Just another Day on the Farm

While I won’t say that I am not reading and marking out the different things in the seed catalogs, I have spent just as much time if not more working on this years planned chick/duckling, turkey pullet list..

I am trying to look at what my own birds have produced in terms of offspring for the past three years combined with what I need to bring in for fresh genes, combined with our own needs considering whe are going to have a number! of large amounts of Lamb, Beef and Pork this year..

I think I have it pretty close to figured out..

• 12 new laying hens to be, I am unsure as of yet what breed but it will be a dual purpose brown laying hen.
• 6 Bronze mixed run Turkey pullets
• A dozen Pheasents
• 4 to 6 geese-A mate or two for honk* and the rest for the freezer..

*Honk has attached himself to Apple Duck and he is just way to rough with her, he needs his own mate and I am unwilling to pay the prices at the bird sales to buy him a single full grown mate, so we will get a mixed run and hope that we get one or two nice girls for him to bond with and I am looking forward to a chistmas goose for 2013!

I also need to track down and add in two new female does to my rabbit breeding program, my girls are getting old and I have done a inbreeding, now, I need to outcross, and or replace the buck with fresh bloodlines. I am hoping to be able to pick them up at my good local bird sale, normally, there is one to five breeders there with rabbits and prices are higher but the qaulity makes it worth it, but last year, there was only one seller and it was angora, and the prices were crazy high..

Kijji is great but being able to get everyone on one sale day and for only one driving cost, it is so worth it if possable.

That’s it, plus one large Bard Rock Rooster from my favorite breeder at the spring bird sale

New energy requirements increase  14 to 15 percent and protein requirements increase 26 to 27 percent from  mid-gestation to late gestation. This  increase in nutrient requirements during this stage of gestation is due to the rapidly  increasing growth of the fetus.  The  fetus accomplishes only 25 percent of its growth during the first two-thirds of  gestation.  The remaining 75 percent of fetal  growth is attained during the last 90 days of gestation.  In fact, the developing conceptus (fetus plus  membranes and fluids) requires 100 to 150 pounds of weight gain during the last  third of gestation!

As hard as it to believe, Girl is now entering in her 3rd part of her pregancy, and suddenly last week, she has baby bump, I have decided that trying to get a photo of baby bump in a brown cow is very hard but I swear if you could see her in really life, you would be like.. WOW, look at that baby bump, even cooler is that for the first time, I felt the baby move, it didn’t kick so much as appear to do the move/wave.

On the feed end, Girl is really getting almost pushy about getting her grain rations on top of all the hay she can eat and her molassies/fat/protein, vit/mineral lick, she also seems to be using her baking soda a bit more then normal.. Amazing that she will need to gain around another hundred to hundred an fifty pds yet before she calf’s out.

It’s now law that you must tag your sheep before they leave for the butcher, this is part of a tracking system for both canada and also to keep us on par with global record keeping etc.

I have the most basic and cheapest tags available, you look at your ear and split it into three, you want to take in the middle of the middle..  but slightly on the downside so that there is still room for the ear to grow..

Hard to believe that when we got this boy, we hauled him home in a large dog crate with room to space and sledded him down to the barn, he was about the size of his daughters at this point in time..

Needless to say that is not the case now.. He is well over six feet in length and according to my measurements and tape, pushing 400 pds.. and I have to agree with Hubby that when a boar gettings that big, might be time to move him out and get a smaller boy to deal with, not that Angelo has a bad temperment, he doesn’t, I can’t say that we ever had any issues with him the whole time we had him.. its just time..

Here he is in photos, the one with the coming three year old milk cow is telling, that is Girl he is going head to head with and winning! I will be very interested in seeing how much meat we get back on him.

Ok, I am looking for name idea’s, Houdini just does not roll of the tongue in a nice easy way and I struggle over it while trying to work with him, I do not want to go back to calling him Pony, I get enough flack over calling the Cow  “Girl”..

So as you know, small mini-horse dapple grey pinto gelding.. but I don’t want to go to silly cute like tom thumb or Tiny Tim or Jimminie Cricket ?

I will admit that I do like Itty-Bit but can that really be a good name to work with.. Whoa itty-bit.. not really..

Open to idea’s and thoughts but won’t say for sure that I will pick one, just that I am open to listening.. Look forward to what you come up with..