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- #371
Wehner Homestead
Herd Master
@mysunwolf you might have! SBC is slightly excited about the potential the girls have developing our own line of Minis! 
Wehner Homestead
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- Thread starter
- #372
Wehner Homestead
Herd Master
In other farm news, it feels like it’s 24 degrees outside according to the weather. I’d say that’s about right! It’s fridgid!
As mentioned before, we expect Snowflake to kid and Moxie and Maxine to calve. We didn’t expect it to be this cold nor the freezing rain to cause problems this late in March. DH penned the two cow in one side of the barn that he divided with a gate to make two Calving pens that each have a water trough and hay feeder.
We furthered the barrier for our stock for the night for two reasons: it’s been warm so the drastic changes in temp are hard on everyone and we don’t want to risk losing young or newborn stock. This lead to putting down fresh straw for all but four cows for the night. (The two that will be butchered this summer and the bull and his companion cow. The first two lost their barn access because all of the big doors were closed, decreasing their space to an unacceptable amount if locked in. The bull and cow don’t have an actual shelter but can go in a valley area with less wind and fare well.) In other words, I put down straw in six goat pens, two dog pens, chicken cages/runs/coops, and two large Calving pens. We also gave the pigs a bale of straw to spread in their pen and put down fresh straw in the rest of the lean-to for any cows or calves that wanted to lay down somewhere dry. Cats were hunkered down in the fresh straw beds with various animals.
Funny moment after work: I stopped to grab some more whole milk for CeCe and Sparkle because I prefer to stay several gallons ahead of them, rather than cutting it close. Anyway, as I was getting in the truck, I paused to lock in the hubs. DH’s truck is a 2004 and was stuck in 4WD at one point and something was running. Anyway, he could pay a bunch of money to have the electric 4WD fixed where the knob inside was in control or have it disconnected and the hubs would have to be locked in. He opted to have to lock them in. No biggie for me as the farm truck was similar growing up. As
I was locking in the second hub before I left, a guy that appeared to be in his late 30s said loudly, “it’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone lock in hubs!” I just replied with “nothin’ like kickin’ it old school” and started my trek home. Thought y’all might get a little kick out of that.
As mentioned before, we expect Snowflake to kid and Moxie and Maxine to calve. We didn’t expect it to be this cold nor the freezing rain to cause problems this late in March. DH penned the two cow in one side of the barn that he divided with a gate to make two Calving pens that each have a water trough and hay feeder.
We furthered the barrier for our stock for the night for two reasons: it’s been warm so the drastic changes in temp are hard on everyone and we don’t want to risk losing young or newborn stock. This lead to putting down fresh straw for all but four cows for the night. (The two that will be butchered this summer and the bull and his companion cow. The first two lost their barn access because all of the big doors were closed, decreasing their space to an unacceptable amount if locked in. The bull and cow don’t have an actual shelter but can go in a valley area with less wind and fare well.) In other words, I put down straw in six goat pens, two dog pens, chicken cages/runs/coops, and two large Calving pens. We also gave the pigs a bale of straw to spread in their pen and put down fresh straw in the rest of the lean-to for any cows or calves that wanted to lay down somewhere dry. Cats were hunkered down in the fresh straw beds with various animals.
Funny moment after work: I stopped to grab some more whole milk for CeCe and Sparkle because I prefer to stay several gallons ahead of them, rather than cutting it close. Anyway, as I was getting in the truck, I paused to lock in the hubs. DH’s truck is a 2004 and was stuck in 4WD at one point and something was running. Anyway, he could pay a bunch of money to have the electric 4WD fixed where the knob inside was in control or have it disconnected and the hubs would have to be locked in. He opted to have to lock them in. No biggie for me as the farm truck was similar growing up. As
I was locking in the second hub before I left, a guy that appeared to be in his late 30s said loudly, “it’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone lock in hubs!” I just replied with “nothin’ like kickin’ it old school” and started my trek home. Thought y’all might get a little kick out of that.
I so remember the manual locking hubs. The best time for them was once you're already stuck... Congrats on your new acquisition of Wings & Caprines Lamanchas! They have some really excellent stock. I'm sure you'll be well pleased with them going fwd. I had to kid today, so it's only right that your girls go tonight. Good luck with them all! 
Congrats on your new acquisition of Wings & Caprines Lamanchas! They have some really excellent stock. I'm sure you'll be well pleased with them going fwd. I had to kid today, so it's only right that your girls go tonight. Good luck with them all! 
Baymule
Herd Master
Congrats on the 2 new babies! You couldn't deal with better people or have nicer goats!
Bruce
Herd Master
Clearly it was a conspiracy against us learning the surprise!!!!2) @Bruce in your good natured teasing, I’ll also add that I attempted to log-in once and I couldn’t get BYH to even load. I wanted to check on something else and couldn’t even do that. I’ll interject that before 11 am, I had one patient intubated and another extubated, I helped transfer a very critical patient to a bigger hospital for more diverse care, assisted with a colostomy explosion, corrected a critical lab value, fielded various calls from doctors, pharmacy, lab, families, and dietary. It was bad enough that my boss came into help! That’s a huge deal!
That sure seems like a "more than normal" busy day at work!
Hens and Roos
Herd Master
Congrats on the new additions!
OneFineAcre
Herd Master
Congrats on the new girls
- Thread starter
- #378
Wehner Homestead
Herd Master
@Bruce I’m absolutely weary from the weekend at work! I think I could’ve slept through a tornado last night and that’s not typical for me.
It’s a little crazy here. We have Diamond who has an udder issue (I’m taking pics and will try to start a thread at some point.) She will be fine though and I’m still milking her.
We went from freezing rain and snow to the start of a muddy mess. It’s only going to get worse though since tomorrow starts four consecutive days of rain per the weather forecast. This sets us back further on getting the chicken barn here and the runs built. I’m so ready to have them situated better. All of the younger ones are outgrowing their current housing and need upgraded. The Thanksgiving chicks are also now starting to lay as DH found two pullet eggs over the weekend and crowing has been happening for about two weeks now.
We put the two cows that we were expecting to calve this weekend in pens in the barn to protect the calves from the ice but they haven’t released their hostages yet. With the extensive mud in the common areas, we opted just to keep them in for now and that’ll allow the calves to get steady on their feet before having to tromp through the mess to keep up with their dams. This added additional barn chores though as each cow has her own water tub and hay feeder to keep full and their bedding has to be kept fresh.
We are running out of barn pens! We divided the kidding pen to put Jericho and Jackson in one half and CeCe and Sparkle in the other half. Diamond and Jasmine were moved into a cleaned out dog pen for quarantine and Queenie, Cowboy, and Jewel are all penned together at night for the moment. A new very temporary kidding pen was built by DH while I worked over the weekend. It’ll serve its purpose when Snowflake needs it but isn’t ideal. The bucks are still separated as I’m not ready to introduce them yet and want to do some testing on Knight before I put them together.
The pig pen is a muddy mess from the odd direction of precipitation lately and we have added several bales of straw and the moisture keeps coming through. (I see a major clean out in the near future.)
New goat fencing also keeps getting pushed back with the mud. We did take the bottle doelings out for walk-about last night while the weather was favorable when I got home from work.
Sparkle is immediately behind DD1 in the purple coat. DS is in the navy coat. DH is carrying DD2. Cowboy is the lead dog on the left with Queenie and Faith behind him. Jewel was to my left so outside the frame. CeCe was walking right in front of me.
It’s a little crazy here. We have Diamond who has an udder issue (I’m taking pics and will try to start a thread at some point.) She will be fine though and I’m still milking her.
We went from freezing rain and snow to the start of a muddy mess. It’s only going to get worse though since tomorrow starts four consecutive days of rain per the weather forecast. This sets us back further on getting the chicken barn here and the runs built. I’m so ready to have them situated better. All of the younger ones are outgrowing their current housing and need upgraded. The Thanksgiving chicks are also now starting to lay as DH found two pullet eggs over the weekend and crowing has been happening for about two weeks now.
We put the two cows that we were expecting to calve this weekend in pens in the barn to protect the calves from the ice but they haven’t released their hostages yet. With the extensive mud in the common areas, we opted just to keep them in for now and that’ll allow the calves to get steady on their feet before having to tromp through the mess to keep up with their dams. This added additional barn chores though as each cow has her own water tub and hay feeder to keep full and their bedding has to be kept fresh.
We are running out of barn pens! We divided the kidding pen to put Jericho and Jackson in one half and CeCe and Sparkle in the other half. Diamond and Jasmine were moved into a cleaned out dog pen for quarantine and Queenie, Cowboy, and Jewel are all penned together at night for the moment. A new very temporary kidding pen was built by DH while I worked over the weekend. It’ll serve its purpose when Snowflake needs it but isn’t ideal. The bucks are still separated as I’m not ready to introduce them yet and want to do some testing on Knight before I put them together.
The pig pen is a muddy mess from the odd direction of precipitation lately and we have added several bales of straw and the moisture keeps coming through. (I see a major clean out in the near future.)
New goat fencing also keeps getting pushed back with the mud. We did take the bottle doelings out for walk-about last night while the weather was favorable when I got home from work.
Sparkle is immediately behind DD1 in the purple coat. DS is in the navy coat. DH is carrying DD2. Cowboy is the lead dog on the left with Queenie and Faith behind him. Jewel was to my left so outside the frame. CeCe was walking right in front of me.
Bruce
Herd Master
Goat walk!!! I guess they aren't concerned about the dogs.
20ish weeks, nice.
- Thread starter
- #380
Wehner Homestead
Herd Master
@Bruce They were actually hatched the week before T-giving but close enough.
CeCe and Sparkle have adjusted very well and it’s been great training for the dogs too!
CeCe and Sparkle have adjusted very well and it’s been great training for the dogs too!
