rachels.haven's Journal

[rachels.haven]

Rest of hay going up today. New delivery coming from the feed store with beet pulp tomorrow. That should fill up the loft and part of the down stairs. I think I'll use and replace the downstairs stuff as long as the stores have it, so I'm going to take it easy after this. I've got a family member with a health thingy coming up, so I'll need to put my focus elsewhere for a little bit to keep things in balance.

I should do an official bale count on the loft once it's full.

 

[rachels.haven]

Yesterday I sent Atlas home to the buck pen as all the lamancha does had cycled and had a honeymoon with him, then I herbal wormed everyone and put the dwarf does back in with the mancha does. This of course, prompted all the dwarves to start fighting among themselves any excuse for a good brawl checks out in the dwarf herd.

This morning Lace and Summer were putting the fear of God back in those dwarven "herd queens" and Trinka gets a free pass because she's a lamancha like them. She has no ears. What a relief. No more Trinka slamming.

Well, I've gotten tired of the stupid polish and opted to sell them. They are both dumb and they bite my boots and hands when I handle them and hold on like angry turtles. So two strikes, time to hatch more silkies, I guess. I liked my orps. Maybe next time I'll just get some no fuss american orps or australorps. Or california whites. Or nothing because silkies are fine.

Anyhow, I got the feed store to bring that 50 bales and some beet pulp to try so now all that's left is to put it away. What fits in the loft is hay storage, anything else is to be used as slowly as I can.

Oh, and the little baby bucks went off into the dwarf's old breeding pen and of course like good little dwarf bucklings they are screaming their heads off because the new pen wants to castrate or eat them or something. But more space for them!

 

[messybun]

Uh oh. Bloody poo and a dead chick in the chick house. Time to break out the corid for the next 5 days

50 bales of hay in the garage to put away. My hay guy is out and he thinks it's to be a "blood bath" come March and he advises me to keep looking until we're at stuffed capacity and if I get desperate he an help look too. Apparently his contacts in New York and VT had worse drought than we did and are out or are down to almost nothing. I'm going to get this stuff put up and decide how much more I can fit.

My "c" key on my chromebook is being insensitive. Sorry for typos I didn't catch. Keyboards getting ruined beyond repair is the number 1 reason I replace laptops. The other being destroyed housing due to kid incidents. Not in the mood for replacing right now, so may need to get some canned air or putty to try.

You can plug in a desktop keyboard into your laptop

 

[rachels.haven]

Oh goodness, I forgot about that. I may even have an extra keyboard laying around. I pushed it about 5 million times and it got unsticky for now.

 

[rachels.haven]

Hay Guy hay vs Farmers' Exchange hay.
Green color doesn't matter as much as it looks for the non-hay people. The farmers exchange hay is always fine and sweet smelling. I think it's both orchard grass, but the goats prefer Hay Guy hay, probably for the later leaf stage and extra weeds yet few to no stems. I think the Farmers' Exchange caters the most to equids. Do horses like it finer and more sugary?

 

[rachels.haven]

Forgot pic.

 

[rachels.haven]

Obi and Ant the Jr. Bucklings letting me know that they are so emotionally scarred from being moved from a small dry stall to a stall and pen that they need more grain therapy so they can get fat...I mean heal the emotional wounds I inflicted and get over it.

 

[farmerjan]

Hay on left - greener color in picture..... looks more like a "bladey type orchard grass" like what we make here in the improved orchard grass fields. The pic on the right looks more like our mixed grass fields....has some different types of hay and it is as sweet smelling as the other....IF MADE RIGHT..... all of our hay this past week has smelled so good because it has dried right with no humidity. Cutting at optimal time is also important, but it is the making it right that has more to do with the sweet smell...plus the variety/type of hay.
Greener hay like that also has more nutrition. The hay we made this week has great color, because it dried faster so did not get bleached out by the sun. In the heat of the summer, it will bleach more because of the intensity of the sun on it, especially if it is more humid so it takes longer to dry.

 

[rachels.haven]

AH. That makes sense. The feed store hay does go faster and they don't seem to like it as much and they waste more. Their hay also can occasionally come moldy or sour smelling and cause the goats to bloat if they eat it. Last year I also had some bales that either came black or became black in storage. This batch has less color, but smells pretty good, so I'll take it. We had a lot of humidity and this last little bit of the growing season, lots of patchy light rain (not enough to dampen the dirt, but enough to drive some hay farmers nuts, I bet).

Hay guy's hay is preferred by the peanut gallery many times over. Pity he ran out so early!

@farmerjan you are a hay artist. Thank you for chiming in!

 

[rachels.haven]

Really almost done.

See?

And yes, the five year old is wearing a two year old shirt he dug out of storage/the trash. Dan loved lifting hay with me, so he is proud regardless.