean why else would I willing lose sleep, make myself sick, and devote so much time to a group of animals during kidding season.  However in the process of becoming passionate about these animals I have also met and mentored some wonderful people into the world of goats.

As I was sitting in church this morning the part about being compassionate is what hit me and brought me to my core.  Am I compassionate about my abilty to help other goat owners?  Do I really do this for the correct reasons and when I give of myself in this manner am I doing it for their benefit or for the animals benefit or is this some how selfish and for my benefit?  Because to be compassionate you must give freely of your gifts and know they are there because God gave them to you.  And it hit me that sometimes my anwser to this question can land in all three areas but rarely does it land in just the answer of for the glory of God to spread my gift he has given me.

Now as I said before this was not a sermon nor would I try to make it into one.  However, I know I have been given a passion to love and carefor and learn about dairy goats.  I also know I will spend the rest of my life learning and still never know enough.  But at the root of this is do I have the compassion to share my gift with others.  Not expecting a paycheck or a return in a monetary way because I am not a trained vet or a licenesed animal husbandry specialist.  I am mearly a farmer's daughter that has a passion for goats and wants to see others develop a passion for them as well. Bottomline is that if I want to foster others passion I need to be compassionate to the point of giving myself, time and knowledge to them without expecting anything in return.  And in the world we live in this is a mighty tough challenge to put yourself up to but its one that I am willing to try with God by my side.  Will I always succeed?  Probably not.  Will I have the faith to try?  I hope so.

So as I end this I want each of you to think about what your passion in life is. Once you know your passion is decide if you are just passionate or do you have the ability to become compassionate about your passion.  Can you take the time to leave an impact on those around you whom share your passion with

?  Can you leave this world a better place than the one you found?  Your passion doesn't have to be a animal, it can be your work, a hobby or whatever makes you happy just know that if you can develop compassion to go with your passion you will be a more content and happy person.

Until we meet again............

Good bye Buddy

Dear Friends,

Well as I continue to be on rest from surgery life keeps right on happening.  I found out last night that my Jr herd sire Goddard Farm The Kansas Legacy died sometime in the late afternoon.  I have no idea what happened or why he is dead but he is now passed over the rainbow bridge.

Buddy and I on our first meeting the day I brought him home.

I now have quite the herd over the rainbow bridge and as a farmer's daughter I know that things happen and that the animals we have are just ours to care for and nuture until God calls them home.  But even with the knowledge that they are only mine for a short while my heart always breaks when I lose one and don't know why it happens.  The past couple years I have lost several and some have been due to my lack of knowledge and some have just been on the I don't know why list.

This was our first doe Goddard Farm Black Orchid

BO as we called her developed a brain tumor that I fought hard to save her from for over 6 months. She developed seizures and would just drop to the ground and begin banging her head against anything.  Several times she would do this in my arms.  My vet and I tried several treatment plans but in the end I had to conceed she was not going to get better and that she need to to go home.  So I let her leave us for the Rainbow Bridge in a save and humane way.  The tears that were shed that day and on many days since have broke my heart and my son Dillon's heart.

Here is a picture of Whimiscal Kids Miss Emmeline

Emme as we called her got the tip of her teat tore off during her first freshening.  I managed to get her healed up from that and proceed to finish milking her out for the season after her first kidding.  Then right after her second kidding she developed pnemonia (which at the time I didn't vaccinate for but we do now).  Several days of antibiotics and numerous lact ringers of fluid later she pulled thru the pnemonia and was doing well on her second laction when around the begining of July she developed mastitis in the teat that had been damaged.  She was just finished being milked on the evening of the 4th of July when I went to give her a dose of penicillin for the infection.  Apperently I nicked a blood vessel with the needle and the penicillin entered her blood stream.  She died in my arms instantly.  I did not know goats were so sensitive to penicillin and therefore we try to never use it on our farm anymore for the goats.  So Emme is over the rainbow bridge in my herd waiting as well.

Here is a photo of our pride and joy DJ's Creek BO's Foxy Roxy

Roxy was the only daughter BO ever gave us and we had a challenge getting her to a full term pregancy but in 2017 we accompished that goal when Roxy popped three kids out like tic tacs and went into a fabulous milk production.  She was doing everything Dillon and I had dreamed of and I thought she was heading to make some wonderful records and events in our herd.  However less than 45 days into her lactation she had a slight cause for concern in her scc (which is our way of dectecting mastitis when it starts).  We started her on the vets recommended treatment plan and she went into what I beleive was milk fever.  Acting quickly I got the lactate ringers and cpkm into her system and kept her in the barn and warm.  She made it til evening feeding and was alive but not doing fabulous so we gave her another round of lactate ringers and cpkm.  However the meds didnt work the second time and she died in her sleep.  So the next rock star from my herd went to the rainbow bridge.

I have more baby goats that were not even weeks old and boer goats out of Dillon's herd and 4-H projects up in heaven than we can count.  So as I titled this blog Good bye Buddy this is just a part of the greiving process and then the farmer comes out in me and I realize I have 2 choices.  1. Just quit and sell of everthing I own cause then my heart wont break from the loss again or 2. I pull on my farmer's daughter shell and realize this is what God Made a Farmer's Daughter for...........

And on the ninth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said,  I need someone to have a kind heart full of compassion and a spirit as free as a wild mustang and as old as time.  So, God made a farmer’s daughter.

God said I need somebody to sit on the armrest of the tractor while her father runs the disc, get up before school to feed the animals and listen to her teachers  lessons, bring the cattle in from pasture, help her mother cook supper and then go to town to her high school FFA meeting and stay up past midnight working on homework. So, God made a farmer’s daughter.

I need somebody with a strong mind and gentle soul. Strong enough to hold a kicking calf to tag, yet gentle enough to calm a heifer delivering her first baby and get it to nurse. Somebody to call in cattle by yelling  boss , lighten the mood between tired farm hands after a long day, come home to hug her mother and help with her siblings and set the table and clean the dishes. So God made a farmer's daughter.

God said  I need somebody who gets knocked down by a horse and stands up, dusts off the dirt from her jeans and the tear from her eye and climbs back in the saddle. Someone to return to the field after school to plant seeds, drive from field to field with only a farmer s driving permit and a phone book to sit on. And who, during harvest season, will sacrifice nights out with friends and days by the pool to help her dad cut crops, sweep out grain bins in triple digit heat, deliver meals to the field, and finish a forty hour week by Tuesday noon. So, God made a farmer’s daughter.

God had to have somebody patient enough to halter break a new colt and spend countless hours training a show steer for months to prepare for the county show, and still be understanding enough to accept the way of life as she loads him into the buyer s trailer, gives him one last pet, and wipe the tears off her face as she watches the headlights disappear down the road. So, God made a farmer’s daughter.

God said,  I need somebody strong enough to build fence, heave bales and yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend to the calf who lost his mother and his foot to that winter’s frost and who will stop the combine for an hour to mend the baby deer hiding in the wheat field despite knowing her father will be yelling on the two-way to keep the machinery running. So, God made a farmer’s daughter.

I need someone who won't back away from a challenge and will face her fears head on and learn from failures and not give up. Somebody unafraid of getting dirty and cleans up well before going to church and volunteer for the town s pancake feed. And who keeps involved in her community and knows her priorities and stays disciplined enough to know her chores must be done before the evening activities. So God made a farmer’s daughter.

It had to be somebody who’d keep on the straight and narrow, not cut corners, and stay hard-working and determined and restore faith in her generation into the minds of elders. Somebody to speak, share, and advocate for agriculture and farmer’s rights &and show the world the truth behind the lies of animal activists groups. Somebody not easily discouraged and mindful of others and who d bond a community together with the heart of sharing and compassion for thy neighbor, who’d laugh and then sigh and then tell her dad with bright eyes and a proud smile, she wants to spend her life supporting what dad does. So, God made a farmer’s daughter.

Time to catch up

Dear friends,

Sorry it has been 2 years since I last took the time to chat with you.  So much in my life has changed and been in a state of udder confusion.  For this I appoligize and will explain.

August 1 2015 my good friend (basically a sister-in-law) passed away totally unexpectedly and this left a huge void in alot of peoples lives.  However for me it added to my life in so many ways I'm not sure where to start.  I started helping my brother/cousin (but he is more like a brother than anyone else is) raise his 3 boys then ages 5,7,8.  Man I love him and those boys but in doing his I was burning my candle at both ends.  I got them afterschool each day and with my mom's help we took care of them did homework and cooked them supper and gave them showers so they were ready for bed each night Monday-Thursday.  This left me very little time with my husband and two teenagers.

Meet Marshal, Charlie, and Dalton 

During this time I still raised Nubian dairy goats, boer goats, pigs, and Jersey Dairy Cattle.  I made and sold goat milk soap and body products at craft shows every weekend from Sept-Dec.  So 2015-2016 has been a very up and down period of time for me with added blessings and many sad moments and periods of time.

 One of my favorite creations Chocolate Covered Strawberry 

I didn't know what or how to share with you all my new adventure and to be honest I was so tired I didn't have or take the time for this therapy.  Yes you heard me correct writing to you all and sharing my days is a form of therapy that I really enjoy.  I hope my short blogs make each of you smile and perhaps understand agriculture just a bit more.

My family in 2015 on our trip to the Grand Cayon and to Pick up Duelly

So in moving forward.  I have had 3 proms, a State FFA Degree and a graduation for my oldest son Dillon who is now 19 and I have had one prom ,a chapter FFA office, and 2 Summer honors programs in art for my daughter Amelia now 17.  So over the next few blogs I might bring back the memories with my children that you have missed.

My youngest buck Buddy from Kansas

As for the dairy goat opperation I have lost a couple wonder does but I have also added 2 new bucks and several retained does.  The program I have worked so hard to make happen is finally coming together.  I can and do sell farm fresh milk and I have giving a try to wine and cheese claseses to bring attention to my dairy goats and my goals with them.

My buck Duelly from Arizona

This past week I have undergone a surgery that will set me back atleast 6 weeks but I'm sure after I get completely healed I will be back to telling you all some great stories about what it takes and means to be a Farmers daugter on Deer Creek.

Until we meet again.......

Andrea Sayer