Accidental Homesteader

Now that we’ve had goats for a while, I’ve been working on tools for tracing lines and such.

Tangent time!

For me? It’s prion diseases. So I’m fascinated/horrified by prion diseases. One little protein misfolds, and bam, you’re dying a slow painful death. Things like CJD, Kuru (which, hilariously is also a shoe brand flogged to me on TikTok), and most terrifyingly Fatal Familial Insomnia. You hear most about Encephalopathy, or Mad Cow Disease.

Anyway, the goat/sheep version of this is called Scrapie, since a symptom is sheep rubbing themselves against the fence. Another old name for it is Mad Staggers. I always joke that it is the name of my Irish Punk band. Turns out, someone beat me to it.

/tangent

So now that we’ve have to get scrapie tags to sell the goats, I started naming everything mad staggers. I’ve set up a spreadsheet to track scrapie tag numbers and transaction data.

Color coded to trace parentage.

I also now have a Miro board for a visualization of the lines.

Pickles certainly did his job.

Hope you are enjoying your new herd, Pickles!

These tools are both easy and free.