Goat Rearranging, Winter Egg Doldrums, Log Jumping Pigs & More!

With the rain forecasted last night through tomorrow, it was time to get the doe and kid herd back over to the hoop house!

We didn’t kid over there because it was nice to have them on high ground close to the house so I could check on them frequently and we had been in a dry pattern.

And also, we had just separated the market bucks from the herd and they needed to be out of sight and smell distance from the does so they could cycle out of their stinky rut phase.

They have calmed down significantly and we trust them with electric net fence enough to move them to the opposite end of the farm, clearing the way to move the doe herd back into the field with the hoophouse.

We had some pigs in there at various points in the spring and summer, so it needed some coffee grounds as bedding and then a bunch of hay bales for the goats to eat and snuggle up in.

We also took off the sheet metal on one side of the hoophouse and replaced with cattle panels. And we rearranged those to where the back half is still free for hay storage if needed. For now, they have access to the whole 100 foot length, but we could close the back half off if needed.

The next step was to actually move them over there. The adults are easy. I honestly believe they’d follow me for miles at this point.

The kids though… walking a quarter mile through a field an internal road and making multiple turns. There’s just no way.

So fortunately we have a hog mover trailer which has hydraulics that drop to flush to the ground. We moved that in on Saturday as we made all of our other preparations for the move on Sunday.

Once we were ready to herd the kids into it, we set up two panels on either side to funnel them into it.

Then we fed the adults to distract them, because they’re extremely curious and would be wandering in to the trailer and getting in the way!

We’ve had some challenges even moving kids over to an adjacent grid in the past, so there was no telling how this would go. But it went surprisingly smoothly. Once we were set up, it probably only took 20 minutes to get them all in, pushing them in by walking behind them on both sides in four or five groups.

And some kids were nibbling at the feed troughs and staying with their moms, so we were able to just pick them up individually.

Once we got the kids in and took down the panels, I opened the net fence and took off walking with the adults. They didn’t spare a second thought for their kids in the trailer before taking off! Just very excited for a move and fresh forage, apparently.

Our oldest and most maternal doe, Candi, did leave the herd and walk back to the trailer, the only one to show real concern about her kids. Grant had to cajole her to walk ahead of him as he was driving. She has always been the most maternal doe and she always is last when we move the herd down the internal road, but this brought things to a new level!

The adults started feasting on pumpkins when we got over there and the kids hunkered down so much in the trailer in their short drive over that they didn’t even want to get out initially.

And I slept so much better knowing they were back under a roof for potentially heavy rains!

Meanwhile the hens are plugging away, but the oldest flock’s egg production ground to a halt this week, going from about 8-10 dozen a day to just 11 eggs even I collected on Saturday.

Thankfully this is why we get a replacement flock of chicks each year in February. On Saturday, the youngest flock laid 22.5 dozen and the flock that is a year and half old laid 15 dozen.

The decrease from their peak production in the spring is notable in the middle aged flock as well, but is so much more extreme in the oldest flock. Hens are highly photosensitive so since we are in some of the lowest daylight of the year at just a little over ten hours, they decrease their production significantly.

I haven’t seen signs of a major molt in that flock, but they also stop laying entirely when they molt (lose their feathers to regrow new ones). They need all their protein stores for feather growth and can’t sustain egg production during that time.

Commercially, hens are only kept through one laying cycle (and they are kept on about 14 hours of artificial light per day indoors). When kept in natural light, hens fluctuate a bit more, but generally do produce well enough in their second laying cycle to warrant keeping them.

But by the time they get to the end of that cycle, man does production drop! And that’s what we’re seeing now.

The feeder pigs got another paddock shift in the woods this week, with more coffee grounds to till into the soil and more hay to spread, munch on and snuggle up in.

Over the years, we have done a lot of tree cutting for overall ecosystem health — cutting sick and dying trees and thinning both so that oaks and other desired trees can thrive and so more dappled light can hit the forest floor for grass growth.

And while the emotional appeal of a wood chipper is strong — creating mulch from all the downed branches and trees would be incredible. The costs and safety risks and maintenance just never have made sense and probably never will.

Therefore we typically chop and drop and let the logs rot and become habitat and food for various animals and insects and microbes.

And Grant has long joked that he likes having lots large downed trees in the paddocks with the pigs because it makes them athletic by running and jumping over them. In the paddock we shifted them to this week, I kept thinking of that as I watched them bound around and leap over the logs!

The pickings are getting a little slim for the cattle, so we are continuing to put out hay bales in every paddock we move them to, along with their free choice mineral and supplemental alfalfa feed, depending the specific paddock.

While I was setting up the fence for the buck herd on Saturday, they all were staring at me intently! And through the tall brush and grasses, amidst the pine trees, along the ditch against the bright blue sky, it was quite a lovely sight!

Meanwhile before the big move on Sunday, the goats had a beautiful, sunny week eating tons of pumpkins.

We have more invasive cogon grass to kill in this field, so early in the week, we extended their area and gave them access to a bunch more hay bales to eat and spread out to help smother the cogon and add organic matter to the soil.

And Little Tiny the goat turned four weeks old on Saturday. Quite the juxtaposition between the first photo I took with her when she was still wet and limp to fluffy and having gained so much weight!

I’m still so surprised and happy that this situation turned around. Her momma just needed her hand (hoof?) held a little in learning that she in fact had two kids and not one and needed to take care of both of them. Now she mothers her and lets her nurse as normal.

Miss LT is still the smallest kid in the bunch, but she’s growing at a great rate for the size she started and that’s what we like to see.

We still have several projects to finish in our house, but multiple times this week as I got to look out my windows at the goats and the cattle, and walk back to the house from other parts of the farm with Bo the dog, I have felt like pinching myself. I can’t believe we get to live here! Thank you so much for patronizing our business to help us get to this point, it’s really a dream come true.