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White Chinese Geese

Posted by html404 on March 19, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Uncategorized

We were given a pair of White Chinese Geese on Friday. They came from the same farm as our goats. We wanted to try having geese as they are good watchdogs or sentinels. We thought they would announce anything on the west side of our barn, as well as help alert the hens to hawks. So we shall see.

The children call the geese Mr. Squak and Mrs. Squeek!

About White Chinese Geese

They are very loud, as you will note from the video above, which we took in January at our friend’s farm. They were announcing our arrival.

Like most geese they stay with the same mate for life.

Their eggs are edible. They can lay 40-100 eggs per year. Our female goose already laid an egg but due to the low temperatures the other night, it exploded.

This type of goose is good for weeding. When I found that out I tucked the information away in my mind to use once we have our garden done.

White Chinese Geese are on The Livestock Conservancy watch list so we will be helping increase their numbers if we allow our geese to raise some goslings.

Geese can be quite aggressive and have very strong wings. This is a bit of concern with young children so right now we have the geese in a stall until the ground thaws enough to put fencing up for them. As it was, over the weekend the male goose (gander) hissed at my husband when he was freeing Annabeth (goat) in the next stall from getting her head wedged in her stall gate.

Our geese upset our whole barn with their honking. Not sure if the other animals have got used to them or not.

Just another interesting animal addition to our farm!

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Cats Riding a Horse – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on March 12, 2014
in Animals, Farm Stuff, Kids Stuff, Uncategorized, Wordless Wednesday

Om our third oldest daughter caught Freckles (left) on our horse Blaze yesterday. Badger (right) was ready to jump up so she put him and Selene (middle) up there too. Ever see cats riding a horse? Neither have we.

By the way, I was wrong on the kittens sex. Freckles and Badger are males! Aw well, what can I say, I haven’t had cats or kittens since I was a child! Ha! I’ve been told they are hard to sex when they are small so that made me feel less of a fool. So the battle of the cat sexes are even at three and three!

The children tried putting our Tom cat on Blaze too but he was too scared and jumped off! Or so they say.

I thought Om captured this photo very well.

Do you see the straw hanging from Badger’s mouth? He was having fun rolling in the hay!

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Monday Motivation or Lack Thereof

Posted by html404 on March 10, 2014
in Animals, Blog Stuff, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Monday Motivation, Uncategorized

I have actually lacked motivation lately, thus the infrequent posting, that and the fact I have been extremely tired. Nope not pregnant, just lacking sleep! My brain doesn’t function well with little sleep. The two paper routes are killing me but I said I would give it two months and I still have a couple weeks left. Plus, it has been a long winter making the driving time so much longer than it should be.

What’s Motivating Me?

This past weekend was extremely busy for us with Liberty Day (I was solo with the younger four) and a CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture) Expo for our farm. I have follow up to do from the expo, plus our farm newsletter. We have to pick up 120 meat chicks and 150 young laying hens on Thursday or I should say my husband and son will be doing that task. Friday we are picking up a pair of White Chinese geese that were given to us, plus our children have piano here at our home. Saturday we have a green market for the farm….let’s just say it’s farm week!

In addition to the farm stuff, I have blogging stuff due and overdue, plus I want to start getting ahead on blog posts in preparation for spring planting, etc. I get tired and overwhelmed just thinking about it all. Ever feel that way?

What’s motivating you this week?

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Meet Juno Our Babydoll Lamb

Posted by html404 on February 26, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Kids Stuff, Uncategorized, Wordless Wednesday

Photo compliments of Hill Bunker Farms

Meet Juno our son’s new Babydoll lamb! Two weeks ago we received word from the breeder that she discovered black twin lambs. Apparently, a ram jumped the fence in September and helped make these cuties so she had early lambs. Since we were the first to reserve 2014 lambs, we were offered one of these black ones! For a bit more money we said yes! Our son is excited that Juno should be able to come home in six weeks, depending on if our other lamb is born or if there is a companion lamb available to keep Juno company until our second lamb is ready to come home.

Oh and she’s a ewe (female sheep). We thought we were going to get a ewe and a ram (male sheep) but are kind of leaning towards another ewe….we’ll wait and see what sex the next lamb is I guess. We need warmer weather to get more fencing up! Eeeks….so much snow to melt too.

Isn’t Juno adorable?

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SitStay.com Pet Treats for Valentine’s Day

Posted by html404 on February 14, 2014
in All Natural Products, Animals, Holidays, Pet Food, Pet Products, Pet Treats, Reviews, Uncategorized

Our Newfie/Golden Retriever mix dog, Padfoot, recently tried Shindig Valentine’s Day Treat Trio dog treats from SitStay.com. Valentine’s Day is a day to remember our pets with “sweet” treats too, right? And since dogs cannot have chocolate Love Licks, Heartbreakers and Love Birds are the next best thing…for a dog.

Love Licks – 3″ jumbo patties made from USDA inspected bison tongue & heart. Nutrient-rich and tasty!

Heartbarkers – 100% USA raised beef heart. High in protein & coenzyme Q10 for good heart health.

Love Birds – Human-grade chicken & turkey breast fillets – raised & packaged right here in the USA! Perfectly combined poultry proteins.

All include ingredients are sourced right here from the USA.

The ingredients in these dog treats are actually pretty good. I had photos of the ingredients to include but they are stuck on our DSLR camera.

Padfoot really likes these treats, then again he’s not a very picky eater. Sometimes he gets sick of certain things he has a lot, like chicken, eggs or bread if the children are tossing their leftovers to him! He definitely preferred these over his peanut butter that you see in the video. He usually loves licking out the peanut butter jar, not so much this time when a Valentine’s Day treat was available instead.

Be aware I was really loud at the beginning so have your volume turned down!

Padfoot gives Shindig Valentine’s Day Treat Trio dog treats from SitStay.com two thumbs up!

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Week #15 Saturday Top Five Laughs

Posted by html404 on February 8, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Fun Stuff, Humor, Kids Stuff, Saturday Top Five Laughs, Uncategorized

We are joining Mel over at The Mommyhood Chronicles for week #15 (for us) in the Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week.

5. Crushed Bones and Poison Bloody Death compliments of Amelia Bedilia when I told her to label it “Baking Soda”. She’s been hanging out with B, can you tell?

She’s not our best speller…takes after her dad and yes, he’d say the same thing!

4. “Picture it, Mommy, picture it!” Jr. said about his “school work”. My phone crashed this week and I think I may have lost the photos of school work, as I could not find them on my phone or computer.

3. Goats are very curious. They got a hold of our son’s glove and then were fighting over it. They tried to nibble on our oldest’s iPod. They thought the stiff brush B was trying to brush them with was something to eat. They were trying to catch sunbeams on each other’s backs. When the dog got loose and ran down to the barn and jumped on the goats stall, all they did was paw the ground and shake their heads at him.

2. We went to the mall for a girls day out yesterday and because of traffic etc. I had the girls watching for cars and people as I backed out of the Panera Bread parking lot. Amelia Bedilia goes, “Ah mommy, the snow bank!” I told her I didn’t care about the snow bank or the curb because I didn’t have to pay for those if I backed into them. I cared about people and cars! Yeah, can’t tell money is on my mind…sigh.

1. The other day I napped in the afternoon and woke up around 4:15pm when my husband came into the room. I jumped up and said, “I’m late for the newspaper!” My husband said, “It’s 4:15 in the afternoon.” I was so dazed and disoriented it took me a few minutes for that to sink in. I just stood there trying to focus…it was weird. Robert and the children laughed and teased me about that one for the rest of the day!

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More Kids – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on February 5, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Kids Stuff, Uncategorized, Wordless Wednesday

Nope, we are not having a baby! We just got our second oldest daughter’s goats over the weekend! We were suppose to get her a goat last year but the one we found fell through. We took the summer off from looking and started our hunt back up in the fall. We found them in Wisconsin in November and because we wanted them bred, the owner kept them for the last two months to make sure they had ample time with the billy goat.

B decided on Oberhasli dairy goats. They are sweet natured and docile. The males (or wethers a.k.a. casterated males) may be used for meat. She named them Annabeth and Hazel. If both goats successfully give birth we could have anywhere from 1-4 kids come spring, as twins and even triplets run in their family and many goat families. That means our goat flock could grow from 2 to 6 or more very easily this year. B will probably keep one, give one to her sister for her birthday and sell any others. At least that’s what she’s thinking right now. We are looking forward to having our own goat milk as it is very hard to find for B’s soap making business.

Excuse the watermark on my photos, they are for our farm and I just didn’t want to take the time to make new ones for this blog.

B and Hazel getting better acquainted.

Annabeth and Hazel traveled very well. It was a bit of a struggle to get them in the dog crate we used to transport them but once they were in there together they settled in nicely. By the time we got them home they were curled up together and hard to get OUT of the crate! Once we got one out, the other pretty much followed.

We have an old barn. It’s all open in the bottom so there were no real stalls. We have had to create each of the stalls for the horse, the cow and now the goats. My husband built their stall out of free wood pallets. A friend gave us the idea to use wood pallets to make the goat’s pasture and then we came across the idea for the stall when googling “goat stalls”. It is very rough looking but it does its job, was cheap and I think my hubby did a good job. I’ll post about the DIY goat stall separately. I have to try and get better photos. The barn is so dark that it’s been a challenge.

Here’s to our “new” kids!

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Week #13 Saturday Top Five Laughs

Posted by html404 on January 25, 2014
in Animals, Blog Stuff, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Fun Stuff, Humor, Kids Stuff, Saturday Top Five Laughs, Uncategorized

Can’t believe I have been consistent for 13 weeks for the Saturday Top Five Laughs! Woo hoo! Once more we have joined The Mommyhood Chronicles in the Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week.

5. Last week I went out to lunch with my “farm” buddies – other women farmers and farmerwannabees – and my friend, who also has cows (beef and a Jersey) shared with me that conventional farmers do not allow their cows to go the bathroom during milking. Now I could be wrong, but I swear the cows at the farm we grew up going to and buying milk from went to the bathroom during milking. Nova Scotia friend Elaine, are you reading? What does the N farm do? Anyhooo…Miss Moo going potty has been an issue for us. So C told me to hold a bucket under Miss Moo’s tail when she went to go. B did this ONCE and Miss Moo has stopped going to the bathroom during milking. Miss Moo knew what she was doing was wrong and was taking advantage of us beginners! I am still shaking my head at that. My pregnancy and sensitivity to smells stopped me from continuing to milk Miss Moo, but so did her bathroom tricks. I think I’ll have to pick up milking again…if Miss Moo will let me. She would not let anyone milk her one evening when B and my husband went to a farmers market. She waited for B to come home! She’s definitely B’s cow.

4. Our three year old ‘s drawing of a snowman from a gift card envelope.

3. Jr. and my husband – snuggle buddies and partners in mischief – these two definitely love each other!

2. I bought a new garbage can to store animal feed in and this is what the little boys did with it before it got taken down to the barn….why buy toys, right? Then I had to take it from them because they started to do stupid stuff. What my husband likes to blame on the “S” gene (for stupid gene).

1. We still have our Christmas tree up. Yep, we do. I bet it stays up until the end of January.

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Miss Moo Miscarried – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on January 22, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Miscarriage, Pregnancy Loss, Uncategorized, Wordless Wednesday

Yesterday Dr. M, one of our vets, was out to check Miss Moo to see if she is with calf……she WAS indeed pregnant but she miscarried.

Warning contains some graphic cow anatomy details! Not so wordless this week, but that’s not really new.

A week ago Friday or Saturday evening a couple of the children came in from the barn saying Miss Moo had a bubble in her butt. By the time I got down to the barn the bubble had popped and she had a clear, mucous like discharge, not bloody, but indicative she could have miscarried. Believe me I googled every known term for “cow miscarriage”, except spontaneous abortion since I hate that term, to learn what I could about miscarriages in cows. Then I prepared B, just in case, because I didn’t want her to be shocked if the vet did announce Miss Moo had miscarried.

Yesterday when Dr. M checked Miss, she only had two thirds the fluid she should have and Dr. M could not feel the calf. We were half expecting it, but it’s still disappointing. Miss Moo should absorb (such an awful way to describe it) the calf in the next 10-14 days and go back into her heat cycle at which time we will try to AI (artificially inseminate her) again. The vet suggested we switch bull semen and instead of trying for a pure bred Guernsey to try for a cross breed. There may be some incompatibilities, though she has been bred to “Grumpy” before. So we are going to try our friend’s Dutch Belted (otherwise known as Oreo cookie cows black with a big white strip in the middle of their bellies) and see if the third time works. It will be interesting to see what the calf looks like, that’s for sure!

These are my friend’s Dutch Belted cows, she sold the heifer, the one in the background, if I remember correctly.

Here’s what my friend said about the Dutch Belted bull semen (like you all want bull semen education, but hey, it’s my blog and I’ll blog if I want to, blog if I want to! Extreme tiredness = silliness):

Your straw (or more, if it takes more than one try) will be from “Snappy”. Supposedly, Snappy sires “easy-calving”, vigorous calves, so we’ve used his stuff on two heifers now. Funny, the heifer that just went to C’s friend in North Carolina is carrying a Snappy calf, half-sibling to your eventual calf.

Dr. M and I thought it would be a good fit, because both of our heifers “took” on the first try with Snappy, and both kept their calves past the time when they could have lost an early pregnancy.

Good luck!

Miss Moo is finally up to her normal body condition after coming to us last April extremely underweight so the vet was impressed again by her weight gain. At his last visit he said she needed another 100-200 lbs, so that she looked good to the vet was good news. We knew she was doing well because none of her ribs are showing anymore, it’s just that confirmation is extra nice, you know? Hopefully her improved body condition will help her conceive this next time. We will be upping her minerals too. He said she isn’t a “fertile Myrtle”. Even if she isn’t we would never get rid of her. She’s a pet, as well as a food source. Besides now that her weight is up she won’t be anything to feed once she’s on pasture and we grow our own hay for winter so it’s not like we have to pay out a bunch of money for hay. I am going to hope and pray this next AI sticks.

Now, here’s to hoping for a fall calf!

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Week #11 Saturday Top Five Laughs – Join the Blog Hop!

Posted by html404 on January 11, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Humor, Kids Stuff, Saturday Top Five Laughs, Uncategorized

Once more we have joined The Mommyhood Chronicles for Week #11 – for us – in the Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week.

5. Our oldest daughter asked our Amelia Bedilia to quiz her on some of her school work. Well, Amelia Bedilia could not read her sister’s handwriting so she improvised, substituting it with mumbo jumbo. The problem? Her older sister could not understand what she was saying and was of no help in the quizzing process. Oh dear Amelia Bedilia, we love you because you make us laugh!

4. This photo doesn’t do the newspaper justice Amelia Bedilia style of bagging but it gives you an idea of what it should look like and shouldn’t look like. I can’t remember what happened or how but Amelia Bedilia, B and I just cracked up on Wednesday over Amelia’s bagging style. Thankfully she saw the humor in it too.

3. We found “Luigi” a gift from Italy in our big bag of oats and our three year old throwing pennies at him/it.

2. This morning Miss Moo broke out of her stall and plowed down my husband’s wall of hay he built to reduce the cold and wind. Naughty little cow!

1. We had a little girl in our home who claimed she couldn’t find her school work all week. Guess where her brother found it this morning? In the laundry basket. Still not sure how it got there and no one is fessing up to anything!