The black box of life can be extra mysterious sometimes.
This is the story of a chick named Boo Boo.
One night the weasel got past several lines of defenses and took out almost the entirety of our flock, leaving us one traumatized rooster and 3 PTSD hens.
I very quickly set up 41 home laid eggs to hatch. Due to the very cold spring here the incubator had a very difficult time keeping a steady temperature.
That was a constant worry.
This is a video of our first batch of babies for this year.
Quail hatching here this morning!
This October surprise snow storm dump 2 feet of wet clingy snow on the northeast and particularly on us. The
Night of the storm our goat shed collapsed and crushed/trapped one of our goats.
We found her weakly crying and slipping away. We pulled her out from under tons of shed and snow – was pushed down into muck. We rolled her onto a bed sheet and slid/pulled/lifted through 2 feet deep snow many yards and then into our dining room onto blankets. We covered her in blankets as well and fed her molasses water until she rehydrated enough to drink on her own. She began to eat grain and hay. She menaces passing cats who she doesnt like. She can not stand on her own – her back leg is not working, might be dislocated.
As you may remember – we milk dairy goats. At the moment we have 9 lamancha dairy goats, 8 in milk. Goat milk is naturally homogenized so it requires an expensive cream separator to get cream. With no cream you can not make butter!
Additionally, the amount of grain and hay and labor that goes into milking these 8 goats (which includes all the work to get them pregnant, help them deliver, etc etc) fails in comparison to the amount of milk we would get from one cow with much much less labor and cost.
Humble Garden Podcast Episode 4 - Observe and Interact [ 13:41 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (427)On today’s podcast I cover how we observe and more importantly, interact with our animals in ways to integrate them more tightly into our homestead.
Please take a few minutes to listen and also to give me feedback, comments, or share what you do or how you listen and interact with your animals!
Some examples of space appropriate animal/plant/human permaculture systems:
Look at those cutie chicklings! This is a photo from a book project I am working on over at Town Farms: stories of collective agriculture.
I am also working on reskilling podcasts to be deployed here, soon!
Dairy goat management includes psychology, trust me.
When baby goats are born you need to separate out the babies and bottle feed them until they are weaned and then you can return them to the herd.
The video above shows what happens when your kids are piggish, dont wanna stop nursing, and the momma goat refuses to push them away.
What a hair raising adventure in animal husbandry this week!
We had contracted with a sheep/alpaca/llama shearer to come down from upper Vermont to shear our llama.
Its not humane to keep a halter on a llama for long so she generally is free of any fetters, running wild with the goats in their acre enclosure.
To be sheared, she needed to have a halter on. She is VERY skittish and only tolerates us barely touching her when she has her head in the feed bucket. She pulls away quickly even then.
Activate the Wp-cumulus plugin to see the flash tag clouds!
We are a family of 5, including Nika, Ed, Q (14), KD (7), and Baby Oh (4). We garden 1024 square feet of raised beds plus assorted permacultural plantings. We also have 13 LaMancha dairy goats, 40 chickens, and one guard llama.