When we first moved to the country and started buying animals, Farm Girl immediately wanted to start breeding. But being the patient, cautious woman that I am I said no...there would be no unaltered male animals allowed on the farm! Fast forward to now. Meet Heathclifffe, our babydoll ram. Dodge, the Katahdin ram. Flint, our Nigerian Dwarf billy goat. And now, Ceasar the nubian/boer billy goat. Well Ceasar's been here a couple weeks now but with my lack of keeping this blog updated and all, it's new news to you. Meanwhile, Farm Girl keeps hinting that Meadow sure would throw some pretty babies. I must say, I totally agree but that would mean bringing a stallion onto the property. I`ve come a long way since a few years ago, but a stallion? Well at least it will be a miniaturized version and not the full sized one. But the minute we breed Meadow, I just know Farm Girl will be hinting that it will be Sierra's turn.
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Life living on our farm is like a zoo. Indeed, so many people have referred to our farm as the zoo and asking what new additions they were to our zoo. And I loved telling them! My favourite subject is my animals. Get me started talking about them and there is no shutting me up. Farm Girl is the same way. We can have lengthy discussions about the animals. One of the reasons I started this blog was to show off my animals and to blab about them without restrictions. I simply love them. I haven`t posted much lately but there has been alot of additions to the farm. So let me introduce you. I think I have already introduced you to Dreamer---who we don`t think is pregnant---but possibly was before we took her because no mare has an udder as big as hers who wasn`t either about due or nursing. That large udder has since receded. And you met Pixie---we adore our Pretty Pony Pixie! Now the thing about miniature horses is that they are addictive. Meet Willow. And her son, Tex. Then I met Meadow and couldn't say no to this beauty. Not only does she have looks but she has a personality to match. Our shopping for horses didn't stop at the miniatures. Nope, Farm Girl bought her first completely unbroke greener than green young filly named Sierra. She will be her first horse to break. We were very lucky to find just the guy to help us too! We hired someone to trailer.Sierra home but he sent a "friend" instead. Turns out that friend is an expert in raising and breaking horses and is one of the coordinators of the local rodeo. And lives not far from us. How perfect is that! Can't wait for spring when they begin breaking her in. The explosion of population in the barn continues with Heathcliffe, an absolutely adorable and lovable babydoll lamb. And Clyde, the cutest little pygmy EVER! Two geese who are nameless at the moment. A pair of white Silkies. A huge number of rabbits both pet and meat quality...and some of those rabbits had rabbits. And lastly, one of our favourite new additions are these two Chinchillas. We also had some new additions that it was inevitable we'd say goodbye. And even had a visit from an old family addition. This is Emma with one of her pups from her last litter. He looks so much like his dad. We also lost some zoo members which is always sad. (Snickers, the guinea pig---not the boy.) Our two favourite ducks, Donald and Ben! As well as Jack. It was a sad morning that day when we woke to find all three male ducks had been killed in the middle of the night, leaving our two females left alone to defend themselves. Gracie also left us when she finally lost her battle to survive and succumbed to Goat Polio. Now I know you all think my addiction has really gotten out of hand with all these new additions, but truthfully, there is a purpose behind all this madness which simply allows me to exploit my addiction. Since this post is long enough, I will explain all in the next post.
First the good, our snowy call duck Daisy`s eggs finally hatched! Ty passes his natural instinct test and is given the go ahead to begin training. The bad, Ella fails her natural instinct test. The ugly, enterotoxemia and goat polio hit the barn and I loose two lambs and a goat. None of these posts should be fly-by posts (especially the last one) and I will write a more detailed blog entry for each. But for now, wanted to update my blog about the newest events occurring at the farm. I would have wrote about the above event sooner but to be truthful, my blog was the last thing on my mind. But I will be writing a post about my experience if not for anything else then to help educate and perhaps save a lamb or goats life.
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. 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!
It was another warm day today. The highest all week. Plus the sun made a return and with the warm weather, our pond melted, making our ducks very happy once again. I'm figuring this should be one of the last warm days of the year, if not for a while, Afterall, this is what it looked like this time last year. And poor Farm Girl was hauling buckets of water to the horses in knee deep snow and below zero temperatures. The boy had been home on a four day long snowday as the second largest storm of the year had struck this exact time a year ago. Highway 402 (one of Ontario's provincial highways) which is located about 30 kilometers south of our farm had been shut down due to the storm, trapping thousands of drivers. The Canadian Military were eventually called in to rescue the over 200 trapped motorists. But today, a year later, this is how we spent the day. We let the girls out on this fine unusual December day. I figured they will probably be locked up for the next three to four months as we don't have a proper outdoor pen for them, so they might as well enjoy it while it lasted. It was young Holly's first time out of her stall. I had fun capturing the day with her. And the other girls too of course!
In our goals to add more goats to the farm, we made our first purchase. Meet Miss Holly. Admittedly, she isn't exactly what we were looking for, but she fulfills two needs. My boy wanted a pet goat of his own that matched his size, and breeding pygmy goats was something I had thought of doing before. Additionally, Faun and Jadis are getting close in age to breeding but I'm not ready for a full size buck. Purchasing a breeding buck for Holly down the road will provide pygmy babies in the summer and help to identify when my other does go into heat. A pygmy buck is a lot easier to handle than a full size buck. I wasn't to sure how the meet and greet would go with Faun and Jadis so put Holly into the stall next to them first. Unlike our girls, Holly has horns and I didn't want anyone getting hurt. But goats are such social creatures and I had no problem moving Holly into the same stall. They did a bit of smelling, gentle head butting, then they all went about their goat business.
I've been busy this past week. Firstly, me and the kids spent a couple days in Toronto for some city shopping and a visit to the Royal Winter Fair. The last time I was at the Royal was when I was a teenager so I was looking forward to it and hoping to learn lots. Sadly, it was a huge disappointment. The Royal is geared more towards showing livestock as well as their huge horse show, rather than educational. At least it wasn't in the area I was interested in. I was hoping to take in seminars or workshops but found none. You see we've had discussions around the household lately about increasing our farming operation. We looked into chickens as they are my favourite farm animal but learned quickly that it is a difficult if not impossible industry to break into. They have a saying that you either inherit it or marry into it. Since neither of those options is available to us, we vetoed that plan and looked at our second favourite critter. The goats. The goat industry is slowing starting to make progress and with more awareness there is promise of it really taking off. It is just as healthy as cow's milk but is easier to digest and better for those with low tolerance to cow's milk or allergies. My oldest daughter has suffered from an allergy to cow's milk ever since she was little. After I switched from breast milk to cow's milk, she became increasingly constipated. It improved some when we brought her down to lower fat content, but her allergies remained all of her life. She was unable to enjoy ice cream, yogurt, or a glass of chocolate milk. I heard about goat's milk recently and brought some home. She had and enjoyed her first glass of chocolate milk without any side effects for the first time ever. Obviously, both she and I are sold. I've heard it also helps with those who suffer from eczima. This same daughter has struggled with eczima since she was a toddler (perhaps another side effects of cow's milk), so we are experimenting and putting her on a goat's milk diet to see if there is any results. Will keep you posted. So, anyway, we spent some time in the goat's barn at the Royal and even took in a show. The only "demonstration" we found was this guy under a stairwell milking his goat between shows. We werent' the only ones curious about what he was doing, there was a whole crowd surrounding his enclosure watching him. I think he was surprised. My boy did get a lesson on cow milking though! No matter it wasn't a real cow. And these chicks made me want white silkies just so I could colour their coats to match the season! But the highlight of the entire fair had nothing to do with agricultural at all. The President's Choice Superdogs by far stole the show and had the biggest turnout. Sorry about the bad quality but they were too fast for my pathetic little camera. Here's one of the stars of the show. Meanwhile, back on the farm, we've been busy getting ready for winter. First up was winterizing the rooster's coop. It originally belonged to the rabbits and it might very well revert back to them in the spring, but for now it houses all of our five roosters. We brought the horses in and did their feet, combed out all the birs from the field and gave them their winter deworming dose. Then the girls were next. The goats that is. They got a pedicure and also were dewormed. We are still working on rearranging housing conditions inside the horse barn as the horses will be coming in within the next month or so and at the moment one of the stalls is being occupied by Lizzie, the pig. We had built her her own pen, but she ended up chewing it nearly right through so we moved her out and put the female rabbits in it instead. I had made the executive decision to colonize all the females instead of making them each individual hutches. It's working out for us and they all get along nicely. And finally, this morning I was greeted with a raccoon hanging out near the dog runs. I set our german shepherd on him but she has grown into an old sad dog who lacks speed but grown fear. The damn critter turned and started chasing Dakota, oye! So I went inside and brought out three more of our dogs (Emma was kept inside because we're crossing our fingers she may be pregnant), and the only thing those three were good at was chasing the coon up a tree. So two hours later and with the raccoon showing no signs of leaving our property, I took matters into my own hands. My chickens wanted out to range. And my boy wanted out to play. How many people can say they've killed a raccoon? I can. Now. Living in the country isn't always pleasant.
Well, we finally did it. We let the goats out of their stall. Now they've been out before...on a leash, in the miniature's pen. But this time, they were given free range. I thought I'd be nervous, but I had an overwhelming sense of trust in them. First we started with Faun who is calmer than Jadis. Who promptly found a new pack leader in my boy. And a friend in Emma. She eyed the great beyond. But for Faun, nothing compares to being right next to the one you love. When it was Jadis's turn to join her, she couldn't understand why Faun wanted to follow that little boy around so much. Snubbed Emma and told her to take a hike as Faun was her best friend. Then lured Faun off into secretative, wonderful places where dogs were not allowed to go. Together they went off exploring and discovered some exciting new and hidden lairs. Met the local natives. Tasted some exotic new plants. And with every step, Jadis attempted to draw Faun closer and closer to the edge of the clearing where the woods and freedom awaited. But alas could not tempt Faun enough when Farm Girl beckoned. Because Faun already knew there is no place like home.
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