So apparently Bella has decided that her mom Roxibelle makes an excellent trampoline - check out the video!
She started to make milk yesterday so we we're warned ahead of time but just like our Toggenburg she hardly made any noise. She gave birth just a little bit ago at 4pm and the boy was already out by the time we figured out it was time. She was bred to Miguel out of Dewmar Acres. The Markings on these kids are just amazing. Millie did a great job. The boy has more brown in his face markings and the girl is more white. I can't place what the markings remind me of but they are also oddly enough born on Friday the 13th. We might have our hands full with these too and we're thinking up names. They were walking in no time and took to nursing like nothing. They are both some strong babies. I just want to take them inside like a lap dog on the couch. They are so fun to watch. I went a little crazy with the photos like a goat paparazzi. The camera just doesn't do them justice ~Ken~             We let Bella out to play and meet other goats for the first time today (she's only two days old). The brown goat is her mom Roxy and Tina (the white goat) is not quite sure what to make of her new "friend"! Please forgive the wind noise - I'm afraid it's unavoidable on the eastern plains! -- Diana Just a few pictures of our lil girl Bella. I'll add some videos soon! ---Diana 
Well... I'm not done baby proofing, plus not totally prepared thanks to a month of bad weather. Our Toggenburg decided to go into labor a week early and planned to do this just as we wanted to go to bed. We were up till midnight but it was all worth it. At least she didn't get us out of bed a 4 in the morning. The baby is adorable! We're thinking of naming her Bella since her mom is Roxibelle. She's so dark she's almost black with curly hair and were not positive but I think she has blue eyes? Her pupils are too big to tell just yet. It was a pretty gooey mess and the placenta didn't fall off until today. It was just dangling by a cord for the longest time and we couldn't pull it out, so as not to make Roxibelle bleed internally. Unfortunately, she was born with an underdeveloped still birth so we had to dig a grave in the dark last night. We're not sure what could have happened but we just know that's the way nature works. My boy was able to be with us for the whole birth, I'm happy for that. Everything else went off without a hitch and I'm glad the still born was facing the right direction so we didn't have to reach in. Bella is gonna get the full treatment of vaccines, dis-budding, tattoo, and registration. She comes from great breeding lines out of Dewmar Acres. She will be for sale once we get her weened off mom, evaluated and all the other stuff taken care of. We just have too many goats but were on our way back to being in the milk business again. We have two other girls that look like over inflated balloons ready to give birth any day now so hopefully in a month we will have shares again ; ) Roxibelle is a machine. That goat makes so much milk and she is a great mom. We have the sound of babies around every corner. I love spring. Were soooooooooo tired today it's not even funny. ~Ken~     Our neighbor was nice enough to give us an old camper he didn’t want for free. I tried to talk him down more but he wouldn’t budge on the price. We’ve had it sitting in our field for the longest time thinking of using it for baby goats but since we have so many more new bird kids, it was time to move it and make a coop out of it. I first gutted most of the stuff out of it. The best part of this coop is most of the work was already done. It had doors, windows, cabinet nest boxes etc… and it didn’t take the work of building something from scratch. I’m not sure about the outside cosmetics just yet. The wood you see on the outside was just some cheap auction wood we had lying un-used and I threw it up against the side. We had to level the camper out on pallets and 4x4’s to keep it from moving. It’s not the prettiest coop but it’s recycling at its best. It should house 20 plus birds since they only get locked up at night. The roosts worked out perfect ending up right in front of the windows and nest boxes. I took the stove out so they don’t have worries and nightmares about a stove. Eventually the sink will lose the wood shavings and be a waterer I think. I couldn’t do it now since the rubber on the drain plug won’t hold water but eventually I think it will be a nice and easy way to drain and fill their water. We also use the sand out of our yard for the floor since it’s free and we can use a cat litter scoop to clean it. We save the wood shavings for the nest boxes. These kids are going to be living in style thanks to our neighbor. Were just going to have to go old school and save the tent for that day when we can make it back into the mountains we all miss so much. It’s a sacrifice I made for our chicks. It’s not a chick magnet camper but I tried to hide it at the back of everything. I know I’m going to hear it that first day of camping when we wake up with sore backs out of a tent :p The pictures are from beginning to end. I still have to put some hardware cloth over some windows that didn't have screens, paint the roosts and maybe dress up the outside somehow. Haven't thought that one through just yet. ~Ken~            Today was this batch of chicks first day of free-ranging and they did great. I thought they were going to get picked on but the older girls were just more curious than anything. They seem to grow so fast. It was so fun to watch them explore a whole new world for the first time. We have 13 Rhode Island Reds left that are a month old and 25 one week old chicks for sale. I hope we can find good homes for all of them soon but they have a home here for now. Babies are the best. I wish they would stay that small but it would make for some really tiny eggs. The ducks keep getting more stupid cute everyday. In the photo below with the truck topper turned into coop is where we kept them with a heat lamp for a while and you can see the big girls made a mess out of the wood chips. The babies are sleeping in the big girl coop now. Also in one of the photos there is a chick that looks like its gagging. Our food really isn't that bad. She's just being overly dramatic :D ~Ken~          They sure took their time about it but we finally have our first two baby ducks. I know they take longer than chicks to hatch so we put them in the incubator a week earlier and since we only have one laying Pekins we could only do 7 eggs. I know for chicks the hatch rate declines after seven days. Two didn't make it the first week so we have three more that have Pipped the shell and they are making me wait on them. They are going to get the stink eye when they finally decide to show up. We have a buyer for two and plan to keep three so we can hatch more in the future. They are so cute I hate them. The photos are fresh out of the incubator so they will only get more cute until they start pooping. Speaking of which, We have 7 turkeys in a tub and they eat more than our 25 baby chicks in the photo below yet they don't seem to poop... much at this point. I don't understand but I like the poop factor. We keep all our birds on towels the first week since they like to eat the wood chips. I was awoken at 3am by what sounded like our metal fireplace stack being ripped off the roof by the wind. After running outside I couldn't see anything. I can only assume it must have been the neighbors car hitting it and it's too dark in the field to see it out there. Oh yeah.. in case your wondering, the news said today is going to be a cold bucket of suck and used the term hurricane force winds... plus schools are delaying. (Great) I been up since the car hit our fire stack cleaning tubs, changing waters, replenishing food, filling the next incubator with easter eggers (7 more ducks are a week along) and even breaking out the snow gear I stupidly put away too soon hoping it was over. If you know anyone that want's chickens, the next hatch of ducks, or baby goats due in the next 2 to 3 weeks, we are getting over run and please pass the word. Our work load is incredible. Were going to hold onto the turkeys for breeders if possible and future meat birds. ~Ken~     Ever see a chicken come out to greet you only to get rolled like a flipped car across the ground and have to run to catch it? Me either. Not until today. While after two years I just thought we were getting used to the winds but they are starting to take their toll and I now know why nobody lives out here. The problem is the winds in one day cause days of work to repair everything. Ever see those picture perfect farms that are so lush and green and so peaceful looking? Where are these places? Sign me up. We have been battling tumbleweeds for the last four months. They been around so long they have become a part of me. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t have to clear a mile of electric fencing from them at least once a week. The problem is they bend the METAL wires somehow either stretching them, making them touch together or just snap. You can see my boy helping me clear the fence today in the wind. Why in the wind? It’s easier than trying to trailer them off to the end of the property or burn them. Trust me... I done both. The wind helps carry them away until the wind decides to blow back the other direction the next day. The wind also sand blasts your face. While great for your complexion it does a number on the eyeballs needing Q-tips to get the mud balls out of the corner of your eyes. We have a lot of fence to fix tomorrow just so our goats can roam. We’re making a Christmas tree out of them next year, since they bring such love to the farm. You can see in some of the pictures below of the damage from just today. The photos don’t show it all. The sand drifts are like a day at the beach. After living 10 years in Florida I just wish we had the ocean to go with them. The great thing about sand drifts and no tractor means our shovels will get more use. Unlike the snow drifts the sand takes some back ache to go away. The wind is blowing this evening just as hard as it was this morning and I hear snow is now coming after it was just 80 degrees in our house last night. The test of patience is going to come here in a half hour when I try to board up the windows on the goat barn in the wind on a ladder; I took the windows off yesterday for the goats. Still need to finish the barn windows. Speaking of barns… I been so busy making room for goat babies that I haven’t had time to work on our chicken coop eye sore in the picture below. Being naive we thought to our selves what a great idea to make an extension to the coop with a green house style roof for the winter. The chickens love it. However plastic don’t last more than 3 months out here. If the wind doesn’t get it, the dryness will crack it much like me on the verge of needing a straight jacket. Not even an easy up top tarp like you see at the farmers markets lasts. We have been patching this Doctor Seus looking thing every wind storm just trying to buy time until we can build it better. All I have to say about the propane tank below that must weigh thousands of pounds is this isn’t the first time we have to call the propane company to come back and straighten it. In an effort to make this paragraph look bigger, get used to thrift stores. Nice clothes have a short life span in this line of work. Forget about personal hygiene. There is no time for it and you just end up covered in poo anyway. It’s been so long since I have had a haircut I’m starting to look like a 30 year old Justin Bieber with a beard. We finally got a good deal on some hay bales shown in the pictures. Not thinking of just how heavy they are (1,000lbs) I didn’t give much thought of how to un roll them. As I stood there picking away at one of them this morning to feed the goats with a trash bag trying to rip out of my hands as I watch and worry about the rocking carport flipping over on me, I ended up looking like Santa clause covered in hay with a bag of food over my shoulders. I’m going to someday hook a chain to them and flip them up right so I can unroll them. The multiple power outages have been wonderful while you’re trying to incubate chickens. Not to mention there is no water for the animals when you’re on a well. That’s all I have to say about that. Being a farm of two people with the weekend help of our teenager it gets real hard when you spend all your time trying to keep a clean farm, plus fix and prepare for weather. This leaves little time for actually selling product. Now I’m starting to see why people stray from farming. Please don’t get mad at the farmers markets for the higher prices. Small farms really have to work hard at it and I could go on with more of the daily troubles but I might end up writing a book. While I just had to rant today, something tomorrow will make me forget the bad and love what were doing. I always have to remember that there is always someone out there with harder times than many of us and we are just grateful to have what we have. We work our butts off for it sometimes breaking our butts. Thank you for reading my dissertation of the day. Please Note... no chickens were harmed in the photo with the red flipped over coop. I was going to incorporate that into some new duck housing and none of them use it. After I piece it back together I guess I need mobile home tie down straps too. Good thing I figured that out before it became a house. ~Ken~           We just recently moved 20 birds to their new outside coop and tonight we have more Rhode Island Reds and Ducks starting to hatch. : ) We're up to 10 turkeys now. Some are shown in the picture in their own tub. Chickens are going in their own tub and ducks get their own since they can't have medicated chick feed. As you can see we made our Front door totally useless :p It seemed like a good idea at the time. The incubators are behind the chair and yes that is a bath tub that we got at auction for five bucks lol. At first I made all those covers too keep the cat out but it turns out that if we didn't put them on top we would have turkeys running around the house. They keep trying to jump out and the cat could care less about the birds. The black chick that I'm holding is an experiment were trying to see if we can cross a green egg laying Easter Egger with our Black Copper Maran rooster with the goal of having Olive eggers. We will have to wait a while to see but it is adorable none the less. I need to take some photos of the older kids we moved outside. They grow so fast! By morning we should have a lot more Reds and some Ducks : ) Once the incubator gets cleaned we have 7 more ducks and 35 Easter eggers going in for the next hatch. ~Ken~        |  AuthorWe are a family-run farm on the wind swept plains of Colorado, happily doing things the old fashioned way! I'll share stories of our farm and animals & tips on gardening and cooking - maybe other randomness as well! 
ArchivesMay 2012 CategoriesAll |
RSS Feed