It’s time to break up all the goat facts with a chicken fact! Today’s chicken fact was one that I found quite interesting…
If you have several different roosters around your hens can/will breed with all of them, but they also have the ability to reject the sperm of roosters with whom they do not wish to reproduce. She can physically eject the sperm after they breed. This generally happens when the rooster is lower in the pecking order.
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.
It’s April!! Spring is really starting to settle in and temperatures are rising slowly. The trees around the farm are starting to bloom, the garden is coming together, and we have lots of babies running around. It’s a wonderful time to live on a farm!
Last Friday Hillary finally had her babies. She was actively in labor for well over 24 hours. All day Thursday she was panting heavily, and had several very strong contractions. We sat with her from 9pm-11pm because we were sure it was going to happen any second. She was up and down, and having contractions here and there. Finally after two hours without much progression we decided it would be a good idea to get some sleep… because as we all know a watched goat never kids. We had a restless night with all of the moaning and movement coming over the monitor, but nothing changed, and when morning farm chores came along she had not progressed at all.
Kevin went to check on Hillary around 8am and she had started to push. It wasn’t long before a little doe was born and a second kid was on the way. The second kid’s kidding wasn’t as easy. He was coming out head first, legs back, and he was huge… nearly as big as our 2 week olds. She pushed for quite a while and I had to aid a little, but he finally came out. Lastly, with very little effort, Hillary had another doe. Everyone is doing well! We are officially done with kidding until June, when Tina is due. 3 Kiddings, 8 Total Babies, 4 Bucks and 4 Does
Production has ramped up around here. We’ve been working hard to prepare for our busy season starting in less than two weeks. We are of course at South of the James every Saturday still. Next weekend we have Spring Bada-Bing, which is our biggest craft show of the spring. The following weekend we have RVA Earth day… and then after that market seasons start to kick off! It won’t be long and we will be in 5 markets a week! This means lots of soap and laundry detergent needs to be made. I really love this time of year!
The garden is moving along! The huge expansion has been a difficult transition, time wise. Which is to be expected when you are growing on 5x more space than in years past. I am desperately trying to get the beds in the new garden prepped, but it’s extremely time consuming. We had to till the beds because the soil was so incredibly compact. With tilling we have to clear out the weeds and mix in some compost and some of the good garden soil that we purchased. I hope that the measures that we are taking to improve the soil will keep us from having to till again. The soil is in a lot better shape than I was expecting it to be though! In that area it was just red clay, so I have been dumping manure and soiled straw on top of the soil for almost a year now and it has really seemed to help.
We have already planted some of our cooler weather crops. So far we have planted potatoes, peas, radishes, turnips, carrots, lettuce and beets. This is my first time planting potatoes. I find them very intimidating, but we have great people guiding us. I am extremely excited to see how they turn out. Considering the amount of potatoes we go through each year being able to successfully grow them would be a wonderful thing!
About a month ago I started a bunch of seeds in our friend Toni’s (of Bella Grove Farm) greenhouse. It turned into HUNDREDS of cabbage, tomato, pepper, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, greens, and herb plants. I also planted a few varieties of flowers. I’ve been slowly filtering them home and some will be transplanted into the actual garden within the next week. In the meantime I have been searching for ideas of new ways to cook and preserve all of the veggies that we are planting this year… because I plan to have an abundance, not just enough to get by!
I am so excited to see the garden come together.
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!
This week we have one last goat kid fact to share with you: Standard goat kids, on average, weigh 6 pounds at birth. While they are tall they are also very lean. This weight can vary due to the size of the litter. In larger litters the kids will likely be smaller, and in single births it is likely that the kid will be larger.
Another week has gone by and Hillary is still pregnant (or at least she is as I am writing this post on Tuesday)! As of Monday the babies lungs were developed. We made it! She could go any day now and has really started the processes of building up to labor. Her ligaments have loosened up again, and she is quite swollen. I think she is actually waiting until I go out of town on Thursday so Kevin has to handle her kidding alone… you know to stir things up again, because thats what goats do. She is so huge and uncomfortable that I am hoping she kids sooner rather than later for her sake. Either way there will be new babies by next week’s What’s up Wednesday.
The babies from the first two kiddings are getting so big. They grow up so quickly. It’s hard to have a bad day when you get to spend time with these little cuties:
(By the way… This image is from a post documenting the first day of Spring on the farm. Check back Saturday, when that blog post goes live, to see more)
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!
Today is the first day of Spring! Hooray! Amelia, the newest addition to The Freckled Farm, wants to say “Happy Spring Y’all”
