Ever wonder why the world seems to have it in for goats?

Why throw them over in favor of the sheep (who are also, I guess, not a good thing)? What did the goats ever do wrong?

Plenty, it turns out.

Look who’s behind Finch, off in the back of the classroom far corner of the pasture, in the woods on the other side of the fence.

That’s right. It’s Team Goat.

You’d think it was a Hieronymus Bosch or something, there’s so much transgression, revelry, and illicit enjoyment (well, actually, more than any of that: Milkshakes’ virid memento from Solomon!).

Instead of staying in the pasture, content with the grass and hay that are there, they’ve decided to make a break for freedom, and enjoy all sorts of forest edibles (the only ones I’m mad about are the ostrich ferns– I’ve had an yen for their fiddleheads since I saw them last spring!). They’ve busted a hole in the welded wire fencing we put up along the bottom of the four-board fences, and scooted underneath it.

As you can tell from their faces, these ladies (and their kids) are not at all repentant.

“We just wanted a little vacation! A bit of adventure!”

Adelaide & Sophie, potamophiloi both, enjoyed a riparian repast.

All there was to do was herd them back in through their hole (which is plenty tricky in the brushy undergrowth, let me tell you) and close up the hole in the fencing.

I guess I should be glad that the goats are healthy, active, and cocksure enough to go out for a daytime escape.

And, in unrelated news, look who else has turned up in the woods!

A flock of mysterious Bonus Chickens! We don’t think they’re our neighbors’, since they 1) sleep in a tree in the woods and 2) just showed up a few weeks ago. Amy told me what kind they are, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten. There are about 4 or 5 hens, and a beautiful golden-buff rooster. We haven’t yet tried to adopt them– but should we? They seem to have quite a happy little woodland life already, and we need more chickens like a hole in the head.

Our good friend Dr. Chris Grover stopped by this morning to check on the calves and to try to ascertain when Miss Daisy is going to have that enormous baby that she’s been carrying seemingly forever.

Unfortunately, the results of the ultrasound were inconclusive. Dr Grover is the first to say that he isn’t an equine specialist and he has referred me to another local vet that may have better luck. Hopefully we can get him out here this week for another peek inside.

In chicken news, we are up to our eyebrows in eggs! Apparently our hens didn’t get the memo that they are supposed to slow down their laying when the days are shorter.

Because we have so many different breeds of chicken now, we are getting a lovely variety of colored eggs.

Aren’t they beautiful?

They range in color from white to chocolate. It’s one of those small things that reminds me what a magical place the world really is.

I wish you were all my neighbors so I could share some of this bounty with you. Living in the country, all my neighbors have hens- and eggs- of their own. I’ve had to get creative, carrying several dozen in my car and foisting them on unsuspecting shop clerks and the folks at the post office. The Fedex delivery man left my house with two dozen last week!

Wishing you a gentle Monday.

After staying up all night, I woke up at 8 a.m. with my Spidey senses tingling and look what I found in the pasture. Miss Martha gave birth to a giant, healthy ram lamb. We haven’t named him yet.

Then the phone rang. It was the post office calling to tell me that our order of 45 baby chicks had arrived. I swung by, picked them up and headed to Amy’s house to get them into the brooder where they will spend the next four weeks or so.

We ordered 12 different varieties of birds, and it was super fun opening the box and trying to figure about who was what.

The silkies were super-easy to identify already.

They are all so lovely.

Emily, Amy’s oldest daughter, got straight to work dipping each chick’s beak in water to teach them how to drink. This is something that the mama hen would do if they were being raised by a hen.

Wren

Wren and Piper relaxing in the run in shed.

Cini and Lucy. Lucy is grounded for eating a baby chicken last week. She’s on a tie out until she learns better or the chicks get to big to eat, whichever comes first.

Dakota, mama of Scarlett and Indigo, is doing a good job loving on her babies but she doesn’t seem to understand that she needs to feed them as well.

We’ve been bottle feeding them in the meantime and they are quickly becoming favorites.

I’m more than a little bit in love with them.

Ethel is still doing a great job with her chicks. They are growing like crazy!

Soon, all 11 of them won’t be able to fit under her!

She’s not fat- she’s fluffy! Actually, Ethel is looking large and in charge because she is sitting on 11 chicks. She hatch five of them herself, then I tried a trick I read about in a chicken book. I waited until she was asleep, with her brood tucked underneath her, and slipped 6 day-old chicks from the farm store under her. When she woke up she thought they were all hers and has been mothering them ever since.

It was warmish today, so Ethel took her whole brood out for a stroll. The chicks have no problem getting out of the coop but they can’t figure out how to get back in, so we have to chase them around and count them before closing up the coop. It’s kind of hilarious.

In porcine news, I put Charley and Churchill to work this week. The boys are in a small moveable pen and we are using them to till up the area that is going to be our garden. This is another thing I read about in a book and I wasn’t entirely sure it would work. The idea is that instead of using a gas-powered tiller, that pollutes the air and damages the soil, the pigs turn up the soil and fertilize it at the same time.

I am happy to report that it totally works! Don’t believe me? Ask Churchill’s snout! Our garden will be ready for planting as soon as it warms up a bit.

Jerry’s  job on the farm is to be awesome and, as usual, he’s nailing it.

“When is RJ getting here to pick us up? Is that him? What kind of car will they be in?”

Okay, I already have my fair share of chickens at the farm. I might even have your fair share of chickens at the farm. So you might be surprised to hear that I recently ordered 45 day-old chicks from a hatchery.

Here’s the thing. Those cute little baby chicks you see at your local hardware store? Those are the gateway drug of the poultry world. Because once you have chickens, you can’t imagine how you ever lived without them and the only thing you want is more chickens.

And not just any chickens. Fancy chickens. The fancier the better. This is the stage of addiction that my friend Amy and I now find ourselves at. When we talk on the phone, we talk about chickens. When one of us is out and sees a sign by the side of the road announcing “Chicks for Sale”, we slam on the brakes and reach for our checkbooks. We email each other photographs of rare breeds and daydream about buying a commercial-sized incubator.

In short, we’ve both got a chicken-shaped monkey on our backs.

So, ordering 45 day-old chicks didn’t seem like a completely insane thing to do, all things considered. Just look at these beauties and tell me that you don’t agree.

This is the Silver Polish hen. I ordered 4 of these.

The White Polish reminds me of Phyllis Diller, no?

I got Cochins in three colors; Buff (pictured above), Black and White,

White Faced Spanish hens,

Red Caps,

Mottled Houdans,

Crevecoeurs

Golden Polish

and several more breeds. In addition to keeping at least one of each of these beauties for the farm, we’ll be selling some of them as four-week-old chicks. I’ve had the idea to do this since my beloved Chicken World closed its doors. Chicken World was filling a niche for several reasons. First of all, you could buy two or three chicks or chickens from them, whereas most mail order and online hatcheries have a minimum of 15 birds per order. (There’s a good reason for this- they need to put that many birds in a box to provide enough body heat to keep the chicks alive. Unfortunately, most people don’t need or want that many birds, especially when they are just getting started.)

Another downside of ordering chicks from hatcheries is that the mortality rate is greatest from the day the chicks hatch until they are four weeks old. But the biggest reason to avoid ordering day-old chicks is that “brooding” them is a total pain in the back porch. The temperature has to be very carefully controlled for the young chicks and changed on a regular schedule. Finally, tiny chicks are hugely messy, turning over waterers, walking through their food and popping everywhere. Their bedding has to be changed constantly, which is fine in the beginning but gets old quickly.

Hardware and feed store chicks have their own problems, primarily that they are what’s known as “straight run.” That means that they haven’t been sexed, and you are likely buying as many roosters as hens. Not a good thing. What most of us are looking for is chicks designated as “Pullets only.”

So JMF is going to be selling some four-week-old and up chicks in hard-to-get varieties and see how it goes. Amy’s husband built us a massive brooder, which will cut way down on the work. Plus Amy’s oldest daughter Emily, aka the Chicken Whisperer, has been hired to do all the dirty work.

In addition to the birds I ordered, we’ll have some farm-hatched chicks available and some hens that are already laying available too. Our first batch will be available the weekend of our Shearing Day Celebration. (I’ll figure out some kind of online reservation system between now and then.) Our chicks will come complete with instructions to get you started if you’re a novice when it comes to poultry.

They will also come with a warning label: Danger! Poultry can very quickly become an addiction!

]]> http://www.fiberfarm.com/2011/03/chicken-madness/feed 50 http://www.fiberfarm.com/2011/03/amy-bought-me-a-chicken http://www.fiberfarm.com/2011/03/amy-bought-me-a-chicken#comments Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:03:20 +0000 Susan http://www.fiberfarm.com/?p=10053

She’s a Mottled Houdan. Jenny named her Liberace.

Thanks Amy! I love her (fingers crossed that she’s a her) already.

Hello, my friends! I’m so sorry for the lack of blogging for the past couple of days, but I was having a lovely, relaxing, warm weekend with friends and I wanted to be fully present at the farm, if you know what I mean.

Joel came to the farm on Thursday and my dear friend Shirra arrive from New York on Friday. Shirra came down to the farm for our Fall Shearing party, but I had such a house full of girlfriends that weekend that we didn’t get to spend much time together, so I was really looking forward to her visit.

In addition to having two of my favorite people visiting, the weather was absolutely, insanely beautiful in Central Virginia all weekend, perfect for spending time out side with the animals.

Shirra brought her brand-new Nikon D3100 camera with her and was thrilled that Joel was at the farm to help her learn how to use it. The two of them spent all day Saturday taking pictures of the sheep, goats, dogs, pigs and  Aberdeen. While they were shooting, I spent three hours cleaning out the barn and the rest of the day tidying the farm, reading and napping on the couch with a fire going in the wood stove. It was heavenly!

The ewes and does suddenly started looking very pregnant this weekend. Totally makes sense, since lambing and kidding are only about five weeks away. [Tomorrow I'll write about my preparations for lambing season, the supplies I order, etc.]

All pics that follow are Joel’s, unless otherwise indicated.

Delware and Dakota, in the front and rear of this pic, will be lambing for the first time this year. It seems like five minutes ago I was watching those two coming into the world and soon will have the honor of watching them have babies of their own.

Miss Liberty. Liberty usually twins or triplets. Can’t wait to meet the lambs in there!

Miss Amelia. She might be the best mama in our flock. She’s the mother of Delaware and Dakota and last year’s Darcy and Dashwood. [Hmm...how did that happen? I never even thought about it till I wrote it.]

Miss Victoria aborted her first lamb before lambing season began last year, so this will be her first time being a mama.

Is it just me, or does Hannah look exactly the same in every picture? Kind of deranged or something? If she sticks with history, Hannah will have a boy/girl set of twins again this year, but anything is possible.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m going to miss this pups something fierce. They are so sweet and funny and soft.

And so different from one another.

Tella is exactly like her mama, Lucy. She has boundless energy and wants to play ALL. THE. TIME.

She is more like Lucy’s playmate than her pup.

Shirra took this pic of the two of them. It perfectly captures both of their personalities. Tella’s smile kills me.

Tella will grow to be a good Livestock Guardian Dog (LGD), but she will take some correcting and work during her puppy and teenage years to get her there.

Vanni, on the other hand, is EXACTLY like his father, Cini, was at this age. He’s super-chill but serious. Completely lovable and loyal and already taking guarding postures when he’s with the sheep. In other words, he is natural born LGD.

He can be playful but he’s a watchful dog, always aware of what’s going on in the pasture.

I’m not going to lie- if these puppies weren’t going to a friend’s wonderful farm together, I would be sorely tempted to refund Vanni’s deposit and keep him here for Juniper Moon. Vanni is going to be a heroic guard dog, a mini Cini, and I hope it doesn’t sound arrogant to say that Cindy is lucky to be getting him. It’s okay, cause we will definitely be breeding Lucy and Cini again. They make wonderful pups!

Jenny, Amy and I are taking a road trip to Nashville to meet Cindy for a puppy hand off this weekend. We’ll be taking loads of pics and video so you can come along.

Another Joel pic. This cracked me up.

HELP! I’m drowning in eggs! Seriously, I’m getting 5 to 6 dozen eggs a week right now. I made meringues last night, which used up a dozen but they JUST. KEEP. COMING.

Aberdeen. Good Lord! I love that mule.

Sorry this post is all over the map. A more focused post tomorrow, I promise.

You get an extra lovely edition of Today in Pictures today, because my friend Joel is down at the farm for the weekend and he offered to share some of his amazing photos with you. It was really hard to chose a handful to post- Joel took over 600!!!

Cini, the hardest working LDG in the business.

Believe it or not, this is one of this year’s lambs. They are healthy and ENORMOUS.

Sweet Buster. Buster is one of the my original flock and an old friend.

Darcy, another of this year’s lambs.

Miss Sicily

Victoria

Chicken Super Highway

Churchill and Charley

Sqooshy puppy face

Lucy mothering her pups

It totally exhausting being a puppy.