Our chickens are losing most of their feathers! They are leaving piles of feathers all over the place and egg production is way down (only 1 egg per day down from 4+ per day over the summer).
Pile of chicken feathers.
A bedraggled hen with missing feathers.
What is the cause of their current distress?
One of the recurring farm chores is to clean out the chicken coop periodically. The cleaning process can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours depending on how long between cleanings and how thoroughly you want to clean the coop.
Chickens coops don’t need to smell bad and a bad smell (usually a strong ammonia smell) is usually an indication that cleaning is actually long overdue.
The chicken coop right before fall cleaning.
Click through to see the before and after pictures from the coop.
We recently had our goats sheared for the first time since we moved in!
Here is a montage video of a lot of the shearing process:
How do you integrate goats?
Don’t worry, knowledge of calculus is not required!
So far, we have needed to integrate new goats into our main flock twice. We received a lot of varying information about integrating the goats. The local advice ranged from no isolation period to over two months of isolation in separate pastures. We decided to go with Continue reading
We recently adopted 2 additional goats from a great rescue / shelter in the Rochester area, Lollypop Farm. When we went to visit our potential new goats, Lollypop Farm had around 40 goats and sheep, along with various pigs, roosters, horses, donkeys, ducks, geese, rabbits, llamas, cows and emus (and of course cats and dogs).
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This past weekend, we adopted two additional goats from a rescue group (a separate post will follow with more details about the new goats). We needed a way to transport the goats from the rescue shelter to our farm which is a little over an hour and a half away by car.
Elf on a dog leash as we led him out of the shelter.
The shelter’s transport vehicle was in the shop for repairs and we don’t have an animal trailer, or even a pickup truck. So, how do you transport a goat without a truck or trailer?
Here are a few more short goat videos from the first few hours after we integrated our original 2 goats with the first 3 new goats.
Here is Rascal and Rosebud scrabbling over a grain bucket (which is empty).
With only 2 goats at the start, we had plenty of extra pasture land available that would quickly become overgrown and need to be regularly mowed if it wasn’t grazed.
Luckily, a neighbor was looking for additional pasture space for 3 of his cows for over the summer months. We agreed to a basic pasture lease arrangement where his cows were grazing on our pastures. He also provided assistance with our goats and answered many of our farm-related questions. He came by every day to check on the cows and was an excellent resource for pasture management techniques.
A couple of weeks ago, while walking out in the pasture, our neighbor who was checking on his cows, pointed out a strange mass on one of the fence posts.
I couldn’t tell exactly what he was pointing at until I got a lot closer and could see it moving around.
It was a … Continue reading
Our new goats arrived!
When we first moved in, we had only 2 goats, Harriet and Butterbean. As Harriet is starting to get old in goat years, she is not as active as younger goats and Butterbean seemed a bit lonely (and he was really getting a bit too fat and not building muscle). We wanted to get another goat or two to add to the flock so Butterbean would have someone to play with and get a bit more exercise. After searching the local area for kids (i.e., baby goats) and coming up empty, we contacted a local farmer who was looking to downsize her flock. (Click continue for the rest of the story and goat headbutting videos!)