Her first litter, and what a good mother, hugging her kittens and purring contentedly.
Jane is a year old and this is her first litter of kittens. As far as I know, none of the neighbours have cats, so the male came from a long distance to be the daddy. He also bred Barbie, but every time she has been pregnant before, she abandoned her litter somewhere and does not care for the kittens. Jane, on the other hand, is an excellent mother. She chose Ofcharka's dog house to have her babies. Jenna was doing clean up and took one of the kittens. She did not hurt it, just licked it clean and left it under the truck. I heard the surprisingly loud crying and returned it to Jane, who was purring away hugging her other two babies. Jane is a small cat and three kittens was about right. They are large and healthy too. The hens lay their eggs in Ofcharka's house. I suppose Jane won't mind sharing, but the hens might try to get the cat out. I hope they do not hurt the kittens. Poor Ofcharka will have to sleep outside or cuddle up with the cats. Jane usually snuggles to Jade, but outside, not in a dog house. There will be some free kitties available in 8 weeks. You want one or two?
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all three geese are out of the shelter now. It is raining hard tonight. I bet they will rebuild another nest inside.
Oh my goodness! The female geese, all four, have decided to nest and keep stealing eggs from one another. One of the girls keeps building a new nest outside of the shelter, so I keep adding wood over top of her to keep out the sun and rain. Today, she tried hard to bite the other goose and get her off HER nest, then built another one and moved the eggs to that nest. This is the fourth move and the eggs should have hatched by now. I will let them fight for a while longer but if the eggs do not start hatching soon, they will begin to smell and the geese should abandon their nests at that point. It is pouring rain and the new nest she built has no cover. I am wondering if I will find her tomorrow back inside the shelter with yet another new nest that she won't let the other geese near. Silly goose! There are kids on the farm! So far, 4 baby goats have been born and this is the latest one born this afternoon. It is a little girl, born to a little white girl. The father was silver grey. Obviously the genes of one or both have the agouti pattern. This little baby was a single, but the mother is so tiny herself, she does not look as though she could have a baby. The kid is a girl and is already playing with the other 3 kids. Goats are so cute and so much fun to watch when they are little. Notice the pupil of the little goat? They are rectangular in shape, unlike most other species. The babies are born with erupted teeth too. Ouch! I guess the mamma goat is prepared for that. Welcome to the Fat Ewe Farm, little lady!
Mamma kept the little girl, but did not want the boy. Gosh he is cute.
When a newborn lamb is rejected by the mother, and it is well and healthy, then bottle feeding is the only choice. Very seldom will a mother ewe accept a lamb that is not hers. The only way to do that is to take the lamb to a mother giving birth and cover it with birth fluids, then leave it for the mother to clean. She may bond with the lamb, thinking she had just given it birth, but she may be wise and try to kill it, so vigilance is necessary. I am bottle feeding a Karakul/Cotswold cross male lamb. He is adorable, all black with the dominant Karakul tightly curled black fleece, but he has the rounded face of the Cotswold and that makes him adorable. His name is Morgan and he already knows my voice and comes running when I call him. He butts me to get the milk flow going (in his own mind) and then sucks his bottle until he is full. Because he is young, his tummy is yet small and he cannot drink more than 6-8 ounces at a time, so he must be fed often during the day. He has 4 feedings during the day and a long stretch between midnight and 7 am which allows me to sleep a bit. As he gets older, he can have three 8 ounce feedings during the day and he should be fine. He has started to nibble hay, since he is in with older lambs that are teaching him to eat. I know of farmers who get down on their hands and knees and chew hay to teach bottle lambs. Normally, they learn this from their mothers. Morgan's tail has been cropped, but he has not been castrated at this time. It is the likely next move, since a black Karakul/Cotswold ram is not a sought after model. Too bad for the little guy. That means he will be eaten one day. And that is the hardest part of bottle feeding. It is. Farming has become an industry that requires the farmer to work full time off the farm in order to subsidize the farming. Why? The cost of feed and animal husbandry exceeds the profits made. Simple, but can it be changed?
The Fat Ewe Farm raises many animals. Sheep are the main industry, raised for the wool and goats, Angora, Pygmy and Nigerian Dwarf, are secondary. Then there are ducks, geese, chickens, pigs, alpacas, llamas, horses, cows, dogs, cats, and a rabbit. After two years, it is time to review the status of the economics. The animals cost a great deal. For example, the veterinary fees alone for a single ram were over $800, while his initial purchase price was only $450, so he is now a $1250 ram. He bred about a dozen ewes this year and most produced twins, all healthy with no losses, except the first two to a predator, likely the ravens. He will stay because selling him would be a great financial loss now, but he is halter trained and easy to manage, plus he is a great breeder and worth his salt. The Jacob ram also did well this year with the ewes and next year will breed all the Jacob ewes except one, but there is a second Jacob ram for her. The other sheep are not profitable. Their lambs can only be sold for $100- $150 and their fleece for $30 dollars raw. Jacob fleece commands a higher price. So, it is worthwhile to keep the Jacobs. The introduction of Babydoll sheep will be interesting. The cost of the lambs is $1000 each. There are 2 ram lambs and 4 ewe lambs, which can breed in one year. They are not known to have twins, but can, so let's assume that the 4 ewes produce 4 lambs the first year. The female babies will be kept and the males sold, and when the flock of Babydolls reaches 20 ewes, the profit from the lambs will be substantial at $800 to $1000 per lamb versus $100 - $150 per standard lambs. So, these sheep will actually make money for the farm. Their fleece is also valuable as an added bonus. The horses are pasture ornaments. They have to be sold before winter or they are eating, literally, the farm profits up. The same goes for the llamas, though I will keep a few because they are the sweetest, gentlest creatures and a joy to have. The pigs do rototilling so they stay. The duck numbers can be reduced greatly as well as the chicken and goose numbers. The geese are sitting on nests and hopefully will hatch babies. If they sell, they are profitable. Chickens are valuable to the farm in the summer for pest control and they do provide eggs, so a small flock is worthwhile. The alpacas are useless, stupid and docile. They can go, even though they eat very little. If the rabbit, who is male, has a couple of girlfriends, he can produce copious numbers of offspring, so he stays. The goat focus will change to crosses between the Angoras, who are terribly stupid compared to Pygmies and not hardy. The Pygmy/Angoras are Pygoras and are much more sturdy and hopefully smarter, plus their fiber is worth something for hand spinners and the babies can be sold for more than Pygmy babies. Sheep and goats waste hay. They require second cut hay, but second cut hay, which is fine without straws, is twice the price. There is less waste, less to clean up, so the value is still worthwhile.This year, the farm will seek out second cut grass hay and second cut alfalfa hay. These bales can run around $100 per large round bale. Last year the animals went through 25 bales, but at least 70% was wasted, so that was a learning experience. Better hay should reduce the waste to a minimum. The numbers will have to stay low as well. No more than 30 ewes, several rams, 15 goats and bucks, and smaller numbers of birds will help stabilize the costs. Winter feeding should be easier too, now that the farm owns a skid steer tractor to move large round bales. This is a great learning experience. Farming is expensive and unless the economy changes to provide the farmer with a better profit, it will cease to exist on a small scale. Why should the large corporations get all the money when the farmer does all the work? I love to have a bath, not too hot, but fragrant with essential oils and pretty smells. Once in a while, as a treat, bath salts soothe tired muscles and rejuvenate the body after a day's labour. Yesterday I made bath salts with exotic organic fragrances. They are a mixture of salts, bicarbonate of soda and a little water conditioner, natural of course, with organic fragrance added. Packaged in a reusable Mason jar, tied with a hemp cord and decorated with a tiny jeweled butterfly, these wonderful bath salts will sell for $12 for 250 ml at the Farmer's market or three jars for $30. A tablespoon in a bath with perfume the water with delightful fragrances: Passion, Floral Enchantment or Desire. A decadent bath would use the entire jar. I can't wait to dive into my antique cast iron claw foot bath tub and test the one I am most drawn to, Floral Enchantment. Mmmm! These days sustainability is a buzz word used by many. It is the condition whereby resources are not over used and abused and the land is utilized with care and concern for the future, while producing enough food for the land occupants in the least, and for others, if there is excess. But, as with all systems, this is not perfect. If we were truly sustainable, we would not be eating anything we do not grow, so everyday items such as bananas and oranges would not be part of a diet for a northern family. Nor would luxury foods, like coconut and its products, be included in the daily food intake.
What has happened to the boom in certain healthy foods, is that it has produced an inflated market in the countries where the foods are produced, often raising prices high enough so that the farmers cannot afford to eat their own crops. Quinoa and coconut are two good examples. A coconut farm may be five to ten acres and each coconut, depending on the country of origin, may bring only 10 cents to the farmer. The rise in coconut oil's popularity and coconut awareness has not been passed on to the farmer, unfortunately, but the demand has, so all of the crop then must be shipped out leaving the grower in the face of starvation. This is true, too, of quinoa farmers and those who harvest the current trendy health foods, either grown as a farmed crop, or wild harvested. There are some groups who have realized the plight of the growers and have come to their aid to teach them to co-crop and to feed themselves better. Rather than grow only coconuts as a monocrop, under the trees other crops, such as cacao, can be grown providing a new source of income for the farmer. We in the western world should think twice about where the exotic products we are suddenly consuming in unprecedented quantities come from, how they are harvested and who gets the money. Coconut water is a good example. Is the pleasure of drinking a bottle, can or tetra pack of this water worth the cost to the environment? First the containers must be manufactured, then shipped, a plant must be set up to process and bottle the coconut water, and then the product must be shipped across the sea to the coconut hungry North Americans. Coconut water has been elevated to a status symbol, unfortunately. "What brand of coconut water do you prefer?" has become an elitist question, with no thought to the poor farmer who grew the coconuts and zero consideration for the processing, packaging and shipping to ensure consumers can have their currently preferred drink. Perhaps we need to rethink this idea of sustainability. Perhaps we need to rethink how we grow food in our own part of the world, how it is processed and packaged and how much we are contributing to the problems of waste and pollution for the sake of eating or drinking the latest craze. Perhaps true sustainability comes from a placid nature to be content with what we need, not what we want. We can survive on whole, natural foods grown locally and we should attempt to eliminate foods that cause poverty for the growers, as well as those foods which are shipped long distances in individual containers. Does that mean we can never eat bananas again or enjoy coconut water? That depends on how committed one is to the idea of sustainability. How committed are you? |
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AuthorFluffy writes daily about the experiences on the farm and with the bed and breakfast patrons. Archives
October 2020
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