Farm News 03-26-06
Sunday morning, after chores, 40°
Incubation Week One
Two days after I started incubating eggs Bebe goose decided it was time for her to start setting. Her nest is in plain view next to the rabbitry, so all the time I'm in the rabbitry she is honking her head off. The racket is incredible. Bebe is a reliable mother so I'll probably give her the goslings from the incubator to go with her own. When cold or tired, goslings generally will crawl under the nearest goose and be accepted. Even the ganders will help care for the little ones.
Training Lucy
Lucy the goat is looking quite pregnant. She is due at the end of April, I think, and I decided I should start training her to come into the barn to be milked. I'm not quite sure why, I don't need the milk, but I might decide to raise a calf or something and goat's milk is a universal substitute for mother's milk.
Just about any baby mammal will do well on goat's milk, but even more important is the colostrum. Colostrum is a thick, sticky, yellowish fluid that most female mammals produce for the first few days after giving birth. It is starter fluid for babies. Puppies from a difficult birth are sometimes too weak to nurse, but if you can get a teaspoon or so of goat colostrum down their throats they will often be strong enough to nurse a few hours later. I like to milk out enough colostrum to fill a couple of ice cube trays, then store it in the freezer. One cube can start several puppies, and two cubes can get a calf going.
Each evening during chores I take Lucy out of the pasture and lead her into the barn. By the third day she had that part down and was hopping up onto the milking stand, putting her head in the stanchion, and finding her grain. She is a nice, gentle, smart goat.
March Madness in Full Swing in the Barnyard
Sexual reproduction is enough to convince me that, if there was a designer, he sure wasn't very intelligent. Mammals are weird, plants are rococco, and birds create madness. Little birds sit around and sing, but big birds, like turkeys, are completely nuts. This nuttiness is frequently the subject of discussions on TurkChatter, a list serve for turkey fanciers, such as what follows.
That is the way Guy Noir, the tom turkey, is beginning to look, only he does have a beer can in one wing and a cute pink umbrella in the other. Guy tries to act like he's a refugee from New Orleans. Those girls listen to his line, look at each other, purse their lips, nod their heads, and say, “Hmmm, hummm.”
Yachting
Saturday I took the big plunge and purchased a yacht. At $100, I thought it was a terrific bargain. Also, it fits nicely in the back of the pickup truck so it is easy to move. It has two seats which rotate so you can face in either direction, and a place to attach an electric trolling motor. It is still in the back yard but I hope to carry it down to the pond soon and take an extended voyage.
Book Review
The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod
This book was published in 1984 but, like all good science writing, it is still worthwhile. Axelrod very carefully and thoroughly examines the Prisoner's Dilemma. In the traditional form, the Prisoner's Dilemma involves two criminals being questioned by the police. If one prisoner confesses and incriminates the other he will receive a reduced sentence. If both confess there is less reduction, though. The problem is whether to confess or not.
Axelrod strips this problem down to it's most abstract essence and then analyzes it's characteristics. Given any two players, A and B, both can cooperate and remain silent, both can defect and confess, or only one cooperates and one defects. Through a brilliant analysis Axelrod shows that the Prisoner's Dilemma can be used to determine the optimal strategy for such situations as the relationship between two symbiotes, where the payoffs are completely different for the two players.
He then tested his conclusions by inviting people to create strategies for players in a computer environment and conducted tournaments to test the strategies. For the most part, the most successful strategy was a very simple one called TIT FOR TAT. Using this strategy a player always cooperates until the other player defects. Whenever the other player defects, the TIT FOR TAT strategy defects in the next round and then always repeats what the other player did in the previous round.
This isn't an easy book but it is certainly worthwhile. Following Axelrod's reasoning is like downhill skiing: fast and non-stop. He concludes with chapters on such things as optimizing the opportunities for cooperation, something that we all can find useful.
Incubation Week One
Two days after I started incubating eggs Bebe goose decided it was time for her to start setting. Her nest is in plain view next to the rabbitry, so all the time I'm in the rabbitry she is honking her head off. The racket is incredible. Bebe is a reliable mother so I'll probably give her the goslings from the incubator to go with her own. When cold or tired, goslings generally will crawl under the nearest goose and be accepted. Even the ganders will help care for the little ones.
Training Lucy
Lucy the goat is looking quite pregnant. She is due at the end of April, I think, and I decided I should start training her to come into the barn to be milked. I'm not quite sure why, I don't need the milk, but I might decide to raise a calf or something and goat's milk is a universal substitute for mother's milk.
Just about any baby mammal will do well on goat's milk, but even more important is the colostrum. Colostrum is a thick, sticky, yellowish fluid that most female mammals produce for the first few days after giving birth. It is starter fluid for babies. Puppies from a difficult birth are sometimes too weak to nurse, but if you can get a teaspoon or so of goat colostrum down their throats they will often be strong enough to nurse a few hours later. I like to milk out enough colostrum to fill a couple of ice cube trays, then store it in the freezer. One cube can start several puppies, and two cubes can get a calf going.
Each evening during chores I take Lucy out of the pasture and lead her into the barn. By the third day she had that part down and was hopping up onto the milking stand, putting her head in the stanchion, and finding her grain. She is a nice, gentle, smart goat.
March Madness in Full Swing in the Barnyard
Sexual reproduction is enough to convince me that, if there was a designer, he sure wasn't very intelligent. Mammals are weird, plants are rococco, and birds create madness. Little birds sit around and sing, but big birds, like turkeys, are completely nuts. This nuttiness is frequently the subject of discussions on TurkChatter, a list serve for turkey fanciers, such as what follows.
I have noticed that now that mating is in full swing my toms are going a little...ahem...bare breasted. I think they are rubbing the feathers off during courtship. There is no irritation and it does not seem to bother them. The rest of their feathers are fine - with the exception of their tail feathers which have gotten really ratty but I can understand that having watched them mate.Is this normal?
Yes. They are drumming and their crops are puffed up, putting their breast feathers out there to get scrubbed off when they fight, etc. I think they look like scruffy men in old undershirts when they get that way. :) All they need is a beer can in one wing and the TV remote in the other.
That is the way Guy Noir, the tom turkey, is beginning to look, only he does have a beer can in one wing and a cute pink umbrella in the other. Guy tries to act like he's a refugee from New Orleans. Those girls listen to his line, look at each other, purse their lips, nod their heads, and say, “Hmmm, hummm.”
Yachting
Saturday I took the big plunge and purchased a yacht. At $100, I thought it was a terrific bargain. Also, it fits nicely in the back of the pickup truck so it is easy to move. It has two seats which rotate so you can face in either direction, and a place to attach an electric trolling motor. It is still in the back yard but I hope to carry it down to the pond soon and take an extended voyage.
Book Review
The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod
This book was published in 1984 but, like all good science writing, it is still worthwhile. Axelrod very carefully and thoroughly examines the Prisoner's Dilemma. In the traditional form, the Prisoner's Dilemma involves two criminals being questioned by the police. If one prisoner confesses and incriminates the other he will receive a reduced sentence. If both confess there is less reduction, though. The problem is whether to confess or not.
Axelrod strips this problem down to it's most abstract essence and then analyzes it's characteristics. Given any two players, A and B, both can cooperate and remain silent, both can defect and confess, or only one cooperates and one defects. Through a brilliant analysis Axelrod shows that the Prisoner's Dilemma can be used to determine the optimal strategy for such situations as the relationship between two symbiotes, where the payoffs are completely different for the two players.
He then tested his conclusions by inviting people to create strategies for players in a computer environment and conducted tournaments to test the strategies. For the most part, the most successful strategy was a very simple one called TIT FOR TAT. Using this strategy a player always cooperates until the other player defects. Whenever the other player defects, the TIT FOR TAT strategy defects in the next round and then always repeats what the other player did in the previous round.
This isn't an easy book but it is certainly worthwhile. Following Axelrod's reasoning is like downhill skiing: fast and non-stop. He concludes with chapters on such things as optimizing the opportunities for cooperation, something that we all can find useful.
posted by The Geezer at 8:08 AM
1 Comments:
I happened on to your blog through a comment on mine. I think it was about my geese I keep for security alarms. Since then, I have subscribed to your blog through Bloglines, and thoroughly enjoy your discourses about your animals and the seasonal changes in the work around them. Thank you for sharing it with us!
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