I am super excited about our plans with the goats and all the animals in the barn and looking forward to watching them grow and reproduce and hopefully turn our little hobby farm into a working productive farm. It isn't much, but it's a beginning.
Goat, goats, everywhere are goats at our little farm! Nothing says spring more than new life! Sadly, none of these little kids were born on our farm but give us another year! We have big plans for the future. And the future starts here. Say hello to our newest goat members. This here goat is Gabriella, she is part LaMancha and part Nubian. She is already two years old and ready for breeding. I bought her for two reasons. One, her colour. I am a sucker for blondes. I love any shade of blonde, browns, caramels, beige, whatever, it is my favourite colour in animals and figure she'll throw me some lovely coloured kids. The other reason we bought her was because she was registered. Not sure where we are going with that at the moment, but it was a bonus and that makes her our first registered goat. Our next purchase was this here fellow who will be our breeding buck. We missed the breeding season this year and don't want to chance it next year, so got our first billy. It should be interesting. We are such novice farmers and I'm worried owning male goats and sheep will be more than we can handle. But we want to try. Lets just hope he isn't too young and will be able to breed our gals this fall. Or able to breed at all. This here is our second buck. He is a young nigerian dwarf. And don't mind the green ears, that's just the residue left over from the ink when he was tattooed. He is our second registered goat which of course we are now on the hunt for a female registered nigerian dwarf. He is super sweet full of confidence and determination. When our goat herd got too rough with him, he bolted over the wall divider between stalls and hung out with the lambs. He'll probably give me a run for my money when he's older. As you can see, he also has alot of the colouring I favour. Along with his future partner, our pygmy Holly, they should produce some nice offspring. Today, we picked up three more goats. They are all half sisters to our original two goats, Fawn and Jadis. They are dual goats with Alpine/Toggenburg in them from their mother's side while their sire was a full boer. It is this cross that I decided to buy my own boer buck to reproduce with these three gals and their two older sisters offspring that would be suitable for the meat market while still being able to milk the momma's for goat milk. And last but far from least as I'm sure we will be adding more to our herd in the future, is this cream coloured pygmy doe on the left. She's not at home at the moment as she is still too young to leave her momma.
I am super excited about our plans with the goats and all the animals in the barn and looking forward to watching them grow and reproduce and hopefully turn our little hobby farm into a working productive farm. It isn't much, but it's a beginning.
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A ways back I did something I thought so stupid and humiliating there was no way I was going to blog about it. Then just recently, I realized that what I had done was not stupid or humiliating after all. In fact, I had done the right thing all along. When we bought our first goats back in June, the breeder used the deep bedding method. I thought, wow, great idea, so will I! I loved it. I never had to worry about changing the goats bedding, it stayed dry and clean and only every so often I would need to add a bit more. Then about seven months later I thought, "Hmm, maybe I ought to clean that goats pen...it's been awhile." So I sent Farm Girl out to the barn to clean it, thinking it would take half hour to an hour. When she was out there something like four hours later, I finally went out to see what was taking so long. She was wiped and grumpy....and the goats pen didn't look any different. I asked her what the heck she had been doing and she glared at me and said she had already taken out 10 loads of straw to the manure pile. What I hadn't realized that deep bedding is exactly that. Deep. It requires a lot of straw. And a full two days to empty. In addition, the top layer may be nice and dry, but the layers beneath were damp, dirty, and already starting to decompose. And the longer you waited to clean it, the more decomposing was going on. It was this that had me so humiliated and feeling like the dumbest first time farmer ever. After all, decomposing manure can be a fire hazard! I had horrible visions of my barn going up in flames. I immediately scolded everyone in the household for my own stupidity and drilled the importance of daily stall cleaning. I felt so daft....I knew the importance of daily stall cleaning! How the heck could I have made such a careless mistake? Then about a month ago, we went back to our goat breeder and thought out of curiosity I would ask her her routine for keeping up with the cleaning out of a stall with deep bedding. She shocked me when she admitted she does it maybe once a year---sometimes longer---since it took so long and so many loads. I asked her if she didn't worry about a barn fire and she looked baffled (whether at me or my question I have no idea) and suggested I look it up. And so I did. This is what I learned. Deep bedding is a very popular choice for all types of barnyard critters besides goats. It is used in pig pens, horse stalls, and even in chicken coops. And that decomposing that had me so worked up and worried, actually is a good thing. You are creating a wonderful nutrient compost right beneath the feet of your animals as well as added comfort and warmth in the winter months. In addition to that, deep bedding also, a) controls odors b) reduces flies c) keeps the stall clean looking d) reduces your workload e) maintains good hygiene for your critters feet f) keeps the smell of ammonia from urine buried deep All those things I had already discovered. And if I needed any more proof, there it was in my Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep. So there you have it! If you don't mind the backbreaking work once or twice a year then it's a great way to go!
Our snowy call duck, Daisy, had been missing from the boys off and on for the past several weeks. Then yesterday, I noticed her missing most of the day so went out looking for her. I knew she hadn't fallen victim to a prey and most likely had finally started to sit on her nest wherever that might be. And I figured that she wouldn't be too far from the boys who were keeping watch over her. Sure enough, I found her sitting on a nest in the front flower bed.
My daughter is loving her agricultural program but she is eager to come home every weekend. Mainly so that she can visit with all her barn friends but mostly so that she can jump on the back of her horse and head out on the trails. Happy trails, everyone!
ps. Farm Girl is almost done school for the year and I will finally be having some time to myself so that I can do one of my favourite past-times of blog surfing. What's cuter than a baby bunny? Two baby bunnies! Wait...even better, FOUR baby bunnies! Yes, after the two huge litters we received after Valentine's Day from our doe rabbits, Lacey and Odette, these four were the only survivors. And this little one. We had noticed she was very shy and would cower up on the rooftop of the little hut inside the rabbit pen as can be seen below whenever we came to visit. She'd have her face turned away from us and we didn't think anything of it, other than she was frightened of us huge humans. The pen was kept critter proof and boarded at the bottom all the way around so the babies couldn't squeeze out when they were small enough. The top was covered and the only access inside was this heavy wood lid. This was to ensure no critters (aka barn cats) got at the babies. But a few weeks ago, the cats got past my security system and Farm Girl found a headless bunny in the barn. Yes, gross. I know. Farm Girl was good enough to dispose of it for me without me ever having to see it. Then the other day, I decided to pull the bunnies out for a photo shoot, and Farm Girl discovered why this little agouti bunny was so shy. Fair warning, the next photo does not depict a very cute bunny and is very graphic...so please look at your own caution. . . . . My first thought was that whoever had done this must obviously be someone from within the pen...either mom or siblings, since nothing could get into that pen. Then I remembered the headless bunny and wondered if this little bunny had fallen to the same predator but had somehow managed to escape. Since there is no blood or scar tissue, I can only conclude that perhaps mom was actually licking and healing her baby`s injuries. But to be on the safe side, we removed her from the rabbit pen and put her in her very own hutch to heal. And as it turns out, she is the sweetest little bunny and had absolutely no fear of us humans. She allowed us to pick her up and hold her without protest. We've got our fingers crossed for a full recovery for this little bundle of cuteness.
What's better than 10 adorable little puppies?! Ten adorable lambs!! We have finally found our small startup flock of sheep. I love that we were able to buy all babies. It will be fun to watch them grow. They are Katahdin lambs. I chose them because they are a low maintenance, docile breed with a coat that sheds (no shearing required) and produce lean meaty carcasses. I had no idea they through such wonderful colours! That was just a bonus! We bought 9 ewe lambs and 1 ram lamb. Our plan is to breed them in the future. I can't wait until next year when we can double the number of these cuties in our barn!
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