Friday, April 22, 2016

Spring has sprung

Spring seems to finally be here. Even the weather seems to be agreeing. Along with spring comes alot of hard work and fun. One of my favorite parts of spring is all of the baby animals that join our farm. The goat's have all had their babies and we have 2 new calves. I have decided to try bottle feeding all of the goat's this year. It is alot of work but I think weaning time will be so much easier.

The first 2 to be born were Legs (white) and Lily (black). My daughter named him Legs because he could not stand for the first 24 hours. He is doing wonderfully now and will be fully weaned in about a week.
Mel (black) and Molly (brown were next to be born). Their mother is one of the first goat's I owned and she always does and excellent job and has beautiful babies.

Last to be born are my first purebred nubians born on the farm. The spotted one's name is Rez because she was born on Resurrection Sunday and the little brown buckling was named King by my niece. Also pictured here is my grandson holding Rez because I think little kids holding little goats is so adorable.

We also have 2 calves that we are growing to butcher when they are alot bigger and alot less cute. We take excellent care of our animals and give them lots of love even when they are going to be used to feed our family.
And last but not least we have 2 Angora rabbits that I am hoping to learn to spin the fiber from. I do not have any pictures of them to share right now but they are doing excellent. I have found out what happens when you let a 4 year old girl name your rabbits. I had given the doe the name Trixie and the buck the name Duke, think of John Wayne when you hear Duke. My niece decided that their names were just not going to work so she asked if she could rename them. Of course I said she could. Well, she renamed Trixie to Ginger after her dog she had at home and she decided that instead of the manly man name of Duke for the buck we were going to call him Fuzzy Bunny!! Well, we had been having trouble getting "Duke" to perform and give me more bunnies but this last time when I put him into the does pen he did his job and I am thinking that he must have decided he needed to prove he was still a male even with the name Fuzzy Bunny! I would give you an update on the chickens but so far all they are doing is walking around pecking at the ground. Have a blessed day everyone.

~April