New Development

There's been some new development in the whole affair with the bad breeder.

(I will be releasing the breeder's name soon enough.)

Today, someone e-mailed me about the person, having gotten my e-mail from craigslist when I posted a Buyer Beware against this breeder.

Hello, I found a post you once posted on ********* Farms about her miscarrying for several animals. I am very instrested in your views on the farm she is raising. I just recently sent in a 300 dollar check (down payment) for her "micro pig" and after receiving the check she suddenly stopped picking up my calls, my text and not responding to emails. I was told I could pick for my pig in Liberty friday the 29th..well Friday arrived and she will not give me an exact address much less a reply. Now she post poned my date to Febuary 20th I have grown very worried not only because the loss of 300 dollars but in fear to how many others this is occurring to. I thank you for your time and hope to hear to views in return.

Thank you.

Not a huge surprise, really. I did e-mail back and go over the situation, and promised to procure contact information for this person so they could go about getting their (overpriced) pig. Once we get this settled, I will probably be releasing the entire story, along with as much evidence as I have left (some was taken by the ASPCA and in the meantime has disappeared.)

An update on Hallie: She appears to have been harboring some hoof rot in a hind hoof. I caught her, cleaned it out, treated it, and hopefully it will clear up soon. I hate to see her limp, poor dear.

Thankfully she does not appear to be pregnant, so we've avoided that potential disaster.

I will be keeping you updated on this new turn of events, rest assured, and soon enough, I will bring the whole mess to light, and hopefully get the word out there.

Moods

One thing I'm sure many of you who know me have noticed is my mood swings. Part of it is physiological, but my moods are often influenced by outside variables, as with most people.

Today I was mulling over the big one for me. The weather. I am as "cold-blooded" as it gets. I detest the cold with a passion, and thrive in the heat. And so, my mood for the day often reflects the current weather.

When it's cold, I am miserable. I can be surly, snappy, and mean. Part stems from the fact I cannot sleep when I am cold. Strange, but that's the way it is. I become upset, edgy, and terribly unhappy when its too cold for me to be comfortable.

On the other hand, give me 110 degree Texas heat and I am in my element. Cheerful, happy, and generally in an all round good mood. I get stuff done, I sleep good, and things just seem to fall into place.

So it's no wonder that I rarely get anything done in Winter. I detest it and constantly look forward to the Summer again. You can always tell when the Fahrenheit has dropped by my attitude, that's for sure.

Other things that influence me can be how I'm woken up. If someone wakes me up poorly, boy can that put me in a right mood for the entire day. This one isn't quite so bad anymore, as I've overcome this certain one, but it still has a bearing on my entire day.

So what about you? What puts you in a bad mood? What puts you in a good mood?

ChaCha for now!

Making Things Stretch

In our current situation, we're having to make food stretch to last us through the next couple of weeks before I can go to the grocery store.

It got me to thinking, what are all of the different ways you can make food stretch?

A favorite thing of mine to do is buy in bulk when something is on sale and break it down into smaller portions. Say a huge family pack of porkchops is on sale. Buy it, get it home, and break out the freezer bags! Soon enough you have several nights of porkchops stacked up in the freezer.

This works great too, for sales on cheese and other items that freeze well. The list is long, but includes tortillas, bread, meats, vegetables, and other things.

I love to buy big roasts when they are on sale. I cook them in the slow cooker and we have a nice roast one day. Then I either freeze the remainder, or I cut it up and we have beef stew another night. Add a bag of noodles and you've really got a hearty meal.

Instead of buying chicken breasts already deboned, I can usually catch chicken breast halves on sale for $1 a pound. From there it's fairly easy to debone and deskin them for my picky husband, and for far less the cost. There's no need to be "controlled" by convenience.

There are so many things that can be bought, cooked, and used for several meals. Hams, roasts, chickens.

Baking chickens are usually pretty inexpensive. Roast it for a dinner, then debone for chicken helper, chicken soup, or chicken tacos. Then boil the carcass with some seasonings and veggie scraps, and you've got lovely chicken broth you can use or freeze for the future.

And what about "cheap" meals? No one really likes ramen noodles, but add some frozen veggies to it and a bit more seasoning, and its something that can get you through a rough week. And you can do wonders with just eggs and potatoes. Trust me! I've had to live off of things before. It's not fun but you can do it, and come up with some amazing recipes in the meantime.

I'll even share my beef stew with you today. It's not very expensive, and its a big favorite around here. It makes a lot.

1 package beef stew meat
2 large cans mixed vegetables
2 cans beef broth
1 package onion soup mix
1-2 cans of vegetable of choice
1/2 stick of butter or equal
Seasonings to taste

Start by dumping, liquid and all, the vegetables in a big pot. Add the cans of beef brother. Stir in the onion soup mix. Bring to a boil. Add the meat and lower the temperature to medium-low. Stir in the butter, onion soup mix, and season. Here, you can add anything you like, be it mushrooms or other. Cover and cook until you can pull a tender piece of meat out, fully cooked.

Enjoy!

Changes

I wonder, how many of you like change? And how many of you are like me, and hate change with a passion.

I thrive on routine. I like to do the same things, every day, in the same order. It's comforting. When something is different, it throws me off and I don't feel "right."

I got to thinking about change because of my job. I work online. Well today they attempted to change the interface we use, and boy did people freak. I personally was not pleased, not just because of the change, but because it was poorly done.

It caused such a riot that it wasn't long before they removed the changes. Good thing too, because what they had done was really slowing me down, and that's never a good thing.

You'll notice animals like routine as well. Goodness forbid if I am late to feed or let them in or out. They prefer things to be done at the same time, every day, just like me. So it really works out well.

Our herd queen, Hope, is a real stickler for it. If things aren't going properly, she will scream as if being butchered alive. It's terrible to hear! It never fails to get me up and running to solve whatever problem she has imagined.

Changing the subject now. Do you ever come across people who continually play the victim? Well of course you do, we all do. But it really grows wearing when you consider such person your friend.

I recently had to experience a bit of a temper tantrum from someone. I play several online games, and in one of them, I've known a person some nearly ten years. She's been a great person, but lately I had gotten the idea she was no longer happy in the game and I wondered why she stuck around. She eventually gave up her position in the game, moving to a "lower-ranked" one, but was still sticking around.

In this position she managed to make trouble by trying to be a leader when she was one no longer. It caused quite a rift in the game, and took some smoothing out. She stopped playing and was offline for a long while. During this time, I was commissioned to make a new website for the game, and we changed some rules and did some work on it.

When my friend returned at long last, she was very upset, threw a temper tantrum, and left, saying it was for good this time.

My personal opinion is that she was looking for a way out; a way that would make her look like a victim so should could cry to others how we "pushed her out" and didn't want her.

Of course anyone who had been there would know we had done our best to be supportive, but things needed to be done and we couldn't sit around forever waiting for her to either do them, or give us access to them. So what was done was done.

I have to admit I'm pretty disappointed, but that's just the way it is sometimes. People don't always live up to your expectations. I learned long ago there's no point in dwelling on it, and I move on.

So, do you have any "toxic" friends? People who play the victim? How do you handle them?

Be sure to keep checking back for more from the Goat Whisperer. Eventually something interesting will happen, you can be assured of that!

Computers

I often wonder why I go through so many computers. Is it because I am hard on them? I am no computer "noob"; I know how to get the best out of my machines and keep them running smooth.

So why am I constantly replacing them? So I just run the poor things into the ground? This may be so, but alas, we may never really know.

I've decided to get another laptop. My last one was a stubborn piece of equipment, despite having root beer spilled on its keyboard, breaking that. And having its screen smashed. And the disk drive stopped working.

Despite that, it was still kicking when I sold it for parts. So laptops can't be all that bad, can they?

I decided to buy from Aaron's. Kill two birds with one stone, right? Get a nice new laptop and improve my credit at once. Sure, I know I'm overpaying for this thing, and could get better for the ultimate cost, but our credit is practically non-existent, so it serves its purpose.

It literally took me hours to clean the hard drive of all the crap that they pre-load these poor things with. Hours! And then I had to move and set up my personal programs that are "must haves." I left all of my information, i.e. pictures, documents, designs, and music, on my desktop so to keep the laptop as clean as possible.

Then come to find out, my wireless router is a piece of junk and I was getting very poor signal. Which meant I had to steal the Ethernet cable from my poor desktop until I can either improve my router, or buy one of my own.

Anyways, so I'm writing this blog from my new laptop. It's got a nice big keyboard thankfully, so I'm not having too much trouble adjusting. I had to hook my mouse up though, without it I am just too slow at work.

Let's talk other things.

Did I tell you that we woke up yesterday to three flat tires? Yes, three! How ridiculous is that. Thankfully, a neighbor had an air tank and hubby and my brother were able to get the car to the tire shop. We had to replace two of the tires, which was a real punch in the gut, since I had to write the check for our mortgage on the same day. The next few weeks are going to be rough, I think.

But we'll manage. We always have, despite the "Saucedo Curse." I won't get into that right now, but you're sure to notice the trend of bad luck that follows us Saucedos eventually.

All things will pass in time.

Know Who You Buy From

No matter what you are buying, but especially when it comes to living animals, know who you are buying from!

I won't go into the whole list of "mills" out there, which includes just about any species of animals. No, today I will focus on my recent covert operation.

Some months ago, a friend contacted me. She had some goats to sell. At the time, I couldn't take them in, we were in the middle of moving and our pens were not set up yet. So I directed them to another friend I had made and knew through e-mail contact. That person bought the goats.

When the seller got back, she contacted me and told me that the buyer's goats were in poor shape, needing deworming and health care. We decided it was simply a matter of her needing a bit of help, and I and a group of breeders in the area banded together to give her advice. We thought it was all taken care of.

Fast forward a few months, and disturbing things begin popping up. There are complaints on Craigslist about the breeder, and I uncover some pretty disturbing pictures on the breeder's website and other information. Apparently she's had a lot of goats die and the ones left are in bad shape.

I contact the seller and we work out a plan to buy back the two does, all the while I am trying to get more information and get something done about the poor situation going on.

We are able to negotiate payment for one of the does, Hallie. For nearly twice what she was sold to this breeder for. The other Delanie, is "not for sale." We later find out that Delanie died.

We are told Hallie is "in milk" and kidded in December. When asked for pictures of the kid by two separate people, the breeder sends both of them pictures stolen from other websites, and not even the same pictures.

Of course this was uncovered immediately, its not hard to trace pictures back to their source. We chose not to confront her about this, in the interest of removing Hallie from the situation. We had trouble setting up a date for the pick-up, but eventually we were able to, though Hallie's registration paperwork was not avaliable.

On pickup, Hallie was underweight, coughing, with a snotty nose and hugely overgrown hooves. She's terrible pale and absolutely terrified. She doesn't defecate the entire ride (3+ hours) home, which begs to ask, how long was she without food? She is certainly not "in milk" as claimed, and she did not kid in December. It's probably she kidded between September and October. Which brings the question, why were we lied to and where were the kid(s)?

I immediately quarantine Hallie and bring the vet in. She is started on a dewormer regimen, gets a hoof trim, a copper bolus, and a course of antibiotics. Thankfully, two weeks later, she is doing quite well, gaining weight and has been introduced into the herd without too much fanfare.

I've tried in vain to get the truth about Hallie. The most I could get was that Hallie's kid died. I imagine this is the truth of the matter, though she still claims Hallie kidded in December. The paperwork as well still has not been mailed.

I personally talked to the ASPCA. I filed several reports and gave evidence. In time, they told me a warning had been given. I'm not sure if they told me this to get me off their backs, or if they actually went out there, but I do know that this breeder sold quite a lot of goats very soon afterward.

Since then, there has been evidence that several other of the goats have died. The goats, by the breeder's own admission, do not receive vaccinations, are not health tested, and many other things. Now, I'm not against someone who does research and chooses not to vaccinate, and many do not regularly test for health problems.

The point here is the ignorance, and unwillingness to learn. We tried to help this breeder, and it was cast aside. Her whole point was to have a "goat mill" and to make as much money as she can off of the poor beasts.

She has been caught in many lies. I can only hope that the recent events have opened her eyes, but in my experience, people like this never change.

Always do your research before you buy. Take a close look at websites. If someone has pictures of obviously emaciated animals on there, don't you think it's a better idea to look elsewhere?

A picture of Hallie, feeling better.

A Future Guardian

Sorry, but no post on the whole goat scandal I recently delt with. I am trying to worm a bit more information out of the person in question, so I'll have to wait a bit longer. But no fear! It's coming soon.

Instead, tonight I'll introduce my future Livestock Guardian. She was born recently here, to a Great Pyrenees dam and a Great Pyrenees/Anatolian sire, both excellent guard animals.

Without further adieu:

Isn't she just a gorgeous little thing? She'll, with work and luck, grow into K-n-S Farm's Guardian, caretaker of the herd and watchdog. We really look forward to having her here and working with her, and having some peace of mind when it comes to the herd and their safety.

How many of you use LGs? Are they canine or equine or other? Have you had good or bad experiences with them?

I've used a donkey before, way back in the day when we had meat goats. He was mean and grouchy and hated everyone. Not the best experience!

In other news, our current bottle-baby, Baby (I know, real original right?), has discovered that she can leap out of the fence. How you ask? Well, we have cattle panel, and on all of them except one, the entire panel is covered with wire with smaller openings, to prevent escapes. On one panel, it only goes partway up. Well miss smarty pants learned to leap right over that part and out of the hole in the panel.

Too clever for her own good. She's turning into a right spoiled little thing, something I've tried to avoid but seem to be failing at! She's our first bottle baby, we've avoided them in the past but she was too cute to pass up, especially when my favorite doe failed to give me a doeling to keep for the second year in a row.

Baby stays outside with the other goats, but does get a little house time after being fed in the evenings.

I look forward to having her grown up and running about the house...sort of.

Keep checking back for more!

The Journey Begins

So I've decided to give blogging another go. Let's see how it works out on a more professional website, and not some ridiculous journal website.

My new blog will focus on many things, but will revolve around my goats, my little farm, my work, and family life. Nothing too exciting, but it has its moments.

I also look forward to exposing important topics that relate to my life, and hope you don't mind sifting through my often complicated thought process.

Let's start off, shall we? Get to know me a bit more.

My name is Kristina, and I have been called the Goat Whisperer. I keep and raise a few Nigerian Dwarf Goats. These are a miniature dairy breed. I hope to add other breeds in the near future, standard milkers, and try my hand at making soap and cheese.

I also will be adding poultry to our little farm again soon. We have a few chickens, but will be gearing up to give quail another shot this spring. I don't know if I will do ducks again, but I may add a small group of laying chickens.

I'd like to garden as well, but I'm notorious for killing plants. Heck, I've had fake plants die because I forgot to pretend to water them.

I'm married, coming on three years now. We've been together over seven now. Feels like forever and none at all, you know? Right now my brother stays with us as well.

We recently bought the ugliest house I have ever set eyes on. It has its moments, and it has its problems. I'll be detailing our advancements into making it a true home on here.

We have the "normal" pets as well, four dogs and a cat. An old grouchy bearded dragon as well. They should make appearances in the blog.

Look forward to my first posts. I plan on detailing an incident that happened recently in my little goat world, with the first published pictures of the result of that.

Let's see how this goes, shall we?