Spring Update II

Spring is an extremely busy time of year, and a lot has happened since our last update.

The goats have resumed their grazing routines. Daily fence moves have extended our morning chores by at least thirty minutes. Currently, we're milking Nutmeg, Rose, Lily, and Star.

Gemma has ceased producing milk; we suspect she may be expecting kids again due to an unintended encounter with Blaise, our buck, earlier in January. If our suspicions are correct, she'll likely kid in June.

Eva recently welcomed her first kid, a buckling, born in the pasture on March 19th. Both mother and kid are doing well.

The demand for our goats' milk continues to outpace our supply. We're on the lookout for a proven milking doe that is horned—a challenging find as most desirable Nigerian milking lines are hornless.

Pigs

Our pigs have also returned to the pasture. Millie, our Idaho Pasture Pig (IPP), is expected to deliver her first litter of Kune/IPP cross piglets soon. Meanwhile, Honeys' piglets have been weaned and now share a pen with Harold and Fudge.

Ducks, Chickens, and Chicks

Egg production is at its peak; we move the chickens and ducks every other day to new pasture.

Our flock of Kaki Campbell ducks has begun laying, and we anticipate selling duck eggs once full production is underway.

Some chicks are old enough to live outdoors permanently. They reside in a mobile tractor protected by an electric fence. We're hopeful that customer interest will allow us to raise additional chicks throughout the season.

Rabbits

Not that long ago one of our dogs killed our New Zealand red buck. Fortunately, our red doe, Strawberry, was already pregnant so we can keep a buck from her litter. She has successfully raised her seven bunnies and they are now about a month old. We now keep all our rabbits in tractors surrounded with electric fencing.

We were not successful with our other two does, both of them lost their litters. We needed another buck since it will be at least 5 months before the red bunnies are old enough to be used for breeding.

So, we decided to purchase Blueberry, a Blue New Zealand buck and two young New Zealand does.

Hopefully we will have more success with their litters which should arrive around April 20th.

All of our does should be pregnant, including Strawberry, so we will see what colors we get since they are all crossed with Blueberry.

Calf

We decided to embark on the journey of raising a meat cow.

Agnes is a two-month-old Angus calf who was not getting enough milk from her mom who was too old, so we decided to take her and are bottle feeding her until she can graze on pasture. We hope to have her be a 100% grass fed and finished cow. She was very shy when we first got her but learned to drink from a calf bottle on the first day and has since got much tamer.

Garden and Orchard

We started a few cold weather plants outside and are continuing to try to get our transplants as big as possible before they go outside.

We purchased a few more rolls of www.premier1supplys.com poultry netting to fence our orchard and in ground garden. many of our fruit trees are getting leaves, the pear and plum trees that were here when we moved in are blooming, so hopefully they produce well this year.

Dogs

Dakota our 5-month-old German Shepherd just finished her 6 weeks of obedience training, and we are continuing to work on socializing Zellie and Dakota to all the farm animals.