It’s the time of year where baby goats become full tilt adolescent goat kids. They want all the humans remember they are descendants of the mountain folk. “Mountains, Gandalf, I want to see Mountains!” is the spirit. These hoofs are perfectly suitable for climbing on everything. These heads are great for pushing through fencing.
Look maaa, no hands!
We set about weaning them at ninety days. That means the fencing between the nannies and the kids must be near water tight. This year that required repair and replacement. Old fencing doesn’t handle goat curiosity well and you notice it when they escape. The kids claim they want to help with the fence. I think they just want to play on it.
New fence to the left, running batches behind this scene to the right.
It’s been a curious spring for the flock guardian Sullivan. He had a wound show up on the top of his head, not clear what it’s from. No other marks of an altercation on his body. But he can’t keep the top of his head clean with his tongue and he was absolutely not going to let the other guardian Ashok touch it.
The wound is real
We brought him inside to manage the healing more directly. His preferred path of care was to scratch the scabs off and whimper about it. When we tried to apply some medication, it didn’t go well, very aggressive response. So, for the first time in my life, I bought a muzzle and put it on my dog. That made a pair of unpleasant treatment sessions. After the second go round, he realized we were helping and could proceed without the muzzle.
It was a problem with our equipment planning that we did not have a muzzle to work with. Nor did we have a cone to put on him. Now we have both and lesson learned.
He wears the cone!
This spring is different from last spring. A triple amount of rainfall means far more plant growth means more insects. There is a caterpillar here that is extremely painful to the touch. They are showing back up after an absence last year. I took a picture of his one, curiously enough, burrowing a hole in some Great Stuff foam in my shop wall.
A Stegosaurus Caterpillar?
Also, if you ever jam a two foot stick into a hose about 2 feet deep, you can get it out by drilling a pilot hole and running a screw into it. Lock the hose end into a vise and pull out with pliers.
People all over these United States make a claim every year. They sing together that the Christmas season is the most wonderful time of the year. I want to submit that at Raising Wood, a wet spring is the at least a tie with the Advent, even beyond the fruitful flame war of Christmas vs Easter. I’ll give some examples from this past month. As a bonus, there’s a picture at the very end that would be impossible to plan for.
Spring has new life. Birds hatch and escape their nests. I found this blue bird on the ground amidst tall stands of grass. It was such a lovely day, Blue the cat came through and made some paw swipes and moved on. Hours later the fledgling was flapping and scampering up past the house, with a whole life of predatory insect control ahead of him.
Speaking of grass grown tall, we have pastures that never grew above my ankles last year. With rain instead of drought, growth is past my knees. It is fun in person to watch the goat kids leap and bound through the grassy jungles as we move them into new pastures. You can see that the stand is up to the momma’s bellies, sometimes past their ears. The sward is thick and rich.
Speaking of new life and mommas, we hatched chicken eggs. Mixed results. Batch 1: 21 eggs, 0 hatches. No reason why, they were silent in the exit interview process. Batch 2: 21 eggs, 9 hatches. They did well in the new halfway house and have transitioned to grass based chicken RV living very well. Curiously, we have seen a dramatic increase in the chickens grass eating capabilities and problem solving skills as we’re on the third generation. There’s chicken capabilities being unlocked that we didn’t get from the store chicks. It’s alsbeen fun seeing the chicks hatch from the brown eggs laid by Wellsummers show yellow feet. The Americana/East Eggers from the olive&blue retain their gray feet. They are for sale, as is the next batch. Email me.
We added two head of cattle to the mix in the winter. One was a bull calf that was already steered, the other was intact. We took the intact one to the vet for the castration. Somehow he dive-bombed my leg in the transport process. Turns out he had a diet very high in fresh grass. It left grass stains on my khakis through the manure. Sometimes you get the steer, sometimes the steer gets you, I guess.
Seeing fresh grass is wonderful. Believe me, they are more aware of the fresh grass on the other side of the fence then we are. Now we get to rotate the cows to fresh pasture as they finish up a pasture. A welcome change from the hay filled tedium of winter feeding. The pasture on the left is ready for grazing. They have spent 2-1/2 days in the pasture on the right and it will grow for 20-30 days before we rotate cows back on it.
Out on those rotation pastures, we’re trying a different method for chickens. The goal is to add grass and insect life to the chickens diet. The A frame is where the hens are roosting and laying eggs. The white net is a portable electric fence that we can use to give them a ‘yard’ around the A frame. This will fertilize the pasture, destroy more grasshoppers, and give the chickens more space to be fun and happy birds with less confinement housing. No manure build up means better sanitation for everyone. This picture is the third area we’ve set up. We’ll move them forward 40 feet in a week. The net connects to all the existing pasture fencing. It is a wonderful layering solution to our infrastructure.
Can I get all of the glory of the spring together into a single picture? No. But if I could make an attempt, this is the front runner.
Do you see it? The cattle in the foreground devouring a pasture that was heavily grazed by goats in the winter. They’re de-worming and eating and fertilizing and becoming delightful beef. The goats in the far back left, fresh pasture with tree branches and so many glorious leaves to nibble at warp speed. Midframe, a tree in full leaf putting shade over my children’s project house, fresh off a good hose washdown and brush scrubbing to ‘clean it up’. Then some pallet fencing protecting the garden. Finally, To the very far back right, where the rainbow terminates, beyond the garden and the pasture: Not pots of gold with red headed guardians, but the finest of does come to admire the view.
My friends, that’s most wonderful time of the year.
Because of the drought this summer, we fed hay out in the pasture. It is a tradeoff because it is more work to move the hay out into the pasture compared to barn feeding.
We hoped this would convert a localized area into improved pasture. Make the cows busy stomping dropped hay and manure into the soil. That would build up the organic matter and fertility in the top soil and take a scrub piece of pasture into a prime piece of pasture. Maybe.
We didn’t see results over the summer, no rain to make anything change. We did start to see results in the deep fall after some rain.
It was different then we expected. The hay bales we placed in the summer that had summer grass, called second cutting, had some stray germination in the summer then nothing in the fall. The bales which were spring cutting, first cut, germinated like a dream.
Multiple locations of first cut hay turned into good pasture patches. The winter grass seed seems to have carried through into an ideal planting environment. I am hoping this has a cascade of fertility in these locations and begins a seed bank and water retention year after year.
In the final review, moving the bales out to the pasture is a good fertility improver and we’ll do it as much as we can over the winter.
We keep the chickens in a mobile coop. We move it everyday. It means new grass for chickens, protection from predators, and eggs always where they belong. Also, they fertilize the grass.
This past year we ran an experiment where the chicken tractors spent most of their time in the yard. The hypothesis is that more fertilizer on the lawn encourages grass growth. Grass growing blocks the stickers from ruining all barefoot activities.
Year 1 was a partial success. There was at least a 50% reduction in time of stickers wrecking the place. The peak season was still just a numerous, but the duration was shortened by weeks on the front and the back ends.
Sometimes you just look at a historical path of chickens in tractors and say wow. This stretch of green patches in the pasture is one of these. The closest patch in the foreground was where the chickens spent a day about 3 weeks ago, and each patch moving away is one subsequent day less, with a u turn at the end. You can see the start of the green shading in front of Jenny coming back to the right.
Next year we’re going to try and run meat chickens in larger numbers in a pasture, and I’m interested to see what grass acceleration we can get from them that the cows can harvest with stronger grass growth on a marginal area.
This fall has been a good one for the homestead. Let me show you what’s been happening.
Mountains, Gandalf. I want to see Mountains!
The rain came and pastures grew back very quickly. Within days of we resumed rotational grazing for the goats and the cattle. In the middle of such a day, a little goat doe who was big time ready for her man broke into the boys pen. She spent several hours under the conflict-affection of the bucks. Once she was bred we went ahead and bred the other 10 ladies, looking at a February birth next year and hoping for 14 or 15.
The grass moustache is back, baby!
We also completed some transactions, selling 3 of the boys into the meat market to some repeat customers from last fall, courtesy of their strong family network and a traditional religious festival. We agreed in the spring to hold the boys for them and it worked out well for everyone. They also picked up some chickens, a pleasant surprise for us. We will plan to manage our birds for selling more next year.
A-frame tractor. Pronounced Eh-frame by some.
We built a new chicken tractor to consolidate all the birds into one place. This has a larger footprint with vastly more wing space to flutter and roosting footprint to sleep. It is light enough for one person to comfortably maneuver every day. It solved the feather plucking antagonisms from the older hens and gave the young hens a first taste of what flapping into a laying box is like. Which is good, because they are laying almost a month ahead of expectations. 6 eggs a day is our find sometimes.
Jenny and my father doing focused puzzle work to maximize pieces cut from a truck bed liner. You can see a piece installed in the peak behind Jenny and scraps between them. A cut from the truck bed liner as roofing capRoosting perches run front to back, feeder hanging just out of reach of chicken bomber droppings
We also executed our first beef sales and deliveries. This was exciting for us as it is the first beef we have done nearly start to finish, and we were delighted to find more customers then we had beef to sell.
Local butcher in the hospital district of Weatherford
We loaded up and dropped them off at a local family run butcher. They run a clean shop. We brought more flies on the cows then existed in the entire shop. We left our cut instructions and a phone number and then updated our customers, 3-4 weeks to deliver. Next step was collecting coolers to make deliveries in. And waiting.
The waiting
Pick up day arrived. Load up that trailer! Pack up the kids! Coordinate delivery times! Pick up the beef! Ready, set, go!
Love the shade tree near the loading dock.
Red light! These boxes are not sorted into quarters like we agreed. Oh my. Some of these cuts are completely wrong. Oh, but this one is right… We’re going to have to sort this all out. Back home everybody, we have work to do.
Ready to go!
Start four hours of sorting, weighing, recording, and finding customers happy with different cuts. Then get the beef back into coolers and get to the deliveries. We learned a lot, among them how to better load the trailer.
Every one of our customers was extremely accommodating to our delivery windows. Some met us midway when it made sense. We only had one counting error and we are blessed the customer was satisfied with that error.
We left the farm grumpy and frustrated with unplanned disruptions. We left each of our customer homes with smiles on everyone’s faces. This is business at its best. The finest product made in a sustainable way and delivered face to face with customers eager and cheerful.
Cutting boards for customers to celebrate the year
After seven hours we came home exhausted but very much alive, praising a good God who let us learn new skills to be a blessing to families and his creation. Did we get rich in cash? No. Did we find this all deeply enriching to the soul? Without a doubt.
Now seriously, you gotta try some of this beef. It’s very good.
Last night we learned some lessons while watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
When you hear a pop sound from the laundry room, it is not always benign.
Sometimes it is an egg gone bad after 18 days in the incubator. Sometimes those carefully heated eggs go pop and explode all over the inside of the incubator.
In about 6 minutes, the smell will waft it’s way to the couch where your vigilant wife will notice a foul stench. Your dog will not even stir.
In that intervening six minutes, the husband manages to make a bowl of popcorn from the cabinet right next to the incubator. He will also pour a beer with his head 12 inches from the incubator on the shelf. He will not notice anything amiss, but he is inordinately proud of the head of foam he produced in the glass.
The wife will go and take the lid off the incubator. She will see the rotted gray green goo splattered all over the interior and will begin to wake up the neighborhood with her protests and gagging over the smell.
Soon thereafter, even the sleeping dog and the covid survivor husband will realize “oh man that is AWFUL”
For the next hour and a half, going right up to midnight, the husband and wife will be involved in sorting and cleaning the good eggs, and the entire incubator twice. You will be throwing out all the malicious looking egg grenades remaining from that one hen your farmer friend gave you to feed your pig because it laid funny looking eggs and you were like “ain’t nothing wrong with these eggs, let’s incubate them!”
You will take everything outside to chemically sterilize under a flashlight. Your bottle will run out of sanitizer. The husband will be helpful and go get the wrong sanitizer.
Then every cat you own on 10 acres will come up to you scrounging for the snacky snack they smelled from the far end of the property. The cows and goats will stir from their sleep and demand snacks, because they have seen the farmer and the farmer is kind. Then you go to bed knowing that is the cleanest the incubator has been since it came from the factory.
After months without rainfall, North Texas caught up in a hurry. Over 4 inches at our place in a day. News reported over 9 inches elsewhere in the DFW area. Now the record books won’t reflect our struggles because they gets us back to near average, but who needs glory of hard times when you’d just rather have the rain?
Cows are good lawnmowers
For us, there is much rejoicing. Scarcely a week ago we were hauling hay bales out to pastures to feed cattle. It’s time consuming, expensive, and not the best for putting beef on frames. There’s no substitute for fresh grass, everyday, all day. There may be a good second cutting on the market this year to get everyone squared away for winter.
For a goat, this is drive thru fast food
Moving hay is a two man job everytime. Someone drives and someone manages the gates and trailer stowaways.
A more civilized dining process
The rain came in with effective volume and deep soaking. There are still huge amounts of dew each morning from the ground humidity coming up. This native grass is resilient in drought and bounced back very quickly. We’re haven’t planted anything on it and will continue to cultivate what grows on the range here.
You don’t see dirt, you see water
A new experience for us is significant erosion from the rainfall. It smoothed out a lot of peaks and valleys from tire tracks over the years. It also carved large swales and valleys of it’s own in the low spots.
We also made our first beef drop this Monday. Very happy with the quality and cleanliness of the butcher shop. I am certain we brought more flies in on our cattle then they had in the entire shop. Very much looking forward to collecting all the beef and delivering for our shareholders in a few weeks.
Somehow I never noticed the volume of food waste I produced. Well, not just me but my household. Kids are amazing at taking a plate of food, eating a tithe and walking away forever. By then I don’t want it, they don’t want it, and it’s too good for the trash. Dogs get the runs off it. What to do?
“How’s about us?”
When the garden is up and running, we process an abundance of whole fruits and vegetables. Even without a garden, the family runs through lots of fruit waste. Banana peels, strawberry caps, melon rinds, squash caps, ect. Are there ancient solutions to modern problems?
The bowl of goodies
Enter the chickens and the piggies. Omnivorous and eager, they consume all of our squandered wastes. Chickens get materials in their size first, then pigs get the rest. We’re not into cannibalism either so no chicken or eggs in the chicken stream nor pork in the pig stream.
Previously we used it for compost, but food in the compost invariably attracts vermin and I don’t need vermin. I’ve attempted vermicompost (worm bin) systems but the mighty wrigglers couldn’t keep up. Those systems don’t have the eager excitement or contented full look of the livestock. It’s just fun to give scraps to these protein conversion systems.
The USDA notes one third of prepared food in the USA goes into trash. Bring home 60lbs from the store and throw 20lbs away? What a waste. https://www.usda.gov/foodlossandwaste
Can you imagine a world where people feed the waste to chickens and piggies and lowered the cost of protein for everyone? For many men across man years, that was normal. Our separation of prepared food into trash is very abnormal.
How about eggs in abundance and bacon for dinner. It’s easier then you think to keep some hens, why not pull eggs from your trash?
Scarlett earned the nickname of “The Blimp” because she was getting huuuge in late pregnancy. Then Jenny noticed her milk dropped and the hip tendons loosening up. Delivery is coming soon, maybe, so we isolated The Blimp to her own pen.
Spoiler Alert!
We came home from church and found her laboring and delivering the second kid right after we put our own kids to bed. She is a champ momma and was busy trying to clean up both kids. Then Jenny noticed another tiny hoof coming out a tiny way… But no delivery labor.
Hard to Google the answer for this one
We monitored for ten minutes with no movement. Jenny went and did some gentle checking and adjusting. Very shortly afterwards, another delivery and three good sized healthy goats joined the flock.
We help dry off the kids that Scarlett couldn’t get to and watched until everyone learned to latch on and get milk. Then off to bed, before midnight this time.
The cleaning processMilk drunk newborns
The next morning one of the boys charges back up to the house. “Mom! Scarlett had 4 baby goats!!”
Turns out she didn’t, a milk marauder found her way to join the fun and nurse off yet another distracted momma. Jenny fixed that and it’s been all cute sleeping and fun games since then.
We timed our goat kidding season to correspond with the spring bloom this year. That makes the feeding easier and more nutritious for the mothers and the temperatures are friendly to the kids.
One takeaway from last year’s birth season was to have the backup supplies ready on hand. So I packed up this bag with gloves, shop towels, knife, booster drench for momma and a colostrum substitute for a kid. We watched the calendar and buckled in for a season of new life.
The backup bag is ready
Friday night we came home around 1130pm. Ain’t no party scene like the like take-the-kids-to-the-doc-and-24hr-cvs-two-towns-over party scene.
Step one, get the kids in bed. Step two, go figure out what the high pitch hollering down in the barn is all about.
It’s all about one new momma giving birth to twins. She birthed unassisted and took care of the first kid well. She ignored the second born, which is who we heard. Because goats are unintentionally a pain, it was the coldest night in a week and downright nippy for Texas. We had fun drying off the little guy and then convincing momma to nurse him too. Come 230am, we’ve finally accomplished all those objectives and it’s time for bed. One boy, one girl, all good!
Boy and girl, as yet unnamed
Saturday, Sunday and Monday had frequent checks and cuddle sessions. My kids are great at snuggling the kids, and the goats seasoned with human interaction from the start are far easier to handle as they grow.
Kid to Kid
Monday morning, time for another birth! This one’s a single, and nursing was well underway when Jenny checked. Still wet though, not sure about that, so we dry him off. Come back out a few hours later and realize, we got ourselves a problem.
One of the twins muscled the newborn away and drank his milk! Just ran him off! Compounding the problem, momma was happy about it and was talking with the interloper while ignoring her own offspring! Not much else to do except separate them and hope it all works out.
Jenny goes to check a few hours later. Same story, same problem! The enterprising little one snuck through the fencing. He pushed his cousin off the milk and took up his rightful place as the adopted one again.
Jenny issued separation orders and then redid the fencing. A few hours later, same story. Restraining orders reissued and more fence changes. The problem is they are so small, think a Chihuahua, and they go through small holes.
“I see your fence and I raise you many escapes for play time”
So last night the youngest one got a supplement of colostrum for his dinner. The backup bag with backup supplies paid off. We’re optimistic about the future with these kids figuring out their own momma, just needs more time, right?
What’s that Jenny? He was in the wrong pen again this morning?… To be continued…
