goats, horse, rabbit

A lot of Firsts!

2 Comments

Alex had his first horse show at the North Stonington Fair!  He rode Precious in 3 walk-trot classes and got 2-4ths and a 3rd.  His favorite part? Getting the ribbons.

Vicki had her first horse show at the North Stonington Fair! She rode King in a lead line class, with me as the lead holder.  She got third and can’t wait to show more.  She is actually ready to show in walk-trot, but Devil needs a little more reovery time first.

Anna had her first student enter a show!  Kenzie rode Precious in the lead line class with Vicki.  It was also her first show ever and she had a ton of fun!

Since King was already there, I rode him in 5 classes.  I managed to get 1st in 2 of the classes and won Grand Champion in the English division.

6 of our rabbits got 1st place in the rabbit show at the North Stonington Fair, and one also got Runner Up for Open Show Champion!

After about a year of owning goats, we finally sold our first goat.  That was followed about 30 minutes later with our second and third sales of goats to a different family.

Tomorrow we will have our first goat show!  The main focus for tomorrow is to learn about showing and make sure Vicki and Alex have fun doing it.

goats, horse, rabbit

To the fair!

Leave a comment

It’s North Stonington Fair time! This is our first fair experience showing animals. We have been busy for the last few days making final preps. 6 rabbits are about to get delivered to their cages and will stay until Sunday night. The kids get to do unlimited rides tonight.

We will probably go tomorrow evening, but first we will be prepping horses. Saturday morning is the horse show. Vicki will be riding lead line on King since Devil is still not healed enough to show. Alex will be riding Precious, and Anna even has a student riding Precious in the lead line class. This will be Alex and Vicki’s first horse show. I may enter with King if there are other adults showing.
Then, Sunday is the goat show. We are taking 5 goats (2 for Vicki and 3 for Alex). This will be our first goat show!

We have a busy weekend ahead!

goats, horse

Fresh cheese and a movie

Leave a comment

20120708-215233.jpg

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?

20120708-215409.jpg

horse, marriage

Couples therapy

Leave a comment

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.

20120704-181000.jpg

20120704-181007.jpg

random observation

It’s disappointing when…

2 Comments

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

1 Comment

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

Leave a comment

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!

20120618-190602.jpg

goats

More goats? Sounds good to me

Leave a comment

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.

20120617-093912.jpg

20120617-093928.jpg

turkey

Heritage Turkeys have arrived!

Leave a comment

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.

The story of our lives with horses. And goats.