It's a Farm Update - 02/08/24

It's time for a farm update. Why do we do these? Because we believe it means a lot to know your farmer so that you can know your food! Letting you in on what's going on and what moves we're making gives you a great look inside! As always, feel free to follow along on our social media pages as well to get daily updates and insight.


The Laying Chickens

Wow, have we had our fair share of predators over the past 6 months. From coyotes to hawks, the last one really did our laying hens in this fall/winter. Since Hawks are a protected bird, we can't take them out which would be the easiest thing in all honesty. Don't write me off, they're killing my chickens. You'd be angry too! We decided to pull them into our new Mobile Meat Chicken Shelter which is much larger and could easily accommodate them closed in. We created temporary roosts then spent an evening driving around local neighborhoods to gather bags of leaves and straw bagged up on the side of the street. We LOADED down with this great goodness - think wonderful compost. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We moved the chickens into the mobile meat chicken shelter from their mobile shelter (it's a bit smaller) and let them do their thing. Every few days, we take those wonderful bags of leaves and straw and layer new ground for them. This is referred as the DEEP LITTER METHOD. The chickens poop, we lay more material, the chickens poop, more material.... until there is a layer of wonderful, rich material at our fingertips. In the meantime, Maverick, our predator detecting goose, was growing up in the brooder. Geese are known to be great alarms for predators and will "alert" the chickens when danger seems near. Just a couple of weeks ago, we introduced him to the flock, and they've been bonding ever since. It’s now time for them to get back to their normal routine of pasture and rotations after an unexpected attack that hit us hard.

This week, we’ve made them our priority. We’ve been setting up netting, adding more tarps to their mobile shelter (we remove some in summer) so when they roost at night, there’s more heat held in.  We’ve assembled a new egg box and constructed new roosts. What’s left? Moving their gravity water system into place, tuning up their feeders and finally, getting them moved.

What outcome are we hopeful of achieving in the few weeks they’ve been in the shelter?

1. 1. That the hawks got bored and moved on (I mean, if I tell myself that it makes it possible right?)
2. 2. That we avoided a mass loss of additional birds (we lost 25 in a matter of a few weeks) by making the move.
3. 3. We know they produced some amazing compost from all the turning, digging, pooping and layering. That will in turn go on the pastures and regenerate the soil.
4. 4. It gave the alarm system (aka Maverick the Goose) time to grow and bond with them.

We’ll keep you updated! In the meantime, send us any tips you have on hawk/air predator control. We’d love to hear it!

The Cow Crew

The cow crew is just living their best life - eating their hay and alfalfa, fertilizing the soil and chasing after us anytime we try to do anything in the pasture. They really are some curious creatures! We planned on working them this week but with the chickens becoming priority and rain on the way this weekend, we've pushed it to next week. So, what does it mean when we say Work them? That means that we get them all up to the barn – equipped with lanes, paddocks, and a head catch for working them easily – and weigh them then sort them based on their data. Sounds easy, right? It is, for the most part. Since we don’t have a direct lane from each pasture to the barn, it takes a little more work to get them there. We make a temporary lane from the paddock closest to the barn, using electric netting and cattle panels. This is a failsafe in case someone decides to go astray and explore the vast land around them. Ask us why we take this extra step, Haha. When the temp lane is in place, Josh will take a bucket of Alfalfa and simultaneously run, shake the bucket, call the cows and sheep, and not fall on his face. Eventually, we get them to the barn. We’ll separate the cows from the sheep, working the sheep first as they’re the most nervous. I’ll cover what working them means below. When it gets to the cows, we slowly walk them through the lane and up to the head catch, which is screwed into a concrete pad containing scales. We’ll take their weight and record it, look at past weight and age, and decide where it’s going from there. If it’s coming up to be processed soon, it stays in the rotation of paddocks at the home farm. If it’s got awhile to grow (100% grassfed takes approximately 18-24 months to grow from weaning) then we’ll place them at our leased land where they are also rotated and given more time to eat and grow.

The Little Lambs

We've already mentioned coyotes once and I hate to give those boogers anymore of my time. But, if you're new here you don't know that they wiped all of our lambs out last season but 3 (Ewes that we had weaned in a separate pen away from the rams). It was a ginormous punch in the gut, and we were devastated. We immediately got to work reinforcing fences, adding more secure gates and even called those guys - you've heard of the ones. Yes, we got some coyote hunters out to the farm. Licensed, trained and skilled gunman that were professional, prepared, and knew how to hunt without causing any threat to the livestock. They were able to take out one, while getting their eyes on a few others.

Our ewes started lambing in November and we had 4 sets of twins! They are ready to castrate and wean now and will be worked with the cows next week. Working them involves a little more time. Sheep are highly prone to parasites, especially in the humid, wet south. Because of this, we check their eye lids frequently. This is called the Famacha test. If the eyelids are red when they are pulled down, the sheep is healthy and doesn’t have a parasite problem. If the eyelids are light pink to white, it’s time to treat for parasites. Since getting into sheep in 2020, we’ve only had to treat a few of our ewes. We don’t treat on a schedule, only as needed. With our practice of rotational grazing, natural de-wormers such as wormwood and black walnut, and feeding lespedeza hay, we cut way back on the problem. We are also breeding better parasite resistant genetics into our herd with our St. Croix ram. But, if we check and they need to be treated, we do treat with a de-wormer as the risk of losing them is far greater. Barber Pole warm is a huge killer in the south. The hope is these better genetics along with rotationally grazing will eventually eliminate the need to treat the ewes (Moma sheep). To clarify, we NEVER treat or have to treat any of the feeder lambs that are designated for meat production.

The next thing we do is check their feet to see if they need to be trimmed. If they do, we take a pair of clippers and trim the excess off. As the ewes and rams are worked, we place them in a separate paddock. We then check the lambs – castrating the males and placing ear tags in all of them for identification. We’ll take the rams and ewes back to pasture and separate the lambs for weaning. They’ll go into our Mobile Sheep pen (Check it out here) where they’re safe and pushed around fresh pasture a few times a day. After weaning, the lambs will return back with the flock.

THIS LITTLE PIGGY

There are 6 pigs left out of the 31 we raised and processed over the past season. They were the last bunch we got, and they’ll be ready for processing next month. We anticipated having about a 2-month break on pigs after these 6 go to be processed. We received news this week that our piglets for this year will be ready in 6 weeks – WOWZA! We’ve already divided off a big portion of the pig paddocks so that we could plant grasses and cover crops. Since we won’t have the time to plant the rest of the paddocks and let them rest once these 6 go, we are expanding the pig area. It’s a project we’ve already decided to do but thought we had a bit more time to tackle it. Once the chicken, cows and sheep get squared away over the next week, this will become our next focus. Fence Work. A farmer’s forever job.

MEAT CHICKENS

The million-dollar question – WHEN WILL YOU BE BACK IN STOCK? While we still have some great options available like wings and legs, raising meat chickens is seasonal for us. They have to have the proper temperatures to grow and thrive. Since we believe their best growing and thriving is done on pasture on grass with fresh air and bugs, we need warmer temps. We’ll receive our first batch next month. They’ll stay in the brooder a couple of weeks (until they grow some feathers) and then out to pasture they’ll go for the rest of their time. We anticipate a restock in early May.

See you in a few weeks for another update!