We finally have babies

When we first purchased Pebbles we thought she was pregnant but we were 100%. She is the one in the Green collar.

After a few weeks it became pretty clear she was. We built a bigger pen and tried to improve her environment but honestly had no idea what we were doing. It took a while just to figure out what to feed her. I never knew it would be so complicated. I started doing some reading about how to care for a pregnant goat and how to help deliver kids. It was all so overwhelming that it made me not want to read it anymore so I didn't. Then after some of the signs I was seeing this weekend yesterday I decide I better read up. I found a great post of a forum call Backyardherds.com that explained the process very clearly and did scare me to death like everything else I had read. I have been telling my buddy Eric all along that I just wanted to come home from work one day and they just be there. I really didn't want to have to deal with any vet bills or complications. Well I rushed home yesterday from work cause I had a feeling something might be happening and sure enough......

I didn't have to do a thing. I took my hut and wrapped it in a tarp and added some pine shavings and a heat lamp and they were all set. When I checked on them this morning mom and both babies were inside sleeping. Everybody seems to be doing good so hopefully there will not be any problems and we can train these two to be friendly and maybe one day we can get some milk from them for our own use.

Farm Update 11/25/2012

 Here are Bristol and Drake on a lazy after noon laying in the sun....

We put our tree up and took a couple pictures of our fat baby!

 She is starting to sit up pretty good and is rolling over.

I am down to 9 guineas from the 17 I started with. I think this Bald Eagle might be part of the reason. I found a couple piles of feathers in a clearing by the road the other day. It looks like they are getting attacked when they go out in the open. As I have read in other places the dumbest guineas die first and the remaining "smart" ones that can survive that first year can teach the future generation how to stay alive. So hopefully we will get babies in the spring and we will have guineas that know the how to stay alive.

Our Turkeys have gotten bigger and have become my favorite addition. They are having a hard time learning to return to their house at night but I think that's my fault because I have moved them a couple time to new homes. They are now in the old Dog/Goat/guinea pen. I have given up getting the guineas to go back inside their pen at night. Instead the guineas sleep on top of it. Back to the Turkeys....They have started to Strut and Gobble which is a lot of fun to hear. They never leave the yard and they have gotten along with the dogs and other animals great. I did loose 1 Turkey but it died in it's pen so I'm not sure what happened to it. It looks like I ended up with 3 Toms and 1 Hen.

The day before Hurricane Sandy arrived My dad and I built this goat pen in the front woods. It is 45x35 ft and they really seem to like it.

 Who's they? I just realized I never posted about Lavern and Shirley. After BAMBAM died Pebbles was very lonely and was depressed. So we found a lady with Nigerian Dwarf babies and we got 2 does about 3 months old. They are about 5 months now. We were hoping since pebbles and BAMBAM weren't the most friendly goats that these would be better since they are younger but it hasn't been going to good. They aren't too bad and will come up to the fence and aren't scared of you but if you try to pet them they run off. So we will just keep trying to make them like us through food....

The new pen has a bunch of logs and hills in it that the goats love to play on. I also built this little hut out of some pallets and scrap lumber form our wood milling.

As you can see here Pebbles is VERY pregnant!

This past weekend we finally split and stacked a few oak and poplar trees that have been laying around for a while.

Happy Halloween!

These will be the only Treat or Treaters we will have.

"LM" helping her momma make a hat

Eating Bannanas...

Ready for hunting season!

No more "Bam Bam"

After only one week of being goat owners we lost our first goat. It was the boy. The one with the orange color in the pictures. I really don't know what happened. He seemed fine then on Thursday they both got out and I found them a couple hours later about a mile from the house at a neighbors. I brought them home and the next morning I noticed he was acting wierd. By that afternoon he was laying on the ground and it was clear he wouldn't make it. We did lots of reading and made a trip to Tractor Supply for medicine but nothing helped. He died the next day. He was either already sick when we got him or he ate something that he shouldnt have while he was out. After he was gone the girl "Peebles" was very sad. She would look all around for him and cry. Then she started just staying in her house all day. So we have added 2 more goats from a better source and will post info and photos of them soon.

More new additions

So I have been looking for some Turkeys for a long time. I have debated hatching eggs or buying chicks. The chicks were expensive from the hatchery and I think you have to buy 30 at a time. The eggs were a better deal but I have never hatched eggs and I didn't have an incubator(I do now....more on that another day.) This past weekend the was an animal sale at Gilmanor Farms. They have this twice a year. We went in the spring but didn't see anything we needed. This time was different. We were looking for a kid goat and the Turkeys. I was specifically looking for bourbon reds. I found some turkeys that were 5 months old. The lady selling them offered a deal if I took all 5 she had so of course I did.

For now they are in the Barn Tractor until I can build a house for them.

Here are the bantams again. They are still hanging out in the old guinea tractor. I tried letting them out the other day but the dogs were way too interested in them. I don't know why they couldn't care less about the guineas or the other chickens. We will keep working at it.

So since we didn't find any goats we wanted at the sale we went online when we got home. We search and called everywhere but never did find what we were really looking for. We wanted something 6 months or less that way a Pygmy or dwarf. I ended up calling a local petting zoo that has tons of goats. They had some ranging from 6 months and up. We decided to pick based on looks and ended up with the Nigerian Dwarfs.

They are very pretty but not so comfortable with us yet. We have been slowly working with them to get them used to us. It doesn't help that the dogs think they are dogs too and want to play with them through the fence. I took the old dog kennel that was 10x20 that the guineas have been staying in and turned it into 2 10x10 kennels. The guineas get half and the goats get half until I can build them a play yard in the woods.

It has also been about 2 weeks now of letting the guineas out everyday and so far I not lost any and they all have returned to their pen every night. It may take a little corralling but they make it back pretty easily.

Farm Raised Chicken For Sale

We are offering some of our farm raised chicken for sale. These are the Jumbo Cornish X's we raised in the spring.

We will be selling them for $1.99 a pound.

We have been cooking at least one of these a week and they are great!

Send us an email or give us a call If you would like some great home grown local chicken.

 scott@catchbigfish.net

These chickens were given no hormones, injections or medication of any kind. There had access to grass and bugs and all the grain feed they wanted.



New Additions to the Farm

Over the last few months we have gone to a few different Chicken Swaps and Farmer Markets looking for new animals to add to what we have. Every time we go to one of these things we are disappointed with the lack of selection(or the high prices). It seems that these events are just too small or too frequent to attract enough vendors and customers. Well this weekend we went to a swap at a local Tractor Supply. We had high hopes for this one because it was at a nice store that has lots of customers. Well to our surprise there were only 2 vendors. There were plenty of potential customers but no one selling. One lady had rabbits which we aren't interested in, but the other did have something I was looking for. After visiting a clients house recently that had some bantam chickens I thought that they would be a cool addition. Since the chickens we already have aren't very colorful I wanted something that stood out. Well the ones that were for sale Saturday were just that.

We bought three Old English Silver Duckwing Bantams. They are very cool looking. They are pretty nervous about their new surroundings but I'm sure they will settle in fine. I will post tomorrow with the updates to my chicken tractor I am making for them. I am in the process of adding a nesting box to this tractor.

After we got home from the swap my dad came over and helped me finish the wood shed we have been building from the lumber we had milled from our trees when our lot was cleared. It will be used to store and dry the rest of the wood from the the mill and to store our firewood. We have a ton of wood that has been cut but not split from storms over the last two years.

Garden Update

Next year I will do things different.....I'll probably say that every year. Between the squirrels and the weeds it has been an interesting garden. Despite having 42 tomato plants I haven't picked a tomato in a month. They get to them way before they get red. 

Actually most of that green is the garden but around the watermelons and the pumpkins there is a lot of tall grass. The garden is just too thick to get a tiller in there anymore.

 The sunflowers have done great. I got two cabbage heads out of the 14 or so I planted. Bugs got to most of them.

Ok so I may have been a little of on my planting date for the pumpkins........We have orange pumpkins in August. Maybe if we are lucky some will still be around in October. I doubt it.

The watermelons are doing great too I just hope the squirrels don't find the ripe ones before I do. 

Here is my harvest from last night. I finally got some green beans. I was really late planting then as I was with everything else. Some of my zucchinis got a little big but oh well. I think the cucumbers are about done. I did get enough to make about 9 jars of dill pickle spears and chips though.

I finally moved the Guineas into the old dog kennel. They have ALOT more room now so I'm sure they are happy. I have set up a bunch of high and low perches for them so they can build up their wings before I let them out.

Here is Tab with Bristol and Drake going for a golf cart ride.

Here she is......

We have been M.I.A. for a while now but for good reason. As you know since November we have been living with our in laws while we waited for our house to be built. Well that is finally done and we are all settled in. Besides having horrible Internet service at our new house I think the biggest reason we have been slacking on the blog is that 7 weeks ago we were finally able to meet our little girl.

She was born on 6/1/12 and was 7 lb 12.5 oz and was 20.5"

She has been a ton of work and even more fun.

She has already gotten so big compared to when she first arrived.

Mom and baby are doing great!

House and garden updates coming soon!



Guinea Tractor

Since we will be moving soon and my baby guineas were getting really big I decided I needed a new chicken/guinea tractor. I used left over boards from the fence I built around our raised bed garden(which still isn't finished). The tractor was not meant to be pretty like the "Barn tractor" but I think it came out really good. It is a little heavy but still light enough to move by hand. I also wired in the bottom so that when I move the guineas to the new house I wont have to worry about any escaping.