Shopping!

Shopping for the farm, that is.  I get way too excited over this stuff.  So here's what I've got on order:

Viking Aronia Berry
Ben Lear Cranberries
Chicago hardy Figs
Wintergreen
Montmorency Sour Cherries,
Gold Rush Apples

I still need to order blueberries, maybe grapes, definitely raspberries and blackberries.  Some of those will depend on how my propagation efforts go.  So far my attempt to propagate raspberry has not worked, mostly because I did it wrong and tried to snip it now...I guess you are supposed to wait until summer.  I did snip some grape cuttings, they've leafed out and even put out blossom buds (which I pinched off) but still no roots.  I don't even know what type of grape they are.  It's whatever the prior owner planted and we still haven't seen any fruit on.

If you haven't seen my facebook page for the farm lately, you'll see that we have a name.  A real farm name! Even better is we have a herd name for our future Nubian herd.  Obviously we have nothing to name right now.  I'm hoping I'll get to start that change tomorrow.  I'm checking out a goat, hopefully she'll be a good fit and I'll bring her home.  I'm so hopeful of this that I have a stall prepped and the trailer readied.

Stalking breeders.

This is one of the more fun parts of building a farm, choosing and adding new stock.  Our search is on for a couple of good dairy goat does and in just a few days of looking I have a line on a couple.  One's a 5 year old who should freshen very soon, the other will be a yearling who is dry and could be bred to our boy, Sonny.  The hard choice will be whether to jump on what I find now or to hold off until March when there will be a much broader selection.  It might be a split decision, one now and one later.

So what do you look for when you buy a goat?  I know what I look for: good feet, strong legs, level back, roman nose (nubian only), good mouth, long ears (again, nubian), wide in the rear with a nice udder, easy to milk teats, milk with good flavor and good quantity.  I'm only looking at breeders who test for CAE and in general I look for well bred, show herds.  I don't know that we'll ever show our own goats other than with 4H for our kids. There's a saying that it costs just as much to feed a well bred goat as it does a poorly bred one, so we'll make the initial investment in quality and hope it means healthier goats in the long run. Obviously, after our experience with Kissee, we know that even with the best quality, stuff happens.

Of course, I say I look for all these things and I do....but once I'm there at the breeder a lot flies out the window.  I fall in love easily. Knowing this, I do as much homework as I can ahead of time.  I look up pedigrees on ADGAgenetics, photos of sires and dams, appraisal data, DHIR results (milk testing)....anything I can find.

I cannot wait to have real, fresh milk again.  I'm ready to start making some cheese again.  I'll keep y'alls posted as to what we find.  I still want to get some rabbits too.  It's going to be a very busy spring.

New Years Inventory and Statistics

Our 2012 tallies

We have: 

23-24 hens, 2 roosters

3 female ducks, 2 drake ducks

1 African gander, 2 African geese 

1 Slate turkey tom, 2 slate hens

1 nubian buck, 1 saanen wether

Culls (for meat):

12 roosters

2 turkeys (hens)

3 ducks

Losses:

1 nubian doe + babies

2 cockerels, 1 hen

2 turkey poults

1 duckling, 1 female duck

Yearly totals:

26 bags of corn = 1300 lbs = $304

78 bags chicks starter= 3900 lbs = $1325

12 boxes baking soda= $7.08

1 bag of goat minerals= $15

1 bag of oyster shell 

1 bag of chick grit (when we brood babies, they get grit and greens)

hay $100 (our field, we pay for cutting)

What's the point of all this?  Reflection.  Reflecting on the year, using that information to make decisions, hopefully wise ones.  I'm blown away by the sheer quantities of feed we use.  I was telling my husband we should consider buying by the ton, as you see, we use about 2.5 tons of feed to raise all those birds.  It also forces me to think of ways to get those birds to offset their feed costs more. 

This also is the reality of keeping animals.  This doesn't include medications or wormers.  I think I spent somewhere around $150 to build up my vet box after Kissee died so we would be more prepared when we brought on more goats and some things for the birds too.  

I haven't been tracking how many eggs we get but we averaged last year about 10 a day for hen's eggs and 1 a day for duck.  So approximately 3600-3700 eggs.  Since we use the same feed for all of our birds it's hard to get a real cost for a carton of eggs but when we had those first 7 hens, we yielded around 9 dozen/per 50lbs of feed.  Right now, our feed mix is about $14.50 for 50lbs.  So our cost before considering any physical efforts is around $1.60 - 1.80 a dozen.  That's not bad really. 

One of the problems with a mixed flock that free ranges is that I can't tell how much it cost to raise these heritage turkeys.  No idea.  I don't have a clue how much they eat.  I can only estimate.

If you have any questions, just ask in the comments or email me.

 

Farm Castoffs

There's a truth to farming that's hard to ignore...boys.  Even on our tiny farm, boys are something that we have to deal with.

When we ordered our first set of chicks, we ordered girls for layers and heavy breed boys for meat.  We could have just ordered Cornish X, which is what most people eat when they eat chicken, but we were trying to do the responsible thing and eat birds that would have likely been thrown away.  I'm not actually sure what the hatchery we ordered from does with their castoffs but most of them put them into a grinder, trash bag or some other awful fate for a living being to experience on their first day of life.  I'm not squeamish about death at all, but I do have a deep respect for living creatures and I don't want them to suffer.  If it's alive it should live until it hopefully finds a quick death.

Now that we have many of our breeding animals in place, we have the reality of male animals.  This year we hatched and/or raised 12 roosters.  For a flock of 20+ hens, we only need 2 roosters for fertile eggs.  So we cull (kill) the extra birds for meat.  Five of those roosters were leghorns.  One of them I culled ahead of the rest of them to try out.  Chicken noodles.  It was awful, the bird was so tough it was pretty much inedible.  Nothing wrong with the taste, just too tough.  So the rest of them I ground; I keep plenty of taco and sausage seasonings on hand for just such meats.

I know a few vegetarians who eat eggs and drink milk, but the reality is that both products require some solution for male animals.  If you drink milk, the cow must birth a calf first.  That calf has a 50% chance of being male.  It used to be that dairy bull calves were the source of veal, but now veal has become unpopular and I've heard stories of bull calves being shot shortly after birth so no expense is wasted on an unwanted animal.  Dairy goats have the same odds of having male kids, also in the US, goat meat is not very popular.  I have yet to try goat meat, so I'm really no exception.  I'm actually looking quite forward to trying it though.  Personally I've not been able eat some of the fattier meats like beef and lamb so the lean goat meat will probably work out great.

Just like you can't have leather or fur without the death of an animal, you can't have eggs or milk without considering the fate of the boys.  To me, it would seem the most responsible thing to do would be to give them a good life and end it quickly when the time is right.  You could keep the boys for pets, but anyone who's heard of cockfighting will quickly make the connection as to why too many boys are a bad idea.

This has been what's been on my mind lately.  We finished up our season by culling the extra boys, girls and one injured girl who we didn't think should hurt another day.  We are down to around 25 chickens, 5 ducks, 3 geese, 3 turkeys and 2 goats.

A few pics.

Blue Slate Turkey hens.  10lbs and 8lbs dressed

PekinX double duck egg, PekinX duck egg, 2 olive chicken eggs

Farm log 10/20/12

This post is more for me than you.  I've tried to keep a log book before but I end up looking up old FB or blog posts anyhow to figure out what I did when.

Sonny- weight taped at 105lbs, dosed with ivermectin (wormer), given CD/T vaccine, BoSe shot, hooves trimmed and iodined.  Sonny has a goiter we noticed a week ago that has been shrinking with the addition of Thorvin kelp free choice every evening.  In a week, I want to reworm him and see if I can give him some RedCell (I'm slightly concerned his "goiter" is actually bottle jaw so I'm treating for both just in case).  In a month he needs hoof trimming and his second CD/T as well as copper bolus.

York- weight taped at 180, dosed with ivermectin and CD/T.  Hooves trimmed and iodined.  I'll probably reworm him along with Sonny and he also needs hoof trimming and his second CD/T as well as copper bolus.

Pictures 10/7/12

'I only have eyes.....for yoouuuuu'  Sonny, now a year old and currently in rut

"Angel"- our currently broody Ameracuana x Wyandotte cross from last fall's hatch. Ironically she's quite mean and will peck your hand off.

The boys, Sonny and York.  Poor York has to deal with stinky Sonny.

The blue slate turkeys....1 jake and 4 hens (are they called something different at this age?)  

Free range hens.  They really like to roost in the pine trees.

duck duck duck goose goose :)  The gosling girls are about 3/4 of our grown gander's size now

this rooster is one of the "school" leghorns, he's just a white leghorn but LOOK at that tail! I've never seen a leghorn with such a fancy tail and none of the other roos have it.  Too bad we aren't trying to keep leghorn roos.

Early Fall.  From my dining room window.

October '12 update

It feels like fall!  We had such a hot, dry summer that I'm not ashamed to say that I was glad to see it go.

I'd love to tell you that so much has happened in the last month, but really it's nothing too exciting.  We lost a duck, one of the girls from the spring hatch.  She disappeared one evening without a trace and we still have not seen any sign of her.  She may have went broody and we'll see her later this month with a bunch of ducklings of her own.  She may have been picked up by a predator, however this theory puzzles me since the only airborne predator I've seen lately is too small to carry away a duck of her size.

Which brings me to the airborne predator in question, the Cooper's hawk.  For a few days we had a Cooper's hawk scoping out our flock and our African geese were so kind as to alert every living creature around that it was nearby.  I believe that hawk has moved on and I don't think it caught a meal here.  Have I mentioned how much I love our geese?  Low maintenance, easy keepers, hearty flock protection.  I can't wait to see the goslings next year.  We've never had goose meat but we are looking forward to trying it.  I was browsing around for prices on goose...wow!  I mean the low end I found was $8/lb and the high end nearing $12/lb for whole goose.  If we weren't raising it, I can't imagine we'd ever afford it.

The goats.  Well, they stink to high heaven right now.  Sonny is in rutt and if we are lucky they he didn't just pee all over his head just before we have to handle him.  Boy goats are gross!

The human kids are doing great.  The new baby was 10lbs, 9.5 oz today at the doc's office :)  My son has taken a liking to jigsaw puzzles.  I have no idea what skill level he should be at with puzzles but the last couple puzzles were probably too easy at 24 pcs.

With all these animals we raise for meat, it had me thinking about our menu.  If we grew all of our own meats our menu would include: chicken, duck, turkey, goose, goat, with rabbit and pork as later additions.  I don't know about you but I grew up with the typical beef, pork, chicken, fish, turkey diet....none of which were grown on pasture like we're doing here.  So it really is going to require me to branch out my cooking skills.  I've never cooked goat or goose or rabbit.