Tree minerals for the goats, natural style

The goats are enjoying the season of the tree trimming. Here is party of today's load.

Trees are bursting with minerals compared to grass and weeds, so we make sure they have a good variety of tree branches to nibble on. The eat the greens, twigs, and even bark. Then , when only dry sticks are left, we run then through the chipper to create poultry bedding.

Yum?!

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Take your children to work day!

Penelope participated happily in "take your child to work day" by bringing her two young children to the milking stand with her today. They seemed fascinated by the whole process, studying it in depth and I think they even nibbled out of the treat bucket.

It's great to see parents involving their children in their professional lives!

posted from Bloggeroid

Tonight's menu...

Here is a look at tonight's menu at the farm...

For starters we have a selection of fresh baby greens, a variety of green plants and weeds from the garden. Succulent, just picked with roots and all.

Then we move on to the main course... Our own mix of soaked, sprouted, and fermented grains. Not one grain... but multi grains. And when we say sprouted... We mean really sprouted with 1 inch tails!

Then to finish, a dessert of another batch of greens (weeds).

These guys eat well!

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Quick Update on things for April

Sorry, no pictures on this post. Quite honestly... we have been a bit too busy to keep up with reporting on things.  So here is a quick update:

1. The fave beans are sprouted, reasonably well. Not as good as hoped, but not bad. The week of warmer rains might bring a few more to the surface... hopefully.

2. We did manage to get the entire main garden tilled this week, just in time for the rain. As always, the plan is to till as soon as dry enough, then let it sit through a warm rain (at least not cold) to sprout initial weed set, then a light till when it dries again and plant.  We have the first tilling done, now waiting for the rain, sprouting, retilling and planting. For the curious, the main garden this year is right at 1 1/2 acres in size.

3. We have 2 more areas hoping to get planted before summer, the old goat pen and the present pig pen. Those two are well fertilized and ready to go. But, the goat pen is much too muddy yet and the pig pen is.. well.. housing pigs yet! Plus the pigs totally tore down one side of fencing, held up by a pallet, so that must be replaced.

4. There are 2 more potential areas to plant this year... one has been housing horses for several years, and the other is the original winter garden spot. both should grow well.

5. The goats are almost all into milk now, ready for the season.  It has meant some serious restructuring of the barn to accommodate the bulk of the herd all at once, but it is slowly coming together.

6. We did manage to get the milking barn rebuilt, cleaned up from the winter, and useable again.

7. The new chicken flock is doing well, we ended up with right at 150 young birds that look healthy and happy. They will be coming out of the brooders this week and into their first job of fertilizing one garden area.

8. The new guinea fowl arrive this week, which means we will be retiring the old flocks to start anew, providing some excellent meat and organs for sale.

9. We have tested last year's home made "feed" of dehydrated zuchinni and greens. It stored exceptionally well! opening the buckets after 6 months revealed perfectly dry, aromatic, well preserved vegetables! The chickens were the first recipients of this marvelous free feed and they love it as long as it is ground a bit into smaller chunks. And their eggs... WHOA! the best eggs we have ever produced! Thick orange yolks, well developed whites, perfect aroma and a beautiful soft flavor. These are , in my humble opinion, the best eggs I have ever seen! And that is without the bug barn in operation, just zuchinni and greens! It looks like the experiment is a smashing success!

10. This week with the rains we hope to spend time finishing the barn insides and getting the chickens moved into their spring positions. Then it's office work! We have lots of paperwork to do to support the new may announcements!

I think that's about it for now. Please forgive us for not keeping up with emails this week, the pleasant weather break meant some long days, and enough hours in the sun to build a nice sunburn! The rains means that things will settle a bit and we can get back on top of things.

Thanks for all your support!

Today's menu... Kale!

With the garden in full swing, the animals get a nice variety of feed from day to day. Today, the menu was fresh kale with a side of dandelion greens. And Lots of it.



The kale is super easy to harvest compared to the itchy zucchini! We pulled a load of kale, about a third of a row, in about 30 minutes. Enough for a full feeding for pigs and some for the milking goats.

I'm really happy with this variety of heirloom kale. Super producer, easy to harvest, and oh so nutritious! Farm animals never had it so good!

First full zucchini harvest

Today was the first full harvest of zucchini. About half the plants had full size fruit, so this is about half of a peak harvest.

Very nice way to end the day... Harvesting feed from our own garden under a summer Oregon sunset. Beautiful! Cool weather, and a full family event.

This load was split between hogs, goats, and birds. Everyone are fresh today!

The hogs enjoying dinner

Even the babies got in on the fun

Tomorrow... It's back to greens (chard, kale, and dandelion greens).

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Garlic! The miracle food with a strong and laaaassstttiiinnnggg flavor

Garlic, perhaps the single most important plant to support health. Its good for SO many things in man and beast.  For the latter, one thing it does quite effectively is kill internal parasites naturally.




It does, however, have quite the flavor....

We routinely treat the animals for parasites, as parasites are ubiquitous in our world.  While most farms use harsh chemicals (i.e. poisons) to treat the animals, we have chosen a different route... herbs and plants.  We rotate through a set of herbal parasite control throughout the year. This not only effectively treats parasites, but actually increases the animals health in the process.

It does, however, have quite the flavor....

So yes, this time the garlic parasite treatment of the goats was very effective but, well, tended to linger on... and on...  We had timed it so that the treatment started in between all herdshare milkings, with expectation that the flavor (which does get into the milk)  would dissipate before the next herdshare milking came around.  Well, yea. That didnt work out.  The flavor lingered.

So for 2 weeks now, the milk has had a distinct and lingering although decreasing taint of garlic / onion flavor. Some days it was stronger than others. But always there. Sometimes it would take two or three drinks for the flavor to build, but it was there!


For herdshare members: as we said in email... if you find the milk objectionable, we offered a $20 credit on your account to compensate for any inconvenience. 

We are happy to announce that it is now all clear! after two weeks, the milk is back to its sweet creamy flavor!

Next time we will keep this in mind when doing a parasite purge with garlic!

Dinner on the patio... the new goat patio...

We are absolutely loving the new goat patio squares! This is one of those moments where you think "why didnt i do this years ago?"... seriously! This may be the single best invention of the year!

As you can see in the pictures, these patio blocks (from this previous post)  make it possible to utilize a part of the goat pen that is otherwise inaccessible during the winter. The girls are very picky about not stepping in mud, and would not go near this corner of the pen when it rains. But now.. it is quickly converted to a clean, dry feeding area.

Soon we plan on adding a roof off the side of the barn to give protection from the rain. But this is already a huge improvement!

You can see the grain feeder up against the barn with some patio squares inside its cage.  The hay area is just a couple of old pallets to hold the bale up out of the water while the girls stand on the patio blocks to nibble. The squares then lead a dry path to all 3 barn stalls and the milking room.

And of course.. Dorothy (middle)  standing in the middle of it all to pose for the picture.  Maggie (on the right) was busy trying to nibble on my clothes but not willing to step into the mud to reach me. 

 Once we have a few more of these patio squares built and distributed around the farm, we are considering offering them for sale locally. If you have wet areas you wish to turn into walkways for the winter quickly and inexpensively, these things work great!  We can fill them with any kind of rock. These have rough granite to help with hoof trimming, but it could be smooth rock just as easily.  If you are interested.. let us know, lets talk!

Portable Patio Squares - Latest invention

We have struggled for years with... MUD.  Lots of it.  Here in southern oregon, when it rains, it wont stop. We quickly go from ground as hard as concrete to ground as soft as jello. So what to do with the animals that dislike mud (which is actually most of them)?

We have tried the traditional methods:

Straw - need LOTS of it.  Requires a thick layer to prevent sinking in the mud below, and has to be replaced about weekly during rains.  We are talking dozens of tons to cover the ground we need to cover. While thats good for the ground, it is too expensive and labor intensive to be practical.

Rock - Expensive and immovable.  To cover the areas we need, would take a lot of rock and expensive earth moving and sculpting. Plus once that is done... the area is unchangeable. It can never be planted with a cover crop, and fences are somewhat permanent.  Thats besides the fact that rock must be replaced frequently as it slowly disappears into the earth below.

Cement - See rock, just more permenant.

Wood Pallets - nicely moveable, but dont last long and a royal mess to keep clean! The wood rots and pallets fall apart if left too long, making them impossible to easily remove.

And on and on...   BUT THIS YEAR WE FOUND A SOLUTION!

Introducing --- Portable Patio Squares!

These things are IDEAL!

Easy to build
Cheap
Easily moveable
Easy to Clean
Able to shape into almost any area
Rough enough to help trim hoofs
Stay Dry

Take a look:

It is nothing but a pallet, covered with 1/2" hardware cloth with a 2x4 frame on top filled with 1/2 to 3/4 clean granite.

They can be washed down with a water hose, because the "clean" granite means  no fines to stick together. The rocks stay loose, so as animals walk on them they shift around. With a little water (rain) this becomes almost self cleaning. The action of shifting rocks under hoofs helps the rough granite sides to grind against the hoofs, providing a measure of self-trimming, Since it is just a pallet, they are easily movable with a tractor to place in position, change, stack, etc.  The materials cost somewhere around $10 each to build, less if you use scraps.  And each square covers about 3x4 feet. They are sturdy enough to take reasonable abuse, and can be moved out for repairs when necessary.

We are building a few dozen of these and deploying them in all animal walkways around the farm to provide dry clean sidewalks and patios. We are even building a "play spot" for the goats  that will have some  things to climb on and have fun without getting in the mud. 

Here are some pics of the first deployment in the milking barn:

I will try to post a quick "how to build these" series when possible, right now we are in process of building and placing these ASAP. 

Goats goats everywhere

Just in time for the first serious winter storms, here comes a flood of baby goats. And I mean a flood! My apologies for not posting sooner, and not having dozens of cute baby goat pics... we have been overrun with caring for these little ones in this weather. Plus.. a good number of these are brand new first time moms... so milking has become... interesting.

All together, there have been about 10 to 12 births over the last 2 weeks. That's just about a birth a day... in the cold rain. Fortunately most have been strong and healthy! But still, first time moms are rarely experienced at caring for little ones, so it requires extra precautions. For instance, we dedicated one barn stall for the nursery, and all new births go there for several days. This ensures relative safety of the babies from the bigger goats, and helps ensure bonding of mom and offspring. Without this we have had babies get lost in the herd, and the new moms can actually forget that they had a little one.

Things are finally calming down... except for milking! Wow... what was a peaceful 90 minute daily retreat is now a bit of a rodeo! Teaching a half dozen brand new first time moms what a milking stand is.... that is an experience! Milking can take as long as 4 hours, and not necessarily peaceful.

The good news is ... milk production is climbing again. We hope to be back making cheese soon.

posted from Bloggeroid

Organic Alfalfa and Alfalfa / Grass Mix delivered for the year

Today we finally received our yearly order of hay... This year we went with a combination of both straight alfalfa and some alfalfa / grass mix, all certified organic.  We have 7 blocks for a total of 408 bales, which  is approximately 28 tons of hay. Thats a lot of hay!

The animals are having a feast!  Even the hogs are chowing down like they haven't seen alfalfa in months (which is almost true).

Here are some shots of the animals feasting on bales of the fresh hay:

Dusting for fun and profit

Its spring, and with a large goat herd as we now have, certain realities happen, like spring goat lice. These little critters are quite common in the spring, and quickly spread from goat to goat, seemingly overnight. This year we had an unusually bad infestation to be dealt with.

Fortunately, an easy fix is diatomaceous earth, food grade.  This magical powder sticks to the fur of the goats and the skin, and thereby the lice. Once on the lice, the microscopic particles of this dust are hard and razor sharp. It gets into the cracks of the exoskeleton of the insects, into the joints and cracks, and literally "wears them out" but cutting their skeleton apart. The parasites die within 48 hours. Other than this physical action, there is absolutely no chemical action from this earth.  In fact it is quite healthful taken internally!

Eggs of these lice hatch in a week or so, which means we repeat this dusting a couple times a week for 2 to 4 weeks, and the lice are gone.  This year, they actually disappeared within a couple weeks.

One session of dusting after milking was handled by Everette and Levi, under Hunter's supervision. They had a ball with the soft white dust (wearing masks to ensure that they didnt inhale too much). Lots of dust got on the ground, which is actually a good thing! but the goats were sufficiently dusted. Good job boys!

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Birds eye view of milking

These three little kids just couldn't resist...  They had to peak in and see what was happening in the mysterious "milking room".  Of course...  They needed a lift to see.

Here's how you do it...

Levi learned to milk this week. He has been watching for a while and just decided that he wanted to do it himself.  right away, he is an old pro!  He loved showing his little brother his new skills this morning :)

Its the little things..

So, the way this works at Little Sprouts is twice each day we gather up the ladies (milking goats) and escort them one at a time into a holding area where they await their turn to enjoy treats and be milked. Lately one of our gals has discovered a new talent. She has figured out how to pull out the pin we use to latch our entrance and exit gates. Having two entrance gates it was a bit comical and only a small set back when she would enter the milking room before it was her turn. Keep in mind the rest of the herd were close behind her. About a week passed and she was bored with coming into the milking barn and decided to try her luck at the other gate. Needless to say... we spent some time sorting the girls that had already been milked from those who had been ever so graciously returned to the sunshine!
To my delight, Uncle Bradley has installed a new piece to the puzzle for the ladies to contemplate for the next while. Order has once again resumed in the milking barn.
Take a look at his design, we will be sure to let you know not if, but when they challenge us with their crafty nature!

Night time emergency!

Wow... Did that really happen? As i wake this morning the images of last night return.... A desperate flight across the valley with half sleeping kids in the car racing to save a life. This is farming?

To catch you up.....

Around 10pm we had just put the kids down and were relaxing after a long day of home deliveries in Ashland. Then... The phone rings. It's is was our farm hand and there is a problem. 

It was Rosemary, one of our best goats in the portable pen there. She had apparently poked her head with horns through the 4 inch squares in the fence, gotten stuck, fought so hard that she broke the 16 foot panel free, managed to slip her horns back through another square in the fence and ended up stuck under the panel trapped against the ground barely able to move or even breathe. Her neck was at such an awkward angle that her airway  almost blocked.

To make things worse, this apparently happened hours ago. She was already lethargic and weak. At first sight she seemed already dead. Rosemary could die soon from stress and lack of oxygen. So... Time for the Calvary!

We called in uncle Bradley to stop by Walmart and get a hack saw or bolt cutter and head out. He gladly sprang into action. We also decided to grab the farm bolt cutters and race over.

Brenda somehow managed to get 5 sleeping kids into the little sprouts buggy while i gathered tools and threw on some overalls. Within 10 minutes the 7 of us were racing to foothill in the dark.

Uncle Bradley got there first and ventured as far into the property as he dare with 2 wheel drive.

With All of our help we bent her head back and slipped the horns back through the fence. Finally she was free! Dazed, weak, but free and OK.

Whew that was a close call! But thanks to everyone's quick action it worked out. This is part of farming.

Two hours later we were all back home safe and sound. Ready to see what tomorrow might bring...

First move to "foothill"

We finally did it... The first move if live animals to the new foothill property! Last night we loaded up one of the portable hard panel pens and moved the small herd of breeding mini Nubian goats to the foothill property. Exiting!

These guys will stay at foothill consuming the abundant organic grass and weeds until they give birth. Then they move back to the main farm for milking season. This greatly reduces the cost of milk production since the breeders no one need stored hay for most of the year! They also will enjoy a more varied and fresh diet than has been possible.

The lucky first pioneers are Aesop, Besty, Rosemary, Penelope, and four teenage bucks.

With more options for grazing at the main farm, even the milkers will benefit. Err can let the milkers spend more time on a wider variety of fresh grass which further increases nutrition and lowers cost.

We are very excited to spend a Saturday evening in the dark moving these guys... Sort of a Saturday night date night ... Farm style!

Tragedy in the milking herd

We are once again sadly reminded of the dark side of nature.  Among  all the majesty,  wonder,  and beauty is a darkness of animal nature.  By human terms, it is sad, but in reality it is animal nature.

This week we lost two of the best new additions to the herd,  the two granddaughters of rosemary.  They were each born within days of the other to rosemary's twin daughters.  Healthy,  strong,  about 2 months old,  growing perfectly.  There was no siangs if illness,  parasites,  or distress of any kind.  One evening they are fine,  next morning,  gone. 

When the first one died,  we struggled to find a cause.  Nothing fit.  No conceivable reason from a health perspective.   When the second one died a couple days later,  we realized what was happening.  Penelope.

Over the last few weeks,  penelope has become increasingly aggressive to the other goats.  She is the dominant goat in the milking herd.  When rosemary is in the milking herd,  these two challenge each other.  But rosemary moved out a month or so ago to the breeding herd.  That left penelope alone to dominate the herd.  Unfortunately she didnt stop at exerting her dominance,  she found it necessary to abuse her position of leadership.

She started randomly but consistently attacking the other goats.  By attacking,  i mean head butting.  Her strenght on attack increased so that we now have two gates with broken welds.  She butted hard enough to bend and break the welds on the gate cross braces.

It never occured to us that she would attack the little ones in the pen.  She seemed to be asserting herself among the other milkers,  especially maggie.  But without rosemary around to keep her in check,  penelope just got out of control in her dominance.

We are now convinced that penelope attacked the babies as they grew and presented a threat to her dominance.  She was definitely strong enough to kill one with a single well placed hit.

So....  We are sad.  And penelope is retired.  We moved her to the breeding stall,  and after a birth we will offer her for sale in milk.  The milk production will drop slightly,  but within our limits.  We cant take a chance on her being around smaller goats anymore.

Nature.....  Beautiful but dark.  Constantly needing the humanity of man to manage it. 

A new sheep containment idea under test

Sheep have proven to be the toughest animal to contain in our approach of smaller movable paddocks.  Feel free to search this blog to understand WHY  we use smaller constantly moving paddocks mimicking the herding action seen in nature. This post is not about why,  but how,  specifically with sheep!

Sheep,  at least our heritage Jacob sheep,  do not respect electric fencing.  We have tried numerous designs and all but one approach fail to contain.  The one is based on very tight lines with permanent end posts.  Perhaps it would be possible to train them to respect electric,  but our sheep seem pretty smart,  they know that if they leap through they seldom get shocked. Their wool lessens the pain to be more of a nuisance than a deterrent. So we finally gave up on electric.

This year we have the new property for the sheep,  so we need a paddock to contain 60 to 80 with movable hard fencing.  The first one was built using tpost driven in and 50 inch hard combination panels.  It will contain them and isn't to bad in labor to move...  But required a tractor there to remove that tpost for every move.

Then an idea...  Why not build a free standing hard panel fence system?  Movable without a tractor,  yet hard fencing you can move by hand.  Sound perfect,  right?

So...  I finally convinced myself to buy that welder I have wanted for so long!  Time to build with metal!   After a lot of research I decided on an old fashioned oxy-acet welder.  Good anywhere without electricity ,  costs less,  and can both cut and weld in one unit. Now  honestly,  I have not welded since highschool...  So that is a bit concerning...  But hey..  Gotta start sometime!

A little u tube instruction,  some practice,  a larger welding tip,  and we are making fence prototypes!   It took a few versions to get a workable idea but I think we have something!

This is based on 6 foot tposts.  I cut one in half and cut a slot halfway down it on one side.  This makes 2 support braces.  Then weld a full tpost one brace,  by sliding the edge of the full post into the brace at right  angles a few inches from the bottom of the full post.  I can make a nice 3 point weld this way for strength.  The result is a full sized post with a piece going front to back a few inches from the ground point.

In the pasture,  you take this assemble,  step on the never to drive the post a few inches in the ground,  paid the supported right angle to the fence line.  Then hard panel sections are attached with heavy duty wire tires.  In minutes,  without a pounder or tractor you have a self standing,  movable,  hard wire paddock!

For an initial test I built one 16 x 32 for the 3 mini nubian goats.  These guys are pretty hard on fencing and will not the first opportunity the see.

After assembly I decided the long 16 for panels had to much unprotected span  and installed a single full size post at a 45 angel,  with a single wire tie.  This really helped stabilize the sides.

It worked!  Except that in the first move I realized some flaws in ease of use.  Corners were tough and had to be fully removed. More work then I wanted,  so I made a corner by bending a wire panel at 90 degrees in the middle (easily done by hand).  Then posts are only installed on the long sides...  No more corner posts!

To help stabilize the corners,  I made sure to overlap each panel one square and attack extra wire tires on the end of the overlap as well as the post a square back.  This helps stabilizer the corner by adding some weight of the long side to the corner if the corner is lifted by am escaping occupant.

I'm pretty happy with where this ended up..  A few days will tell for sure.  For now aesop,  rosemary,  and besty have volunteered to test it.  No escapes yet!

Here are  some pics of the test paddock

The love birds..... Or..... Love goats

Rosemary and Aesop have been alone together for quite a while...  And it shows!  Seems like the have bonded nicely.  I found Aesop snuggled into Rosemary just like a honeymoon couple.