Our sweet Gertie girl is going in for her first ever vet visit tomorrow. For the past week or so, she's had a wheezy cough that comes in little fits. At least I think that it's a cough. The girls say it's hiccups and Bill initially thought that it was a sneezing fit. Whatever it is, it's not going away, and it can't be good.
Like I normally do when I'm blindsided by something weird, I googled the bejeebus out of "goat coughing". Most sites say that it is likely lungworm (EWWW!), but we wormed Gert & the boys just a month and a half ago, so I'm not too sure about that being a the culprit. Other sites say that it can be a bacterial infection that requires antibiotics like erythromycin. I'm not overly keen on the idea of throwing antibiotics at every little sneeze and cough, but when you see a creature in your care suffering, you do what you've got to do. I would gladly give her the meds to make her well again, but with our girl being in the family way, and so early in her pregnancy, well, I'm hesitant.
And so, the Gertinator is going to take a little ride into town with us tomorrow to see the doc. I'm not sure how I'm going to get her there. Dare I let a goat loose in the back of my station wagon?
Assuming that we get there in one piece, I'm hoping that the doc might be able to confirm Gert's pregnancy & dates for us, just to be sure. At this point, according to my voodoo math, Gertie is due to deliver on May 8th.
So here's hoping that we'll all make it to the vet and back safe and sound (and without hoof-shaped bruises on our foreheads) and that our sweet Herd Queen is restored to health lickety-split. Viva la Reina Gertrude!
Showing posts with label worms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label worms. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Composting 102
As eluded to in earlier posts, my compost fanaticism has reached new, annoyingly specific heights this spring with the addition of a second bin to our yard. We added a second after finding that, between kitchen scraps, yard waste and chicken coop cleanings, our bin runneth over. Being so crammed full of stuff, it was not getting adequate air or moisture in it's deepest depths, "retarding", if you will, the breakdown process.
So, we now have two compost bins, side by side. On the left, the "hot" heap, on the right, the "cold".
It's not pretty, but it's very functional.
The hot bin is primarily for critter poo. We also throw in the occasional bowl of kitchen scraps ("green" compost) to balance out all of the "brown". I also add a compost starter now and then to the bin, which is essentially a compost probiotic. It's the "good" bacteria that help eat up and literally heat up the pile. The heat created by all of the microbial activity benefits you in several ways-
1) The bacteria's metabolic process accelerates that rate at which your composting material is broken down.
2) Most compost accelerator formulations include beneficial microorganisms that common topsoil frequently lacks. Again, essentially probiotics.
3) The heat generated in a hot pile, when done right, usually reaches temperatures high enough to "deactivate" weed seeds. So if you have a hot pile and you tend it well, you can throw dandelions, horse poop and other weed seed-filled compostables in there without spreading the weeds all over your garden when you use the finished compost.
The hot bin. With a potato growing in it, no less!
Our cold bin is our worm bin. I don't add compost accelerator or critter poo to it, because I don't want to fry my worms. The majority of my green compostables go into this bin, because those worms are voracious little things.
The cold bin.
My happy little helpers!
The preferred type of worm for a worm bin is the Red Wriggler, sometimes also called a Red Wiggler. They are smaller and more brightly colored than the more common earthworm/night crawler that most people think of when they think of worms and dirt. Earthworms and night crawlers are helpful in their own way, they tunnel through the soil, aerating and adding small amounts of fertilizer in the form of poo as they go. The Red Wriggler is the preferred compost worm, though, because of the quantity of food and plant material that it can break down in a short period of time (they can eat their own weight in food every day!) and because of it's fast reproductive cycle - 5 weeks from hatching to reproductive maturity. You can buy wrigglers online and increasingly more often at garden centers and even farmer's markets. We bought a container of a couple hundred worms a few years back for around ten bucks, and they've gone nuts on their own, ever since.
In addition to making stellar compost, the worms' poo can also be used to make a liquid fertilizer called "worm tea", which many claim, in addition to fertilizing plants, can cure black spot in roses, help veggies root and control unfriendly fungi. I've yet to brew my own tea, but there are a million recipes for it online if you are interested in giving it a try. One trick that I've heard of for making a very effective worm tea is to add a crushed aspirin to your brew, which supposedly boosts plant health and assists root production.
So, if I haven't bored you to tears by now with all of this jabbering on about poop and happy bacteria, I'll say just one last little thing about home composting: Do it! It is absolutely worth the effort! Though you'll be putting 10 times more "stuff" into your compost than you'll be getting out of it, the stuff that you do get out of it is incomparable to anything that you can buy in a store. It is perfect for your plants, critters and land because it was made by your plants, critters and land! Not to mention how much completely usable plant material that it keeps out of disgusting, airless landfills, where it would sit forever, never breaking down, it's usefulness wasted forever. Composting - dig it, baby!!! ;)
So, we now have two compost bins, side by side. On the left, the "hot" heap, on the right, the "cold".
The hot bin is primarily for critter poo. We also throw in the occasional bowl of kitchen scraps ("green" compost) to balance out all of the "brown". I also add a compost starter now and then to the bin, which is essentially a compost probiotic. It's the "good" bacteria that help eat up and literally heat up the pile. The heat created by all of the microbial activity benefits you in several ways-
1) The bacteria's metabolic process accelerates that rate at which your composting material is broken down.
2) Most compost accelerator formulations include beneficial microorganisms that common topsoil frequently lacks. Again, essentially probiotics.
3) The heat generated in a hot pile, when done right, usually reaches temperatures high enough to "deactivate" weed seeds. So if you have a hot pile and you tend it well, you can throw dandelions, horse poop and other weed seed-filled compostables in there without spreading the weeds all over your garden when you use the finished compost.
Our cold bin is our worm bin. I don't add compost accelerator or critter poo to it, because I don't want to fry my worms. The majority of my green compostables go into this bin, because those worms are voracious little things.
The preferred type of worm for a worm bin is the Red Wriggler, sometimes also called a Red Wiggler. They are smaller and more brightly colored than the more common earthworm/night crawler that most people think of when they think of worms and dirt. Earthworms and night crawlers are helpful in their own way, they tunnel through the soil, aerating and adding small amounts of fertilizer in the form of poo as they go. The Red Wriggler is the preferred compost worm, though, because of the quantity of food and plant material that it can break down in a short period of time (they can eat their own weight in food every day!) and because of it's fast reproductive cycle - 5 weeks from hatching to reproductive maturity. You can buy wrigglers online and increasingly more often at garden centers and even farmer's markets. We bought a container of a couple hundred worms a few years back for around ten bucks, and they've gone nuts on their own, ever since.
In addition to making stellar compost, the worms' poo can also be used to make a liquid fertilizer called "worm tea", which many claim, in addition to fertilizing plants, can cure black spot in roses, help veggies root and control unfriendly fungi. I've yet to brew my own tea, but there are a million recipes for it online if you are interested in giving it a try. One trick that I've heard of for making a very effective worm tea is to add a crushed aspirin to your brew, which supposedly boosts plant health and assists root production.
So, if I haven't bored you to tears by now with all of this jabbering on about poop and happy bacteria, I'll say just one last little thing about home composting: Do it! It is absolutely worth the effort! Though you'll be putting 10 times more "stuff" into your compost than you'll be getting out of it, the stuff that you do get out of it is incomparable to anything that you can buy in a store. It is perfect for your plants, critters and land because it was made by your plants, critters and land! Not to mention how much completely usable plant material that it keeps out of disgusting, airless landfills, where it would sit forever, never breaking down, it's usefulness wasted forever. Composting - dig it, baby!!! ;)
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