Well, a month after kids hit the ground, I’ve finally made time to sit down and post about it! Twas a warm and sunny March 18th. I let Tisl and Ruma graze the meadow freely to their hearts’ content. Tisl bred 4 days before Ruma, and theoretically today was her due date. The girls hadn’t been out of the barn long before I heard Ruma nickering with concern. She wandered around the barnyard and towards…
Tag: farm stories
“Turkeys as Flock Protectors”
If you’ve kept turkeys, you likely have a strong opinion about them one way or another. Depending on the kind and quality of turkeys you kept, you may have read this post title and laughed out loud. It’s true that turkeys come in a wide array of dispositions. From “too dumb to keep itself alive” to “too smart to corner or catch”, turkeys can be inexplicably stupid, inappropriately violent, unreasonably skittish, or valuable beyond measure.…
“Goats and Calcium Stones”
A lot of farmers are aware that many ungulates are prone to urinary calculi. These are stones, kidney and bladder stones, that can potentially clog the urinary tract. The risk is greater in male animals due to their more petite urinary tract, compared to the females’. It’s said that intact males fair better than males castrated young, as they are able to develop larger tracts, but it seems like most of the horror stories I’ve…
“A Goat Update: Kids, Milk, & Cheese”
We are now 2 weeks from Ruma’s traumatic birthing experience and she is doing wonderfully. At no point did she threaten me with uterine infection or complications. PHEW! She’s stayin’ plump and lookin’ beautiful as ever. Never did I envision myself someday following a female goat around, carefully sniffing her vulva and noting how it smelled each day… We have each doe down to 1 kid each and are milking the ladies twice a…
“Baby Goats Have Arrived!”
BABY GOATS! After 5 months of eager anticipation (the last 2 months of which were even more eager once we stopped milking in late January and instantly began missing fresh cheese), we have beautiful baby goaters! Tisl birthed first, 48 hours later than her technical due date. She was stealth-preggers, barely showing any baby bulge right up to birthing. I expected only 1 kid out of her. But she produced 2 beautiful kids. I had…
“The Goat Ripped Her Teat Open”
I put Ruma on the stanchion one morning, as per usual, and knelt down to milk. “Wait- blood? Fresh blood? Where is it- oh wow… Ew.” She had somehow snagged her teat on something and tore it clean open, nearly 2 inches long. A very unsettling mixture of blood and milk was weeping out of the gash. Gross. Super gross. So I milked out her good side, trying not to look at the wound too…
“Aspen’s Story: Broken Turkey Legs”
Aspen was a black Spanish turkey I purchased. She was an adult and had grown up semi-wild. She had very little trust in me. As turkey hens do, Aspen went broody in her first spring with me. She chose a large wooden cupboard for her nest. And as turkey toms do, Pip the tom started to get restless after all of the hens disappeared to sit nests. To my dismay, he found Aspen in her…
“Stitches the Chicken”
Before moving to an area with frigidly cold winters and an extended cold season, I kept turkens. Turkens are a breed of chicken that lack feathering on their head and necks. I love turkens, they’re fantastic, and I wish I could raise them here on the mountain but that would be cruel to the half-naked birds. So one day I head out into my bird yard to put the birds up for the night and…
