Lots of Questions!

Welcome back!

This is your last post for the school year. I'll keep posting during the summer if you want to stop by and visit the blog to see what is going on.

I looked through all the questions you sent and picked some that I haven't answered yet.

We only have one cow. Her name is Echo. We've had other cattle (that's the fancy name for cows) but they were all steers, Echo is our first girl cow.

This is my favorite picture of Echo.

Remi is the dark steer on the left.
You can read a little more about Remi here.

We had to bottle feed Remi when he first came to us because he was so young.

This is Dinner and one of the goat kids.
He loved hanging out with the baby goats!
You can read a little more about him here.

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This is Darcy. He died a few years ago.
He was a very sweet bunny and we took good care of him when he got sick.
We don't have bunnies any more.

If you want to see what happened to Darcy you can read about him here, and here, and here.

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Yes! We have fun in the fall. We work hard in the fall, too!


This is what we like to do after we rake the leaves.

Sometimes we just like to be silly!
That's fun, too!

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I don't know! We might get a girl sheep if Stew dies or goes to a new home. We usually only have one sheep at a time. They have to be friendly so people can pet them.

Stew is happy, and friendly. He likes hanging out with the boy goats.

This is my favorite picture of Stew.
You can read a little more about Stew getting sheared here.

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We don't know exactly how old Clover is. We got her when Matt was in 5th grade. She showed up in front of our barn with two goat kids. When we found out who owned her we told them that they should make their fences stronger because Nubian goats LOVE to figure out how to get out of fences.

The nice man asked if we wanted to keep her so he didn't have to fix his fences.

We did, and we've been so happy that she has been part of the herd! She has been part of the herd since 2006. She was at least 4 years old when she came to us. That means she is about 15 years old.

This is Clover a few years after we got her.
Ginger is the other goat. She died a few years ago.
We still miss her.

Here's a funny picture of Clover.
She's a silly goat!

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Thanks for stopping by this year. We had a lot of fun sharing our animals and our farm with you. I hope you enjoyed it, and that you learned some new things.

I hope you get to visit some fun places. Here's a post about Flat Stanley when he came to visit our farm a long time ago.

You can visit the blog during the summer, too. If you have questions you can type them into the comment box and I'll answer them.

Have a great summer vacation!

New Kids 2017

Welcome back!

I know there are quite a few people enjoying Spring Break right now. I hope you are having a wonderful time while you're on vacation.

We've been busy and so have our mama goats! We have 6 new goat kids. Serenity and River kidded at the same time. They both kidded on Monday evening.

We had a big surprise because Serenity had 3 kids. We've never had a first freshener have 3 kids. They usually have one or two. Smaller breed goats have more, but the big breeds don't always have a lot of babies in one litter.

We dry off all the kids and put sweaters on them so they stay warm.
This is Serenity and her 3 kids.
She had two bucklings and one doeling.

Serenity looks so happy to have her kids close by her!

We keep the kids and mamas in a stall for about 2 days so the little kids don't get lost. They can walk, but they can't walk very well or very far, so it's best for them to stay in a small area with their mamas.

We let the kids out when they start playing inside the stall. That's when we know they are strong enough to find their mama when they need food. 

Misty had one kid on Tuesday night.
It was a rough birth because the kid was stuck.
She had one hoof forward, and one hoof back.
I had to pull her out!

We aren't sure why Misty doesn't have much milk this time. We are bottle feeding the baby. Misty is such a good mama that she taught her kid how to nurse anyway.

I thought you might like to see what it looks like when a goat has a baby. This is Serenity having her second kid.



The baby is fine, I had to turn off the camera and clean him off. He's running around with all the other babies.

Annie hasn't had her baby yet. She is due in May. Echo is due May 19 so we're also looking forward to a new calf!

It's been a busy week!

Stuck Under the Feeder

Welcome back!

Stuck!

Sometimes animals get themselves in a bad spot.

Thor pulled the feeder over on top of himself yesterday.

He looks like he's in jail.

He doesn't look very happy, does he.

I'm not sure how long he was there before Bryon found him. He was very happy when we let him out.

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This hen is just starting to get a few new feathers along her back.
You can see a few little black stick-like feathers starting to come through her skin.

This chicken has a lot of new feathers coming in!
You can see all the little stick-like feathers.
It's a good thing she's growing feathers.
They will keep her from getting sun burned this spring!

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We found a nest of eggs that the chickens had been hiding.

That's a lot of eggs! We weren't sure how long they had been there so we put them in a pail of water. None of the eggs floated so we are pretty sure they are ok to eat.

Heather put a "T" on every egg from the nest because I haven't had time to candle them all yet. If the eggs have a mark then we know we have to break them into a bowl to check them before we put them in dough or another recipe.

I use a special high powered flashlight with a small collar to 'candle' the eggs. 

The light is so bright that it lets you see what's inside the egg.
I can tell that this egg is good to eat.
There is a dark yellow area at the top,
the bottom of the egg looks clear.

This is a duck egg.
You can see the yolk at the top of the egg.
This one is good to use, too.

If an egg isn't good the yellow yolk is a dark color, and it fills at least half the egg. We bury them in the garden because if you crack them open they usually smell bad. They aren't good to eat, either.

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River is on the left, Misty is on the right.

Serenity.
She has chubby cheeks because she's chewing her cud.

 These three goats are going to have their babies soon. They are due to kid any time after March 30.
We don't know how many babies they will have, and we aren't always sure of the exact date they will have their babies.

You can guess how many kids each goat will have! You can count how many days until March 30 to find out how long it will be before they are ready to kid.

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All of these photos have something that I'm thankful for. Something that makes our life easier on the farm, and in the house. You use it every day, too.

Can you guess what it is?

It's plastic!

Plastic makes our life so much easier on the farm. We have plastic buckets to carry water in, or to hold feed. We have plastic dog houses that are sturdy and keep kid goats safe and warm. There is a plastic coating on electrical wires and extension cords to keep the electricity from hurting people or animals. Baling twine is made from plastic, it hold the bales of hay together so they are easy to store, and to move from the field to the barn. Wood shavings come in plastic bags so we can store them easily before we put them in the stalls for the goats and the cow to sleep on. We use plastic hoses on the milker when we milk Echo. We use rubber hoses on the milker, too. I buy flowers and other plants that are grown in plastic pots. We start our seeds in plastic containers, too. We use plastic barrels to store food in. We use a plastic cover the keep the water and snow off the connection between the heated water bucket and the extension cord.

Look around and see all the wonderful things made out of plastic that you use every day. I am very grateful for plastic!

Do you know when plastic was invented? There are many different types of plastic, but the first plastic was invented by a man named Alexander Parkes in 1862. That's a long time ago! Sometimes an invention takes a long time before it is used in our every day life.

Some people think that plastic is bad, but it has made our life much easier and much nicer. If you are interested in learning more about plastic, when it was invented, what types of plastic there are, and how plastic is used you can use this link.

https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-plastics-1992322

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!

Copper is Working!

These photos were taken about a week after we gave all the goats their spring copper bolus. The hair is already starting to grow back on Curly and Annie's noses. We've trained our goats to love bananas so I put a bolus in the middle of a piece of banana and they gobble it down. It's so easy!

Bryon is working on a Prime 90 supplement especially for the goats. It will have higher amounts of copper, selenium, and cobalt. Goats tend to need higher amounts of those minerals than other animals. Right now we give them the Equine formula, which works well, but I have to supplement once or twice a year with a copper bolus.

They also have a 'blue lick' available that helps them get their cobalt. Link We buy ours locally at IFA, but many feed stores carry them or they can order them in.

Yay! He's growing new hair!

You can even see the new growth on Annie's nose.

Doesn't he look so content?

More info about dosing with copper can be found here.

I really do love it when something works so quickly!

One more thing I love....

We have enough milk to make cheese again!