Hello out there! Does anyone read our little blog anymore? Lately I’ve been considering just moving over to Youtube permanently as we got a nice vlogging camera from my dad for Hanukkah and well, like I said, I’m not even sure anyone reads this these days. If you are reading this, I do hope you had a lovely holiday and are healthy and well.
Here are some farm updates…
First of all, we decided to sell Sundae, our pregnant Mini LaMancha doe who was born here in spring 2019. She went off to her new home at the beginning of December where she will live in a smaller herd and hopefully thrive.
We bought two polled Nigerian Dwarf bucklings to add to our herd. However, one fell through because the breeder decided she didn’t like our holistic practices. I should have known when she unfriended me for my politics she might be a tad judgemental but I had Christine purchase the goat from her account because he was super sweet looking and we had hoped for two polled ones (no horns b/c of genetics) since we don’t disbud (burn horns off). We asked her if she would skip out on the vaccines and medicated feed (eww, I’m so grossed out as I’ve moved into registered goats to find out how many people feed their goats chemicals and then drink milk from them/their kids! In my opinion if you’re using all those chemicals you might as well buy store bought milk; this is a lot of work we do just so we can have HEALTHY chemical-free food for our family). Anyway that apparently set off red flags for her and she freaked out and basically said our goats were going to die if we didn’t do those things. She went on and on about tetanus (the vaccine often given to goats, CDT, is partially for tetanus) but the funny thing about people and tetanus vaccines is that no one seems to really understand how that stuff works. For instance, she said she needs to give the vaccine the day of tattooing b/c they can get tetanus. Well, if you look it up it takes the tetanus vaccine TWO WEEKS to work in which case if her goats didn’t get tetanus from the tattooing then they wouldn’t have without the vaccine either, LOL. We gave her some facts about tetanus and how it actually works, too, but she didn’t like any of that because she’s been in goats longer than we have so she thinks she knows everything. One of those people. I can’t imagine not selling goats to someone just because they do things differently, sigh, but that’s how it goes. Rather than choosing to get a goat with tons of chemicals and work on detoxing them we just accepted our money back (ha, not that she gave us a choice b/c she’s now deemed us bad goat owners). Sigh, but again, I’d just rather keep my eyes peeled for like-minded breeders.
I came across another breeder who had those same protocols for her farm and has awesome LOOKING goats, but the thing is, giving goats medication from Day 1 when they are not even sick is weakening their immune system and is going to cause them to likely get sick easier later. It’s like giving human kids medicine just in case they need it when they really don’t. Isn’t that called drugging your kids? Crazy. So no, we’re not getting those goats.
Luckily the breeder in our area who keeps kicking A** at the shows does not do any vaccines and does not give medicated feed. Now, she doesn’t talk about this aloud but that’s what she says when you ask her not to do those things. I kind of wish more people like that WOULD be loud about it because then maybe those other ones would look around them and realize people do things naturally more than they think. And that’s also made me wish that goat shows were based on actual health of the animal. It’s all about quantity of milk and look of the animal rather than what’s going on inside. That’s kind of frustrating but it’s often the American way.
Well, so the more like-minded breeder I mention above we are getting our second goat from next month, he just needs to wean first (yay, she even dam raises!). He’s polled and unrelated to our other bucks. And then this past week we found a horned buckling with blue eyes (I’m trying to get a bit of variety because although eye color may not really matter for health, there’s more of a market for it and that’s something to look at too, if we’re going to make any money back).
We had all of our goats herd tested for major contagious diseases this past week like we do annually and all came back negative. AND we found out that both of the goats that weren’t looking pregnant ARE pregnant, YAY!! Lady and Powder were hiding it but no we have no doubts. So that means six pregnant does and then 1-2 pregnant ewes.
The rams are set to go to the butcher mid-January but Christine is very attached to them. I’m hoping since that’s been the plan all along that she can follow through with it. I get less attached to animals are more excited about meat than she does, I think. We’ve also been going back and forth about our three full sized wethers that remain. We were going to train them for carts but the one we like the most has the most horrendous hocks (back legs going inward toward each other) that he really won’t be a good option. The other two are just meh goats in general to me. But Christine does get attached and since we hadn’t raised them thinking they were for meat it’s a lot harder to consider. Still, they just take up space and eat feed when we don’t actually need them. Which brings me to something sad.
The llamas have all been sold.
I know that’s shocking. We really liked the llamas a lot. I had such big plans with them pre-COVID…cart training and hikes and all that. But then I overextended myself, partially, with all the new arrivals on the farm. And then I realized I kind of suck at training animals. And then dealing with their monthly injections just felt like a lot of anxiety for me. They basically require monthly injections of wormer in any place with high loads of White Tailed Deer because the deer carry a parasite called meningeal worm that lives in their hearts and kills them. There’s no way to test for it until the animal is dead, so the prevention is just done monthly. It’s pretty ugly. And holding a llama that doesn’t want to be held, plus giving it a shot of some very thick burning liquid is just awful. I guess this could have been solved by buying a $500-$1000 llama chute so they are restrained. But when it came down to it none of the llama stuff even made sense for our farm. We haven’t even had a farm tour in 6 weeks…and I am trying to look at what’s practical both time-wise and financially. The llamas just didn’t fit into that. Our favorite llama, Llami Salami, went back to his original owner (she was SO excited at the opportunity to buy him back!). The other two will be leaving next week to be trained for 4H llamas.
Moving the llamas out will open up 2-3 acres of land for us to fence for the goats. Pasture rotation has gotten more and more important with all the barberpole (parasite) issues in Texas and we’re also considering having more than one pen of does since some of ours are mean to each other. Christine plans to build two more indoor enclosures in the barn that will connect to new fenced areas for the does so we have new options.
And then yesterday, a Christmas morning surprise…Christine went out to check on the animals and witnessed Matilda and Bon Jovi, our Kune Kune pigs, getting frisky, something we’ve never seen before. Funny story about this, if you go into any Kune Kune facebook groups people will say that pigs raised together will not breed b/c they’ll think of each other as brother and sister. I thought, yeah right, that makes zero sense bc animals just do not CARE. It’s all about reproducing. They’ve said that if you want them to mate you should remove them from each other for a couple weeks and then reintroduce them. Well we didn’t do that, mostly because lately we’ve even considered selling the pigs to just focus on goats/sheep. What we did do was pasture rotate on Christmas Eve so that the pigs could have a fresh area to live in and graze in. And then the next day, mating?? Wonder if that means it’s less about each other but more about a change of scenery making pigs frisky! I guess we may be having piglets in April (pig gestation is 3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days).
Currently we are setting goals for the farm for 2021, discussing what kinds of poultry to pre-purchase for meat because I think that’s all we’re going to be adding this year after the goats all arrive, of course. I’m considering Muscovy ducks because they eat flies more than other types of ducks and ALSO they taste like veal as opposed to greasy chicken LOL. I could live on red meat alone and be quite satisfied, so I like this option a lot. Considering adding geese because they are known to keep the chickens safe from hawks but I’m also terrified of geese so there’s that… I’ve heard some breeds like Toulouse, Buff, and Embden are sweet, but there’s always some bad apples. But hey, if there are any we could just eat them, right? People eat goose…but does it taste like chicken? If so I’m just not too enthusiastic. We do need a plan though because keeping the chickens cooped up has been really frustrating.
Our city friends are going to have us raise 4 turkeys for them too and I think I’ll try some new varieties. We still have our two Bourbon Reds and they are very sweet and curious. I’m thinking of trying out Royal Palms or Blue Slates. Any opinions here? Anyone? I’d like to stick to heritage breeds; they do grow slower but I think it’s worth it.
And then the last thing up for discussion still is whether to do broiler chickens big scale. Our dogs and cats in the house (not farm puppy) all eat a raw diet and the cats and one dog eat only poultry because they get sick on red meat. It would be pretty nice if we could just grow all their food and not have to buy it. That would mean we’d need to get a better plucker b/c I think they need to eat skin too for a balanced diet, plus we’d need a darn good meat grinder to grind all the bones. Raw diets for carnivores consists of the WHOLE animal ground up (well, some people feed whole but we don’t want carcasses dragged through the house, personally). They eat the bones, the meat, and the organs for a fully balanced diet. It’s how they’d eat in nature and it keeps their coats glossy, their teeth white, and their health tip top. But that would be quite an undertaking, raising all that meat, even though they’re small animals. I know for the larger dog plus the three cats they go through 600 pounds of meat/organ/bone per year. The other dog is actually on a more complicated raw diet so I probably wouldn’t worry about making her food any time soon. But there’s this…should I? Should I wait til 2022 and just focus on dairy this year and fattening up the pigs?
Christine also has made learning to garden a priority, though I still like the idea of bringing other people to our land who already know how and letting them grow things for us. (The woman I mentioned in the last post who was interested in living here decided she didn’t want a community and would pursue the purchase of her own land instead.)
I do NOT want to get overwhelmed because that leads to burnout. But I also want to really strive harder to be more sustainable and self-sufficient. There’s a balance in there somewhere…
Any votes for what we should do this next year? Or not do next year? Let us know your opinion!
