It's a Dirty Job . . .

Everyone knows that farming isn't all cute animal photos and peaceful misty morning pasture walks. Farming involves a lot of hard work, and if you're farming animals, it also involves a lot of poop. Not very many people show the dirtier, grittier part of farming, especially with animals. And I know it's not as fascinating or beautiful as photos of the animals. But the dirty part is the bigger part, so I'm going to take a moment to take you on a little tour of daily animal chores.

I get up each weekday morning around sunrise. This is mostly because I really enjoy the peaceful early mornings and love a good sunrise. You get to see a lot more wildlife at dawn than you do at other parts of the day. Most mornings I see the sandhill cranes leave our pond, the beaver industriously stockpiling his lodge for winter, countless geese and other waterfowl and birds, and sometimes even a doe or two. I also get up early so I can get my butt in my chair for my full-time non-farm job by about 8:30 a.m.

Insert majestic awe noises here. To be fair, not all sunrises are this pretty.

I take care of the dogs first. We take a roughly 30-minute walk with my mother-in-law and her dog, and then I feed the dogs and cat their breakfast (though if Jon has to drive to the city that day, he takes care of the cat). Then, it's out to the barn. The first thing I do is open up all the doors to give everyone access to pasture. The sheep always leap out like they're being chased, only to stop and wait for the alpaca doors to open. The alpaca rarely go outside first thing, but they do enjoy gathering in front of the door.

Daisy contemplates going outside for the day.

Mal hanging out in front of the door

Dorrie wanders over to the alpaca pen to look for grain and better hay.

Okay, now that the cute animal photos are out of the way, we get down to real business. Your morning probably includes some coffee beans. Before I can get to those, I first must deal with beans of a different sort, aka poop. The alpaca are nice enough to poop in a communal pile (also called a midden), so their pen is super easy to clean. Just a few big shovelfuls into a muck bucket and done.
The alpaca have a midden out in the pasture too. That gets scooped once or twice a week.

The indoor alpaca midden.

The sheep, though, they poo everywhere. And their beans are so tiny, they can be hard to scoop. But I think I'm finally getting a good system down. I leave about a third of their pen bare, with just the concrete floor. They tend to poo in this area the most, and then I can just quickly and easily sweep the beans into a shovel. I patrol the rest of their pen for obvious soiling on the top layer of straw, and rake that up too.

Beans everywhere!

Once poos are scooped, the alpaca pen gets some pine pellets on the potty pile (they help absorb urine and any odors), and the sheep pen gets a fresh layer of straw in areas where I removed some soiled matter.

Full muck bucket, after scooping out both pens. About 17 gallons of future black gold.

Next up is hauling water. The hand pump in my barn does not work, so I've been pulling my mother-in-law's hose to the barn entrance to fill my buckets (her house is closer to the barn). I will need to come up with a different method for winter, likely hauling buckets from my house, but for now this works.

Filling up the water buckets.

All buckets hang on wall-mounted hangers in the pens. The animals will kick them over otherwise, and ain't nobody got time for hauling more water than needed! 

2 5-gallon buckets of water are pretty heavy. On the other hand, who needs a gym when you're farming?

Hanging the alpaca buckets on the wall.

My super awesome mother-in-law helps me with morning chores most days. She often takes on the the thankless task of hauling water! See? Awesome.

Next, everyone's hay gets topped off. How much depends on how much is left in their feeders. Some days they have nothing left, others they have plenty and won't need more until evening.

Just one more quick chore before I can go inside and eat breakfast! The big muck bucket full o' straw and poo gets hauled to Manure Mountain.

This is going to be so good on the garden next year.

Most days, this whole routine takes about 30 minutes to complete. Some days it can take an hour or more, but that's usually because I'm taking lots of breaks to watch and interact with the animals.

A large portion of this routine is then repeated in the evening as soon as I log off the day job for the day. Scoop poops, lay down bedding, top off hay. Sometimes top off minerals (the animals have access to a bowl of free-choice mineral salts at all times to help balance their nutrient intake) and water too.

The only other "chore" I do every single day is shut all of the animals in for the night at dusk. This is to give my herd the best protection against predators (coyote and black bear are both common in these parts, as are roaming packs of dogs), and me peace of mind. To facilitate this, I give a small grain ration each night. All of the animals well know the sound of grain hitting a pan, and will come running inside the minute they hear that!

This is one of my favorite times of the day. I can get more hands-on with most of the animals while they're distracted by their delicious carbs, so I'll often use these few minutes to pick vegetation out of coats, stroke necks (alpaca) or chins (sheep), and maybe sneak in a quick spinal massage (only the alpaca allow this) to see if anyone is under- or overweight.

There are other animal chores that need doing less often, like halter training, toenail trimming, and deworming. I also walk the pasture a few times a week and after every storm, to make sure there is no damage to the fence or anything else out of the ordinary. And there's hauling and stacking hay every so often too, as well as restocking grains, bedding, vet supplies, and so forth.

I know some folks view all of this as a lot of work. And it is, but it also isn't. Not if you have a passion for the animals. I actually look forward to chore time most days. I get to spend valuable time with the animals, I'm cultivating my connection to nature and it's rhythms (a connection I think too many people sorely lack!), and it's good exercise. Are there days I don't want to do these things? Sure. But there are also days I don't want to read or knit, and I like doing those things too.

In the end, it's all worth it because of all the different joys sharing my life with animals brings.