Tag Archives: Animal Husbandry

June 10, 2014 · 7:55 am

Parenting Challenge–Learning from Animals–Running the emotional gamut

Welcome to the June 2014 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Kids and Animals

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have shared stories and wisdom about kids and pets.

***

We have animals. We interact and coexist with them on a daily basis. How can we not learn from them?

Having animals is an emotional training ground for my son, or so I believe. I hope that when he moves on to the emotional truckload found in adolescence and young adulthood, he will remember some of these experiences and maybe be just a little more prepared and not blind-sided with their impact.

Unconditional love

We have had quite a few baby animals under our care. Some have been abandoned, some orphaned and some we bought young. These babies, whether puppies, kitties, colts, ducklings, lambs, bunnies, piglets, kids or chicks, have looked to us with unconditional love. They greet us with shining eyes in the morning. They wait at the gate for us to come home. They follow us trustingly wherever it is we go. They crawl into our laps for comfort. Everyone should experience unconditional love.

Group Identity

Some of our orphans have been accepted immediately by our other animals. Others have been rejected for whatever reason. Maybe their color was wrong, or they were seen as a threat to the already established status quo. It comes as no surprise then that the rejected form their own iron-clad gang, finding love and acceptance among themselves. Everyone should have a feeling of belonging.

Unrequited love

Some of our animals we have found had been abandoned and took them in. It is harder for us to love these older animals with their already formed personalities and behavior issues. We go through the motions, but the unrequited love these animals look at us with is difficult when our emotions do not run so deep. The kindest thing we can do is to try and find a more appropriate home for them. Everyone should learn to deal compassionately with a love that is not returned.

Betrayal

Sometimes, no matter how much lavish attention and love we shower on our animals, it isn’t enough. My husband has been the most affected by animal betrayal. Those dogs and horses he feels closest to have been the ones that ultimately have to go after a particularly horrendous crime. Everyone will experience betrayal.

Loss

Animals have a shorter life span than humans even when allowed to live out their natural life. Outside events are also a factor. Some of our animals have been poisoned by not-so-well-meaning neighbors. The sadness and pain of loss is not lessened with frequency. Sometimes the only thing that we can do is sit by a dying animal and give comfort with our presence. Everyone will experience loss.

Sometimes, when we have to make a particularly difficult decision with regards to our animals, I look at my son’s shining eyes and wonder if it is fair that I force him to experience these emotions right now, at his age. I wonder if it would be better if he didn’t have to deal with their magnitude and if I could keep him protected in a hazy bubble, maybe by giving him a fairy tale to believe, a Disney version of All Dogs go to Heaven perhaps. Then again, I know my son and doubt that he would believe such a story even if I could present it well. After all, life isn’t the Disney channel and childhood isn’t an isolated period of growth and development. He already knows that and so do I.

***************************************

*********************************************************

Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

What Animal Rescue is Teaching My Children
Tips on Picking the Perfect Kid-friendly Dog — Lactating Girl at The Adventures of Lactating Girl shares some tips she’s learned on how to find the perfect child-friendly dog for your family.
All New Animals Are “Woof” — Baby Boy is still learning animals. Life Breath Present doesn’t yet have any at home, but he still believes that all animals are “woof.” Here’s the proof.
Dude, where’s my Horse? — Adora loves horses, but Erin at And Now, for Something Completely Different really doesn’t. However, Adora’s longing wins out; learn about their interactions with horses here.
Weighing the Pros and Cons of a Family Pet — When is a family ready for a pet? Donna at Eco-Mothering discusses her worries as well as the benefits of adopting a dog, including how it will affect her seven-year-old daughter.
Parenting Challenge–Learning from Animals–running the emotional gamut — Survivor at Surviving Mexico writes about the emotional learning her family has experienced through sharing their lives with animals.
Puppy Love for our Family — In case you didn’t catch it from the blog title, Pug in the Kitchen, the family pet is an integral part of Laura’s family and home life!
Vegetarianism and Animal Rights: Explaining to Children — Becca at The Earthling’s Handbook is mostly vegetarian…not 100%, and not because of animal rights…yet she has found that the idea of not hurting animals is the aspect of vegetarianism most easily understood by a young child. She explains what her son has learned about not eating meat and how it has affected his social life.
Pets & kids: The realities — Lauren at Hobo Mama lays out the benefits and drawbacks of pet ownership when young kids are involved.
HOW PETS CONNECT WITH EMOTIONS: KIDS & PETS AFTER 9-11 — Parenting Expert Laurie Hollman at Parental Intelligence discusses the importance of pets in lowering stress after traumatic situations, why children choose certain pets, the loss of a pet, and the role of parents in teaching care-giving to animals in a warm, gentle way.
It’s not our house without a dog! — Amy at Me, Mothering, and Making it All Work describes why giving a loving and disciplined home to at least one shelter dog at a time enriches the life of her family, and has become a vivid memory in the minds of her children.
Canine Haikus —Kids, dog, haikus, atDionna (Code Name: Mama).Pet-centric poems.
Beanie’s Bunnies — Our Mindful Life‘s Sofi Bean has gotten her first pets!
Montessori Care of Pets — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now tells about her experiences with kids and pets and shares Montessori resources for pet care.
No Puppy! — Meg at the Boho Mama shares her tips for dealing with toddlers and the (very real) fear of animals.
Year of the Pets — Jorje of Momma Jorje wasn’t sure she ever wanted pets again, but things have changed a lot this year!
3 Reasons Why Keeping Backyard Chickens is Good for my Toddler — Bianca, The Pierogie Mama, started keeping backyard chickens for the benefit of their eggs, but what she wasn’t prepared for was what they would teach her two-year-old daughter too.

18 Comments

Filed under Animal Husbandry, Carnival posts, Parenting Challenges and Cultural Norms

Tagged as Animal Husbandry, children and animals, homesteading, learning from animals, lessons learned from animals

April 8, 2014 · 7:11 am

Our Family Hobby

Welcome to the April 2014 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Parenting Fears

***

A family hobby? Us? We are so busy in our day to day lives that we don’t often have time for leisure activities like travel or bungee jumping or arts and crafts. But we spend time together as a family and we enjoy the time we spend together as a family. So what do we do together as a family? Our daily discussions, activities, and lives are centered around our animals. Animal husbandry is our hobby.

We play around with animal husbandry, not in the Wikipedia definition of Animal husbandry as “the management and care of farm animals by humans for profit,” since we certainly do not realize a profit, but more as the now obsolete meaning of the word husbandry as a “steward” of a household. We are definitely stewards.

Since moving to Mexico, we have been involved in purchasing, raising, caring, breeding, healing, feeding, selling, butchering and sometimes burying all sorts of animals.

Afternoons will often find us settled on the back steps watching some aviary antics.

Mrs. Macho setting on the eggs.

We have been host to domesticated pigeons escaped from the tiro de pichon (shooting range) and watched them raise generations of babies in the eves of our animal area. Eventually, Mrs. Macho moved on when we had to change the roof slant, but it was fascinating to watch the love and care both Mr. and Mrs. Macho took by sitting on the eggs and feeding the ugliest little broods. We enjoyed watching the babies growth and their first practice flaps and then rejoiced as they left the nest one by one.

Codornices are small, native quail.

We have also had codornicess, which are a small native quail. We noticed most how the little guys would come to greet us at feeding time, even pecking at our shoelaces when we were slow to acknowledge them, hopping up and hooting just like in the cartoons.

Chicken hierarchy

Of course, our mini-homestead has chickens and chicken culture is amazing. Their socialization and hierarchy are as intense as any telenovela (soap opera). We have watched young roosters make their first macho challenges to the current head mucky-muck. We watched as Henny Penny gave up the will to live when the love of her life was no longer there. We chuckled at Jovencita’s attempts to adopt every single chick hatched and shook our heads at the poor mothering done by Hilda. We were horrified in the pecking death of Gringa, for the crime of being different from the others. And we are on hand to cluck over the newest batch of hatchlings. (See Why did the chicken cross the road?)

These goats are less than a week old and already playing bump heads!

One of our daily activities is taking the goats out to forage. Some days this is a run for your money if Duchess or Twiddledee get it into their heads to head for the hills. Most days, it’s a relaxing afternoon under the mesquite watching the antics of the goat kinder (kindergarten) as they play king of the rock or a rousing game of bump heads. We have even had kids that wanted nothing more than to sit in your lap, although this tends to be a bit cumbersome as they grow. (See Separating the sheep and the goats)

Beauty getting saddled up.

Sunday afternoons will often find us spending time with our hoofed animals, which currently includes Fiona, the donkey, Beauty, the yegua (mare) and Shadow her colt. It is not unheard of for us to take a family ride up and past La Yacata and back, sometimes further. We have even been known to have donkey races just for fun. (See Donkey Races, A horse is a horse or not, Beauty’s Babies)

Smile for the camera now kitty!

I must not forget to include our long list of puppies and kitties that have come into our lives, sometimes for an extended period, sometimes for just a few days. Their personalities, travasuras (naughtiness) or amiableness, have made them such a pleasure to come home to. Currently, we are hosting 2 dogs, Hershey and Chokis and one cat, Little Miss Licorice Stick, otherwise known as Licky. (See 101 perritos)

Whether we have been strictly observers or had a hand in their daily lives, we have enjoyed our foray into animal husbandry. We have come to know that animals are sentient beings and that our actions and attitudes towards them affect their lives, sometimes drastically. Ahh, a hobby with moral value. What more could anyone ask for?

***********************************************************

disclosure
***********************************************************

Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

8 Reasons to Go Camping with Your Kids — The weather is warmer, and it is time to think about taking a break. As you plan your family vacation, Mandy of Living Peacefully with Children, guest posting at Natural Parents Network, explains why you should consider hitting the trails with your kids.
Crafty Cohorts — Kellie at Our Mindful Life enjoys crafting with her kids, and the skills they are learning.
Helping Himawari — Sophelia’s family at Sophelia’s Adventures in Japan share a passion for helping when a dog is abandoned at the nearby elementary school.
The ‘Art’ of Having Fun — Marija Smits shares some thoughts on family art and fun.
How we made our own Family Day — Lauren at Hobo Mama shares how her family celebrates the best day of the week, a chance for connection and adventure and endless possibilities: Family Day!
Our Family Hobby — Survivor talks about how animal husbandry has become her family’s favorite hobby at Surviving Mexico Adventures and Disasters.
Sowing the Seeds of Passions — Christy at Eco Journey In The Burbs wonders if her interests, and her husband’s, will shape her children’s passions as they mature.
Harry Potter Potions Party — One of the best activities Dionna at Code Name: Mama has ever done with her family has been a Harry Potter Potions Party. She is sharing the resources she used to create their potion recipes, the ingredients and tools they experimented with, and the recipes themselves. Feel free to use and adapt for your own budding wizards and witches!
Pastimes Have Passed Me By — Kati at The Best Things takes a new perspective on projects that never get done.
Food as a cultural experience for preschoolers — Nathalie at Kampuchea Crossings finds that food is a good way to engage her preschoolers on a journey of cultural discovery.
Pastime with Family vs Family Pastime — You can share lots of pastimes with your family, but Jorje of Momma Jorje discovered a family pastime was much more pleasant for sharing.

15 Comments

Filed under Animal Husbandry, Carnival posts

Tagged as Animal Husbandry, cat, chickens, Codornices, codorniz, dog, Donkeys, Goat, goat kids, golondrices, hobby, homesteading, Horse, kitten, Mexican quail, pigeons, puppy, raising animals

February 7, 2014 · 3:22 pm

Animal Doctoring

Having as many animals as we do guarantees that some will fall sick on occasion, no matter how attentive we try to be.

For instance, there was that horrible week when the hens would get the hiccups then fall over dead, and we had no idea what to do. It did eventually run its course, but we lost 5 chickens.

Then there was the sad event when our new puppy somehow managed to get on the other side of the wall and was accidentally stepped on by Beauty. Sometimes the only thing to do is to sit by an animal’s side.

But in other instances, the illness or injury is completely treatable, if you know how. My husband often calls me to “traer el libro” (bring the book) for me to do some on the spot research on a new symptom of one or more of our animals.

Our library is small and consists of Barnyard in your Backyard and Keeping Livestock Healthy, but for the most part, that’s enough.

When our rabbits kept getting sore hocks, we changed the entire way we kept rabbits, from caged to free range, well, within our yard range anyway based on a section of the Barnyard book. When the chickens looked droopy, my husband cut a hole in the wall so that they could forage in the goat and horse poop while those animals were grazing, and sure enough, the extra vitamins did a world of good, all based on the Healthy Livestock book. When one of our nanny goats developed mastitis, we checked the books to see what we could do and did what we could to ease her agony until the infection cleared up.

In addition to our resource books, there are local folklore methods concerning the care of animals. Fortunately, my husband is not one of those men afraid to ask for directions, when it comes to the welfare of his animals that is. Some of the information he gets seems to be a bit hokey at times, so we cross reference with our books. If the treatment appears to have some sort of valid basis and not entirely dependent on the warts of a frog during the lunar eclipse, he often gives it a try.

My husband has treated swollen eyes with a spit of salt water. The first patient was Duchess, the goat, who was accidentally hit by a slingshot stone. (Apparently, there was a passing squirrel my son was aiming at.) A spit of water and the swelling was completely gone within the hour. The second patient, Shadow the yeguita (female colt) also was struck by a misdirected stone thrown to scare her back from jumping a fence that was much too high for her young legs. Again, the spit of salt water, my husband actually spits into the eye, and the swelling went down.

The most recent examples of this folklore animal medicine can be illustrated with the unfortunate injuries sustained by our horses, Beauty and Shadow.

Beauty came up lame one day and what appeared to be a superficial cut above her front hoof became a gaping hole overnight. My husband thinks that she opened it with her own hoof while dancing. Yes, she actually dances continuously in her stall at night. As it was on the bend of her foot, it could not be sewn up. He was, at first, dismayed and unsure how to help in the healing since she opened it anew every time she went out to graze. He asked around. One person told him to echar aqua de la mata de toro (bull’s weed water). Another told him to cover the wound with hoja de sábila (aloe leaves).

mata de toro

Now, I had never heard of mata de toro (bull’s weed), so I couldn’t be too sure of its effectiveness. However, aloe is a herb that I know to have soothing qualities for burns and endorsed its use. Beauty’s treatment ended up being a periodic dash of Azul (Blue) for infection, a daily wash with boiled mata de toro (bull’s weed) and an overnight bandage of sábila (aloe). The Azul we purchased at a local vet place, but the other two herbs grew wild in La Yacata, and it was just a matter of harvesting. Her wound is slowly healing, and we hope she will be back up to her regular dance routine soon.

Little Shadow

Shadow also recently sustained an injury. One day, she wandered a bit from where her mother was grazing and tried to leap a barbed wire fence. She’s only 6 months old, so she really didn’t know any better. A good section of her skin on her underbelly was ripped open, the fur hanging off in one big sheet. Poor thing. My husband called in a more experienced horse keeper for advice. He brought a needle and thread to sew her up. Of course, she wasn’t too keen on this procedure, so she had to be lightly sedated. Even under anesthesia, she kicked out several times and had to be held down to get the stitches in. This was quite a group project. In attendance in the operating theater, a.k.a. Shadow’s stall, was the tailor, my husband and his father for front and back leg holding, my son, for head holding and nerve soothing, and my sister-in-law, the light holder. I stood outside the stall and ran for things like clean water to wash with, alcohol to sterilize the needle, rags for blotting, etc. Beauty, the anxious mother, was behind me looking on and expressed her emotions noisily every few minutes. It was over in about 30 minutes and took another 30 minutes or so for Shadow to recover from the sedative.

Warming aloe vera to make a poultice

In the morning, my husband made a dressing from hoja de sábila and fashioned a bandage out of a costal (feed bag). He heated the aloe leaves on the comal (tortilla pan) so that the juices would run well. Then he cut the sharp edges off the leaves and sliced them down the middle. The inner sides he placed up so as to be the part that touches the wound and tied on the bandage. We also have been using periodic treatment with the Azul, which is an animal antiseptic, although it is more purple than blue and a round of penicillin and tetanus shots just to be on the safe side. We are all hoping for a quick recovery for our little lady.

Attaching the bandage with the aloe vera poultice

I won’t say that we know everything about healing animals and we may yet discover that what we do on these occasions is not the best way to treat injuries, but we do what we can with what we have and have found that the natural remedies offered in our area often outdistance any man-made chemical when it comes to effectiveness.

********************************************************

4 Comments

Filed under Animal Husbandry, Health, Native fauna and flora

Tagged as Aloe vera, Animal Husbandry, caring for horses, homesteading, keeping horses, livestock care in Mexico, mata de toro, natural remedies in Mexico

Tag Archives: Animal Husbandry

Parenting Challenge–Learning from Animals–Running the emotional gamut

Share this:

Our Family Hobby

Share this:

Animal Doctoring

Share this: