Shop Goat Kid, Breeding for Spring Piglets, Herding Chickens & Bale Grazing Cattle
Aside from the drama with Little Tiny goat’s mom not taking care of her initially, this has been a pretty smooth kidding season, so of course another shoe had to drop.
We lost a young momma doe overnight on Monday night. I found her totally tangled in the electric net fence on Tuesday morning. Even though they’re right outside our window, I didn’t hear anything overnight, otherwise I absolutely would have bolted out of bed and untangled her.
Unfortunately, livestock do find ways to kill themselves in all manner of fences and this is fortunately just the third situation like this that has happened in our eight and a half years of keeping goats.
This time was extra heartbreaking since the doe had a 12-day-old kid. Her name was Macey and she happens to be the one whose mom had triplets nearby her and kept trying to take her kid, as well. Maybe grandma had a premonition?
In any case, the window for grafting the kid onto grandma Nutmeg had closed and even though Nutmeg is doing amazing feeding all her triplets, she definitely doesn’t have enough milk for a fourth kid, even if we were to somehow get her to take it.
And Grant and the farm staff had a busy day on Tuesday, so I took the kid with me to get on a bottle schedule even though I had egg deliveries and things to do at the shop!
She adjusted extremely well given the circumstances and by that evening I had heard back from a farm friends who loves bottle kids and wanted to take her on. So now she’s living her best pampered life with Alexis and her name is Esmé!
The rest of the herd and all the kids are still doing amazing, otherwise. The kids have gained a ton of weight already and a few are even starting to nibble on feed and the moms are loving their daily dose of pumpkins.
Generally we see a huge uptick in pumpkin drop offs after Thanksgiving, so we will be running van and truck loads to the farm all week to keep up. And likely there will be enough to start sharing with the pigs and chickens again, too!
Speaking of pigs, the 2025 piglets are under way: we moved our three sows in with our new Duroc boar this week.
They all were in heat just before moving them together, so they likely won’t cycle again for 2.5 weeks or so. Generally their cycle is about 21 days on average, but it can speed up a little in the presence of a boar.
We waited until they weren’t in heat so that he didn’t breed them at the tail end of the heat cycle, as that can result in smaller litters. So we expect more piglets at the beginning of April, but of course will plan to have them set up in the farrowing barn by mid March in case they somehow did get bred right when we put them together.
Because the sows are not in heat currently, they are showing zero interest in the boar and sleeping in cozy piles together but not allowing him in!
Meanwhile, the feeder pigs are doing a beautiful job tilling in some coffee grounds and hay bales into the soil of one of our woods paddocks and we’re getting ready to shift them over to an adjacent section this week.
The cattle are basically on daily moves right now as the forage growth grinds to a halt in the cool weather. Many of the cover crop beans we put out did survive the frost and those that didn’t already provided some fertilizer value to the soil anyway.
We also have been bale grazing (moving hay bales in the fields the cattle graze) and supplementing to make sure they get enough nutrients while still dropping manure on the pasture.
The cattle rotated through the field with Flock 3 this week and one of them somehow knocked down some of the chickens’ fence.
So a bunch of the flock was out on Saturday.
However, our staffer Cade had recently thrown together some flags with step in posts and pieces of a ripped super sack. When trying to “herd” chickens to move into the next grid, it’s nice to have something to flap around. Grant and I often grab pine branches, but these flags were even better and the old girls filed right back in where they belonged pretty quickly and easily!
A few more goat pictures to cap things off. The kids have had access to the igloo since birth, but even in the heavy rain a few weeks ago, they didn’t really use it.
I moved it closer to the areas they like to sleep and sure enough, on the first cold night, they jammed about 15 of them in there!
But all in all, I worry less about the kids in cold dry weather than even hot weather. It had been pretty unseasonably warm the first week and a half or so after they were born and I can’t do much for them when they’re panting, other than move them to the shade.
They’re born with nice fluffy fur coats and drinking more milk helps keep them warm, too. Everyone seems much happier zipping around these cool mornings than they were in the heat!