It's official. We are now officially in a drought. It's been obvious for some time now. Except for a few teasers... you know where it starts to rain and you get all excited and then you turn around and it's done, I cannot remember the last time it rained. We had 1 minute and 47 seconds of rain today - not even enough to hardly wet the driveway, let alone moisten the parched ground. Look at the grass in Big Guy's pasture! Crispy fried, like it's late August or something. The only good news is that I haven't had to mow in almost two weeks (but it's on my agenda for tomorrow).

But look at him!!! We're nearing the end of antler growth. Another month and a half and they'll be hardening up in preparation for the rut. I love how symmetrical Big Guy's antlers are. They are just so impressive. I hadn't seen him in about four days, so I was glad he decided to say "hi" today.

And this girl? Well, she's still trying to recover from her ordeal. Now she's fighting a bit of infection, so the vet wants me to medicate her every day for a week. The first two days were a bit awkward, but I think we've finally figured it out. My chute is an elk chute... not quite made for such diminutive creatures. 

Our first issue was that yak have some of the thickest, toughest hide I have ever tried to put a needle through! Wowza! At first I was trying to give her the injection in the muscle of her hip because I simply couldn't immobilize her head enough to allow me to do it under the skin behind her shoulder, but it was so dang hard to get the needle in, it was a huge ordeal every time I had to inject her... and, of course, the dose is big enough it has to go in two separate jabs. I finally realized if I raise the chute up a bit and then close it all the way, I can pretty much completely envelope her and safely get her doctored up. A little grain helps too. Here she's asking me, "You sure you don't want to jab me again? I could use a bit more of that grain." 

I am just astounded at how quickly these babies grow! And they are so much more willing to come out than Little Girl was last year. She was a bit of a scaredy cat - still is, truth be told, but not these two. They listen if mama says they should move away from me, but it doesn't seem like they're really scared of me.

But that doesn't mean I'm getting up right next to them or anything. If I zoom in on my camera, I can see quite a bit, but it's still tricky to determine gender at this point, at least it is for me. I think we might have a boy and a girl for the first two. I've still only seen 602's baby from way far off, but I did see it this morning at least.

Not sure if 603 will grace me with fourth baby, but I can't say for sure she won't! Fingers crossed. And 100, my other yak cow, looks like she might be starting to bag up. Her udder seemed just a bit less floppy today. ;-) 

As you might imagine, things are crazy busy for me. There is always ten times more to do than I have time for, but I just keep plodding along! I picked these roses tonight to crystallize tomorrow since I expect my dehydrator to finally be empty in the morning. That thing runs 24-7 this time of year. I've got strawberries to process, cheese presses to make, and plants to water. So. Many. Plants. To. Water. Boy, do we need some rain. I sure would like this drought to end. Officially.

Now that I have two totally different types of livestock, I find myself noticing some interesting differences between them. I mean, obviously... they're different. Yak have horns and elk have antlers, for instance. They may both grow out of their head, but one is regrown yearly and one is a permanent fixture. 

But one of the reasons I got the yak was because they are, in some important ways, very similar to the elk. I like that they are an ecologically sound meat choice in that they both convert feed to meat in a much more efficient manner than beef or other traditional livestock. In general, elk and yak use about one third the feed of beef to produce one pound of meat. That's pretty incredible when you think about it!

Scientists claim that matriarchy is fairly rare in the animal kingdom, describing less than a dozen species that practice it. Elk are one of those species. Except for during the rut, when the bull doesn't really lead so much as terrorize the cows into submission to keep them away from rivals, the head cow leads the herd in their day to day decisions. This last rut, Big Guy was very protective of his harem, keeping them deep in the woods out of sight. In fact, for a few weeks, he was so protective, he wouldn't even let them come and get grain from me, despite their clearly wanting to.

​The rest of the year, however, the herd is clearly led by a cow. Initially, it was 604, but last summer, as she approached calving time, after a number of very impressive boxing matches, 601 took over the lead position and has held it ever since. In my day to day observations of them, her leadership is fairly clearly seen in where they go and who does what when.

I spent most of my formative years working cattle out west on fairly large ranches. In those outfits, the bulls are kept separate most of the year, and - honestly - they just seem to be interested in doing their job and then resting (it's hard work, I guess! Ha!). I suppose because most of the year it's just a bunch of female cows hanging out, it didn't seem weird at all to move onto an elk farm where the predominant social structure is one of matriarchy. So I was a bit surprised by just how patriarchal the yak are. ​The big bull is clearly in charge... of everything and his herd dutifully follows his every move. The video below is a perfect example of how they follow him around, strung in a line, head to tail. 

Growing up, I loved watching Nature on PBS and other wildlife shows. One of the things I love about my little farm is that it almost feels like my own episode of Nature every time I go out to check on my critters. Sometimes I'll go out to feed and my husband will call me and ask me why it's taken me two hours to do a twenty minute job. Oops! They're just so fascinating to watch - I never get tired of being out there with them!