goats, horse

Fresh cheese and a movie

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Anna and I enjoy sitting down after a long day and enjoying a glass of red wine and some goat cheese. Until recently, we were buying our goat cheese at the grocery store for $5-6 for 4oz! We have finally gotten back into making our own cheese. It is very easy and we use real lemon juice to curdle the milk. After a night of draining in cheese cloth, we salt the cheese, add some fresh garlic, and roll the cheese in fresh herbs. The biggest complication is we will run out of fresh herbs!

Now to sit back and enjoy Pete Ramey teaching about hoof trimming. What else would you watch before bed?

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horse, marriage

Couples therapy

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For the past few months, Anna and I have missed the opportunity to take the horses on a trail ride without the kids. This is because we have been without two horses for us to ride. While the lower feed bill has been nice, we really missed our time to ride as a couple and as a whole family.
On Monday, Calli (Calliope) came to join us. We have her on a free lease for now as we evaluate if she is right for us. Calli is a 5 year old, 16.1hh, thoroughbred mare. She has some arena experience, but is definitely more green than horses I have worked with in the past. So far, after 2 rides, we are getting along well.
Since it was raining this morning, we rearranged some plans and Anna and I went trail riding this afternoon. To my knowledge, this was only Calli’s second trail ride. We got her to do a small water crossing and did some canter work in a nice open field. She did very well and Anna and I were able to enjoy the afternoon out.

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random observation

It’s disappointing when…

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We live on a country road and have offered eggs for sale at the end of the driveway for about a year and a half. In May, we had our cooler stolen. We keep a smaller soft side cooler inside a big hard cooler. They left the soft cooler and eggs, but took the money.
Last night, we had the soft cooler with 3 doz eggs taken – this time the replacement hard cooler was left.
On many other occasions, we have had money or eggs disappear. It hasn’t been a big deal, but when we have to keep replacing coolers, there is no point in selling eggs.
It’s disappointing that you can’t even sell eggs without stuff getting stolen. We will now have to move the cooler next to the house or stop selling entirely.

chicken

Home grown chickens in the freezer

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In April, our Freedom Ranger meat chickens arrived on the farm (read here).  Saturday morning, the first group of 23 got processed.  Of the original 51, none died due to disease, however, we did lose 6 to predators (probably a raccoon).   Here are our observations about the birds:

1. The chickens were just over 10 weeks old and had an average packaged weight of 3.7lbs.  This is a little lower than originally hoped for, but was a 67% live to packaged weight conversion.  By comparison, a group of cornish cross that I processed for someone else at 8 weeks averaged over 4lbs and had a 75% live to packaged conversion.

2. 45 birds at 10 weeks were consuming 25-30lbs of feed a day.  The first 23 that we processed were the larger birds.  The remaining 22 birds will be raised another 3 weeks.

3.  It took 750 lbs of feed (15 bags) to raise the entire group of birds to the 10 week point.  I expect to use another 200-250lbs to raise the remaining birds 3 more weeks.  Rough math means that it took about 4.5lbs of feed per lb of meat.  By comparison, I have seen numbers more like 2.5-3lbs of feed per lb of meat for the Cornish Cross.

4. Meat birds are disgusting.  They poop a lot and sit around a lot more compared to dual purpose birds.  From all the discussions with others, I don’t think there was a significant difference between our Freedom Rangers and Cornish Cross birds.

5. While the Freedom Rangers definitely got larger faster than a Dual Purpose rooster (like a Barred Rock), the meat was not necessarily better and the higher feed consumption was a disadvantage.

6. Cornish Cross had fewer feathers, larger breasts, and bigger chest cavities at 8 weeks than our Freedom Rangers had at 10 weeks.

Overall, we have decided that if we raise more pure meat birds, they will be Cornish Cross. Also, even as large as our chicken tractor is, 50 is more than we want in that space.  I think we will plan for 25-30 next time.

While we do make a little profit on the birds sold, it is not significant enough to make us want to do chickens full-time.

goats, horse

Pasture maintenance in progress

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Horses eat grass and leave weeds. Goats eat weeds and leave grass. A little rest from the horses is a perfect time to let the goats clean up the weeds! We recently purchased a large quantity of used Premier electronet fencing for just this purpose. At their initial browse rate, it looks like the weeds will be clear in about 24 hours. Luckily, we are putting up more electronet around an overgrown area of the property for the goats to move to next!

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goats

More goats? Sounds good to me

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To say this week has been busy is an understatement. I haven’t even had time to write about our newest goat herd additions. Last Sunday afternoon, I drove to New Hampshire to meet Cliff Parker of Longvu Lamanchas. I specifically went to buy Tangueray Texter, a first freshened in milk. She come from a very good pedigree and will help improve our herd. With her coloring, she should make nice babies with Apache, our lamancha buck.
While I was there, I looked at the kids they had, and decided to buy Pocohontas. I love her coloring and she is super friendly. The kids love to play with her.

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turkey

Heritage Turkeys have arrived!

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Since we are on the kick of raising our own food anyways, why not raise turkeys too?  We placed an order back in February from another local farm that keeps Narragansett and Blue Slate hens with a Narragansett tom.  As a result, we have some pure Narragansetts and some crossed birds. This morning, Anna picked up the 14 poults (10 are a couple of days old and 4 are a week old).

We have been researching raising turkeys and plan to try and give them as much grass access as possible with our portable electric fence, however grain will be a big part of their diet.  My research has a lot of conflicting information about what we should expect for weight at harvest time.  Some people report 8-16lbs (hen/tom) while other have 16-25lbs averages.  All I know is, we have about 22 weeks until harvest right before Thanksgiving, and I will have a better idea of our results in November.

The biggest gamble for us is setting the price for the birds now.  We prefer to have an incentive for people to make an reasonable advance deposit on the turkeys to offset feed/raising costs, and that only works if I set a price now.  We know that Ekonk Hill Turkey Farm sold heritage turkeys in 2011 for $8.99/lb.

You may reserve a Sawyer Family Farm turkey for $40 which will lock in a price of $8/lb at harvest.  I am only offering 8 birds available for deposit (and 1 is already paid for, leaving 7 left).  The remaining birds will be retained by us for our own freezer or as breeding stock.  It also allows for possible loss along the way (turkeys generally have a higher mortality rate than chickens).  If there are any birds left available in November, they will be sold at a higher price than those reserved in advance.

What if you don’t want a bird that will be 22lbs at $8/lb?  I will be monitoring the growth of the birds along the way.  If you want a particular size bird, and don’t mind having it harvested early to go in your freezer until Thanksgiving, we can do that too!

If you are interested in placing a deposit on a turkey, please Email with the number of turkeys you would like, and any rough size preference (10-15lb, 15-20lb, etc) and I will send you an invoice via PayPal.

Uncategorized

Sawyer Family Farm updates

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Have you ever thought, “Rob and Anna always seem to be doing something new on the farm.  How can I keep up with the changes?”  Many people who are reading our posts are clicking in from the Facebook links. However, as Facebook is always changing who and what I see (without asking me), I find I miss updates on other pages that I am interested in.

You can get an email each time we make a new post!  If you look on the right side of our home page, I have added the convenient ability to subscribe to the blog!

horse

Devil’s cancer surgery

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Warning: This post contains explicit details and graphic pictures of equine cancer surgery. 

Last summer, we got Vicki a Paint pony named Devil in Disguise (Devil).  He has been absolutely fabulous with the kids and Anna uses him for teaching lessons to new riders.  In late April, we noticed an unusual lump on his sheath, so we decided to have Salem Valley Vet out to evaluate the issue.  Salem Valley came and took a small cell sample for analysis, but was pretty certain it was a sarcoid tumor. In the about 3 weeks from when we first noticed the tumor until Salem Valley checked it, Anna and I both noticed a definite size increase in the tumor. The recommendation came back to book him for surgery at Tufts.

As we were moving through this, I met Dr. Kara Kneser at a 4H goat showing clinic, and she referenced me to Dr. Anne Schwartz of Tri State Equine Surgical Specialists.  Based on the cost estimate from Tufts, we decided to have Dr. Schwartz give us a second opinion.  Dr. Schwartz has experience working in equine hospitals in Florida and a couple of years ago moved to RI to branch out on her own.  Right now she is specializing in on-farm surgery.  We did a consult with her to evaluate the tumors.  The advantages of doing on-farm surgery are lower stress (no trailering, familiar environment, etc), convenient, maybe better recovery, and cost.  Of course, the risks are higher because there are no monitors and fewer options if things go bad.  We decided to accept the risks and cost because Devil is only 9 and has many more years ahead of him.  Due to some shifting schedules, the surgery got moved up to today.

Dr. Schwartz did the actual surgery and Dr. Kneser was the anesthesiologist.  The surgery was actually conducted in the grassy area just outside our barn.  They started by sedating Devil and then actually giving him the anesthesia.  Once he was down and on his back, Dr. Schwartz got to work.  It was about 2 hrs, 15 minutes from her first incision until she finished sewing him up as much as possible.  Brittany Banning introduced us to Devil in the first place, and since she is a vet student, we invited her to the surgery.  Dr. Schwartz let her jump in to help.  The tumors were much more involved than any of us had imagined.  Samples are being sent for analysis to confirm the are sarcoids.  In all, 1-1.5 lbs of tumors were removed, and a number of times Dr. Schwartz commented on how in over 20 years she didn’t remember seeing any sarcoids that involved.  There were a few touchy points when his heart rate dropped or his breathing got irregular, but in the end, he survived the surgery.

It took about 45 minutes for the anesthesia to wear off and for him to stand up.  At first, 5 of us were helping keep him from falling back over.  After a while, Vicki came up to check on him.  Devil was very happy to see Vicki and actually, kept stepping forward to get closer to her.  We used Vicki to lead him back to his stall.

Devil will be on stall rest for 1-2 days, and then get to go back out.  He will get 4-5 chemotherapy injections throughout the summer where the tumors were located.  How he does will determine how long until Vicki gets to ride him again, but probably about 2 months.

We are very pleased with the work that Dr. Schwartz and her team did, and definitely give them a “4 hooves up” endorsement.

What follows are pictures from the surgery.

The story of our lives with horses. And goats.