A Good Weekend

So let's just say that it's been a less than ideal couple of weeks past. It's been one catastrophe after another on the farm -but this weekend was wonderful. I sold at the market Saturday morning, and despite the buckets of rain falling from the sky, had a great time. After the storms rolled through, I went and worked on the electric fencing in the back corner of the holler. The clouds were eerie, and rolled right on by. It was beautiful.While up on the top bench, a large pack of coyotes fired up and started yelping just a little way up the holler. The pack was only about 75 yds into the woods, and I'm pretty sure they were eyeballin me as I fenced. The guard dogs were up on the bench with me so I just enjoyed listening to the "concert". It was quite a large pack of coyotes.Across the holler, the turkey hens have built a nest in some branches downhill from the house. They're remarkably camouflaged. The hens haven't taken to setting yet.
Our tom turkey keeps a look out over his ladies though nonetheless.

Cornish Cross Not for Us

It's been one thing after another this season. Some of it's so ridiculous that it's comical at times. Today was the realization that the Cornish Cross Hybrid meat chicken - the same bird that every industrial poultry operation uses, has no place on our farm. We tried a small batch of 50, and they've been dropping like flies. With time constraints of family, work, & farm, I can't coddle these birds. Cornish Crosses are dumb, and I mean dumb. Raising these birds are not compatible to our values. Why did I even try them?

I made the assumption that the Cornish Crosses were the equivalent of the Broadbreasted White turkeys - they are not. Broadbreasted whites do great on pasture, or at least I've never had a problem - they gobble grass, clovers, chase,err I mean waddle, after bugs, dust bathe, etc. Despite common opinion, the turkeys won't drown in rain. They have a good life, and only one really bad 5 minutes to go out on. The chickens, however, are a whole different story; other people can raise them on pasture, but not on our farm.

Blind Turkey Poults!

So it's been a really, really crazy week. I got swapped mid-week into night shifts while interviewing for another, awesome job with a really awesome agricultural non-profit organization. This other job will be much, much more farm friendly. It will also give me an opportunity to help other farmers like me. I can't believe people actually get paid to do this job...How awesome is that?! We'll see how it goes.

In the midst of everything that's been going on our turkey poults came in. There was a problem with the heritage poults, specifically the Bourbon Reds. Half of the shipment was blind! Once we figured out what was actually going on, we contacted the hatchery, Welp out of Iowa, let them know, and they're sending us more chicks. We've switched to them exclusively, because they don't charge shipping, and their customer service is awesome.

So here's a group of normal looking poults.
These are healthy Bourbon Red and Broadbreasted white poults. Below is one of the deformed poults. The eyes are a solid, eerie greenish-gray color and there's no pupils. They were runtish, and completely blind, and they all started dying at four days old - they just couldn't find food or water.
At Bruce's suggestion, I tossed in an older chick to help the little poults figure out how to scratch and find out where the food is. One of the poults took to snuggling under its wing.
Here's a shot of the Cornish Cross Meat birds heading out to pasture here in the next couple of days. They'll be food on May 19th. The growth rate is incredible in the Cornish crosses, growing so fast their feathers can't keep up.
Ugly Duckling, err Tasty Chicken!

Dog Training Invention & Birds on Pasture

So last year, I had some problems with the Pyrenees eating hens. I couldn't figure out what was happening, so I hid in a patch of cedars and watched as two playful puppies followed the flock around and managed to catch a hen. They then laid down with the hen between their paws and proceeded to lick the hen, and then pull out feathers. What was happening was the pups were playing, and being affectionate (licking), but chickens are very delicate, so it didn't take much to kill the bird. Once dead, instinct kicks in and the pups eat the carcass. This is pretty common across the board for livestock guardian dogs - the guy that we're buying our goats from told me about how his Anatolian shephards quickly dispose of any stillborn goat kids. Dead animals attract predators, so the dogs are protecting their flocks/herds. Pretty neat.

But to stop inappropriate play, I came up with the idea demonstrated below. It's just a chicken wrapped in polywire fencing hooked up to a charger. The chicken is on a rubber mat, so it can't be shocked because there's no ground. A mischievous puppy, however, will complete the circuit and get popped on it's nose or mouth, and it will probably be a lesson that sticks for the rest of the pup's life.
In other news, I finally got the chickens back out to pasture yesterday. Finally!

Double Dew Claw

One of the unique traits of the Great Pyrenees breed is that they have two dew claws. A lady at work who used to breed Pyrenees warned me that some times individuals in the breed can have problems with the dew claws, so they need to be checked every so often. Sure enough, I checked Feta's claw and you can see below how the rightmost dew claw had started to curve in on itself. Interestingly, Alfredo's claws didn't present a problem. Good genetics.
So while we were in the pasture trimming claws, I took a picture of the family. Feta's in the pic below, sniffing baby Silas.
Another trait with Pyrenees is that they are ridiculously affectionate towards children. Kids can pull and squeeze on their necks, tug on their massive jowls, and scream in delight, and the Pyrenees take it in stride as you can see below. The only problem is size - klutzy large dogs and uncoordinated toddlers can make for some (hilarious) wipeouts.
Good family and good dogs.

Getting Goats

So yesterday I put a deposit down on a starter flock of goats. We're getting Kiko goats from John Jeffries, who breeds Kikos on his farm over across town. He's got a herd of around 50 Kikos plus a whole lot of (goat) kids running around. We looked at getting Katahdin sheep, but we went with goats for 3 reasons:1.) Land - our land is perfect goat land. The pasture that we've fenced in is full of sericia lespedeza, cedars, locust trees, briars and rose. The sericia is choking out the fescue and other grasses, and the goats will relish the browse. Parasites are inevitable in goat herds, and will be the biggest threat to our herd. S. lespediza actually acts as an anti-helmitic that kills the worm eggs and slows down the adults in the goats intestinal tract. Lespedeza is also a legume that's high in protein. One man's weed is another's resource.

2.) Price & Support - The goats are about half as expensive as the sheep we were looking at for local breeding stock. Also, John is very easy to talk to, and breaks things down easily. From experience, you never really have a clue what you're doing with livestock until you start to raise that particular animal and have to start troubleshooting problems. Having someone who can hold my hand through the first year, and whose farm gate is always open is very attractive to our family.

3.) Market - We have a good amount of connection with people who come from other countries and areas of the world where goats are valued as a meat source. I have no problem dealing with people from other cultures - and that's skill or stumbling block that's taken for granted. A friend from Trinidad recently brought Carla goat curry to try - and Carla loved it. So whether we keep the goat operation small for our own use, or want to scale it up, we've got the options either way, and we really dig that.

A Ridiculous Foot of Snow

So Saturday night into Sunday, a fast moving system dumped an inch of rain and then over a foot of snow on us. The day before, it was nearly 70 degrees. Seriously, the end of March and over a foot of snow? It's depressing, and it's really screwed things up. The weather man predicted 1-3 inches. He was right, but there was an additional 9 inches he forgot to mention...
Hopefully this will be the last time this year that I have to hike up and down our road because of the snow. It's getting old.
The pups were ready to be fed. Squirt got popped by the fence last week, so you can see in the pic that he stays way, way back.
So Feta didn't wouldn't even wait for me to fill her bowl. The bucket had a bunch of goodies mixed in with their dry dog food. Apparently she was a fan!
I'm so glad that I didn't put the hens out on pasture last week - really dodged a bullet. This year's been really crazy so far. It's good to see this while just getting the farm started, because it shows me what I have to plan for worst case.