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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
Today I am a stay at home Dad so Anna can chaperone a field trip with Vicki.
You know you have farm kids when the 2 year old is quite happy helping with chores in a princess dress and then finds a nice mud hole to dig in. Now she is learning how to drive her tractor. We saved it from the older kids and just got a new battery installed. I think it is going to be hard keeping Alex and Vicki off…
That’s right, we have Goat Addition Syndrome. You can read more about the affliction on Backyard Herds. In September 2011, we bought our first 2 goats. Right now we have 2 bucks, 6 does (3 in milk – 2 getting milked and 1 with babies), and 4 doelings born this year. Some people would think that 12 goats are enough, but we are only getting about 5-6 quarts of milk a day from the 2 does we are milking. Farrah is either going to kid this week (she is already overdue), or she is very fat and going on a diet. Theoretically, we will sell some goats, but we just haven’t decided which ones yet. We are somewhat attached to our Lamanchas and want to expand on that herd, so that’s why we are going to buy another goat from New Hampshire this weekend. Hopefully by Monday we will be milking 3 does for about 2 gallons of milk a day. That should support the demand for a little while. The kids are capable of eating 2 quarts of ice cream a day, so we make a batch every other day. We actually drink about 3 quarts a day, and the rest will be used for making cheese. If we still have extra, we might raise a veal calf. 13 goats should be enough for a little while. Of course if Farrah really does kid, then it’s more like 15…
Sawyer Farm’s Goldilocks (born 5/18/2012)
Sawyer Farm’s Belle (born 5/18/2012)
A little bit of enlightening truth from my first class (Critical Thinking) towards my Equine Sciences degree:
In 1906, William Graham Sumner published a land-breaking study of the foundations of sociology and anthropology, Folkways, in which he documented the tendency of the human mind to think sociocentrically and the parallel tendency for schools to serve the (uncritical) function of social indoctrination :
“Schools make persons all on one pattern, orthodoxy. School education, unless it is
regulated by the best knowledge and good sense, will produce men and women who
are all of one pattern, as if turned in a lathe…An orthodoxy is produced in regard to all
the great doctrines of life. It consists of the most worn and commonplace opinions which
are common in the masses. The popular opinions always contain broad fallacies, halftruths,
and glib generalizations (p. 630).”
Last weekend, I wrote about the North Stonington 5k, but I left out the details of something that happened. During Vicki’s 1/4 mile race (which was 2 laps around a field), she ran by Madison. Madison is 5 and goes to church with us. Vicki noticed Madison was crying and not at all happy about racing around the field. Vicki stopped and put her arm around Madison’s shoulder, walking the second half of the first lap until Madison got back to her parents. Then, with a smile on her face, she ran her second lap, well behind the main group.
On Monday, we cooked 2 freshly harvested roosters on the rotisserie. Alex and Vicki pulled the wishbones, and Alex won twice. Since Vicki didn’t win, he gave her one of the two wishes.
As I think about both of these events, I consider that my children are much more compassionate than I am, and can only conclude they learn it from their loving mother, and my beautiful wife.
We finally took some pictures of our rabbits! Since we currently have 27 kits (baby rabbits) and 13 adults for breeding stock, I only selected a few to put on the page. Don’t worry, we have 2 more rabbits due with litters in mid June.
