Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Piglets Soon?

Lately Angelina has been acting differently. She digs burrows and runs away from the other pigs. Also her nipples are getting bigger. We think it's probably because she's almost ready to give birth. This being said... WE ARE NOT READY!!!! We still have to build a different pen to keep her away from the other pigs and a burrow for her and her babies. Hopefully my next post on the pigs will be how well the birthing went!

All the Babies of Summer

This time of year is always really busy for us because there's always a lot of young animals. Right now the main thing we have is DUCKS! There are ducklings EVERYWHERE you look! They are mostly Muscovy crosses and are all different ages because they've just been hatched by random ducks in the barn.



There are also two ducklings with "shower caps" which make me laugh. Sadly they don't have much function. Whatever. As one (wise) farmer once said, "you have to have pets"!



We also ordered some chicks that we've had for a week or two now. There are some Ameraucana's and some Rhode Island Red's. Today we're putting some other (younger) chicks and quails into the same pen. Hopefully they'll get along okay because right now they live in my room which is not a good place for chicks.



The turkeys that were in our basement now live outside as well. The chickens are looking great! The latest thought is to try showing them for fun! It would definitely be interesting at least...

The Next Animal for the Farm!

Last time we went to Buca (the restaurant we sell our eggs to) the head chef was in the mood for goat. We, of course, couldn't resist the idea of MORE animals so we surfed kajiji (a small farm owner's best friend!) and found a farm willing to help us start a herd. A couple days later we were on our way to the farm! It was an epic all-day road trip that took us all day. At the goat farm we got to meet our potential goat (Although now we're pretty sure we are going to go through with it) who we are assured really is the best. Goats have a body temperature much higher than people, and some are really fuzzy and tame so they are really nice to pat. We were also told that this is the year of the "W" so all goat we want to keep should have a name starting with that letter so any goat farmer we talk to will know how old they are when we talk about them. So now we need some help coming up with a W name for our billy! Any suggestions? This is a picture of the goat we're getting. He isn't one of the tamer ones, and it was really hard to get a picture of him because he kept hiding in the shadows. This was the best picture we could get of him. He's the one in the back with the darker brown head.


Goats are wily creatures apparently, and if there is a way to get out of the fence, they will. Not for any particular reason, just because they can. This was proven to us by the farmer who showed us some kids who had broken out and were busy eating pine trees. Some other useful information she (the farmer) shared with us was that contrary to popular belief, goats actually are picky eaters, although they do eat things most other animals won't, like trees and thistles.


She took us out into the fields to meet her goats. She has 2 herds which each have about 25 goats including the billy (only 1 per herd), mothers and daughters. The boy kids are separated from the herd when they are younger because they are either eaten or sold to other farms. In one of the herds there was one little kid that had to be bottle fed because his mother wouldn't nurse him. He is much tamer than most and was bleating for food!

After learning as much as we could, we left with intentions to go back soon and take a goat home!

SO BUSY!!

Well I haven't posted anything for months... Oops! But now its the summer! So hopefully I'll keep on top of it all!