Growing Piglets, Grazing Goats & New Kids, Sleek Cattle & Our Battle with Chicken Predators
With tons of baby animals bouncing around and lots of bright green forage, it definitely feels like quint essential peak spring around here.
This week’s farm update has updates on our growing piglets, grazing goats and more new kids, sleek and shiny cattle enjoying lovely grass, our ongoing battle with predators of our chickens and updates on our next farm tours!
The piglets are growing like weeds and doing so well!
Last Sunday, when the first two litters were a week and nine days old we let them out of their stalls in the barn to start roaming the yard area. And manure/bedding management is much easier this way and the sows love to roll in a mud wallow to cool off and help with mites and lice.
But with the youngest litter in the middle stall a week younger than the other two, we have left that happy family in their cozy stall all week. We will probably expand the yard and let her and her piglets join everyone today or tomorrow.
As is almost unavoidable with litters this large, we have had a few losses, but overall am I super proud of these sows and their chunky and smart piglets.
The goats are hitting their grazing circuit in full swing again! But because we left the bucks in with the herd for basically half of last year, we have some outliers still kidding here and there and have been letting them graze nearby fields and come back to the hoophouse paddock at night.
Heidi had a kid out in the woods one day and we had to go hunt for it to find it and bring it back to her! So then the next day, we had her stay in the hoophouse while we let everyone else out to graze for the day.
Then Cori had a kid on Saturday afternoon, which was especially sweet because in November and the January prior she had breech, stuck stillborn kids that we had to pull both times. This time, unlike Heidi, she stayed with her kid and is being the most doting, neurotic helicopter mom I’ve maybe ever seen.
She was across a ditch and through a wooded area, so getting her back with the herd posed a bit of a challenge. I picked the kid up and started to walk backwards a few times and we did this awkward exchange where she circled around me but couldn’t decide whether to follow or look for him on the ground or what.
And then she looked at me again and just took off to get back to the herd. I took that as a sign of trust that she assumed I would bring him along, which of course I did!
We have two more yearlings that haven’t kidded and both have developing udders. One I recorded an April 29th due date for and maybe the other one is somewhat synced up with her. Then, there are some does that kidded in November that may start kidding again around the same date and the beginning of May. And then, hopefully, maybe, we will finally be done kidding until February and focus on just grazing and growing!
The cattle are slick and shiny and loving spring forage, it seems. We have plenty of grass, but cattle prices are so high right now that we are holding off on buying more.
And since we have so many goats this year, hopefully they serve as proper pasture maintain and mowing behind the cattle until prices come down a bit to buy in more.
Every year the soil and the forage improves with rotational grazing and manure drop of our four different species, plus targeting mowing, cover crops and compost spreading and it’s so gratifying to continue to see the soil, the forage and the insect and bird activity improve as a result.
The chickens are doing their thing, but unfortunately we’re really fighting a predator battle with Flock 2 in particular.
We had just moved this flock back to one of our original fields in the summer of 2024, after it hadn’t had chickens for three years or so. And the field we moved them out of needed a rest.
And for whatever reason, the predators have been more active and more bold. The electric net fence is the main line of defense, but we also set traps around the perimeter and Grant occasionally does some night patrols. We’ve caught many opossums and racoons in the act of breaking in (people will tell you that opossums are vegetarians, but they definitely kill and eat chickens), plus gorgeous foxes and even coyotes.
I think there’s something to the idea that you might attract more predators over time and that the smart animals do start to outsmart your defenses. We’ve been raising chickens in electric net fencing for nine years now.
The losses aren’t to the point where a livestock guardian dog would make sense financially (while everyone loves the idea, the reality is that the cost of a dog from good stock, the training, the vet care, the feed spread ove the (short) length of their working life doesn’t usually come close to the cost of the predator loss of the chickens, not to mention the liability of dogs that break out of your own perimeter fence to patrol and run beyond your farm, potentially killing other people’s animals, getting hit by cars, getting into poison out out for wild hogs, etc.).
But we have some more strategies to implement now that it’s clear that our usual defenses aren’t working.
And in the meantime, a new flock of chickens is being delivered this afternoon and they should start laying soon!
Fortunately and unfortunately, they are going into a field that has less of an issue with raccoons, opossums and coyotes, but is one of our worst fields for hawk predation. So we may have to play around with an old fashioned scarecrow or something!
Last but not least, we had two more wonderful tours on Saturday and the week before! There’s one left, this Saturday, April 26th. Here’s more info about the tours in general and you can sign up for this Saturday, April 26th, here!
We will likely do one tour per month moving forward and move it to the late afternoon/evening to avoid the heat and end with refreshments at our house. Stay tuned on that as I plan to post the May and June dates and updated details soon.
Grant planted a bunch of nasturtiums in the ditch right at the entrance, so we’ve been having any attendee who wants to try them — they’re like delicious and fun with a sweet initial taste, followed by a spicy horseradish-esque punchy note at the end! We like them in salads.