'Tis the Season

We have had 3 cows calve in the last couple of weeks. This has brought us up to 5 milkers as we're still milking the two we milked through the winter. This means cheese making is picking up with the excess milk production. Yay!  Cheese!

The grass has finally taken off growing and suddenly it's trying to get away from us. We may even be able to make some hay for ourselves. There are two pastures, 20 acres worth, that could, possibly be hayed.

The garden is falling behind due to the sheer volume of things to do and I'm getting closer and closer to my own due date of July 4th. But I'm trying to make progress. If anything, we'll have lots of potatoes and onions. I'm trying to get green beans planted and have made some progress in that regard.

Otherwise, we have 300ish meat birds growing and goslings hatching.  A friend of ours is incubating 60 Silver Appleyard duck eggs for us. So MAYBE we'll have duck and goose to sell this year as well. I have 5 goslings and two broody hens are sitting on 16 eggs between them. Another dozen are being incubated for us. Just a ton going on.

My kerosene incubator is on the back burner for now but still will happen just maybe next year so we can start hatching our own meat bird chicks.

The pictures below are of our calf feeding/training bucket. It's a Kiwi system (meaning it hails from New Zealand, geniuses when it comes to 100% grassfed dairy). The nipples are halfway up the bucket and hoses go down into the milk.Technically, this bucket is meant for two calves. But I've been feeding three. Works fine. I add milk until gone then pour a gallon of water in toward the end. This cleans the system out to a small degree. It gets washed every once in awhile and a lid is left on when not in use. All in all, I like this waaay better than bottles.

Goslings and Incubation

Goslings are the messiest, most ungangly little things... We have White Chinese. We like them for their appetite. Yes, we want geese for weeding, though we have yet to use them as such. At this point we're just trying to figure out how best to propagate them, as odd as that sounds.

These one were incubated and hatched by a friend of ours. There were 7 (out of 14) but two died for no real apparent reason. One he thinks got on it's back and died, the other, he has no clue. He's been raising waterfowl for some time and knows what he's doing but as he says, he's still learning. He's also the only one who's been able to hatch our waterfowl successfully. I don't have an incubator built yet to even try. I've been too busy with everything else. So we sent 12 more goose eggs and 60 Silver Appleyard duck eggs to him when we picked up these goslings. Hopefully they go well and we get ducklings and more goslings.

I do know we both use dry incubation methods. What does that mean? It means, you keep the incubator humidity down around 50% rather than the regularly recommended 80%. The eggs NEED to evaporate liquid out of them or the baby inside will drown in it's own fluids. By the time they're ready to hatch they should've lost around 40% of their liquid. Now at hatching time you do want higher humidity so shells don't stick, something like 70%.

But I digress...

P.S. I made some adjustments to their watering and feed. They are staying much drier and cleaner. The big adjustment was putting a small cake pan under their waterer. Ducks and geese are horribly sloppy with their water when cleaning their beaks...

Raising Rabbits and Other Tales...

Sooo.. in the short amount of time we've been raising and breeding rabbits, it's certainly been interesting.

The most interesting is the doe that started methodically killing And eating her kits.. herbivores, right? Many would say environmental stresses others a protein deficiency. Curious, is what I call it. So why?  No idea. Once read a study about cows eating rabbits. Turns out it was a selenium deficient area and rabbit bones accumulate selenium. My father said they'd leave dead cows out in the pasture because the cows chew on the bones. Say, what?  Yup they roll them around and around in their mouths and would find bones in the water tank from time to time. Why?  Calcium and phosphorus was his reply. Go figure. Granted.. can't do that now..
It's always strange watching a cow eat her placenta and afterbirth. They chew and chew.. blah! Would I take it away? Nope. Part of nature. It helps guarantee no hemorrhage as a major dose of oxytocin causes the uterus to clamp down. I'm more worried if she doesn't eat it.

Now I've got myself thinking .. another favorite of mine is that geese are "true" vegetarians. Which is why, after a rain storm, I watch them eating worms with the best of them. We were both a little surprised on that one...

Muscovy ducks are excellent catchers of frogs and chickens are very good thieves of those frogs. My pond froze pretty thoroughly one winter and the ducks fiercely attacked the trapped minnows and ate handsomely for a good week.

It's just strange what you can observe and learn. Especially in a natural environment ...

The Weather... it mocks me.

Last year by this time I had potato plants in bloom! And even if I was on time for planting it was getting late. This year... ah, this year has been the opposite! I have potatoes barely peaking out of the ground and those that were got frost damage. I'm having a terrible time getting things to germinate in the garden and out. Been too cold for carrots too!