livestock

Our Livestock

Chickens
    The chickens were the first to arrive here on the homestead. It was the first thing to try to see how we liked the idea of turning our home into  farm. They have arrived about 4 years ago and we really enjoyed them. Watching all the different personalities that each chicken had. You never were bored watching those birds. We had our favorites too. The reality set in very quick when we lost a few birds do to racoons and foxes, showing us that we weren't quite prepared to have chickens. sigh... We learned very quickly what we needed to do... Jumping ahead to last year around March 2012, we decided to try the chickens again. We already had the coop and run there waiting for some chickens to call home.

The small coop and fenced in area is what we had built for our first
set of chickens. The bigger building with the blue tarp is our add a room from
a trailer. It was cheap and big enough to hold the chickens. All we have to do is  build
the front wall and add nesting boxes. These are dual purpose birds,that way we can
have eggs and eat them as a bonus.
Meat birds are the next part on the to do list.

Our new additions to our Coop. We still have to add a few things to it yet. This is so much better then the blue tarp you see in the first photo.

My family and I were introduced to lamb one year and after that we enjoyed it so much that we had it for Easter. I couldn't believe how expensive it was. So I had an idea what about adding sheep to our little homestead.
                  Hmmm....
                                     Now how do I convince my husband to agree to this?  Wasn't sure how, but I knew I had to. So I put my big girl pants on and walked up to him and said
                                     Deeeearrrr,
                                                 could we have sheep?  He thought about it, and said sure. I was shocked, but extremely happy.
               The story doesn't end right there. I was told that 2 would be on hold for me. I was waiting and waiting in anticipation for the day they were able to come home. A few months have pass and no sheep yet. I was getting worried. We all thought that we were not getting the sheep and started to prepare for not to have them. So my son's birthday was here July 4th. We get the call from the sheep man and he said we are on our way to drop off the lambs.
      Now you have to understand something we thought we were not getting them so we didn't put up any fences, nor did we buy any feed for them, that was including hay. Where were we going to put them?   Panic mode now! Friends and family were coming today for a party not to find 2 lambs crashing the party.

  Here they are double trouble. We did end up building a make
shift temporary pen for them.

We were able to get in touch with the farmer to buy some hay and made a quick visit to Tractor Supply for grain.  All was good for awhile.

Turkeys

Tommy the turkey here.
 I know so original right. He is actually named Thomas Jefferson.

We were able to get to turkey hens for him but one literally flew the coop and the other one died (not sure why) I think she was egged bound but that is just a thought. So not much to tell you about him but that he is lonely. If he doesn't end up dinner, we will try and get him a few ladies. It would awesome to see little turkeys running around.








Goats

We found out that my son has an allergy to regular milk COWS milk. I had another one of my ideas. I wanted my son to try goats milk. Here, he likes it, pretty much all the kids like the milk. Now again had to ask my husband to allow goats to be added to the mix. Surprising he said yes right away. So here they are
2 La Mancha Dairy Goats

 ButterCup (black and white)

Hazelnut (brown and white)

 




















Boer goat

My daughter's market goat. We are trading him in on a ewe to be bred this to give us freezer meat. Our cousin is selling his nanny boer goat to us and breeding her with his billy so we will have little kids next spring. I'm really hoping to 2 kids out of her this year. That way my 2 daughters will be able to show them for the fair. 

Say hello to Jerry