Let's Count Eggs!

Welcome Back!

Every year we spend a few weeks counting how many eggs we get every day. We figure out how many eggs we get from the chickens, and how much money we spend on food. It gives us a good idea of how much our eggs cost. I make a graph to see which color eggs we get the most of, too.

Here is my egg count for this week.

• Friday, April 14 I collected 11 brown eggs, 23 green eggs, and 0 duck eggs
• I found a nest in the hay shelter AND a hidden nest in the horse trailer!
• Saturday, April 15 I collected 10 brown eggs, 6 green eggs, and 0 duck eggs
• Sunday, April 16  I collected 10 brown eggs, 11 green eggs, and 3 duck egg.
  One of the ducks was hiding her eggs and I found her hiding spot today
•  Monday, April 17 I collected 1 brown egg, 2 green eggs, and 0 duck eggs.
• Tuesday, April 18 I collected 8 brown eggs, 4 green eggs, and 0 duck eggs.
• Wednesday, April 19 I collected 6 brown eggs, 6 green eggs, and 0 duck eggs.
• Thursday, April 20 I collected 7 brown eggs, 4 green eggs, and 0 duck eggs.

Quin's mama duck is sitting on a nest of eggs.

I'm not sure when she started sitting on her nest
so I'm not sure when the eggs will hatch.

She built her nest in a safe spot under an old fence. I'll keep you updated if I see ducklings!

We also have one grey hen who is sitting on eggs. I kept taking her eggs away, but she keeps sitting in the same spot. I decided that I would let her hatch out some eggs so I let her start sitting on them yesterday, April 20. Her eggs should hatch about May 4. If everything goes well I'll show you pictures of chicks in 3 weeks!

Did I answer your question, Ellie?

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There are lots of cats who like to drink running water. Our new cat, Bubbers, loves to get a drink of water from the bathroom sink.

Look closely and see how he drinks.

He scoops the water with the back of his tongue! 

Chickens scoop the water into their beak

then they have to lift their beak into the air so they can swallow the water.

Goats, cows, and sheep suck the water into their mouth

the same way you suck through a straw.

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We took the goat kids' sweaters off this week. It's warm enough and they are old enough to run and play with only their white fur coats.

We also had to 'disbud' the kids last Friday. That means we make sure they don't grow horns. They have black spots on their heads this week. It takes about 4 weeks for the marks to go away.

The kids are fine, but they look odd when their heads look like this!

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No, we don't have butterflies.
A few years ago Quin hatched butterflies at home.
It was a lot of fun and so exciting to see the butterflies come out of their cocoons.

No, we don't have fish right now.
I usually buy some goldfish for the little fountain in the flower bed.
I'll show you a picture when I get them.

We have 6 baby goats right now, and it seems like we should have lambs, too!
We only have one sheep, his name is Stew.
Sometimes we have bottle lambs in the spring, but we don't have one this spring.

Thank you for all your questions!

I'll answer more of your questions next week! Have a great week!

Stumpy is Getting Trained

Welcome back!

Sometimes we send dogs to a school to be trained for work. We send children to school so they can learn, too.

Often we train the animals on the farm to do things ourselves. We don't send them away to school.

We need to train Stumpy, Echo's calf, to lead. We've been working on it this week. I'm hoping to get a video of it for you next week. I can't take a video while I'm training so I tied Stumpy to the fence. He is learning to be well behaved on a lead.

A lead is just a farm word for leash.

He's so cute!
He has a halter on, and he has a blue and green lead rope.

The lead rope is a special one that goes over his nose and around his ears. It's the best way to train him. When he gets good at leading we'll just clip a lead rope to his halter.

If he pulls really hard the rope around his nose gets really tight. He doesn't like that! He would rather follow me than pull back and have his nose squished!

River and Serenity, the goat kids, love to play with Stumpy.

It's so much fun to watch them play. I'll try to get more videos of them this week.

Did you notice the dark spots on the top of Serenity's head?

Here is a better look at River's.

Goats are usually born with horns. We don't like our goats to have horns because horns are dangerous. Imagine what would happen if your mother let you play with your friends while you were holding knives or scissors! Ouch! Someone could get badly hurt!

Every year when goat kids are born we have to 'disbud' them. That means we get rid of their horns when the horns are very, very small. They don't grow back. If they don't have horns they can't get their heads caught in a fence as easily. They can't hurt each other when they play. And they can't hurt people or children when they are playing.

It only takes a minute. They are up and playing with their friends as soon as they are done! Annie, Misty, and Clover are all fine! They were disbudded when they were about 5 days old, just like River and Serenity.

Cows are often born with horns, too. We will take care of Stumpy's horns in a few weeks. He'll be fine, just like the goat kids.

Echo is a wonderful cow.
My friend called her a 'fairy tale cow' because
she does things that most other cows won't do.
She lets the baby goats have a snack!

The turkey hen didn't want to get off her nest, even when her eggs didn't hatch.
Silly turkey!
So I put a bunch of chicken eggs under her.
We'll see if she can hatch out chicken eggs!
She started sitting on them last Saturday.
They should hatch in 21 days.

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Do you see the tape measure around Misty?
That's how we 'weigh' the goats.
But Misty and Annie are too big for the weight tape!

We have to use a regular tape measure to see how big they are around. Then we put the measurements into a special app on my phone and it tells us about how much the goat weighs.

These are the two places we measure on the goat.

These are Misty's measurements.

This is about how much Misty weighs.

These are Annie's measurements.

This is about how much Annie weighs.

An average First Grader weighs about 45 pounds.

Misty and Annie each weigh about the same as 6 First Graders!

The goat kids weigh much less. Serenity weighs about 20 pounds. River weighs about 18 pounds. They will grow for about two years and weigh about the same as their mothers. 

Goats and cows grow much faster than people do!

You might be wondering why we can't weigh a goat on a regular scale.

It's very hard for them to put all 4 hooves on a bathroom scale and stand still. We would have to get a large animal scale and they are very expensive and very big.

Most goat and sheep owners use a tape measure. It really does tell how much they weigh, which is often a surprise for people that don't live on a farm.

Someone did a lot of math and weighed a lot of animals on a big scale so they could figure out how to make a chart (or an app) that tells you how much a goat or sheep weighs.

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One of the best things about living on a farm is that children love to visit.
Here are my grandsons heading out to the barn to do the chores with Papa one morning.
Sometimes they come early in the morning, or stay overnight.
They love to help with the chores.
Their favorite chore is finding eggs.

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Disbudding

CooleyBug needed to disbud some goat kids. She was really, really sick a few weeks ago when it would have been best to do it, but we went ahead and did it last Monday anyway. CooleyBug has some mini-LaManchas and some Nigerian Dwarf goats.

Each of the six kids we disbudded got a tetanus anti-toxin shot before being disbudded just to be on the safe side.

Here are a few photos that our neighbor friend took during the process.

So cute!

We always spray Blue Kote after we are done disbudding. Then again 12 hours later, and once more 12 hours after that. The only year we didn't spray we had terrible disbudding infections.

This little one was snuggling close to Vet2Be.

Then it screamed, "Oh, please! Let me go back to my Mama!" He got a shot anyway!

This photo was so funny! This little goat really looks worried!

Disbudding seemed to go well. They all got up and ran out to their mamas after they were disbudded. I'm curious to see how well it worked on the kids that had horns 2" tall already. I've never done goats this late and hope that we did a good enough job that they won't have scurs.

These little goats are louder than the big goats, though! Next time... ear plugs :)

Please Disbud Your Kid Goats

Goats are sweet and wonderful, but if you have goats, you have fences. And if you have fences you are likely to have horns in the fences, or feeders, or other goats.

We've had experiences with goats and horns. Not good ones. Although I don't have any graphic images in this post, I talk about some graphic incidents in an effort to help people understand why we disbud our kid goats. So, don't read any further if you don't want to read gross stuff.

Vet2Be's first goat, Mama, was a sweet mixed breed goat. We never drank her milk, but she seemed to have plenty. That was before we did the 'dairy goat' thing.

Mama is on the right. She is with her friend, Riley. Vet2Be's first goats! Both sweet, gentle!

Graphic Story One
One afternoon we went out to find a bloody mess. Mama had apparently got one horn stuck in the fence and ripped it out. The photo above shows her with both horns. The broken one never did grow back.

Graphic Story Two
Our doctor also has a few dairy goats. One day they got home from work and found one of their favorite does laying dead in a puddle of blood with blood sprayed around the pen. She had gotten her horn stuck in the fence and ripped it off. She was so shaken up that she ran around the pen and bled to death.

Now, visit Tonia's blog and read her story, too....
What prompted this post was Tonia's posts about her sweet goat. You can read them here and here. Her blog is called The Simple Life. If you are thinking about leaving horns on your goats, you should read her posts, too, and all the comments.

Disbudding Last Week
Last week we disbudded 3 little Nubians. They were about 10 days and 12 days old. Disbudding is never a fun job. Usually we disbud by the time they are 5 days old because it is less traumatic for the little ones than it is for the big ones. The two families had brought their 3 goat kids along with one of the family's 8 year old girls.

Please... don't bring your little children to watch this, it is heartbreaking for them! I would wait until children are 12 or so, at least so that they understand that this is a really hard job to do!

If you are uncomfortable about disbudding your kids, call someone who can do it. They will probably be happy to help (we don't even charge to help!) and they probably won't make you watch. We certainly don't make goat owners watch unless they want to.

It's an awful job, but if you have dairy goats, or any goats besides Angoras, consider disbudding. For the safety of your animals, your other animals, your family, and your visitors.

Disbudding

This is about the nastiest job there is when raising goats. But we believe it is necessary. We had a goat one year who caught her horn on a fence and when she pulled it out, she left her horn behind. It was a yucky mess. Now we disbud everyone.

Yesterday we disbudded Rosie (50% Saanen x 50% Nubian) along with her half brother and half sister who are both 100% Saanen. Rosie is about 2 weeks old, but since she is part Nubian her horns grow much slower than the Saanen horns.

The two Saanens were ready today! And they were only born last Thursday evening. They are only 5 days old and had buds as big as Rosie's!

Clover, Rosie's mom, wasn't too sure she wanted Rosie back after she smelled so horrible. We'll watch them and make sure that they stay bonded.

Janice was more than happy to take her two back and start licking off the Blue Coat spray that we use as an antiseptic.

We also did two little Saanens for a dear friend. It is a nasty job, and she doesn't like to do it either! She always does things for us when we can't. And I never feel bad helping her in any way I can.

Last year we had lots of problems with disbudding infections. I think it was because we didn't spray the sites with Blue Coat. I read somewhere that you didn't need to spray because the area was cauterized and didn't need disinfecting. This year we went back to using an antiseptic. I hope all goes well.

None of the kids we disbudded last year ended up with any scurs. I hope for the same this year.