Friday's Day On The Farm

Hi! Welcome to my Friday. It's been an interesting day, starting with a phone call early this morning to go collect two of our American Quarter horse mares who were loaned out for the summer to a family with teenage girls who like to ride. It's weaning time for foals anyway, and we have several "babies" in stalls in the barn.
We wean the babies slowly, taking their mama's away for short periods of time over a week, until both mare and foal are happy enough to leave each other.

The vet was here the other day to remove a cast from our dairy goat doe, Squatti's leg. Squatti panicked and jumped a gate five weeks ago, breaking her leg. The report was all good - a beautifully healed leg!

Milking the does this morning didn't take too long. We are down to 125 milking does, as the winter approaches and they "dry up" or stop milking. Goats are seasonal breeders which means they all come into "heat" for breeding in the fall, and then "kid" (have their babies) in the early months of the new year. This year we are expecting over 500 baby goat kids to be born! Half of those will be males and most of those will be sold as day old kids. The girls or "doelings" will be retained to expand our milking herd size next year.

A baby doe is called a doeling. Doelings only take eight months to reach maturity and will produce their first babies around the time of their own first birthday! Once a doeling has milked for one year, she is called a 'doe'.

Our chickens are also slowing down for the winter. During the summer months, we keep all the breeds separate and collect 'purebred' eggs from the different varieties. I sell hatching eggs on eBay of rare breeds such as Swiss Spitzhauben, Blue Silkie, Cream Brabanter and Barnavelder chickens.

This year we also raised Nargansett turkeys for the first time. Out of nine turkey chicks we only ended up with three hens. But we won't have to buy any turkeys to have Thanksgiving Dinner.

Of course, we also raise Muscovy ducks for the same reason - providing meat for the table. The Muscovy duck raised three clutches of ducklings this year, and not one of them has ever made it to the pot! So there is a good possibility the turkeys will be safe after all!