I just noticed that I must have missed putting this video up when they were just weeks old.  They were so cute and full of energy whenever water time came into play.  Hopefully we will be hatching some Pekins in the next few months. 
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We're currently on day 11 of our 21 day egg incubation with the new Hova Bator.  We've been candling our eggs periodically to make sure we don't have any failed eggs so they don't end up making a mess and I gotta say it's a pretty cool thing to see life being created.  At only 6 days of incubation you can see blood veins inside the egg that feed off the yoke and also the embryo moving around.  The dark spots are the eyes and heart as it moves around in there.  We just use a high powered flashlight to see whats going on.  Out of our 40 Rhode Island red hen eggs we have only had to remove 2 so far.  The Hova Bator was working wonderfully until the small computer fan that keeps the air circulating started making noise and rattling around.  I was getting worried because we're half way through the incubation period and we don't want it too poop out on us now. So with some bolt-tweaking and the use of a rubber band, we got it to run smooth again for now.  Before we start another batch were gonna need a new fan.  I cheated and found a youtube video of what we see as we are candling so this isn't our own video.  We may have some baby peeps for sale soon ; )
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 I'm going to run a campaign to have this month removed from being a recognized month on our calendars.  Some may say I'm a visionary and some (probably just single digit numbers :p) may call me an idiot.  I'ts too cold, too windy and I've reached my snow threshold already for the winter.  Of course if I could just call up the goats and say I'm not going to be in today due to being sicker than sick it would make February a little easier and not such a bucket of suck.  So... in short I propose to due away with it since it's the only month without 30 or more days ----- Were Lilbitfarms and we approve this message. 
~Ken~
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  I Copied this from Washingtontimes.com so you wouldn't have to go through the barrage of advertisements. We saw the story on Fox News channel that led us to look into it further.  It drives us CRAZY!   The way they treat raw milk with unfounded arguments and demonize it as if it was an illegal drug. They even mention marijuana in the article which gives you the feel they treat milk like illegal drugs.  This is what the Feds are wasting our tax dollars on and shutting down good farmers trying to make a living as Americans did when this country was founded. At some point the government decided we don't know whats best for us and believes they can police everything we do.  What they are really doing is killing jobs, opportunities for people to innovate and create an income other than unemployment checks and creating a  food supply with unpronounceable  ingredients under unsustainable filthy conditions. 

  I just had to rant a Lil.  I feel a little better now :p   Here is the article.



A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stopRainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.

The product in question: unpasteurized milk.

It’s a battle that’s been going on behind the scenes for years, with natural foods advocates arguing that raw milk, as it’s also known, is healthier than the pasteurized product, while the Food and Drug Administration says raw milk can carry harmful bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria.

“It is the FDA’s position that raw milk should never be consumed,” saidTamara N. Ward, spokeswoman for the FDA, whose investigators have been looking into Rainbow Acres for months, and who finally last week filed a 10-page complaint in federal court in Pennsylvania seeking an order to stop the farm from shipping across state lines any more raw milk or dairy products made from it.

The farm’s owner, Dan Allgyer, didn’t respond to a message seeking comment, but his customers in the District of Columbia and Maryland were furious at what they said was government overreach.

“I look at this as the FDA is in cahoots with the large milk producers,” said Karin Edgett, a D.C. resident who buys directly from Rainbow Acres. “I don’t want the FDA and my tax dollars to go to shut down a farm that hasn’t had any complaints against it. They’re producing good food, and the consumers are extremely happy with it.”

The FDA’s actions stand in contrast to other areas where the Obama administration has said it will take a hands-off approach to violations of the law, including the use of medical marijuana in states that have approved it, and illegal-immigrant students and youths, whom theadministration said recently will not be targets of their enforcement efforts.

Raw-milk devotees say pasteurization, the process of heating food to kill harmful organisms, eliminates good bacteria as well, and changes the taste and health benefits of the milk. Many raw-milk drinkers say they feel much healthier after changing over to it, and insist they should have the freedom of choice regarding their food.

One defense group says there are as many as 10 million raw-milk consumers in the country. Sales are perfectly legal in 10 states but illegal in 11 states and the District, with the other states having varying restrictions on purchase or consumption.

Many food safety researchers say pasteurization, which became widespread in the 1920s and 1930s, dramatically reduced instances of milk-transmitted diseases such as typhoid fever and diphtheria. TheCenters for Disease Control and Prevention says there is no health benefit from raw milk that cannot be obtained from pasteurized milk.

Acting on those conclusions, the FDA uses its regulatory powers over food safety to ban interstate sales of raw milk and has warned several farms to change their practices.

According to the complaint the FDA filed in court, the agency began to look into Mr. Allgyer’s farm in late 2009, when an investigator in their Baltimore office used aliases to sign up for a Yahoo user group forRainbow Acres‘ customers, and began to place orders under the assumed names for unpasteurized milk.

The orders were delivered to private residences in Maryland, where the investigator, whose name was not disclosed in the documents, would pick them up. By crossing state lines the milk became part of interstate commerce, thus subject to the FDA’s ban on interstate sales of raw milk. The court papers note that the jugs of milk were not labeled - another violation of FDAregulations.

Armed with that information, investigators visited the farm in February 2010, but Mr. Allgyer turned them away. They returned two months later with a warrant, U.S. marshals and a state police trooper, arriving at 5 a.m. for what Mr. Allgyer’s backers called a “raid,” but the FDA said was a lawful inspection.

The investigators said they saw coolers labeled with Maryland town names, and the coolers appeared to contain dairy products. The inspection led to an April 20, 2010, letter from FDA telling Mr. Allgyerto stop selling across state lines.

He instead formed a club and had customers sign an agreement stating they supported his operation, weren’t trying to entrap the owners, and that they would be shareholders in the farm’s produce, paying only for the farmer’s labor.

Customers hoped that would get around the FDA’s definition of “commerce,” putting the exchange outside of the federal government’s purview.

The FDA investigators continued to take shipments, though, and last week went to court to stop the operation.

Ms. Ward, the FDA spokeswoman, didn’t say exactly why they targeted Mr. Allgyer’s farm, but that violations generally are determined either by FDA investigations or by state-obtained evidence.

Pete Kennedy, president of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, said undercover stings are not unheard of.

“It happens quite a bit. It’s almost like they treat raw milk as crack. It’s happened in a number of states, and at the federal level,” he said.

His organization has sued to try to halt FDA enforcement, and the case is pending in federal court in Iowa.

Mr. Allgyer’s customers declined to talk about the operations, and when asked whether they knew what would happen to the farm’s distribution, they said they would have to wait and see.

One of those customers, Liz Reitzig, president of the Maryland Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, said she started looking for raw milk when her oldest daughter began to show signs of not being able to tolerate pasteurized milk.

She first did what’s called cow sharing, which is when a group of people buy shares in owning a cow, and pay a farmer to board and milk the cow. But Maryland outlawed that practice and she was forced to look elsewhere for raw milk, and turned to Mr. Allgyer’s farm.

“We like the way they farm, we love their product, it’s super-high-quality, they’re wonderful. It’s just a wonderful arrangement,” she said.

“FDA really has no idea what they’re talking about when they’re talking about fresh milk. They have no concept - they really don’t understand what it’s like for people like me who have friends and family who can’t drink conventional milk,” Ms. Reitzig said.

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     Yesterday was  a crazy day that neither of us saw coming.  We started the day out normal cleaning coops and the goat barns with only planning to go to the Calhan post office, being sick as a dog.  It seems  that bigger things were on the horizon for us and we were the last to know what was coming.  

     While taking care of the goats, my favorite doe "Margie" decided she wasn't  pregnant AGAIN : (  going into heat for a third time.  Both of us were pretty upset, frustrated thinking of throwing in the towel  by how this first breeding year has been going. We then got the horse trailer ready once again and made a call to our breeder (who has been wonderful to us) and hit the road to get Margie some more man love.  I made a conscious decision not to bring our digital camera not expecting anything new which I now regret, so please excuse the not so great camera phone pictures. 

     We always get put to work by our "goat lady" as we call her.  We don't mind at all  and like to help her out with all the heavy lifting plus chores that we can while were there since she has been so kind to share with us her  30 years of experiences. 

     While I was making the "love connection" with Margie and Odie (Were now pros at the dating game and deal with the contestants on our own)  I heard some loud screams  that I knew wasn't normal.  It sounded like a cow yelling in trouble but the cow was on the other side of the farm.  After tracking down where it was coming from I saw a goat with a baby half way hanging out.  I immediately ran to Mary Sue and Diana to let her know a situation was about to go down. 

     Had we been an hour earlier or an hour later we would have missed out on a great learning experience while expecting baby goats of our own due any day now.   And as usual just when we think we thought of everything we end up learning new things.  It was a pretty nasty  mess the doe made as you can imagine if you ever been in labor or witness to it.  We learned to clear their nose right away so they can breathe and what tools to have on hand since you don't always have a warning.  The afterbirth hung out on a long intestinal looking cord for the longest time.  My first instinct was to pull it out since it was driving me nuts but being with our goat lady we learned to let it fall off naturally or you could cause the doe to bleed internally creating a problem. 

      The doe had two kids (a boy and a girl)  The girl was all white and you can see me feeding the boy colostrum from a bottle while he was about 20 minutes old.   If you try to research bottle feeding versus natural feeding to prevent CAE (Caprine arthritic encephalitis) you won't get a straight and definite answer.  It seems to be fifty fifty.  Mary Sue takes the babies away pasteurizing and bottle feeds all her babies but were going to go the other route  letting  them stay with and nurse off mom.  We did have our whole herd test CAE free but your really never safe from it. (It's nothing harmful to humans)  One thing we have learned is that there is no one way and many different ways of doing things and it's up to the farmer to decide what works best for them and the animals. 

      Everything seems to happen for a reason.  While Marge is going to take longer to kid, if it wasn't for her we wouldn't have had on the job training for when our does start popping out ankle biters. 
~Ken~
     
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The oldest tractor in the picture is a 1946 steel wheel, made just at the end of the world war.  there was a rubber shortage during the war sending all the rubber to the military.  I don't mind at all because you cant get this beast stuck even if y0u tried.  It runs perfect.  Now..... I have a 1999 Dodge Durango that is falling apart and is a turd mobile.  In my opinion this is why our car manufacturers have been failing.  Why cant us Americans have the pride and quality that came out of that era.  It blows my mind.  I work on my truck more than I do my tractor. We Love anything old.  There's a reason the products lasted this long. We even have a working 1930's era dairy cream separator that we found at a farm auction.  We just haven't put it to use yet. 
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Now were cookin 02/11/2012
 
     We were able to finally let the girls free after saving their eggs for hatching recently.  They went right back to the big coop for their first night of freedom.  I figured they would want to stay in the coop they were living in since they are creatures of habit but they went back home.  

     In the photos is our starter incubator.  The eggs incubate for 21 days and they come out of the turner for the last 3 days.  There is a water channel in the bottom to add water to try and keep the proper amount of humidity.  If its too humid the chicks may not be able to break out of the shell and could have some deformities such as crooked toes.  Also too high of humidity can cause them to break the membrane in the shell and literally drown.  
The egg turner keeps them from sticking too the side of the shell.

     With this incubator the only trouble we're having is getting the temperature just right.  The temp should be 99.5 degrees but it keeps climbing up and we keep lowering the touchy and sensitive temp adjustment knob.  104 degree temperatures will do nothing but cook the eggs. 

     The eggs are placed in the egg turner pointy side down as there is an air pocket at the top.  After a week in the incubator we will have to take the eggs out and candle them all with a high powered flash light to find the eggs that have a growing embryo in them and weed out the non fertilized or eggs that the embryo died (indicated by a ring around the inside of the egg)  We have to take these ones out or they could pop and make a mess from being "over cooked."  So not all 40 eggs will be hatching and it's pretty exciting for our first attempt.  

     We're setting up a brooder box hidden in a hallway by our front door to keep the little peeps under close supervision and warm as they grow.  It's pretty fun but you wouldn't think there would be so much to learn.  We're gonna raise these kids as new egg layers then when they hatch were going to fill it up again for round two.  I would really like to get a young Easter Egger rooster eventually so we can breed them too. 
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Snow Aftermath 02/04/2012
 
     I spent 11 hours today shoveling snow.  First I had to dig out the 4 foot snow drifts that were blocking the front and back doors of the goat barn just to get into it.  Then i shoveled more snow in the goat and chicken yards throwing down dry hay so they could have a place to play outside.  My back is so fried and my fingers hurt just typing this.  After caring for all the animals I then moved on to shoveling the snow drifts out of our driveway. Normally I wouldn't have but were running low on propane and we need the truck able to get in.  At this point I was ready to pass out.  

     Once that was done I had to walk to our mailbox hoping my medicines made it since the mailbox is on the county maintained part of our road.  I had to walk (total of a mile) in some knee deep snow at spots to get there only to be disappointed.  Our road to our house is completely snowed in.  Luckily there is one other way out but we haven't tried it yet.  During my walk I passed a garbage truck that has been stuck on the road for days packed with snow halfway up the front grill of the truck.  A tow truck did come before and got stuck as well needing another tow truck to get him out.  In the pictures below I took a photo from our mailbox and you can see the stuck garbage truck way off in the distance from my walk.  As I was making my way back  a monster sized tow truck showed up and finally was able to pull him out.  I'm going to have snow shovel nightmares tonight I'm sure. I'm also going on strike and sleeping in tomorrow and hope I don't hurt to bad.  What a crazy storm.  Is it summer yet!? 
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Snowmageddon 02/03/2012
 
     We got caught yesterday afternoon after spending time at the motor vehicle and V.A. doctor thinking that the storm was going to come from the Denver area but we were caught by surprise not knowing it was moving in at our house after we left instead.  It was the longest drive home ever, never going over 30mph.  It took at least one and a half hours.  We were slipping and sliding all over in 4 wheel drive and the only way to come to a stop was to downshift the transmission.  We passed what seemed like a grave yard of  numerous abandoned cars that slid off the road into ditches.  We even had a call from my son's school saying a bus was rear ended and they had to move the kids to another bus.   No one was hurt thankfully. 

     Today is not a good day to be a farmer.  We had to dig through 4 foot snow drifts just to get to our barn and coops to feed and water the animals.  The wind is still blowing hard and howling out here.   The animals have no interest in leaving their houses (understandably).   It's going to take a while to melt this off.  Were not looking forward to going back out there but the animals need us.   I wish summer would hurry up and get here!
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      While still building for the goat babies, we're also getting ready to hatch some chicks and ducks.  We're really lucky that the weather has been holding out for us so far.  In the photos is a chicken yard that we slapped together last year in a hurry in just two days so it's not much to look at but it works.  We abandoned it thinking to rebuild a better one later on but we're now re-purposing it for the time being.  Since our knuckle head chickens are used to running everywhere and getting into everything  (I think some of them try to trip us on purpose), we had to put up some bird netting to keep the escape artists in.  We even named one of the hens in there being bred "Ghost"  because somehow she would be out running around the yard in the morning when she should have been locked in at night.  We still don't know how she evaded us but it hasn't happened in a while.  If the coop looks slapped together... it really is.  Most everything we use is Craigs list or farm auction finds.  Luckily all our neighbors are pretty far away so being the neighborhood eye sore isn't a big issue and we get to recycle and keep it cheaper :p  

      We have a Copper Maran Rooster so we put 8 hens in there with our two young Rhode Island Red Roosters.  We had to wait a week for any Copper Maran "fertilization"  to get out of their system and we're now ready to start collecting eggs.  This is why we had to lock them up... also so we have more control on which eggs should be fertilized.  We found a local hatchery and neighbor selling some incubators that they started with before moving up to the bigger and better ones.  This one will give us a good start being our first shot at it.  It even has an egg turner so we don't have to turn them five times a day and holds up to 40 eggs.  We're hoping to raise more hens both for sale and to have more egg layers.  There is always so much to learn.  Wer'e going to try a few of our Pekin duck eggs as well most likely for meat birds.  We're really asking for trouble with all these new additions and ankle biter goat babies on the way but we are really excited.  It's gonna be the coolest thing to see the little peeps break out of their shell.
 ~Ken~
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