We're Expecting....Kidding 2012/2013

Sometimes when you breed goats, it's simple.  Look at Faith.  Of course she's the best goatie ever, so she does everything by the book and only asks for cookies in return. 

She comes into heat 1 day of the year, points to her choice of bucks, I open the gate and let her into his pen....and 5 months later she kids.  This year she chose the wildman....aka Sparta.

Faith is due on Dec 1 (+ or - 5 days).  This will be her 9th kidding.

Next in line would be Silly.  Silly also just required 1 "date" for breeding this year.  This will most likely be Silly's last kidding. 

She had a knee injury a few years ago and had a chunk of wood imbedded in her knee.  The joint capsule abcessed and after working on it for weeks, the knee finally healed.  But being that she is CAE positive, her knee has been unforgiving.  It was difficult to make the decision to breed her this year, but she has done so well, we decided to put it in God's hands.  One breeding, and if it took...so be it.  Silly is very special to us, she was the very last Exadore kid born.  In fact, she was born 4 days after his death.  Of course she is also a Legacy daughter.  It means a great deal to me to have the chance for another Silly daughter.  Since we have 1 daughter by Pete....we chose to breed her to Manny this year.  This will be her final kidding.

Silly is due December 5 (+ or - 5 days).

It will be a race to see who kids first since Fennel is due the same day.  Fennel is Silly's yearling daughter by Pete and we're hoping for some great kids this year.

If she has that fantastic udder like her mother and grandmother, I'll be tickled.  She is not only flashy to look at, her personality is very flashy as well so of course she's another favorite.  This is an experimental breeding of sorts, since we bred her to Beaux.  He was born in Jan and these will be his first kids.  With both of them coming from strong milk and show lines these should be fantastic kids.

Silly is due December 5 (+ or - 5 days).

Somewhere in the middle is Joy.  Joy is rather....um....promiscuous....like her mother was.  She snuck around the corner of the barn with the wildman one day.  After waiting a month and sending bloodwork in to be sure she hadn't settled, we bred her to Ditto. 

A few weeks later we bred her to Ditto again.  She continued to cycle, we continued to breed her to Ditto.  I think she's finally settled, but her due date is questionable.  At least we know WHO she's bred to!

Joy is due sometime between December and February (+ or - 5 months!)

Also bred is Nommy, Genesis, Fiona, Glory, and Fame....but they are not due until after the first of the year.  Unless one of the many escapes of the wildman proves fruitful.  Which is a distinct possibility.

DNA tests may be in order.

Either way, we should have our show string ready for 2013.  I'm getting excited!

Beautiful Fall Morning

It has been a lovely cool fall morning.  Last night we had a huge bonfire and this morning I looked out to find some of the goats soaking up the warmth from the remaining coals...

Not all of the goats were enjoying the cool weather...I gave Moon a haircut a few days ago...so this morning he wasn't leaving the man cave.  He stuck his head out enough to let me know he was okay, but nope, he wasn't budging.

Once the sun was peeking through the trees, the girls piled in a pool of sunlight to soak up some rays...

Nommy took the opportunity to pose for a few pictures.  I sure do love this girl and miss her mother, Happy.  Nommy reminds me so much of her!

And talking about daughters...here are two of Legacy's daughters, Joy (the brown one with a cheek full of cud) and Silly (the black one)...

Here's Legacy's first daughter, Angel.  I think she has the most unique facial markings...

And I can't show you goat faces without showing you my all time favorite Lace daughter....Glory.

Of course Aegis watches over all of them.  Not sure what he's been doing at night lately, but he sure has been coming home with his share of scars...

The turkeys have settled into their new pen, and seem much happier now that they are dry!

And lastly, now that the pig has been processed, packaged, and put into the freezer.  I finally got the cure on the bacon.  Just to give you an idea of what 48 pounds of bacon looks like.....

Yes.  48 POUNDS!

Talkin' Turkey

Back in late July we purchased 30 turkey poults.  Turkeys being turkeys, we've lost about half of them....but the other half are doing very well.  We split the remaining poults into 2 separate pens, one of which is a hoop house that we move every couple of days to give them fresh grass.

The other group has been in a make-shift pen.  It has worked out well until recently when we've gotten a lot of rain...

Yep, the pen is staying wet and muddy......not good.

Since the pig pen is now vacant, we decided to move them out there.  The ground in the pig pen is rocky and sandy, so even if we get rain, it runs off fairly quickly.

Not to mention they will have a lot more room...

So this morning we made the move.  There are 9 birds in this group and barring any problems, this is where they will reside until they head for freezer camp.

Hopefully over the next few days they will dry off and groom the mud out of their feathers.  They not only got a new pen, but I'm changing their feed to a finishing diet.  They have been raised on an unmedicated layer crumble for the past month, and I will be switching them to a grain mixture.  We are trying to eliminate corn from all of our feed mixtures because of the high cost of non-GMO corn.  The finishing mix will be:

1 part wheat

1 part milo

1 part crimped oats

1/2 part black oil sunflower seeds

I'll also add crushed boiled eggs and meat scraps for protein.  

I sure am looking forward to Thanksgiving!

 

It's All Over But The Curing...

Thursday evening we decided that Friday would be the time to butcher the pig.  Please keep in mind, this is a big pig.  A very big pig.  We've never let one get this big before, and in hindsight I know why! 

When we butcher we try to make it as as quick, stress-free, and painless for the animal as possible.  Because of MP's size I was pretty sure that stunning her with the .22 wasn't going to do the job, so our dear friend Levi H offered to bring his guns.  So the plan was set.  Ben and Levi H would do the shot and then using a rope and Lil Blue (Bob's Ford Ranger) drag the pig from the pen to the hoist.  Keep in mind there's an 18" drop from the area outside the pigpen to inside the pig pen.  We had to get this big pig up that 18". 

Lil Blue was good enough to get the pig across the pig pen, but no matter how hard we tried, that truck was not pulling that pig up that incline.

So Levi H once again brought out a big gun....

And even his big Bronco couldn't get that pig up that incline.  So we ended up getting a length of chain, attaching it to the pig, and using the hoist to get her up out of the pen.  Here's a shot of us finally getting her through the gate.  This is a big pig.

Once we finally got her out of the pen the real work began.  It took the 3 of us to get her hoisted for processing.  I did manage to get the needed measurements for calculating her weight.

Body length (measured right behind the ear to right in front of the tail) was 57".  Heart girth (measuring around the body just behind the forelegs) was 56".  The pig weight calculator says she weighed 446.8 pounds.  That translates into approximately 324# of useable pork!  That's a big pig.

I didn't get a whole lot of pictures because we were so busy working.  I did get a shot of Ben holding up one of the hams.  This ham weighed 48.6 pounds....compare it to the size of Ben's waist!

It's taken us 2 full days to get it all cut, wrapped, and in the freezers.  The trimmings and belly are in the fridge until tomorrow when we will trim the bacon and start grinding and mixing sausage.

It's Tater Time

Potatoes are on sale here right now for .23/pound.  This is usually about the time I put up a year's worth of potatoes, which I do mostly by canning.  This year I will be preserving a good bit of them by drying them.  Once dried, they can be stored for many years.  They can be used like you would make au gratin or scalloped potatoes....or they can be rehydrated and fried.  I'm starting with 75 pounds:

First they are scrubbed well and sliced...

Then they are blanced in boiling water for about 4 minutes...

After blanching, they are plunged into a pan of ice water...

And then arranged on the dehydrator tray...

I've got a 9 tray Excalibur and it holds about 8 pounds of slices at a time.  It takes about 4 hours for them to dry...

Once cool and dry I bag them and store the bags in food grade buckets.

Ditto Honeymoons at TUH and Duck Update

For years we have needed a way to transport goats.  Kennel cabs are great for toting kids, but if you have to move a 200+ pound buck, you ain't gonna shove him into a Kennel cab...no matter how big it is.  It's just not a goat's instinct to hunker down in a cave!  Now when CB hauled Pete up north, he just rode in the back of the van.  The van was a Kennel Cab on wheels...yes, Pete IS that big.  LOL

This year we had planned the big buck bonanza.  No, not the big buck show that they hold in Central Texas each spring......we were doing a buck swap.  Eventually all the boys will live here, so that CB can focus her efforts making her marvelous cheeses and not deal with stinky bucks.  But not yet.  First the does all have to be bred, and this year the buck for the job is Ditto.  This means Moon had to be transported here, and Ditto had to head north.

So we needed a truck bed cage.  Oh you can buy one, they run anywhere from $200-400, are welded, and have no floor.  But not only do we not have a few spare hundred dollars laying around, I really wanted a floor in the cage....and I wanted it collapsable.  So Bob and I set out to design something that would work for us.

Have I mentioned how wonderful my husband is?  Thursday morning he left for work at 4am.  Thursday afternoon he met me after work at 4:30 pm....at the farm store to buy, measure, cut, and transport the livestock pannels to build the cage.  We finished the cage just after 8pm.  He had an idea for connecting the whole thing together.  Not only do we not have a welder, but I wanted the corners to move so that the cage could be folded for storing.  This is what he came up with...

It's hard to see in the pictures....and I'll do a separate post to really explain it....but we took the end pieces of the wire and twisted them to make a "hinged" connection.  More on that later.

Once the cage was finished, we got it into the truck, and I put down some shock absorbing pads on the floor, and then covered it with hay.  I went into the house a few minutes later and came out to find this....

Aegis was convinced that he'd be going along for the ride.  NOT.  He changed his mind about the time that Ditto did a few of the things that bucks are known to do....and decided to let him ride solo.  The cage was a great fit for the bucks...

Once we got moving, Ditto nestled down in the hay and rode like a champ.  I was really concerned about transporting him since he's never been moved from the property since he was 3 weeks old.  He rode like he'd been doing it all his life, and I swear by the time we got to CB's place he had a smile on his face!

You can see why we call him our black angus bull.  He jumped out of the truck like a pro and even let us get a few pics before he went to meet the ladies.  I love all of my bucks, but I believe that Ditto is the most striking of them all...

Once he was settled in, we loaded up Moonie Man and got ready to head home...

Funny thing, Moon chose to make the ride standing up!  Good thing we made the cage nice and tall!

I am happy to report that both boys have settled into their new accomodations well.  OH!  The biggest suprise of the day happened when I took a look at CB's ducks....a few months ago we sorted some Buff hens out and sent them to her to go with her Runner drakes.  I looked at the flock and realized that one of the 4 Buff hens is a DRAKE.  So we may not be finished with the Buff ducks at all!  We're making plans to bring him and one of the hens here asap.  Also, of the 17 eggs collected after the massacre, it looks like 6 or 7 of them are viable. 

Rainy Days Make Projects Slow

We've had a lot of rain lately....and I'm not complaining although the mud does make the work go a bit slow, and being bogged down makes more housework.  We've got a number of projects in the works, but first I wanted to share something exciting! 

I've tried to sprout mint from starters before, but never been very successful.  I do grow some peppermint, it's really good for tinctures....but my favorite mint is a sweet mint.  On the 27th I picked off a small sprig of the sweet mint that is sitting on the AP bed.  I stuck it into one of the grow baskets on the floating raft.  It's been 5 days....

Obviously the fish are putting some nutrients into the system!  Yesterday I planted 3 pots each of Dill, Basil, Bell Pepper, Onions, Peas, and Parsley.  I wanted to try starting many different types of seeds to see how they do in an AP system. 
I also harvested enough baby lettuce today to go into some roasted chicken & veggie roll-ups.

Speaking of harvesting....we have low temperatures predicted for the weekend.....it may be harvest time finally for MsPiggy....

We have to get everyone coordinated on this one...she is our largest ever butchering project.

I also wanted to share something that I've been working on this summer.  They are Black Soldier Fly Larva, and we've managed to keep them going since spring under the quail.  The larva are used for composting, but we've raised them as feed for the poultry.  If the chickens have a dry spell I can toss them a shovel or two of these larva and within a couple of days, they start laying again.  These little mealworms pack a big protein wallup and cost NOTHING to raise.

And one of the biggest projects we've got started is the livestock trailer we were gifted.  I hope to have it fit and pretty by next show season....

It's gonna take a lot of work, but I know we can get it done!