I’ve mentioned before that I really like it when kids do the filming, photography, etc. It’s really neat to see their perspective on things and with our modern electronics it’s pretty surprising how good the quality can be.
We had some friends over Saturday and left the kids with supervision (that’s Bombshell in the video). The kids took it upon themselves to make an entire film all over the farm and we came home so it edited and completed. The only thing I had to do was to cut out their names (they used their actual names in the credits) and add in our normal kids names we use on the site.
I uploaded the video to Youtube but I’m not sure where the kids got the music that is playing in the background so Youtube might yank it. Also the Youtube version doesn’t have credits whereas the one on our site has the credits. Also the version on our site is a high resolution version. Here is the version on our site. Farm kids video
I read this article to Lamont, our boar, recently. He seemed mildly interested, sort of like when you hear that kids are starving on the other side of the world. It’s touching but it’s not right in front of your nose so it doesn’t seem real. He then sauntered over to Penelope and continued his courtship, immediately forgetting the plight of “normal” pigs destined for our traditional food system.
Lucky for Lamont, I’m not getting that personal with Penelope. She’s already bitten me once, and tried more than once. The idea of trying AI with her just isn’t appealing for more than the normal reasons.
Penelope, with piglets made the old-fashioned way.
The Princess, post cake creation and prior to gobbling it up
Having The Princess bake an independence day cake is becoming a tradition at our house. Fluffy cake, whipped cream, and fruit stars and stripes all put together by her Highness. This is a tradition I can get behind!
Spork taking a well deserved break while Miguel loads the last pallet of watermelons
Every day we go to two farmer’s markets to collect all the fresh produce that they cannot sell due to damage. We collect about 2500 pounds per day by my rough guess. That’s 365 days a year or over 900,000 pounds of produce a year to feed our animals which is pretty much their only feed besides what already grows on the farm. Here we are loading on the 4th. Yes that is three pallets of watermelons. This doesn’t show the heaping full truck bed already loaded with other produce. The next day we put FOUR pallets on the trailer and still had the truck full. That was a personal best for me for one day. Cows LOVE watermelons, as do pigs, and chickens, and kids for that matter. The cows are starting to figure out how to break open watermelons and it’s funny to watch them chase the round melons around the pasture. While all the rest of us (animals both in the house and out) still love watermelon, SWMBO is getting a bit tired of watermelon juice covering her counters. Looks like its time to switch to peaches.
Feeding the cows a pallet of food. This is one of three that day.
This pallet was full of sweet corn husks, watermelons, squash, zucchini, and I don’t know what else. By the time the cows were done with it, it was just a pallet and some cardboard. By the end of the weekend, I noted that the cows were looking mighty portly. A few are showing some signs that they may need to be culled but the rest are looking fat and happy with slick coats and not a lot of signs of parasites. Right now #23, #14, and #3 (all brood cows) all look like candidates for culling, along with #28 and #40 (steers) who both had bloat but are doing better now.
Spork shooting his sister’s 22. He went through about 30 rounds and never missed!
The beauty of a longer weekend is even on the farm it’s not all work and no play. I took a little while to take SWMBO, The Princess, and Spork down to the shooting range to get in some practice. Spork was phenomenal, knocking down every target with boring regularity. Since he did so well, we decided to put him to work on our squirrel menace. Every year we have squirrels strip our fruit trees of all of our fruit before it has a chance to be harvested. With Spork doing so well in his shooting, it was time to introduce him to hunting. Between Spork, myself, and Alice, we accounted for 4 of the little fluffy tailed rats this weekend, with more to come.
The Princess trying her hand at shooting.
The gun is still just a bit big for the Princess but she stepped up there and took some shots. She was nervous at first but very excited after shooting. I believe we’ll have her back again this fall when the weather is nice. By then the gun should just about fit her.
Dad and The Princess off to process chickens.
This weekend we processed our 25 freedom ranger chickens. We process on farm and despite being able to sell these chickens pretty much anywhere we want with such a high demand, in the end we are simply going to put them in the freezer and eat them ourselves which was the original plan. There is a difference between home raised chickens and store-bought chickens and we have another 50 on the way for another batch. The Princess was everywhere for processing and did every single job on the line.
The Princess did every job at least once, but this job she did all of the chickens, all by herself.
You never know when catching chickens will be a skill you need to list on your resume.
Miguel using our new killing cone. Miguel made the cones and they worked perfectly.
A quick bleed and the worst part of the job is over. Nobody likes killing animals but these chickens lived a good life on our farm and never had a bad day till this day. I believe you should know where you food comes from and all chicken ends up on the plate somehow. These chickens went from their home to the cone, with no scary truck ride or meat factory in between.
The chicken plucker in action. This is a home made version of the whiz bang chicken plucker.
Note the blood on the face of The Princess. For a minute that morning she said she didn’t want to be around chicken processing, but then she reverted back to her old blood loving self and was in the middle of the fray. Playing with all the blood is her favorite part, unless you count identifying all the organs, which she is quite good at.
Did I mention she’s quite ok with blood?
She’ll probably grow up to be a vegan, but she’ll know where food comes from and how it gets to the plate.
An overview of the process.
Concrete floors, bleach for cleaning, and plenty of water to work with. A pretty good setup. We need to switch to food grade water hoses and tweak a few other things but overall the processing setup is working nicely.
The Princess’s chicken puppet.
When we couldn’t keep enough work for her to do, she reverted to pulling a whole chicken from the ice bath and plopping it on her hand then proceeding to run around acting out scenes with her “chicken puppet.” It was very cute, and quite twisted which at least for me and Miguel was funny. I’m sure someone would say that she’ll have emotional scars from seeing chickens killed or any of the other things she chooses to do on the farm. Folks, playing with a recently deceased chicken couldn’t be more normal. Scarring comes from having the world hidden from children and then they learn reality when they are adults.
Chicken on the counter, ready to be cooked.
For those of you who were put off by the previous images, this probably looks more familiar. Our chicken, grocery store ready, cut into traditional cuts and ready for SWMBO’s magic act of turning this chicken golden brown and yummy.
Fried chicken, straight off the farm.
This chicken was walking and clucking this morning, now it’s our dinner. Thanks to SWMBO’s efforts in the kitchen we sat down to a healthy and hearty meal. Yes it was as good as it looks.
SWMBO vacuum sealing our chickens, getting them ready for the freezer.
And don’t think she’s a one trick pony, just working in the kitchen. Here is SWMBO, still in her workout clothes after having worked out for two hours, bailing us out on the processing line by taking the quality control and packaging station. She saved us because we were getting backed up with not enough hands to do the work. Thanks Honey!
This was just a small part of our weekend. Yesterday evening Spork was excited telling SWMBO about what he and dad were going to do tomorrow. She had to break the news to him that dad had to go to work tomorrow, that he would have to wait for the next weekend to spend the day with dad again. Broke my heart to hear that I was letting him down for today but I guess that means he had a good 4th of July weekend. I know that I did.
Sam, having some private grazing in very lush grass before being loaded onto the trailer
Today was graduation day for Samuel. He was loaded up and took the 1 hour ride to Chadhrey’s in Siler City, NC. Before getting on the trailer I gave Sam some time unmolested to enjoy grazing this small paddock. This is a paddock where we used to feed hay in the winter and now serves as a holding paddock for when cows are run through the corral. Effectively nobody is ever in here and the grass grows very tall and lush. Sam was pretty happy to enjoy grazing the sweet grass tips unmolested by me or other cows competing for the juiciest bits.
After a good breakfast, Sam hopped right onto the trailer and we had an uneventful ride to Siler City. Sam is the son of Spunky, our old milk cow. When we purchased Spunky, she was already bred to one of Dr. Sydnor’s Red Devon bulls so Sam has always been a little different being here with all the Ninjas. However he grew to be a very fine-looking steer and should make excellent meat. Now we begin the 2 week wait for aging and packaging. Hopefully July 17th I’ll be heading to Siler City to pick up all of our meat and we’ll switch over from the porkapalooza we had all winter to beefapalooza all summer.
And in case you are wondering, this cow is destined for our family. The way they eat, I have to be in the cattle business!
#40, back in the head gate awaiting his shave and trocar install.
I’ve written already about treating #40 for bloat. Yesterday we had to continue our treatment and expand what we were doing. Before we could do anything though, we had to get him in the head gate. Unfortunately, by this point he’s pretty aware of what happens when he gets in the head gate and we spent quite a bit of time chasing him around the barn yard. Usually a cow will go where you point him, or at least away from you however this particular cow has ninja blood in him and he decided that the best thing to do was to run straight through Miguel and I. After I landed on my posterior the second time I decided to go get the one cow implement I’d never used, the cattle prod. The batteries were old because it had been sitting in the corner for years, never opened, but it seemed to work well enough to get our little ninja back in the mood to do what we said. I don’t like shocking cows, but I don’t like cows that don’t behave either. So dripping with sweat we locked him in the head gate and went to work.
We tried to be minimally invasive on our previous treatments with our steer since we had had such good luck with the other cows. We only bled off the offending gas and did a small treatment of DSS. Then we monitored the steer for how he was doing and repeated the treatment if things were not progressing well.
Finally yesterday we decided that minimal care wasn’t enough and we had to install a trocar. The trocar holds the rumen and skin open and allows the gas to vent outside allowing the rumen a chance to settle down and pretty much guaranteeing no more bloat.
Our steer is still not feeling chipper but now we have ready access to his rumen to apply more DSS or whatever else we need to try. Hopefully tomorrow will see him feeling better and things beginning to progress towards him getting back in the pasture.
Lastly, a shout out to Summit Equine in Apex, our vet, who helped us through all these bloat cases and helped us with the gear to be able to treat the easy cases ourselves on farm. Being able to treat on-farm is better for us and better for the cow.
Dottie and her new baby calf, Lightning. This picture is from today, when the calf was a day old.
Normally a birth on the farm is a blessing but not a big deal. However with Dottie we had a lot of concern as she carried her baby to term. A few weeks ago we had the vet out to check all of our cows. Dottie was pregnant we knew but why not check her anyway and make sure things are progressing well. The vet checks, and says that the baby is dead and Dottie has to have emergency surgery to remove the dead fetus or Dottie will die as well. Yikes!
We finish our other cows and rush Dottie to the vet hospital to have surgery. Dottie is our only milk cow, and is the replacement for Maggie who we had to put down due to a broken back. Loosing her baby is pretty much a death sentence for Dottie as well so this whole event wasn’t one of our better days. So I get Dottie to the vet and he checks her one more time to make sure everything is the same and low and behold, the baby is now fine. The vet says she’s due any day, take her home and keep an eye on her. Talk about mixed emotions.
Well some weeks go by and no baby. Dottie’s bag swells to humongous proportions and still no baby. I woke up Saturday thinking I may have to take her back to the vet to find out what is going on. What if the baby really is dead. What if she can’t have the baby. Her bag is huge, that has to be hurting her. I walk out to the paddock to move the cows and see Dottie off away from the other cows in the distance, with a little calf circling her. This is what I saw.
The baby was only hours old, maybe hour old, just getting her feet under her and still wet from birth. She was very friendly, wobbly, and hungry. I checked on her all I could without interfering, and make arrangements to come back and bottle feed the calf that afternoon if she wasn’t able to nurse because for the time I was there, she wasn’t able to latch on. Like I said, Dottie’s bag was huge and it was tough for the little calf to lean down so low to nurse. Thankfully when I got home that afternoon, the little calf was nursing just fine and was dry and healthy. She was cavorting around the pasture and having a large time.
The Princess and I talked about the new calf and worked out a name. You see, the night the calf was born, we had a major thunderstorm here on the farm. Lightning knocked out our internet (as in burnt to a crisp components) and blew up our fence charger. The Princess decided that this little girl calf was to be named Lightning in honor of the storm on her birthday.
We’ve had a bad run lately with the vet. I elected to have the vet out a few weeks ago and check over the cows and the pigs. Apparently having the vet out here caused the cows to decide they like having doctors around and now I seem to have the vet out once a week. First a little bull calf, #28 started having issues and eventually bloated with gas till he was dangerously sick. The name for this condition is simply enough, called bloat. If you are curious, here is more information on bloat than you ever wanted to know.
We took the calf, who was none to keen on getting to the barnyard or on the trailer, to the vet hospital where they tubed him and put medicine directly into his rumen to help with the bloat. Unfortunately the medicine wasn’t enough and later that night the vet had to introduce a trocar directly into his rumen to directly vent the gas through his side.
#28, in the head gate at the vet, waiting for the vet to begin working on him.
Despite the medicine from the tube, the trocar, and everything else that was done, #28 didn’t recover well and the next day the vet called and said he wasn’t going to recover and needed to be put down. So off I go to the vet with the trailer to get this cow, take him home, and put him down. He’s a young bull, about 1 year old and all we can do is bury him because we’ve given him medicine and now he cannot be used for beef. However when I pull up he’s standing there looking at me, ready to get in the trailer and go. The vet says that he suddenly started feeling better and to take him home and see if he lives although no promises.
So Miguel and I set up a convalescent stall in the barn complete with a fan for cooling and fresh food and water. #28 recovers well and as of Sunday is just about ready to go back to pasture.
Then Saturday, after more than a full day, I receive a call from a visitor who wants to take a tour. I’ve been going hard since about 5am. I’ve been covered in about every disgusting thing you can think of all day, I’ve just taken a shower and finally have on clean clothes for the first time since I got out of bed and frankly I’m beat. Not to mention I’m supposed to cook dinner that night for SWMBO and the kids. But they are here and want to see the cows. Ok, back to the barn for a quick tour. And thank God I did, because I find that #15, Love, has a huge case of bloat and won’t last long. I call the vet again, and have them start heading towards the farm. While they are coming I conduct an abbreviated tour for the family who was very nice. As soon as they leave, the vet shows and I wrangle Love to the barn and into the head gate where she gets her own trocar after a many failed attempts to get a tube down her throat.
Love getting more attention than she wanted in the head gate.
Love was so bloated she barely fit through the corral. The vet had to get the gas off of her quickly so he used three needles directly into her rumen and it sounded like he’d stuck a needle into a basketball. Many psi were bled off of Love, who was thankful for the relief from the pressure and pain. She wasn’t long for this world if we hadn’t found her and treated her immediately. Thankfully I got up and gave that tour rather than being lazy. It just goes to show that getting up and doing what needs doing, especially when you don’t want to, is what it takes to keep your animals healthy and alive.
The Hilton, where both of our cows are getting room service daily.
So we’ll keep an eye on both of these cows for the next few days and hopefully reintroduce them to the pasture with no problems. And while we’re hoping, let’s hope no more vet for a very long time.
Yesterday’s paddock on the left, today’s on the right
Grazing update from 6-8-2014. The paddocks are about 35 yards wide, and half the length of the main pasture. They are split in length on the bottom of the field where all the repair work was done last year for erosion. While the cows eat a lot of the seed heads, they leave quite a bit standing as you can see in the picture. The dog fennel is rearing its head, and the thistle is coming up thick but only in areas where there is an issue. I hate thistle, but it’s a pioneering plant that is good for recovery of soil. Having it be so selective where it comes up is satisfying because it was starting to pop up everywhere. As we’ve recovered soil health, it’s starting to choke out in the good stands of grass and only appear where things need more help. I love it when what we are doing works.
One thing both Spork and I noted was that the cows are leaving quite a bit of grass behind. They aren’t reaching under the hot wire at all, nor are they eating down the grass past a first bite or two. The clover is being decimated as usual but the grass is only getting decent pressure. As we head into summer, that’s where I want the grass to be. Tall and not under pressure, even though the fescue will go dormant and our warm season grasses will take over, the fescue will help shield the ground from the heat of summer. We will clip this pasture as we’ve done the others, leaving about 8″ of height and plenty of litter on the ground to help rebuild the soil. One big reason the grass is not getting so much pressure is that huge amount of veggies and fruits we are bringing onto the farm each day. We literally bring thousands of pounds of produce on the farm, most of which goes to the cows. The cows are getting a lot of what they want from these loads of produce, and are filling in the corners with a days grazing. The end result if happy, fat cows with no grain (except seed heads).
One issue I’m noting is that the flies are especially bad this year. There is a swarm around the cows and I don’t want to use chemicals to ward them off. We ordered another batch of meat chickens last week. I’m hoping to get the chicken tractors back in production behind the cows so they can start eating the fly larvae. That is supposed to put a dent in the fly population. It’s about time these chickens started earning their keep around here.
When I started this blog over a year ago, I made it a goal to post every day, or at least to average a post per day. Some days you’ve gotten long diatribes, other days it’s been quick thoughts or even a link to something else going on in the world. And some days it is a picture of poop because you know, it is a farm. Either way, over 300 posts later, I feel like I’ve met my goal of one interesting post per day. I also feel like we have a nice repository of content on our site where people that are new to our farm can browse and learn about what we do (raise and sell really high quality meat) and what we do not do (make any money).
So with that said, I’m going to start a new chapter in the blog and forego the goal of one post per day and instead try to have my posts be high quality and routine, but not daily. Don’t worry, there will still be pictures of poop, and cows, and chickens, and even the kids on occasion. But if you don’t hear from me a couple of days, don’t worry, I’m not dead.
Thank you all for your continued business and for following our little blog. I promise there is still plenty more to come.
Your hosts on our internet farm tour, Dan and SWMBO
