Thursday, February 23, 2017

Updates

  It's been a fairly uneventful spri-er winter. That's right it's still winter. The last few days have been pretty warm today it's up in the 60s and tomorrow all the way to 70. Apparently I have yet to experience an Ohio winter. I'm ok with that. The bit we had was pretty cold and made hauling water to all the animals a lot harder than normal. 

  Ok, enough pleasantries about the weather. Farm stuff! We combined our boy goats with our girls since this is breeding season. It started back in September and and I have sadly been absent from blogging for more than that. We also got a few more goats, some lovely boer does, Mary and Martha. That puts are goat herd total up to 12. Most of our goat ladies are not due until May so still awhile until we get to see a lot of babies. Naomi got bred earlier but I didn't have a good record keeping so I am not sure on the date. At this point Hubs and I agree that she is due any day now. Her udder has developed, the baby has dropped and I could hear the heartbeat with a stethoscope. I thought I saw her leaking a bit of mucous a few days ago so hopefully the baby(ies?) will be coming soon. Oh, to go along with all my sucky record keeping I have no idea which buck is the daddy. Hopefully that will be easy to tell once the kid is born. 
We put in a well insulated shelter and private yard in preparation for mom and baby goat bonding time. Naomi is not in there anymore and I probably won't put her in until after she has the baby or if I catch her in labor. 
Hubs put together a more permanent goat shelter so they didn't have just the 'shacks' for shelter. It worked out well for keeping the round bales we got out of the weather. Only took Hubs 2 days to build it which impressed me. We'll paint it someday but for now the goats like it. 


   Recently, as in a couple weeks ago we picked up some pigs. After a lot of research we went with Large Black Pigs. Originally I wanted Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs but they are hard to find in our area and very expensive. I've heard so many good things about the Large Blacks so I am comfortable with my choice. They are for the most part good foragers, gentle, and good mothers which were my top concerns, oh and taste. Taste is important. We are planning on raising our pigs on pasture and of course feeding a non-gmo hog feed along with eggs and goat milk occasionally. We picked up 3 pigs that are about a year old first. Two gilts, Gwen and Morgan and a barrow Sir Bacon. A few days later we picked up a younger boar, Arthur. Our plan is to breed and keep our girls and Arthur while Sir Bacon will go to the butcher in the fall. 

Currently we're keeping Arthur in his own pen since he is so much smaller than the other 3 and we wanted to make sure he is getting food. They seem to be worried about him and he seems to be stressed at not being with them so this weekend we will make it so his pen has a small hole that only he can go in and out of. That way he can still be fed separate and can escape the others if he needs too. They've already tilled up quite a bit of the yard we put them in but in a couple of weeks our electric fencing should be here and we're going to move them to last years garden area. That way they can till it up for me. While they're out of this pen we're going to seed it with turnips, rape, Jerusalem artichokes and pasture seed so its a nice thick pasture next time they're in there.

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