Have I mentioned that knitting is my favorite winter activity? Things have slowed down and I can have some time to catch up on my knitting projects. The garden has been put to bed. I’m still making cheese, butter and yogurt, but canning is done for the season. I have even gotten all the frozen fruit out of the freezer from this past spring and made the promised cherry and blueberry jams. For the first time, I made brandied figs. This and so much more coming up in this podcast episode. But first . . . Welcome to all the new listeners and a hearty holiday season welcome back to the veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast for every episode. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate you all so much. Let’s get on with some homestead updates. Our Virginia Homestead Life Updates Let’s talk about the animals first. We love all of our animals. What would our homestead be without our animals? Pretty boring, don’t you think? Cows Finally, we have good news on the bovine front. We believe that all of the cows are now bred. Glory Be to God. Natural breeding is superior by far. We have one calf scheduled for birth on March 5th 2023. Then the next two will be around the 16th of July. Then the bull comes along and we have six that will give birth between August 4th and September 4th. Here is the run down. Princess Princess is a lovely purebred A2A2 Jersey heifer, soon to be cow, giving birth to that first calf around the 5th of March. We used sexed AI semen for her so her calf will be 50% Jersey and 50% Normande and likely a girl, a heifer. She looks great and we are anticipating great genetics in her calf. She is small and so is her mom. Not quite miniature Jerseys, but close. Rosie is her mom and in her first lactation cycle she was giving us about three gallons of milk per day. We will expect a similar amount from Princess. We plan on selling her in the future as we move to a 100% registered Normande herd. Keep your ears open about when she comes up for sale as she will make a fantastic milk cow for some lucky family. Rosie Speaking of Rosie, she is in the second group of two giving birth in near the middle of July. Rosie is also a registered A2A2 Jersey. She was bred via AI to the bull Fullblood French bull Jacaranda. The semen was unsexed so the gender of her calf will be a surprise. This calf will also be 50% Jersey and 50% Normande. We will be keeping heifer calves that are 50% Normande, but like her daughter, Rosie will come up for sale sometime in the near future. Ginger Ginger is the second animal giving birth in mid-July. She is 75% percent Normande. That means she is not recognized as purebred, but her offspring will be as their percentage will be high enough to meet the minimum standard. The sire is also the Fullblood French bull Jacaranda. Ferdinand’s Offspring The last group of six are all bred via Ferdinand. You will recall that he is the Guernsey bull that we purchased a couple of months ago. He did his job well. In one month, two hormonal cycles, he has impregnated all of our remaining cows and heifers. At least it appears so as of this recording. I’m not sure if we will be able to registered his offspring as 50% Normande. I’ll have to check on that. Violet, Virginia and Wanda are all purebred Normandes but it may not be enough for proper registration. We shall see. Butter is a registered A2A2 Jersey. And the last two, Molly and Cookie are mostly but not registered Jersey cows. Though they are also A2A2. We will be keeping Molly as she does have 25% Normande genetics, but Butter and Cookie will also be moving on to another family. In the end, four of our cows will be up for sale in the next year or two. They are all great animals, but again, we are building a 100% Normande herd. Each year we will probably move out a couple more as we slowly inch toward our preferred genetic goals. Nickel We have Nickel waiting in the wings to get big enough to be our breeding bull. Ferdinand will have one more round of breeding our cows and then we will also sell him. As you can tell, he is a great bull and will be a wonderful addition to someone’s herd. After that, Nickel will be our herd bull for a couple of years. And we will continue using AI as we can to improve the herd genetics. Scott is coming on board as our primary AI technician. Scott’s AI Training This is a really great piece of news that I have to share. I mentioned in the last podcst that the idea was for Scott to be able attend an AI workshop and learn to do the procedure himself. Hallelujah, he was able to attend an AI tech training session just a couple of weeks ago. It was literally only an hour away and we made it happen so he could attend. He now knows the basics of how it is done and what challenges he may face. And we have lots of cows for him to practice on as he builds his skill. The first day he came home a little frustrated with his lack of skill. According to him, it is much harder than it looks from the outside. On the second day of the training session, he got the hang of it and all that is left now is for him to practice. The very next time that any of our cows get bred, Scott will be trying out his new skills. That is months and months from now but we are both excited about the prospects of being able to use AI much more effectively. We will share how that goes when we get there. The timing of this training session was truly a Blessing from God. Mack, Finn and Charlotte Now on to the livestock guardian dogs. There is not much to say here. I am still feeling so blessed that Finn returned after six months of roaming the countryside. We are still treating an infection in his left eye. It is a stubborn infection. Sometimes his eye is clear and then it will cloud up again. Just today we aggressively upped the amount of antibiotic cream we are using in that eye to see if we can knock out that infection once and for all. Otherwise, he is putting on weight and is very happy to be home. There was an early escape and one a day or so ago that was my fault for letting him loose with an open gate, but he is still with us. Charlotte is going along just fine. Sometimes she tolerates me petting her and sometimes still she won’t let me near her. I just go along and pet her when I can. She is a great dog and I love her so much. Both Finn and Charlotte are currently with the sheep and the goat doelings. There are a couple of calves in there as well. I forgot to talk about Jill and Penny. Jill is currently up for sale if you know of anyone looking for a young heifer calf. We will be keeping Penny. She is 50% Jersey and 50% Normande. All is well in that pasture for the moment. Mack is with the cows. They don’t really need him, but what else are we going to do with him. At some point, I would like to see all of the dogs and animals together. I’m not sure that will ever happen. We will always have heifer calves that need to be kept away from the bull and/or vise versa, but bull is kept away from the cows/heifer calves. And then there are ewe lambs and doelings that need to be kept away from the breeding ram and buck. I’m pretty sure we will always have two groups of animals. The best I can hope for is that all the of animals and dogs will eventually become interchangeable. At the moment I don’t trust the large animals with Finn and Charlotte and I don’t trust the small animals with Mack. So, there you have it. This may be our standard operating procedure going forward. I’ll keep you posted. Kiko Goats Now for a little update on the goats. Things are going fairly well in that area. I have managed to tame all of the goats a fair bit. They will follow me anywhere if they think there might be a treat at the end of the road. All are growing nicely. It will be another two months before the girls can meet up with the boy. Lian and Amys are with the sheep and Rhuarc is right next door in the lower garden with a ram lamb as a companion. As soon as the girls are old enough, these two boys will be able to join the main group of sheep and goat girls. Sheep Several ewes are looking quite plump. I expect that we will have lambs in January or February. Not the best time of year, but I have found that these Katahdin sheep are really good moms and the lambs are generally hardy even in winter. If the weather is particularly bad, we can take them to shelter. Otherwise, this breed is very used to giving birth out in the pasture, even in the winter. I have heard of several breeders that specifically breed for birthing in January and February as they are looking for their lambs to reach market size by the time November rolls around and the various religious groups are looking for lamb and goat for their feasts. We may look at that market as well. Otherwise, we like to keep ours all the way up to the 12th month of growth. I’ll keep you posted, but the sheep have dogs protecting them at the moment and I expect that we will actually have lambs soon and that we will be able to raise them to market weight without predators running off with them. At least that is the current expectation. Chickens The last animals to discuss are the chickens. Last time I mentioned that Mack had made mincemeat of one of the hens. We still have all of the rest of the hens and roosters. Just a few days ago, we added six new hens to the flock. One of our herd share members had more chickens than she wanted and she gifted us these hens. We are not sure whether they are Cinnamon queens or Rhode Island reds. Either way, they are providing us a couple more eggs a day. Of the eleven others that we have, we were getting 2 or 3 eggs per day. We added half as many hens but doubled our egg production. Now we are getting 5 or 6 eggs per day. Go figure. I don’t know if I mentioned that I am looking at perhaps changing my mind of what breed of chickens that we raise. There are always good logical reasons for the breeds we choose for any give
