The months are just flying by! March was amazing. Between babies being born and the garden we had our hands full. Here is the look back at the March images from our 365 project. Get ready for lots and lots of pictures of baby goats!
To see the daily pictures from our 365 Project “A picture a day from The Freckled Farm” follow us on Instagram @TheFreckledFarm
Check back next week for all of the “other” pictures from March.
Tux is the newest member of our farm family. I had been talking about wanting an inside lap cat for a while. Don’t get me wrong our other inside cat, Buckley, is a wonderful companion, but he has never been much of a lap cat (although this has change a little in his old age). A friend of ours, who works at a vet in Goochland, called us on Christmas eve saying that she found our lap cat. Animal control brought her into the vet completely out of it. The vet had fixed her up and they wanted to make sure she went to a good home. We went to visit her an hour later. She was so sweet and good with the kids that we told our friend to let animal control know that we were interested in her. She was at the vet another few days after which she went back to animal control to finish out her hold time, where they hold her for a short period to see if she is claimed. No one claimed her so we picked her up and brought her home on New Years Eve. She settled immediately and bonded strongly with the children. She is full of energy and is incredibly loving… She’s my perfect lap cat.
I decided this year that I wanted to document the first day of spring on the farm. While there isn’t a lot of “spring like” things happening yet, there are little hints that spring is on it’s way. There is new life on the farm with the baby goats, the trees are starting to bud, and the daffodils, the first flower to pop up each year, are poking through the ground throughout the farm. The start of spring brings so much excitement! I can’t wait to see what this spring has in store for the farm and gardens!
Digit is our sweet barn cat. He plays a large role here on the farm. His job is to keep rodents out of the feed and hay. This not only saves us money, because we are not having to replace feed that has been spoiled, but it protects the health of the entire herd. Rodents carry parasites and diseases that can affect the other animals. I cannot express enough Digit’s importance. We got Digit for this purpose, and he does his job extremely well, but he is so much more than just a rodent hunter. Digit has somehow become the watch dog of the property. He feels that it is his job to keep dogs out of the yard. We have witnessed him attacking strange dogs on more than one occasion. He has sent quite a few of them out of the yard yelping with their tail between their legs. This little fact might make him sound like a mean cat, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Digit is an amazing companion. He loves to be held and loved on. He is incredibly sweet and is extremely loved!
Warner is our new herd sire! We purchased him early spring 2014. Before 2014 we bred our does with driveway breedings, which is where you wait until your doe goes into heat, pack her into the truck, drive her to the farm where the buck lives, let them breed, then bring the doe home. It can be difficult to tell when your doe is in heat when you don’t have a buck around, and they never go into heat when it is convenient (of course!). We felt with 4 does to breed this year that it was time to get our first herd sire!
We reserved a buck at a local farm that has very strict standards for the bucks that they sell for breeding. The others, the ones who don’t reach the standards, are sent for meat. The day we went to pick out Warner they had sent all of the other bucks off to the butcher that morning. There was only 4 bucks there for us to pick from. She walked us over to the buck pin and the boys rushed up to greet us. The moment I saw Warner I knew he was ours. I don’t even recall what the other bucks looked like. I’m not sure I even looked at them. Warner was just so handsome and sweet! He caught my eye immediately!
Warner has been a great herd sire so far. He is so sweet to the girls. I can’t wait to see what the kids he sired look like! With as beautiful as our girls are, and as handsome as Warner is, we are in for some gorgeous babies!
Eleanor is Elsie’s full sister, the goat we introduced two weeks ago who had the traumatic birth. She is the opposite of her sister in nearly every way. They may be twins, but their personality couldn’t be more different. Eleanor was born without us even knowing. Her mom didn’t make enough noise during her labor for us to hear her over the monitor, so she was already born when we went out to check on Tina. Her sister had an extremely dramatic labor. Eleanor has a sweet, calm, loving personality. She follows rules and is very easily lead. She very rarely gives us a hard time. While her sister is hard headed and will never do what you want her to. And even with all of these differences these sisters love each other and are always at each other’s side.
Eleanor’s calm personality makes you gravitate to her. She is so sweet and loves to give kisses.
Every month we take and post pictures to our Instagram that are outside of the 365 Project “A Picture a Day from The Freckled Farm” but like with the 365 Project we don’t want those who don’t have Instagram to miss out on all of the fun pictures from the farm. So here are the “other” pictures from February… There aren’t as many as there was in January, but I know there will be a huge number for March because of all of the baby goat pictures! Follow us on Instagram to keep up with the pictures each day.
*** Before you scroll down I must warn you that some of the pictures below are a little graphic. They depict an actual goat birth ***
We are days away from starting our 2015 kidding season, so I thought it would be the perfect time to look back at last year’s kidding season! This year we have 4 pregnant goats, 3 of whom are due in March and another that is due in June. Last year we had two kiddings, Tina and Hillary. Hillary’s kidding, the one pictured below, was completely by the book. It went smoothly without any hiccups. Which is why we were lucky enough to document it. Tina’s kidding, however, came without any warning and required me to “go in” to help. Her kidding was not documented… for obvious reasons.
Weeks before Hillary’s kidding she was showing us signs that she was ready. Her udder was forming and her ligaments were slowly disappearing. The ligaments are about the width of a pencil and run on either side of the goat’s spine near the base of the tail. Softening ligaments is a sign that labor is near. When the ligaments completely disappear you are likely within 24 hours of labor. Hillary kept us on our toes as her ligaments were softening for almost 2 weeks before she kidded!
Saturday night I could not find Hillary’s ligaments at all. This was 3 days before her due date. We had the monitor on all night listening for signs that Hillary was in labor. The next morning when we went out to do farm chores Hillary had a thick string of mucus hanging out of her… A sign that the kidding would be starting very soon! We went inside to eat breakfast and impatiently listened to the monitor. Thirty minutes later I heard low moaning noises, so I went to check on her. I found her with the tips of hooves (a perfect birthing position) coming out. I called to Kevin over the monitor asking him to bring towels, and the rest of the kidding kit. We had created a calm, quiet environment for her to kid and everything went smoothly. For the next hour we (our children included) watched her quietly as she gave birth to two perfect kids… One buck and one doe.
According to Hillary’s ultrasound this year she is carrying at least two, potentially three kids! She is due March 28th, but will likely go at least a few days early. Sonia is the first due. Her date is March 6th. Ruth is due March 13th. Tina isn’t due until June 26th.
I can’t believe another month has already gone by! Here is a round up of the 365 pictures, A Picture a Day From The Freckled Farm, for the month of February. Enjoy!
Follow us on Instagram (@TheFreckledFarm) to see the pictures each day. Baby goats are days away and things will be blooming on the farm before too long!
If you follow us at all you know that our female goats are named after powerful women, so you may be looking at the name Elsie and trying to remember a strong woman in history who has this name… Well, you won’t find one… or you might but it wouldn’t be who this goat is named after. Elsie is technically my mother’s goat and she got her name from a powerful woman in our family… My great grandmother. A woman who played a very large role in raising my mother. Who was there for my mom through extremely hard times… The true matriarch of my family. While I never had the pleasure of meeting this wonderful woman, it seemed only fitting that we have a goat named in her honor.
Elsie has a very dramatic birth story. She was the kid involved in our traumatic kidding in 2014. Her dam is Tina and her sire is Davin of Chribrydon Farm in Lousia, VA. When we went out to check on the goats at 5am Tina was already in labor even though she had given us no warning that she was in labor at the last check. When we got to the barn Tina had already given birth to Eleanor, in a labor that seeming went smoothly, but when we checked Tina she was in the process for birthing another kid (Elsie), but the kid was in a terrible position. The optimal position for the kid to birth in is called the dive position, where both front hooves come out first followed by the nose of the goat. Elsie was coming out head first with her shoulders square (not angled as the dive position allows) and one hoof hooked under her neck. When we discovered her, her eyes were bulged and her tongue was turning blue. I thought we had already lost her and my concern turned to saving Tina. I had to “go in” to try to reposition her. When that didn’t work (she was stuck tight) I pulled her out. I passed Elsie off to Kevin and then took care of Tina. We cleaned her off, got colostrum in her and she seemed to be fine. Over the next few days she was slightly loopy, but has since totally recovered and you would never know now that she had such a traumatic birth.
Elsie is our problem child. She came into the world in a dramatic away, and she is the most hard headed of the herd. She doesn’t follow instruction and hates to be lead… not that she would go where you needed her to go without you leading her! She is a sweet girl, but just wants to do things her way.
