POLYFACE MICRO

           Just in! I finally have a new book, POLYFACE MICRO! We are offering autographed, early bird discounts through the end of September!

             The whole theme of the book is livestock on small holdings, like homesteads.  I took all our experience and protocols and down-sized them to miniature scale--even as small as a Manhattan apartment.  I'll autograph all the pre-sale books that go out directly from our Polyface gift store, and the price is $5 off the cover, with free shipping. 

             Here are a few paragraphs from one of the chapters:

 Few activities in life can be as rewarding as being responsible for some domestic farm animals.  Developing relationships with them, understanding individual nuances, and watching them respond to your care is perhaps one of the most fulfilling human activities imaginable.

          With rare exceptions, animals have an unconditional appreciation for their caretakers.  The milk cow is always happy to see you.  No matter the news, the weather, or if your spouse is upset with you, the chickens always run to see what you're putting in their feeder.  They're never disinterested or aloof. 

          Iconic animal behaviorist Temple Grandin says that living in the moment might be one of the biggest distinctions between humans and animals.  We humans have a lot on our minds.  We think about yesterday, today, and tomorrow simultaneously.

          While I'm pouring water in the chicken pan, I'm thinking about whether my daughter enjoyed her birthday party last night and what the commute to the office will be in an hour and if my wife wrote the check to the electrician.  Our minds are all clogged up with helter skelter stuff.  Not so with animals.

          They live completely in the moment.  When a cow is in estrous, she doesn't care about relationships or getting in the mood.  She doesn't even care if the bull is handsome and she certainly doesn't care if the bull helps her in the kitchen.  No, she'll take whatever male with the right equipment gets to her first.  Over and done and now time to eat more clover.

          While some animals can figure things out, such figuring is relatively rudimentary.  Some are certainly more mischievous than others--goats come to mind.  And a horse has an uncanny ability to finagle a gate latch.  Part of this cognitive function, though, is not really brains.  It's just time.  While you and I fill out licenses and sit in the auto mechanic's waiting room or cook dinner, our animals have 24/7/365 access to fool around.

          And fool around they do.  How does a chicken find the tiniest hole in the yard fence?  How does the horse jiggle the gate latch until it opens?  If you stood there nonchalantly jiggling on that latch for 5 hours, you'd coincidently probably hit the open combination too.  This isn't brains; it's just time and persistence.

          This time fact has major ramifications.  It means that not only do animals love and respond to routine, they also despise and shy away from new things.  Remember, as Temple Grandin says, they live in the moment.  In her spellbinding and delightful lectures, she talks about wearing a certain hat to do chores.  One day we don a different hat.

          To us, it's nothing.  Somebody gave us a new hat or we decided the old one was too ratty to keep.  The point is that we go out to chores with a new hat and suddenly the animals are off balance.  They saw the color, the logo, the style every day and suddenly a new color, new logo, and new style enters their world.  It turns everything upside down.  She tells cowboys to either always wear or never wear sunglasses.  If you flip flop, the cows get edgy.  You don't want edgy cows.

          You'd think the cows would understand that it's the same person in a different outfit, like when you meet people.  Nobody would be put off because someone changed outfits in the middle of the day.  Animals are far more in tune with what we're wearing, with our look, than we are because their minds aren't cluttered with schedules and other responsibilities.

          Animals despise innovation.  They want the same thing every day.  They don't want vacations, change of scenery, change of schedule.  Living in the moment means you don't want surprises.  In her corral design work, Temple emphasizes that a tiny fluttering piece of straw on the wall of a chute might as well be an elephant-sized predator to a cow.  She's thinking "what is that odd-looking thing silhouetted up there?"  Suddenly the cow is tense, edgy, and looking for escape opportunities.

          The reason to put attention on this in-the-moment mindset is because if we aren't trying to walk in our animals' shoes, trying to put ourselves in their position, we'll never have happy and healthy critters.  The first rule of animal stewardship is to look at their situation and ask yourself "if I were this pig, how would I respond?  Would this make me happy?  Can I see what my caretaker wants me to do?  Is it clear, or am I confused?  Does this environment make me happy and healthy?"

          This is why in this book I'm going to spend a time talking about emotional and physical needs of the animals.  I've raised many thousands of animals--perhaps millions--and I still have to remind myself that my first responsibility is honoring the pigness of the pig and the chicken-ness of the chicken.  Different animals have different needs and desires.  Some, like rabbits, especially dislike loud noises (if you had ears that big, you wouldn't like them either).

  Well, what do you think?