The GOAT goat thread (Lizard blogs their farming adventure)

Update on the eggs, we get to candle them and see what's up!



Most of them look like there's some kind of development, though two of them very clearly aren't doing anything.

 

I've been busting my ASS trying to get the grow out pen finished for the geese and teen age chickens (they are definitely officially teenagers now, I heard one of the roosters practicing his crowing). Only have to make the hinged top and get scrap metal up onto it and the uncovered sides and it will be. Done.

Friday our replacement chick order came in and this batch has been MUCH livelier than the first. No loss, all chicks are running around full of energy! And the hatching eggs I stuck under April started hatching today WOO! we have 6 so far. Two I actually had to help hatch which is highly unusual. Normally they're fine on their own, but these little ones weren't making much progress after the first pip, so I ended up oh so carefully peeling back chips of shell and then the layer of membrane underneath until they could push out themselves. I guess marans eggs are rather notorious for being thicker/harder to break than other breeds. As of rn we have 6 tiny fluffy babies under April, 27 in the chick brooder, and 17 outside plus the geese. That's- quick math here- ..... 55 birds :D

 

So many bird!

 

It is the start of my bird empire! Okay, at least some of them will end up in the stew pot. We already have one spare black copper marans rooster who is runty and fighty even with the hens and generally just not very impressive. I've given him the moniker Soup, because that's what he's going to be. all the babies I got this weekend are straight run, meaning they're unsexed and I will be getting a random grab bag of sexes. The split in chickens runs about 50/50 so in theory we will have around 14 - 16 more roosters that won't make the cut. I want to keep one rooster of each type: Marans, Barred Plymouth Rock, and Ameracauna. I'm willing to double up on either the marans or ameracauna roosters so that one can be the flock daddy for my olive eggers.

It's probably going to be marans tbh because the recent hatchies from April come from genetics that have won some shows including egg color and uniformity and best in show. I want to keep those lines as much as possible.

 

The babies are heeeeeere!

 

Honestly I was hoping to get a little more progress before this video went up just so I would have something to show on the next one too but uuuuh. Rain. We are coming upon the Dry Times though, so I'll accept it is what it is and keep moving forward with the inside stuff until then!

 

Chicks are doing great! They get bigger every day. Which poses the problem of now they're getting to be too big for the back yard.... So built a chicken tractor! Next comes the fun part of trying to get them from our backyard to the property.

 

Feather kids are all moved over!

 

Buns are actually happening this time! We went and picked them up this afternoon!!! !!!







We've named the brown girl Coconut, Coco for short! Eris has already bonded, she held that little bun the whole ride home and then held her some more and brushed her out while I prepped the hutches for them.





REW boy we've named Pineapple, just apple for short. He's already to the point where he needs to be sheared so I'm going to try that in a day or two :D

 

Good morning! You guys already know what we got but here's a formal introduction to the bunnies! Say hello to Pineapple and Coconut.

 

This week we dusted off our basic carpentry skills and framed in a bathroom. You can really see the room space coming together now! Framing is simple but I'm still proud of the work we did.

 

i am becoming one of THOSE people.

i got excited the urine diverter for the composting toilet came in the mail today.

the other day i was in Home Depot, found this auto retracting under counter waste basket thing, and literally squeed at it right there in the store.

 

Video is late today because it is TOO DAMN HOT to edit at night and really I should have done it Saturday but we had our Pathfinder game which I'm sure you'll all understand. Got yet another big-ish order from the orange store we need to go pick up today as well. Once we have toilet it will be KIDS' BEDS time.

 

Video up!

 

I think. It is just about time. To start processing all those extra roosters.

 

Damn I haven't updated this since September. BUT!! We have so much gong on in April my head is going to fall off.

I ordered a nuc of ankle biter bees, they're going to be here April 1st. New order of GOSLINGS and DUCKLINGS ship that same week and I expect to have them around the 5th! Liam's birthday is on the 11th, and then if Pineapple did his job Coconut will have babies around the 15th. I need to build a long lang hive, new brooder for the bird babies, and new hutches for the buns.

 

Bought a (small) egg incubator (but still capable of holding 46 eggs so woohoo) and I am considering sending it on a test run with my currently mixed flock before I separate out the roosters with their hen groups.

I also impulse bought some gooseberry, blackberry and strawberry plants. Zero regrets.

 

Test run of the incubator was a success and now I have so many fucking new chickens, which is great because this weekend I'm picking up some blue slate turkey hatching eggs!

Bunny babies went from teeny little half baked beans to floofer little tribbles in like no time. I was going to sell them but Coco threw this perfect spread of colors: a fawn like her, a wild type agouti, a silver agouti and a solid black. At some point I'm going to need to sit down and figure out wtf genetics are going on because Apple is a red eyes white- a type of albino.

Bees were unfortunately a bust, but the dude refunded me and now I'm using that for.... sheep. Yeah we're getting sheep. Wensleydale-Merino crosses to be specific. three little bottle baby ram lambs (that the seller is going to band for me so they'll all be wethers because I am not currently equipped to deal with intact rams on the homestead, no sir). It's a bit of a jump, I know but their colors and coats are just sooooo pretty. The lady who breeds them in also a large animal vet! which is exciting! And her daughter's breed nubian goats as their little side cash project, so we might end up getting goats from them as well

 

SHEEP!

 

Ok, now that I am not freshly awake and overwhelmed by sheepiness, I can be more verbose! I am so super excited for your sheep!!! I'd heard in my tentative research that keeping a small group of wethers is a perfect easy entry point for someone interested in keeping sheep for fiber, so that was my current tentative plan whenever we get enough land. I'd never heard of a Merino/Wensleydale cross before, but that sounds really intriguing - what's the fiber like? You said pretty colors - what colors did you get??? Sorry if my vicarious sheep excitement is A Lot :)

It's awesome that your bunnies have such a wide range of colors, too! All I know about rabbit coat genetics is that when I've tried to read about it I go cross-eyed, so I wish you the best of luck.

Congratulations on so many eggs! And witnessed bees :(