Spring is here. Beautiful time of the year. Everything springs to life. Doors and windows stay open. With the Four Seasons, noted time traveler Vivaldi captured a bit of this energy. Let’s see what’s happening with four movements here at Raising Wood.
Our open market economy sells trees in pots RIGHT NOW because everyone has the itch to plant them. Jenny is reworking a peach tree from 3 years ago in this picture. Cardboard base, heaping piles of mulch, and deep watering all go together. There’s fruit budding on this tree now and we should get our first harvest off it. Jenny also planted some fig trees and has plans for pear trees. There is a lot of excitement about future harvests around here, even before we address the berry patch invitations.
Mesquite trees are a pain. Literally, full of thorns. They grow in the pasture and need to be be taken out by hand. Or, alternatively, you can water around it and let pasture pigs waller around it to destroy it. The pigs like this option. So do I.
Goat mothers are interesting creatures. Dot here gave birth to twins. The boy is enormous and thriving. The girl is rickety and slow. Dot recognized this from birth. She triaged the situation by focusing all her care on the boy while comprehensively neglecting the girl.
Fortunately we’re accustomed. Now we have kidding pens to set up our own triage. Five days of keeping them separate from the herd. Four times a day forcing nursing sessions for the little girl. Three goats learning to be a family. Two determined shepherds. Now one self standing and self feeding girl goat. Success is satisfying.
2am. The flock guardian Ashok is barking in the pasture. Jenny investigates. Jenny sees the problem and rouses me from bed. There is a dead chicken in the meat bird tractor. Cause of death matches three chicks from four weeks prior. The head is fine, the organs are fine, the neck is fine. The legs and thighs are sliced into chicken burger and feathers are everywhere.
Turns out Ashok was barking at a 3ft tall owl. Jenny watched it sneak talons under the lip of the tractor to grab chickens l. When the chick was 12oz, it was a good snack. Now these birds are 7lb and they don’t fit under the frame. Owl doesn’t care and just tears off a talon full of thigh meat.
I can’t always tell when an owl will show up. I can add a PVC pipe flap on the gaps. They are working for a week now and no more sliced up birds.
Well, not til we process them in early May to fill the freezer, as is right and proper. Happy spring y’all.
He is indeed. Now there’s a bird nest behind this in the shop
I’ve been out of town training for work this past week. Our running joke is that things go wrong when I’m gone, and Jenny suddenly has to figure out what to do. This time it’s been quiet and I’ll be home tonight.
Then this morning , a happy development.
Video call from Jenny, a discovery in the morning mists, a new kid in the herd.
Nursing is working and the kid is already cleaned up. A perfect overnight/early am delivery from one of our sturdy does.
Oh yes. Hello Phoebe. Thanks for picking a warm and dry morning!
2024 was our smoothest year. After 4 years of tweaking, adjusting, improving and optimizing we had the lowest ratio of labor + chores : production yet.
The biggest improvement this year has been integrating two boys (now 7&9) into dog and chicken management. It is a daily task to manage feed and water for the Livestock Guard Dogs and the Hens, as well as collecting the eggs. They are compensated per egg, so it varies by the day. They are really quite good at it and I’m proud of their efficiency in the task.
We cleared a huge range of branches on the north end of the pole barn and replaced a broken gate system. While we did the replacing, we went ahead and moved the placement of the gate to better fit our trailer access needs. Incremental improvement!
You will notice the red Packout tool storage system on the 4×4, and also in this picture in the house while I remodeled the bathroom. Huge time saver, a lot less walking back to the shop and much faster access to each tool, because it always has a home. Even for a DIY Homestead grade guy like me, this system is worth the investment for the time savings.
On the topic of organizing tools: Love getting the extension cords off shelves and workbenches. Now there is a single hanging organization system, another incremental improvement that pays dividends. When it is time to string up cables for deicing water tanks, easy access to each cable.
Family nearby replaced their wooden garage doors. They kept the wood for me and I converted them into worktop and shelving space in the shop. Nice improvement in feed & supplement storage and access for a low cost. Milk crates fit perfectly in the second level, making organization on the shelves a success. It’s a wonderful feeling when the shop is a asset to walk into, not a liability you groan and try to avoid.
While we’re in the shop, let’s talk about these Enbighten wifi electrical outlets. Originally I installed motion detecting LED panels in the shop. The idea was they would auto off when I was not in there at night. It’s a great plan, except the cats keep the lights on most nights. The shining is annoying in my bedroom window. Now I can turn them on and off from an app on my phone. Additionally, I can manage the electric fence remotely from the phone. Find a break and need to fix it? Turn the fence off. Make the repair. Turn it on. Huge time savings for electric fence maintenance, easily dozens of hours in a year. Incremental Improvement!
Since we’re looking at extension cords, diligent children, and a home remodel, check this out. There’s a green extension cord on the right side of the driveway. That 300ft of connected cable is there because the boys wanted to get our Nativity scene set up at the end of the driveway. I was in the middle of fussing with replacing trim and said “go help me by getting the power lines out there.” They knew where the cables were in the shop and ran them out without assistance. They were proud of their work, and they should be. It was a great help and gave them skin in the game as we set up the Christmas lights together.
Looking at equipment that drags gear around, sometimes you just barely manage to finish chipping wood and get the tractor in the barn while the steam is blowing out the radiator. Not a great feeling, and this is going to be some time investment to find the root cause and remedy the overheating.
Since we’re in the barn, time for hay! We haul the cattle hay around on the utility trailer. To feed the goats, we tip a bale over and cut it open, then peel hay off to toss into the feeder systems. I just like this pic of the girl and the goats playing around, so now you get to see it too.
Jenny developed an incremental improvement to this feeder from last year. She salvaged broken halves of 5 gallon buckets to make a new hay base . This prevents the tiny bits of hay from packing together and cementing the bottom of this wire arrangement and encourages more comprehensive eating of the hay.
Another Jenny concept: Affixing sheet steel on the north end of the barn. This greatly improves the storm resistance of the goat area in the winter. In the summer there’s still plenty of cross breeze to keep it from overheating. This expands the functional area of feeding hay to the goats, resulting in a healthier flock over winter.
Down at the south end, the other half of the flock has its own area. Jenny’s idea (see the theme?) was to add a passthrough gate for the farmers to farm better. Now it has a gate. Incremental improvement worth 2 minutes a night for 100 nights each winter. That’s time well spent.
You may run the numbers in your head and say “Well Robert, that took you both 3 hours to arrange and install. That’s 6 man hours. Not a good investment, that is a 2 year return to your labor!” To which I will say, “any minute saved on a daily chore is a minute farther away from frustration, annoyance and burnout. Taking 3 hours on a nice Saturday to make this a joyful experience for the family year round is worth it. Or in economics terms, the opportunity cost of our labor every night is high compared to the opportunity cost of a slow and peaceful Saturday morning. See also, that smile up in the pic.” Incremental Improvement!
A picture of a kid with a kid with another kid in the background is a good segue to some of your questions following the latest chicken processing day:
Q: “The air drying: I had not heard that needs to be done, I assume this is because you give the birds all a good rinse and just want to keep that moisture off of them for freezing?”
A: Bird skin will struggle to crisp up if it’s frozen with soggy skin. Drip/air drying helps with that. Eviscerate on the table, spray off with a hose, dunk in water in a utility sink for 10-20 minutes. After it sheds heat in the sink we move to a cooler with ice. Target is under 40f within the hour. The joints will feel stiffer when cold. Then drip/air dry for 15-20 minutes with those stiff joints. I run a big shop fan on low to keep air moving over it gently. Longer is fine too.
Q: “For bagging, you’re not using a vacuum sealer or anything, but the bags look nice and tight to the bird. Are you just dipping the bag in water to push the air out and then sealing it?”
A: I fully recommend these, We use them because Neighbor J.P. uses them because he learned to use them on a nearby pasture poultry operation. 100% success rate for both of us. texaspoultryshrinkbags.com/products/10-x-16-shrink-bags Unless the bird is over 8lb, then we size up to the turkey bag. There’s a straw that goes into the bag in the cavity of the chicken. When you dunk in 195f water the plastic begins to shrink. Remove from water. Pull the straw out and tighten zip tie completely with pliers. Let the bag dry and then label with included labels, which have excellent adhesion.
One for the road folks! There’s always some Wood to raise in 2025, Godspeed on your endeavors.
This fall we bred a month earlier for February births. That makes bigger for sale goats in the fall. We modified the winter housing to have three feeding areas so there’s less competition for headspace.
Newborn twins 3 hours before
7 mommas gave birth, 1 with a single, 5 with twins and one with triplets. 2 more on standby for delivery.
Triplets taking a long nap
We made three small pens for delivery and early stages of nursing. They share a fence with the rest of the flock so they are not isolated, but the kids have their mothers in a close space to help with nursing.
Newborn 5 minutes before
Most of the mothers did very good and required no intervention. Two of the mothers rejected one of their twins. That required extra management throughout the day to help drive nursing activity. Few things are as frustrating to me as a mother who won’t nurse one of her kids, they will both be sold by summer.
Isolated and sad kid too left. Milking stall to lock mother up to right. Absurd mother in foreground. Well fed kid to mid left. Overall, picture of the kidding pen.
By the end of a week in this facility, the neglected kids wear the mothers down and they can all nurse effectively now. No bottle feeding required!
One of the triplets started small and can’t hang with the big ones. That one is taking a bottle with great reluctance. She’s also the most advanced at eating grass so far.
Note the dull grass in foreground, recently cattle territory
It is very fun to turn them loose on the spring growth in the yard. Lots of running and jumping for the little ones and lots of weeds consumed from my yard.
Net fencing trials
We are trying a portable electric net to focus their grazing on the pasture. Opening test run was successful and we’re looking forward to experimenting throughout the summer.
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…
