Texas in the summer. It’s hot. Has been my whole life and will continue to be hot. Last year was an extreme drought, this year is a regular drought. So grass is dormant and we’re back to hay.
We finished up the hay from the winter buying and realized all of our delivery hay contacts were out of hay. So we’ve been hauling two at a time on our trailer. Ten bales now in the barn.
New to us heifer Amber with the cream color
We added a new heifer Amber to the herd this summer. She has high end Beefmaster genetics and has grown on range grass, perfectly in line with our development goals. The target has been to run two breeding cows, two growing cows and two finishing steers on a revolving basis. We are there now and will see how the plan works in reality.
We also added some kittens from a friend. One made it past the first two weeks, the other passed with some parasites we were unable to treat effectively. The laughs were fun though and we managed to keep both grown up cats in this new kitten process.
Nom nom
We had three hens die in the shade this week, which did not happen last August. We’ll be developing the breed to higher heat tolerance as this continues. Egg production is way down, 10 layers giving 2 to 3 eggs a day because of the stress. Fortunately we have been hatching and raising more as the summer progresses so the farm team pipeline is strong.
We did have a baby boy goat who struggled with parasites and weight gain. After a week of two or three time a day intensive care and treatment, he’s back on his feet and feeding on the range with the rest of this scrappy herd. They are delightful to watch prosper on scrappy drought land. They keep an antifragile edge to our meat on pasture production process.