Instead of adding stories and text to our website logging all our new adventures I decided to just add a blog. You'll have to see our website for previous postings but here's a quick summary.
Chickens: Last fall we ordered some chicks in the mail. We've never had laying hens before so this is a new adventure. We have Rhode Island Reds, Silver Laced Wyandottes, Barred Rocks and White Rocks. We ordered from McMurray Hatchery and they give you the option of a free chick. Our free chick turned out to be an Americana rooster. Perfect, we needed a rooster. We named him Glenn Peck. Yep, that's right named after the man himself, Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck is crowing the warning for our country's freedom and Glenn Peck...well he's just making a lot of noise :) The hens started laying in mid-January when they were just over 4 months old. Now we are getting almost an egg per day from each one and the eggs are almost full size. This spring I couldn't resist those cute little chicks and ordered a few more. We now have 3 Buff Orpington chicks and 7 Americana chicks. For those that don't know Americanas lay the tinted eggs and are referred to as Easter Egg Layers. I'm expecting some colorful eggs by August.
Goats: We have been raising Boer goats for several years. Last summer we got two dairy goats, Toggenburgs named Hunny and Bunny. We got them because I have been becoming more and more interested in living a simpler life in which we provide ourselves with as much of our own home grown food as possible. A milk cow seemed like it required an awful lot of work and money. After researching dairy goats I found that goat milk has a lot of nutritional benefits over cow milk. When we brought Hunny and Bunny home they were starting to dry up and produce less milk. I still got enough to try out some recipes like ice cream, cheese, pudding, soap and lotion. Now they have had their kids and I'm back to milking them. Most people bottle feed the kids but I'm leaving the kids on them. Its made it more difficult so far but I'm gradually getting more milk. It seems the goats would rather give the milk to their babies than me and often won't let much down for me. The kids are a couple weeks old now so I just started separating them for a few hours before milking. I told Hunny and Bunny that I "kid"napped their babies and was holding them for ransome to be paid in milk. I get much more milk this way and plan on making my second ever batch of cheese this week. I'll start with a soft cream cheese since Mike still has to build me a cheese press.
Sheep: I don't have a lot to write about the sheep. We are pretty much done lambing for this year. We had a good year and hopefully they will all stay healthy. We cross our romanov/ramboiullet ewes with our black dorper ram and get what I call our "holstein" sheep. They sure are cute!
Calves: A couple times a year we'll get a batch of holstein bottle calves from a nearby dairy. They are a lot of work and I'm always glad when we wean them after 6 weeks of twice per day feedings. They are cute and sweet though, you can't help but fall in love with them.
You'll also see on our website that we have miniature horses. These are actually my mom's horses so I won't have much to say about them. They have their own stories titled "Pony Tales: The Adventures of Junebug & Jitterbug". Books are coming soon to our website.
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