The Freckled Farm Soap Company

Tag: Farming

  • Getting to Know The Freckled Farm – Topanga

    Want to know more about the farmers, animals, and buildings on The Freckled Farm? Every Friday I will introduce you to another part of The Freckled Farm. This week you have a chance to get to know Topanga!

    The Freckled Farm Soap Company - Topanga ChickenTopanga is a buff orpington, and she is desperate to be a momma, as orpingtons often are. We cannot keep this chicken from going broody. This means she sits in the nesting box all day trying to hatch eggs, none of which have been fertilized. I collect eggs multiple times a day and shoo her off the nest each time. When I am able to get her out of the coop she wanders around the yard puffed out and growling. I have thought about getting her eggs to hatch, but we currently don’t have room for more chickens.

    When chickens go broody they stop laying eggs, which with Topanga is a good thing. We have never been able to get her to absorb calcium well, and her eggs have a tendency to be very thin. They always break in the nesting box, getting yoke all over the other eggs and straw. This is even after giving her oyster shells, yogurt, greens, and anything else we can find that contains calcium. None of the other chickens seem to have this problem, so we know it’s not the overall diet of the chickens.

    Topanga is a beautiful bird and one of the more friendly chickens. She is one of the largest chickens we have and when she is all puffed out she looks monstrous compared to the other girls.

    Chicks

    The Freckled Farm Soap Company makes handmade goat milk soaps. Our body care products are all natural and made with love. For more information about our products please visit our website: www.thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com

  • Getting to Know The Freckled Farm – Blue Ridge

    Want to know more about the farmers, animals, and buildings on The Freckled Farm? Every Friday I will introduce you to another part of The Freckled Farm. This week you have a chance to get to know Blue Ridge – Aka Blue!

    Llama

    Oh sweet Blue. He is nervous and shy, which makes him extremely endearing. He reminds me of Filburt from Rocko’s Modern Life. Although he is a guardian he is the baby of the farm, and while I am sure if it came down to it he would protect his goats we see him as more of a companion for Afton. He is very much a loved member of the farm.

    Llama

    The Freckled Farm Soap Company makes handmade goat milk soaps. Our body care products are all natural and made with love. For more information about our products please visit our website: www.thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com

  • Llamas as a Guard Animal

    How many of you are familiar with using llamas as a guard animal? I wasn’t until two weeks before our llamas moved in… Yes, TWO weeks. I may have heard about it in passing, but it certainly wasn’t something I was exposed to enough to consider it on my own. Using llamas as guard animals was a completely unexpected and out of the blue decision for us.

    The Freckled Farm - Llamas as Guard Animals

    Our original plan was to get a dog, a Great Pyrenees. We actually had a reservation for a puppy and were only weeks away from picking her up when I got an email from the breeder saying that five of the puppies had passed (at 5 weeks) and they believed that it was because the dam had so many puppies and couldn’t care for all of them. They didn’t have a plan to autopsy the puppies who passed, so I was tentative about getting one of the remaining puppies. I called our absolutely wonderful, patient, helpful farm veterinarian Melinda and she suggested we pass on the puppy. We could be getting a dog with medical problems that wont show up until later. She went on to say that she felt like a llama or two would be a better fit for us anyways. Their care is very similar to how we care for the goats, they wouldn’t take training, and would be just as affective as the dog. I was a little skeptical since the idea of llamas never even crossed my mind… Where do you even get a llama?

    Melinda came over the next day for some routine blood work and we discussed it further. I wasn’t sold that I absolutely needed a guardian, after all our pasture was fenced in with five foot no climb horse fence (yes, we went a little overboard). Her response “coyotes can jump 6 feet and you NEVER hear of an attack on a llama farm” I was well aware of the coyotes in our area and the thought of losing one of our girls is horrible, so just like that I was sold. She gave us information of where we could get a llama. I called the farm and set up a visit for that weekend…

    The llama farmers, as Breckin calls them, were John and Debra of Westerham Farm and Studio. We toured their beautiful farm and asked a ton of questions. We went with the intention of getting one llama and ended up picking two. I expressed my concern that the llama(s) would not actually protect my goats because not all llamas are guard llama. They promised to replace any llamas that didn’t appear to be doing their job, but in their experience whether they were actually specifically protecting the goats or not they would attack any predator that came into the pasture. I was feeling excited and confident, and scheduled to have our guys delivered…. just like that two weeks later we had llamas on The Freckled Farm…

    The Freckled Farm - Llamas as a Guard Animals

    It was interesting adjusting to the llamas. They are far bigger than our goats, and not as social. They didn’t want to be touched and would immediately move away if you put your hand out to them. I wasn’t sure how I was going to catch them to give them their monthly deworming shot (since we live in a state with white tail deer, who carry the M worm). Over the next month or so they slowly warmed to me (in fact they are very easy to handle now), but I was still nervous that they wouldn’t actually guard. It was a week or two later I had the opportunity to see Afton in action. A random dog came up to the fence and all of the sudden Afton was running full speed in his direction while screaming his battle cry. The terrified dog ran away with his tail between his legs. Since then anytime a dog, hunter, random car, strange noise has managed to wander onto our property Afton has made his presence known. Nothing has attempted to actually come into the pasture, that I know of, but I’m confident at this point that Afton would “take care” of anything that did. Our sweet, sensitive Blue generally stays with the goats if there is a perceived threat (maybe he is protecting the goats specifically rather than the pasture as a whole like Afton), but there have been times that I have seen him right there with Afton protecting the fence line.

    The protection goes beyond the battle cry and full speed charge. The first few months that we had the goats we locked them in the barn at night, but we hated doing that and it was always a chore trying to get them to go in. When the llamas moved in we stopped closing them in and kept the barn door open. Now if you go out at night you will find Afton laying across the opening of the barn.

    I am so pleased with our protectors. I feel so safe knowing they are protecting our girls.

    Why I believe llamas are the best guardians

    1. They eat the same things as the goats (although we do not feed our llamas grain), so there is no need to purchase and prepare a totally different diet. 
    2. They poop in the same piles all the time. My guys poop in three different piles. You don’t have to search the pasture for random dog poop. I scoop the llama poop daily and it makes for a lot less mess in the pasture. Their poop also does AMAZING things for your garden.
    3. They are large and intimidating, even to human visitors. They will not be swayed by strangers if they have treats.
    4. They protect from the same predators as a dog.
    5. They are cheaper to maintain. Quite frankly I was a little scared of how expensive the dog was going to be. They need more vaccinations, dog vets are expensive, good dog food is extremely expensive… This doesn’t include the cost of the dog itself (which was more than both llamas together) and the spaying!
    6. Dogs need training and our llamas at least did not.
    7. They are very gentle towards the goats
    8. They are just as protective of me as they are the goats. Don’t try to stand between me and Afton… It’s not pretty and be prepared to be spit on.

    We LOVE our llamas and hope that you will consider using llamas as your goat guardians.

    The Freckled Farm Soap Company makes handmade goat milk soaps. Our body care products are all natural and made with love. For more information about our products please visit our website: www.thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com

     

     

  • Dealing with a Death on the Farm

    On August 1st, the day our blog went live, we lost our sweet Blanche, the family’s favorite chicken. She was a sweet bird who would follow my son around the yard. She was very social and far more interested in interacting with the humans on the farm than the other chickens. Breckin loved her very much. I don’t think he has meet someone in the last year that he hasn’t told about Blanche and how she lays green eggs.

    Chick

    On Monday July 29th, when I was putting the chickens in the coop for the night, I noticed Blanche was missing. We called her and looked all over the farm. Finally she came out and slowly strutted across the yard. She meandered along, pecking at the ground. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with this, maybe she just didn’t want to go in the coop, so I picked her up and put her in myself. On Tuesday I had a meeting and Kevin did the evening farm chores, and he didn’t notice anything wrong with her either. Finally on Wednesday, I went to let the chickens out of their coop for their yard time and Blanche didn’t seem interested. I went about my chores, but was curious why our shadow was deciding to stay away, so I went to check on her closer. She was sitting next to the water. I scooted her out of the coop and she immediately hopped back in and returned to her spot. I looked around and noticed a bloody stool. Blanche then stood up and pooped another bloody stool. I had an idea of what could have been wrong, but since I had never actually run into this I ran inside and checked the web to see what it was and how to make her better. Of course it came back cocci and I called Kevin to ask him to pick up Corrid. We treated her, and the rest of the flock, as soon as Kevin came home. The next morning Blanche was gone and we were faced with the first loss on our farm.

    Building of The Freckled Farm

    (Unfortunately this is the most recent picture of Blanche that I can find. It was from a year ago and she about 16 weeks old)

    Finding out we lost Blanche hit me much harder than I would have expected. I am extremely sensitive and love my animals very much, so I guess it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Beyond dealing the loss of a beloved member of our farm I was beating myself up quite badly. What had I done wrong? I should have been able to avoid this. What does this say about the state of our farm? It was all my fault. I spent every free second searching the web trying to get any advice I could on how to keep from losing our other chickens and how I could avoid this in the future. I was amazed to find that all of the farms that I follow and admire have dealt with this before. This is very common, especially when you have had a warm, humid, wet summer like we have had. We have rarely had a day pass that didn’t include some amount of rain. I started to let go of the feeling that I had done something horrible. I keep my farm clean and organized. I clean waterers daily, etc. I thought I was doing what I could to avoid a problem like this, but you can’t account for everything. Cocci can be brought on someone’s shoe, or from a wild bird, it could have come from anywhere, and our current conditions were unfortunately breeding the parasite.

    I spent the next few days talking to my other friends who own farms. I beat myself up for being a “bad farmer.” I shouldn’t be grieving a loss this hard. What was going to happen when we decided to raise meat animals for our family’s meat needs? I found that my reaction was not uncommon. She wasn’t a meat chicken. She was loved laying hen, who my son had very closely connected to. Why shouldn’t I mourn her? And realistically why shouldn’t I mourn our meat animals. Maybe it wont be on the same level… they wont have names, we wont spend the same amount of time with them, and they wont live with us nearly as long, but don’t they deserve to be cared for too? Isn’t that why you homestead? To have a better quality of life for you, your family, and the animals who provide for you?

    Now we are forced to decide when to replace and add another chicken or chickens to our farm. When a dog or cat dies you wait a long period of time to get a new pet. You allow yourself time to mourn, but on a farm when you can’t just go without. The chickens we had weren’t producing enough for us already and we had discussed getting more. We were easily going through 2 dozen eggs a week and could go through more if more were available, and then we lost one of our best layers. It feels wrong to “replace” her so soon, but it’s not something we can go without. Eggs are our main breakfast.

    So maybe I will always mourn the loss of an animal, because I will always love my animals, but maybe I needed to get over the guilt of replacing them. Maybe loving my animals makes me a good farmer, even if that means it hurts like hell when they pass.