Cheap Chick House

With the cooler weather we decided it was time to get some chicks.

It is easiest if the weather is not so brutally hot, or so cold....  They arrived almost 2 weeks ago.

I  got layers and meat chickens, I am brooding them together for now, soon I will separate them out,
but not yet.




When they first arrive they're so cute! little balls of peeping fluff,  they stay that way for about 4 days, then they become less adorable, they're such stinkers!


I started them all in one cage, but they quickly outgrew it. Next  I moved them into 2 cages side by side, which lasted 2 days... they needed a permanent home!

I had to be creative.

Awhile back I  had acquired a large dog cage, it  was  in a fenced area we had used as a chicken pen
The cage was shelter but not enough...
Chicks do need to be kept  warm and dry, I needed to figure something out.









I took some empty feed bags and cut them open.












I put one end of the opened feed bags under the piece of plywood that was serving as the roof for the dog cage.








I secured it with wire attached to the cage.












Then I laid down another empty bag inside the cage and covered it with hay for comfort.

I made a hook out of wire and hung a heat lamp from it.









Finally I put in their food in a large container that the chicks won't be able to get into and soil ( nice word)











Water for the babes...

They love it!

School Days

Last week was the start of our little 10 week or so Farm "School".

We had a lot of fun... I guess it stands to reason that the kind of Moms and kids who would want to come out here would be very cool people.

While we aren't doing any real "school" type of learning, I do believe the kids are learning some real life, real useful sorts of things.. like where their food comes from and how much work it is to produce it.

We are working on getting our gardens going, and this week we are having rain to help us out!

The kids loved Bonnie, our Flemish Giant rabbit and her 2 new guinea pig friends.


We milked Mattie with the machine, and soon the kids will be milking Novella by hand each morning.









We sowed seeds in the garden beds, and started
some in flats to transplant.












We loved animals
















Painted pictures









Spent time with Bonnie
















And just got familiar with things.....

Made friends....


A great success
I will be posting more so you can follow our progress, wish you were here!

Sex Lives of Cows

Submissive behavior

 The thing about dairy animals is that you have to breed them.

We choose to do our breeding via AI, or artificial insemination.

 I go shopping on line for the bull I would like to breed the girl with, and order the semen.
It is then sent to the vet's office and then I wait til the cow is ready to be bred. Then we take her to the vet and he inseminates her... easy as pie.

Lana is trying to chin rest

The trick is learning when the cow or heifer is ready to be bred. Every 21 days she will go into heat, and within  this cycle there is a period of 12 to 18 hours where she can be fertilized. Now let me tell you something, bull semen is not exactly cheap, and the postage and storage will all add up, so you really want to get it right the first time..


What you are about to get here is a little lesson on
learning when a heifer or cow is in "standing heat".

 

Sunny is standing to be mounted

 I would say it is next to impossible to determine a cow in heat that is  kept alone, really it is all about the behavior of the cows together that you need to be watching.

Initially other cows will "chin rest" on the animal going into heat, the animal going into heat will also
be more submissive as you can see in the photo of Sunny with her head under Lanas head.

Most importantly though is that the cow in heat will allow other animals to mount her, and she will stand for it, thus the term "standing heat".

Shorty!!

Honestly, their behavior would make a sailor blush..
the cow in heat will try to mount everyone else, but they won't stand for it, they will walk a way, but the one in heat will stay put..... so after this hanky panky is observed, you have to get her to the vet to be bred 12 to 18 hours later....

It takes a little practice but after you know what to look for it's so simple....

Yet one more reason to thank god you're human.

Novellas Tuesdays in the Fall

This is not really  a post per se...
More of a notice.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye....

Novellas Tuesday Fall Class is accepting kids.

We are meeting Tuesdays starting on Sept 10, through November.
December will be for bad weather make up days and Holiday events.

We will be: working with the animals ( halter training Lana, bathing cows, taking care of chicks, rabbits etc.), gardening (starting seeds, mixing soil) , making cheese, yogurt, butter and other dairy items (from our milk)
Doing Art, and maybe some surprises.
Hours are from 9 if you want to milk, or 9:30 if not til 1:30 or 2.
Mom or Dad or responsible adult must remain for the day.

Space is very limited, cost is 75 per child per month. Contact me if you have more than one child.
age appropriate for 6-9/10.  

Remarkable Cow

The other day something remarkable happened.

Every morning my routine goes something like this,
I feed the cows a bit of hay, feed the rabbit, the chickens and the dogs.
Then I go inside to get a spot of coffee for myself and to check my emails.

About 30 minutes later I go back down to give the cows yet more hay.  At that time I call Mattie, and she walks out the gate and up to her stanchion for milking..
Well, last Saturday morning, I went down to give the cows their second breakfast, called Mattie, held the gate open...waited, and  then things went differently.

Mattie walked over to me, looked into my eyes and deliberately turned around and walked away, I said "hey Mattie, get over here, you know the drill" and I followed her... she stopped, turned around and looked at me again and started walking away from me.

By this time I was sort of angry with her, because she obviously heard me and saw me and was just being naughty. I said" what is wrong with you!" and she just walked on, then I noticed a brown spot out in the meadow by the fence line.

Mattie walked to the spot, stopped, turned and looked at me. Then I realized what it was...a deer.

A doe was caught by one leg in the fence and she was frantically trying to free herself, to no avail. It looked like her leg was already out of socket...
I ran up to the house and got Jerry, who came down to the meadow with big wire cutters.

Mattie was still standing  calmly by the deer until she saw Jerry. Then she walked to the gate,  ambled up the hill and went into her stanchion and waited to be milked.

Jerry cut the deer free and she limped off....

I was amazed.... Mattie saved the deer, I believe it would have died there, in the hot sun a miserable death if she had not shown us the problem.

I know some people will say she was just walking in that direction.. with no intent at all.
I know what happened... she's one amazing cow.

Days have been hot around here.
Little Lana has been taking her naps in the mornings.


I figured most of you  have never seen a cow sleeping.





Usually you see a cow laying like Novella here,
with their head up, but I guess this posture is like us sitting down.

Head flat on the ground is really considered resting.

It can be kind of spooky to walk up on one of them while they are like this, quite frankly the first thought is "are they dead?" because it really could be so.
No one expects to find a dead cow around but it does happen.

Lana here is a deep sleeper. I have gotten used to seeing her, "sleeping like the dead" so have the chickens.

She's pretty cute!

 Everyday I milk Mattie, two times a day. Once in the morning and once in the evening.
I get 1.5 gallons each milking. That's 3 gallons a day!

21 gallons of  milk a week  means we get to have fresh, raw butter around here.
Butter is the easiest dairy product to make.

All you do is skim the cream off the milk.
Any milk that has not been homogenized will separate out after around 24 hours in the fridge. The longer it stays undisturbed the more it separates.

So.. I just get my little dipper......

 and dip out the cream.  That left over milk could be used as low fat  milk for drinking or made into something, but I usually just give it to my plants.

From 1.5 gallons of milk I got 1.5 quarts of cream
(which means we should watch how much milk we are drinking because were gonna get fat)


I put the cream into the food processor, I can only do a little at a time.

 That's about all that I do at a time,

 Turn on the processor and do something else for,.. say around 5 minutes.

 After a little while you will notice a change in the sound of the processor. That means the butter has formed, and everything has separated into butter and buttermilk (real butter milk is just the leftover liquid from the butter making process).

 Here you can see the butter and the buttermilk.

 We need to strain the liquid out.
Get out  your colander line it with a piece of cloth and pour it all in. You will also want to rinse the butter with cold water.
 If you don't, your butter will taste sort of sour.

 Some of us are too busy to wait, so we just help the process along by squeezing the butter.

Here you go! butter, just scrape it into a container with a rubber spatula, salt it if you like, put it in a container and refrigerate.

Good News, raw butter has been found to not be bad for your health. It is the homogenization process which changes the molecular structure of the protein that is harmful.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/12/07/why-is-butter-better.aspx

Yum!!