Bos Grunniens or Grunting Ox

Have you ever noticed how children and animals will do the funniest, cutest, or most interesting things until you try to get them on film? Must be some sort of instinctive thing, they know if you record their action they might lose their audience. I've been trying to get a video of the yaks "talking" to each other. I'll get a little bit of it and then they stop their conversing. They'll grunt to each other at length, unless I'm there with the camera. I think they must tell each other to stay quiet, there's a camera nearby. The other day Little Bear decided she needed to talk to me, so finally, here's a little video of her very brief oration, after which she decided that she needed to add a little bluff charge in my direction. The video begins with her talking. You might have to watch it more than once to hear the two times she "speaks".


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Button and the Helicopter

We had some excitement the other day. Apparently Southside Electric, our local power company, is trimming the trees near the power lines using some equipment we've never witnessed before, neither have the yaks. At first we didn't know what was going on, other than we could see this helicopter hovering near our house with something hanging from it. We realized it was flying slowly above where the power lines are and dragging a cable. We later saw what appeared to be circular blades at the end of the cable. It was quite fascinating and noisy. This was all happening close to the yak field. The only yak that showed any interested was Button. She generally seems to be pretty observant. Here's a little video of her reaction to the helicopter.

Seeing a helicopter this close to the farm was pretty interesting.

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Annual Vaccination

Yesterday we began vaccinating the yaks. It's a family project, corralling the animals and herding them through to the head gate. Since the yaks are separated into two different fields we only vaccinated the herd from one field yesterday. Here are a couple of videos of the process. The yaks were communicating a lot with each other. We'll post a video soon where hopefully you can hear them calling to each other.


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Wildlife on the Farm

No, this isn't a yak. Thought maybe the blog could use a little photo variety. This young deer came almost right up to our front porch. You can see the porch railing in the bottom left hand corner of the picture.Pin It Now!

Limpy

We have several yaks that are not full blood yak but are cow yak crossbreeds. Our cow/yaks still have the horns of the yak but generally they have a smaller skirt, are not as woolly, and they have a more square or straight back. They don't seem to be as friendly as our full blood yaks and are a little skittish. One of our cow/yak crossbreeds, #36, is 3/4 blood yak. She tends to be pretty jumpy but she has proven to be a wonderful mother. Her off springs are 7/8 blood yak and have more yak characteristics. When #36 arrived on our farm she exited the trailer and began to explore the fields. We noticed that she appeared to have a slight limp. We would watch the yaks, see how they were getting along. We began to refer to her as "the one with the limp", soon that turned into "Limpy". The name has stuck with her, not the most creative name choice, but at least she has a name...... unlike the farm.

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