Thursday, May 31, 2012

Meet the Critters

Wow.  What a beautiful, sunny 70 degree day today.  Willow and I played outside a lot of the day.  While she was napping, I took the opportunity to plant 110 feet of red and Yukon gold potatoes and some more peas (since the chickens seem to have found a secret entrance to the upper garden and dug up 100 feet of the ones I had planted last week).  I love the warm feeling of a slight sunburn on my skin.  It still feels like the sun is shining on me.  

Spinach and arugula quiche is in the oven, so I thought I'd take a few minutes to introduce you to the animals of Feral Farm. 


Chickens
This old guy is a three year old Welsummer rooster.  They're a breed known for laying dark brown speckled eggs.  I also have two Welsummer hens. His tail feathers are a little beat up from him trying to keep the younger roosters in their places.  I'm sure this is where the term "pecking order" comes from.


 I have about 28 hens and 4 roosters, two of which are destined for a stockpot as soon as I have the time.  I'm expecting a shipment of 40 chicks any day now.  I order them online and they travel via USPS.  The local post office will call me early in the morning when they arrive.  It usually takes 2-3 days for the chicks to reach me.  They can survive this long without food and water because right before they hatch, the remaining yolk is absorbed into their bellies.  I choose the chicken breeds I have based on laying ability, cold hardiness, temperament, and of course, LOOKS!  I like to have a nice assortment of breeds and colors to look at, and I can tell individuals apart more easily.  Some of the chickens I have are called Easter Eggers, and lay a blue-green shelled egg.  Here are a few of the girls.



When an Easter Egger and brown egg laying chicken cross the resulting offspring will lay an olive green- grayish egg.  Here's a typical dozen.  The bottom left egg is from a Welsummer hen.


My chickens free range our property.  We let them out in the morning and they put themselves to bed before sundown. I find it interesting that animals have a concept of time, but they certainly do.  The goats stand and look impatiently towards the house if we are late getting them some grain. Speaking of goats.......

Goats
We currently have three does (female goats), one buck (male goat), and two goat kids.   The goats we have are Swiss dairy breeds.  They're lean and very athletic compared to a lot of other breeds.  People that use pack goats for hiking in the mountains usually use Swiss breeds because of this.  Yes, people really use pack goats!  My four adult goats are yearlings, and still growing themselves. 


They still have quite a bit of their winter coats in this picture, so they're looking a little scruffy still.  The brown and white kid up front is our doeling, who doesn't have a name yet.  Any suggestions??  The black and white doe behind her is her mother, Estella.  Estella is by far our most mischievous doe and is always getting into trouble, but she is a friendly goat. The cream and black doe in front is our sweetest, most gentle goat, Mildred.  She has an extra teat growing off of one of her normal teats, so if I ever milk her, it'll have to be on just her other side.  She does not appear to be a heavy milker anyways, so we may just keep her more as a pet.  I do not normally keep unproductive animals, but lucky for her she has such a great personality.  The kid with horns is Mildred's buckling.  We did not bother de-horning or naming him since he is destined for our freezer this fall. Estella and Mildred are half sisters and are both purebred Alpines.

Our third doe is not pictured.  She's a Saanen Alpine cross and is pure white.  She is not tame, so doesn't have a name and won't until I get to know her a little better.  We bought her last fall from an auction, and I don't think she had ever been handled.  I can touch her now (finally) when she is eating her grain, but she doesn't enjoy it.  She had a pure white buckling this spring, but we had a horse in with the goats that killed the kid.  Goats must feel loss also, because she adopted the buckling pictured above.  He is not only nursing his own mother, but "white goat" too, and is growing at a phenomenal rate! I separated them today and will attempt to start milking her tomorrow.  I did milk her once, and mostly succeeded in taking a Cleopatra milk bath!  Haha!  I am not new to having goats, but am new to actually milking them.  It should be interesting trying to milk a wild goat while I'm 35 weeks pregnant!


This is our buck, Buckley.  Real original name, huh? He is rude, mischievous, and unfortunately a necessity to make baby goats.  He's a purebred Toggenburg.  They're always brown with cream markings.  He can clear a four foot fence effortlessly.  Since we discovered this, we modified our 60' horse round-pen and turned it into an inescapable 6 foot tall goat prison, complete with barbed wire at the top.  He has not been able to escape this enclosure......yet. 

Rabbits
We also have two (now feral) rabbits.  My family and I love looking out our window and seeing the bunnies hopping around, doing cute bunny things.  :D  They were supposed to be the beginning of our meat rabbit breeding stock, but then they dug out of their enclosure perhaps sensing their fate.  We're pretty sure they're both males, so my meat rabbit venture has been postponed until another year.  Honestly, I don't have time for them this summer anyways.  I really think the world would be a better place if everybody had bunnies hopping around their homes.  It's impossible to not feel happy after a bunny sighting! 

Cats
We currently have four adult cats, and two strays living here outside.  There are three batches of kittens that we know about.  They're supposed to be "barn cats", but are really more like "deck cats".  We always keep more cats than we think we need, because we've had such bad luck with cats dying from different causes or disappearing.  They do a good job at keeping our mouse population down.



The Dog


We acquired a new puppy a couple of months ago, and appropriately named him Chaos.  He is a bizarre mix of Yorkshire terrier, Poodle, Red Heeler, and Border Collie.  He's about four months old now and about the size of a fully grown wiener dog.  He's also kind of shaped like one, with short legs and a long body.  Willow and Chaos are a pretty good team.  

Hope you enjoyed meeting the animals of Feral Farm.  Stay tuned for my attempt at milking a wild goat tomorrow!

4 comments:

  1. Nice photos of your "menagerie"

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  2. I'm really looking forward to the pictures of you milking a goat, be careful!

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  3. Love the pics and the storyline, Apryl! If I ever really become successful at talking my husband into having goats, I'll know just who to purchase them from! (I have been trying ever since our 10th anniversary though...which was nearly 13 years ago. Ugh. Can't shame a girl for being persistent though, right?!) ;]

    Happy weekend to you and yours!

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  4. But they are so justifiable if you are going to milk them! Here's my list of pros for your husband, Darcie.

    1) They eat brush, weeds, and even leafy spurge.
    2) One good, mature doe will produce about 2-3 (or even more)quarts of milk per day. Depends on feed, health, and genetics though.
    3) You can milk them for ten months at a time and some people even go longer without re-breeding them. I personally am just going to go until I think it's too dang cold out though.
    4) They're small and manageable, even for one woman.
    5) Baby goats are SO cute!!!
    6) Their turds are neat little dry pellets, not stinky sloppy patties like cows!

    Don't show him this list yet though. Lol! The cons......

    1) You need GOOD fencing. Goats go over, under and through anywhere they can.
    2) Goats are smart, but also very mischievous!
    3) Bucks stink, but the Swiss breeds only do during the fall, because that's their breeding season.

    Here's a good article http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/2002-06-01/Want-Milk-Get-Goats.aspx

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