farm dectectives

Did you know that you can play detective on the farm?
If you have a poultry flock that is being ravaged by a predator there is a "detective" fact sheet available from Oklahoma State University that can help you look for clues and determine who the likely culprit is...
Predators: Thieves in the Night.

I came across it reading the latest blog post over at Ravenwood farms. They lost a duck this week and were suspecting there was a mink loose. But they conducted their own little CSI investigation and came to a very interesting killer. Check out the post if you have a minute.

I know what I want to be when I grow up...

I just came across Raven Wood Ranch.
I'm Jealous?
Inspired?
In Love?

I'm not so sure I aspire to owning my own butcher shop. But here's a mom with 2 young boys making a living raising and selling the animals (meat) to a niche market.
All the things I've been trying to explain to my in-laws, parents, husband for over a year now.
IT CAN BE DONE.IT CAN BE PROFITABLE.
But...
What I'm most interested in was her post about being "A Farm with No Barn" she claims she pasture raises all her animals (sheep,goats,cattle,chickens,ducks,pigs) with minimal out buildings as shelters in severe weather the rest of the time they are outside. IN ALBERTA. In Caroline to be exact, where my in-laws live and I know for a fact gets just as drastically cold and miserable as right here.
So...
They also offer CSA farm tours through out the year. I'm thinking I may have to book one and go pick this girls brain on how exactly these animals are surviving these brutal temperatures with minimal shelters when I can't seem to keep goats up and running in what I though should have been more than sufficient shelter?!?!?

Regardless I'm inspired. I want our little "farm" to grow up to be just like theirs.

That or...

There is a Farmstead Goat Cheese operation. FULLY LICENSED DAIRY & CHEESE MAKING FACILITY. for sale about 45 minutes north of us. It's been on my radar for a few months now. If I could figure out a way to come up with the finances, I think I might even give up my beautiful house to take over an already running operation like this.
Sadly it's beyond my budget. If I want it I'll just have to be inspired by what can be done, and work towards it as my ultimate goal...

useful horns

A pattern and a confession

Last week I mentioned how I was going to sign up for the goat hypothermia class with Kathy at HMFF?

The class was up and rolling as of Monday. Today we received an e-mail detailing the pattern for Kathy's ever so cute little lamb/kid coats.
Which I promptly forwarded to my MIL

*Gasp*

Why?

This is the confession part...

I can't knit

*double GASP*

Yeah, I know. I have all these great plans that may or may not include getting animals like sheep, alpacas, and angora rabbits. Maybe even some angora goats.
All fiber animals.
And yet I myself can't knit.

Growing up I can remember my mother knitting me exactly one sweater. I also remember getting yelled at if you talked while she was doing this. "BE QUIET I NEED TO COUNT!!!"- My super crafty mother got right stressed out by knitting. In fact after she finished the sweater, I don't recall seeing her ever knit anything else.
This is probably why I have no idea how to knit.

I was absolutely in love with a Patons pattern  called Sally Secretary Monkey. I bought it and begged my MIL to knit me one. Which she did and I got got for Christmas. Awesome gift!

My favorite part is her little high heels.

Anyways, I can't knit. I've made my confession I feel better.
Okay not really.
One of my goals for 2011 is to learn, at least be able to knit a scarf by the end of the year? We'll see.
I don't suppose you could just raise fiber animals for the fun of raising the animals and barter/sell/trade all of the fleece/fur/wool???
Yeah, probably not really the point.

But right now I've talked my MIL into making me a couple of little goat coats. Because I've learned 2 very interesting facts from the workshop so far.

1) Kids can get hypothermia at any point in the year. They go from being inside Mom at a comfy 103 degree F. temp. to being dropped on a barn floor at whatever the temperature outside is sitting at.

and number 2 has nothing to do with why she needs to knit them for me, but it was an interesting fact about goat coats I thought I'd share.
2) They need to be made from Acrylic yarn. -because you can't use real wool. A baby animal can't smell even slightly like another animal to a new mom.
Something I totally wouldn't have thought of, pretty interesting huh?

just one more website to get addicted to

The Canadian Goat Network is a newly created Socialgo network, with a layout much like facebook.
With different forums, upcoming events, and goat breed groups.
It's just starting up, but already there's a ton of great advice, articles and a recipe for making brie cheese.

The Canadian Goat Network

chicken myth articles

Barbara Foreman is writing a series of articles entitled "7 myths about Urban Chickens" on the Mcmurray Hatchery Blog.

In the first article she published yesterday, she is trying to dispel the myth that Chickens carry diseases communicable to human. ie. The avian bird flu.
Apparently many experts and even the CDC think that the solution to the Avian flu may actually be backyard or smaller flocks. Since commercial raising of chickens usually has such massive amounts of birds housed in less than adequate space, and and all diseases can run rampant.
It stands to reason that smaller flocks, especially small well cared for flocks will be better cared for, housed and fed. Therefore being much healthier and more resistant to diseases.

It may be an interesting series of articles she has planned...

some goat humor

see more funny videos

I laughed so hard when I saw this picture I just had to share.

My Brother the Welder rocks!

So my brother is a welder. A very good one. In fact he or my Dad will send me pictures of his work and I'm always astounded at his skills. He does everything from pipeline welds to work scary high up on new high rise buildings.

But
I've been saving a "special" project for him.

We need a milking stand.
The plan is to start milking the goats sometime over the summer, but short of tying them to the fence and hoping for the best there was no real place to start the milking.

I have plans for how to build a milking sanction that you can download for free from the scroungeman site.
{Awesome site BTW, I love the way he writes about his animals, and his crazy inventions too}
It's a free e-book that you can download here if your interested in building one too.

Anyways, I have the plans for the milking stand, and we were thinking of just building it from the plans. However as usual our to-do-list is about a mile long. And Although I think the plans for the stand are great, it's been rolling around in the back of my head how much greater it could be with a metal grate/mesh table to it.

So I hit up my brother the welder for a favor.
I sent him the PDF file and asked him to look at it and see if he could adapt the basic plan to make it how I envisioned.
He says he'll do it!!!
I'm so excited.
Of course when I talked to him on the phone this morning he was already talking about metal legs, and if the head piece needed to be wood, or how it could be machined to be made out of metal.
So I have no idea if it will look anything like the original plans or be a completely different beast all together.
But he agreed to do it for me and I released the reigns to his creative spirit. telling him I'd sent him the plans to just to give him the basic idea of what I needed.

So I'll keep you updated on how it turns out.

Interesting Goat Links

I know my goat obsession is getting a little out of hand...Just for fun I've been searching around webland looking up different goat related items.
These are some of the cool links I found

California golf course using goats for natural bush clearing on rocky terrain. .http://www.golfweek.com/news/2010/oct/26/golf-courses-employ-goats-maintenance/

Incredible gravity defying goats in Italy
Article or Video

Love watching goat antics? you can watch 2 goats live 24 hours a day
Goatslive.com

and of course...I'm in love with the idea of fainting goats. If you've never seen a fainting goat you have to check out this Video. Although I would love to get a couple, I know I'm a little to playful to get a goat that has a reaction like this.
Yeah, I'd probably start doing something crazy like the Chuck Norris vs. Fainting Goats Video
I'm sorry even if you're not a Chuck Norris fan that's darn FUNNY!!!!

I'm a Little Cranky

I was all set.
My Dad had even agreed to come up for the weekend and babysit the boys.
I was heading to Edmonton for the weekend of November 12-14, for the 2010 Goat West Conference.
And was so excited they had speakers ranging from Vets talking about herd diseases, to topics on marketing goat meat, to coyote predation.
And I was totally psyched to finally be able to slip out of the house, and mingle with "real"
 goat people. I figured I'd learn about a million things.

Of course.

The Alberta Goat Breeder Association now called and said the conference has been canceled due to low interest and registration.

I'm crushed.

Back to school decisions

I'm trying to decide if I should take some more classes right now.

Herbal Maid Fiber Farm is offering another 2 workshops in September

"Colored Angora Goat Genetics- (In time for making breeding decisions) This is a repeat of the intensive course I gave last year and would help you make intelligent breeding decisions for color, pattern, horn and eye color."
and
Putting up late summer bounty

She's offering them for 30 dollars each or 50 for both classes.

Our goats are Alpine not Angora. Although I would love to get into angora goats eventually and I'm thinking that knowing more about genetics and breeding them would help when you go to buy some. You would know for sure your looking at a quality animal right? Plus I know nothing about goat genetics at all. I'm already trying to decide if I want to breed little Linus in with the girls since he's not an Alpine like the rest.

oh and my garden crashed and burned this year. so taking the summer bounty course would only be helpful if I was willing to go buy all the veggies at the supermarket or farms market, cause they sure aren't coming out of our garden  (I mean weed pit) this year.

One thing I know for sure I want to take is being offered through Olds College Continuing Education.

Lambing Fundamentals 101-
yes it's about sheep not goats but it covers a lot of the same topics I think you will have when delivering goats. And seeing as I've never done either...
It's not offered until march But I'm hoping to set Romeo on the girls for December which means we should have kids until May and therefore...I'll be able to take the course and hopefully have some clue as to what I'm doing by the time the girls are ready.

there also offering an
Introduction to sheep nutrition in October.  But I'm really up in the air about if I would need that. Sheep and Goats seem to have very different tastes.

Chicken Woes

We've had a small set back with the chickens.
I was assuming ( I know, I know) that any of the butchers in the area would process the chickens for us. Especially when their ads say all animals. But I guess technically a chicken is a bird. Not an animal.
Anyways turns out there's only 2 chicken processors in Alberta. Down in Lethbridge. and up in St. Paul which is still about a 2 hour drive from here.
We talked about taking them to St. Paul. but they want over 70 dollars to do up the chickens. Plus the time and gas...
well long story short, we decided that this would be a problem again next year so maybe we should look at a longer term solution.
so

tada...

The chicken plucker 10 000.

Okay it's probably not called 10 000 I just named it that because of the hours and I mean H-O-U-R-S it took to put together. (Note to self- next time when it costs 50 bucks extra to get one pre-assembled. DON'T BE SO CHEAP!!!!)

and now...

I'm Doing lots of reading like how to butcher a chicken tutorial

and how to process a chicken on The Deliberate Agrarian Blogspot

***Note Most of the Pictures are quite graphic~just so your warned****
trying to figure out exactly what I'm doing before we even attempt this.

cow vs. goat

Taking this online hand milking/ cheese making and the goat soap making course is making me wild to get a goat or 3.
This weekend I bought some goat milk from the grocery store. Just to see if I could drink it. I think I've had goat milk at the farm before but that would have been 20 years ago easy.

It has a very distinct smell but it was much sweeter than cow milk. I can drink it (although I'm not sure I would put it in cereal just yet. But the best part was Nathan LOVES it. Like L-O-V-E's it. He insists on getting to drink the "special" goat milk and won't touch his regular milk right now.-Which is great news for when we get goats, that he'll drink the milk. But bad news right now since the goat milk from the store is double the price of regular milk.

So I'm all hyped up for getting goats and then I read this article about keeping a dairy cow in Mother Earth news. I still like the idea of cow milk better , but I assume that's because I'm more accustom to the taste.
However goat milk seems much more versatile. In terms of cheeses and the soap. Both of which I think I would be able to sell at local farmers markets.

I did like the article in Mother Earth. and thinks it's worth a read. But I do think their stats are a like off in the "annual Budget for keeping a Family Milk cow." as they quote the "Value of milk available for human consumption:$3,000 to $ 5,215"
1) I don't believe my family spends 3000 a year on milk- I could be wrong but that seems awfully high. so...
2) The rest of the value would come from being able to sell that milk, and the excess that your family is not able to consume, which I think would be more difficult than selling goat milk. Since Cow milk is available literally everywhere how would you be able to compete?

So although at some point I would love to get a cow, I really still think we'll start with goats and go from there.

How to Build a Wall in Your Backyard (article)

Oddly I came across an article in Esquire magazine about how to build a stonewall in your backyard.
Considering I think we have about a million field stones I can't help but imagine how amazing an 18 inch or so wall would look lining the driveway up to the house.

I'm sure Chris will kill me when I tell him of this new brilliant (and free) plan. Since it really isn't about the cost of materials, but I'm sure the back breaking labor of moving the stones is going to get me in some hot water.
Ask A Landscaper: How to Build a Wall in Your Backyard

Answers to dumb questions

remember me complaining about dirty chicks?

apparently you can wash chicks. as long as you don't allow them to get their heads under water. Do it with warm water. and dry them well before they can get a chill.

At least according to people on the the backyard chicken form

Backyard chickens is quite the information packed site about ummm...everything chickens. funny how that works.

I found it through the site hencam.com, which was talked about on the scratch and peck blogspot
Lauren is such a cute illustrator, and writes with such a passion about her little flock you can feel the love she has for them. Totally worth checking out just because it's so darn cute.

Dandelions

I won't even go into how many times I've cursed at dandelions in the yard at all our other houses.
I've attempted to dig them out by hand, be satisfied with just popping their little yellow heads off before they can go to seed and usually end up resorting to some sort of chemical spray rather than continue the never ending battle.
Of course this yard is larger than any of the others we ever had. And proportionally the dandelion problem seems to be even bigger.
I have to tell you I am less than enthused about even attempting this time to dig them out.

But at the same time. Knowing our water source is below us, Chemicals to me become even more of an issue in my head.
Chris and I have already battled about this. His point is that the farmers all around us are spraying their field with round up or whatever chemical they choose. So if it's in the water the small amount we spray is hardly going to compare.
but it still bothers me

I did a web search of organic dandelion control and came up with this...
dandelion fix Corn gluten meal
Although it sounds like I may have to go on quite the hunt to find it. And I'm not sure it will work this late in the season. Since it sounds like it needs to be applied just as the grass is turning green in the spring.

Fiber Farm

I'm still quite convinced that the best way to work with animals around here would be to do a fiber farm. Sheep, rabbits and Alpacas.
I found this website, and am madly in love, especially because not only is she able to make her farm work on this concept. But she also offers online courses to share her vast range of knowledge. So excited to sign up for the next one.
Herbal Maid Fiber Farm

and thought this was an interesting site too...although I haven't explored it enough to know if I'd be accepted into any of these courses they seemed to be based out of Texas from what I saw. But still worth a look when I have a moment later to pour over the details more carefully
substainable farming course
I believe most of them are free.

Government RED Tape

Well,
The issue of whether we're going to the auction is solved!!!

I thought I'd look up some more info on sheep, and the different breeds etc. before making any bad decisions about animals spur of the moment.
Came across Alberta lamb producers website.
http://www.ablamb.ca/
which actually seems like a good resource, but it set me off on a massive hunt that had nothing to do with sheep tonight.

In the news section of the website I came across an article about "Is your livestock operation legal?" which mentioned how a Premise ID number must be provided for every transaction or transportation of all "recordable" animals. On January 1, 2009, regulations requiring premise identification became law as part of the ANIMAL HEALTH ACT.

meaning we cannot buy any of the animals ie. sheep, alpacas, llamas, or cattle (plus a ton of others) until we obtain a Premise ID number. since all bills of sale must now include the premise ID of both the buyer and seller.

There is a Premise ID application form on the government of Alberta website. But I'll have to call on Monday for some help filling out all the information. Since it requires information like maximum herd capacities for the land...and to be honest I have no idea how many head of cattle or sheep or pretty much animal could be supported on 30 acres.
- so the application form is going to be like 5 pages of mind numbing information...and then you get to snail mail it to them, and wait!
I LOVE GOVERNMENT RED TAPE.

some excellent websites

so I was cruising around looking at sheep and Chicken stuff and found a few interesting and informative stuff.
I found Miller Hatcheries a hatchery with 2 Alberta locations
This was the first time I heard about beak trimming on Chickens.
I guess it...

It stops cannibalism, saving lives and annoyance
It stops fighting - the birds is literally disarmed
It stops feather pulling - preserving a good grade of bird
It stops feed wastage - birds can't pick so they receive a balanced diet
It stops egg loss - a major plus for the egg producer
It stops the nuisance problem of toe picking.
Beak trimmed birds tend to be quieter - fear of other birds is eliminated

I also checked out UFA the farm supply store, and found out they carry all the fencing supplies I think we might need for sheep. As well as the feed, and waterers and fed for chickens. They also had a link for miller hatcheries- which has got to be a good thing.

Another website I thought was a good resource for sheep was sheep 201 ~ a beginners guide to raising sheep
which has a ton of links to explain sheep fencing, handling, different breeds and more resources than I can even fathom right now.
and the website sheepandgoat.com which is affiliated with sheep 201.