Velma and Daphne

It is spring time and on the farm that means BABIES. It is always exciting to have baby animals here, though it presents some additional stressers. Babies eat different things than adult farm animals. That means additional feed bills. They are more delicate, so we have to stress about kids over handling them or hurting them. The babies have less defense against predators and sometimes the dogs get too interested. And then there is the stress that even if you have done everything right, sometimes babies still die.

We have experienced this every time we have gotten chicks. There is usually a 10-15% mortality rate. The same goes for rabbit breeding. We have never had every baby born to a litter survive. We allow the doe to raise her own babies, and a few usually die in the first few days.

The only babies we have never lost any of are pigs, but we have always gotten our pigs after they have been weaned, and at that point they are amazingly hearty and able to defend themselves.
We have been expecting the birth of baby goats for a few weeks now. We mated our Nubian, Mary Jane, with an Alpine buck back in September. Having never bred goats before, this was very uncomfortable territory, but the best way to learn is by doing. I had been on the phone with Chrissy (our aunt and large animal vet extraordinaire) and she had told me what to expect when it came to the delivery. Mary Jane just turned one in February so we had no idea how well she would kid.

On Sunday the 23rd I came out of my bedroom and found our living room destroyed. There was clothes and shoes and FOOD all over the floor. The TV was on, even though the room was empty and there were some spilled drinks on the floor. There were many, many things wrong with this picture, so I began to yell (yep, I'm a yeller) for the kids to get down and clean up their mess.

Julia appeared from upstairs promptly and began cleaning. Liam strolled in a few minutes later from outside.

"Where are the little boys?" I asked him.

"They're outside. Elliot is watching a baby goat come out of Mary Jane's butt." No excitement in his voice. Afterall, this news was not even worthy enough to mention without my asking.

I ran outside just in time to see a baby goat be born. It moved very little and I was worried it was not alive, but I saw it breathing so I didn't intervene. One more yell from Mary Jane and a second baby popped out. Chrissy had told me there was most likely twins in there.

I immediately called Chrissy. Seriously, right now, you as the reader know as much if not more about caring for a newborn goat as I did at that moment. We were a little concerned about how well Mary Jane would do as a mother because she was a rejected kid and was bottle fed from day one. Also having been bred in her first year, her maternal instincts were a little less developed.

After being instructed to move the babies by her face Mary Jane took mucc care in cleaning the two DOELINGS. (Yes I was so happy to know that they were both girls because that meant we could keep them both and neither would befall the fate of an unneeded, mixed breed buck.)

Despite her initial interest in her babies, after a few hours, Mary Jane was content just to allow the babies to fend for themselves. She had zero-and I mean ZERO-interest in allowing the girls to nurse. Back on the phone with Chrissy (this would be a recurring theme over the next 48 hours) and I was given instructions to make it so Mary Jane could not move away from the babies. It was goat jail for her. 

She stepped on them a few times, peed on them once, and even pooped on them, but I got them to get a little colostrum. That first night Leigh and I got up three times to hold Mary Jane so the babies could eat. 

Now, why did I not just milk Mary Jane and bottle feed the babies? Because! I have 5 kids of my own to take care of! I don't need two more! That, and Chrissy kept telling me not to because I would regret it. I called her two more times ready to bottle feed and she was able to talk me down and convince me to give Mary Jane a bit more time to learn how to be a mom. I was so glad I listened. But let's be truthful, why would I not listen? I honestly had NO idea what I was doing. 

After 24 hours Mary Jane had gotten the hang of nursing (and the babies did too because there was a learning curve for them too!) and we had two healthy, beautiful little goats! 

Daphne:

Velma:

Ya, so we might be Scooby Doo fams here! 

After only 7 days Daphne and Velma are energetic, happy goats. And I could not be happier that I am not responsible for feeding them! 

Oh wait, that's not normal?!?!

Sometimes I think my family is just like every other American family. I don't think of us as belonging to a sub culture or minority. After all, we are a white, middle class, heterosexual couple, married with children. That's America's majority right?

But then I think of all of the sub-culture and minority groups we belong to: Mormons, homeschoolsers, military affiliated, large family, (aspiring) self sufficient homesteaders. Those things are just us...until I find or see something that screams "Not everyone has/does this!!"

Case in point: The other day I was cleaning out my car and I came across a Ft. Huachuca Active Shooter Protocol Handbook. Heather was standing behind me and I held it up and said, "Not everyone has one of these do they?" Nope. Apparently not!

Anyway, on our way to Texas Road House (the same trip where the kids pointed out the "sad cow" steaks in the window) this conversation transpired:

Leigh: What is better, store eggs or our eggs?
Elliot: Store eggs! There is no poop on those eggs. The store's chickens are cleaner.
Leigh: There are no chickens at the store.
Elliot: WHAT?!?! Where do they get their eggs?
Leigh: The eggs come from a farm far away. The farmer collects the eggs, washes them (which is not good for the eggs) puts them in cartons and then they are driven lots of miles to the store.
Elliot: That is just weird!

Out of the mouths of babes ladies and gentlemen!!!

Grow House

This semester for science we are studying botany. We use the Apologia science curriculum. I really like it and you can check out all their different elementary science courses here. It is a Christian based curriculum, which I swore I would NEVER use. I also swore my kid would not eat french fries till they were five...what do I know? 

Anyway, the religion is pretty separate from the science and if I do find an off the wall evangelical tidbit, it is easy to skip that paragraph and none of the science is lost. There is a lot of pretty advanced information in the text, but I just emphasize the basics and we work through the botany journal and the kids are learning some really cool stuff. They know taxonomy is a way to organize things, the difference between a seed and a spore, the difference between vascular and non-vascular plants, and the difference between angiosperms and gymnosperms. (Most of that I didn't even know.) So now at the conclusion of unit one we are making a grow house to grow herbs. (Later we will use the herbs to cook or make soap).

We went with Seeds of Change organic seeds from Lowe's. We bought organic potting soil and took some time to talk about why we chose organic over other things like Burpees seeds or Miracle Grow potting mix. (We know these kinds of things sink in because the last time we went to Texas Road House the kids were looking at the cuts of meat in the window and asked if it was made from "sad cows.") 

Then on to the fun part! Diggin' in the dirt! 

They each picked out their pots. The fact that they all happen to coordinate with their outfit for the day was a total coincidence! And even though Liam looks grumpy, he was really having a good time. 

We took a plastic tote with a lid and I drilled 1-1/4 inch holes in the top. $6 clamp lights from Lowe's with the clamps and shades removed (we are currently using the clamps on the chicken brooder) fit snugly in the hole. "Daylight" compact florescent 60 watt bulbs screw into the underside. 

We lined the inside of the tote with aluminum foil. We talked a little about the reflective properties of light (science is everywhere!!!) and why having the light reflect within the box would be beneficial for the plant. 

We snapped the lid on, we'll water it regularly, and in 40-75 days we will have organic slow bolt cilantro, garden sage, dill, and Italian flat leaf parsley. Now on to unit two: seeds! 

Random Noteworthiness of 2014

I have been far from stellar about keeping up with my blog this year. Sorry about that. But I have done some back-blogging and put some events into their proper places. I have come across some pictures that need to make it into the books of Muckey Family History. So enjoy some random glimpses into our last two months.

Since we were jyped out of a winter (seriously it has been in the 60's and 70's all winter) at least we get to see the almond tree blooming early. Now we need to hope that a late frost does not kill them.

I built more bunny housing. I was thinking they looked like condos, but they were built slightly haphazardly, so I call them "bunny military housing". 

Elliot zip-tied his thumb so tight we couldn't get anything under it to cut it, luckily Lea had a pair of finger nail clippers handy and we were able to save the thumb. 

Liam lost his two front teeth. Well, he came to me and they were bleeding, so I yanked them out. 

We had disease sweep the house in the form of a chest cold. Even with a high fever, Noah smiles for the camera. 

Quinn, however was less apt to work the camera. 

On the 26th of Feb we loaded the pigs up to take them to U of A. We seemed to have perfected the loading of pigs onto the trailer. One person puts a bucket on their head. They then try to back out of the bucket and a second person steers them by the tail up the ramp of the trailer. Just don't let them steer your hand between two pieces of ply wood! 

 Leigh and Quinnie had some tea time. 

Julia also got her show chickens for her 4-H poultry project. She is not willing to show anything that you eat or you sell for meat. So that left her with dairy or eggs. She opted for eggs.

That is pretty much all the happenings around the farm. I will try and be better about posting as they happen! 

The appliance disaster of 2014

We don't buy a lot of extravagant things. When the rare occasion comes that we can afford something expensive, I get very selective. On the 13th, I baked some bread in the afternoon. That evening I turned on the oven to bake some kale chips. The oven never turned on. There was no clicking, no gas flow...nothing. I tried everything. I took off the knobs and turned the metal things...nothing. Panic began to rise in me! WHAT WAS I GOING TO DO?!?! We have to make almost everything!

Leigh came home and we decided to take some of the tax return and buy a new oven. We would also replace the dishwasher because the racks fell out and it only sort-of cleaned the dishes. 

We went to Lowe's over President's Day weekend and purchased an oven and a dishwasher for a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, they both would have to be delivered the following week. 

After what seemed like an eternity my oven was delivered! 

I was so happy! It had a griddle and I loved the controls and the oven timer and I thought it would look great with the new cabinets we are planning in the next year or so. Then less than three days after installing the oven I pulled a dish out of the cupboard to the left of the oven, bonked the side of the oven and the whole glass front shattered. 

Having purchased the warranty that I was assured covered "everything" I called the service department. "Nope!" I was told, "intentional or unintentional breakage was not covered." They were sorry, but there was nothing they could do. I could purchase a new door.  After a rant on Facebook I learned that Samsung ovens are known for their glass breaking, but usually it is on the self clean cycle and then it explodes outward and showers the kitchen with 500 degree glass. Suddenly I am very grateful! 

Leigh calls and talks to some people, yells at some people, and finally gets the thing resolved. I get to go pick out a new oven the next day. I pick out a new one. It is not the one I wanted, but it is about the same.

I don't like stainless steel, the griddle is harder to clean, I don't like the oven timer as much or the way you set the oven temp. I'm not sure how it will look with the cabinets I want. They seem like frivolous things, but when I spend $700 on something I want it to be EXACTLY what I want. But it cooks bread and makes it so we don't have to eat out. 

So with that out of the way we move onto the dishwasher. I was told it would be delivered on the 27th. But the day before the original oven came I got a call and was told it would be here on the 19th. I was a happy camper. On the 19th I unhooked the dishwasher and waited patiently for a call. It never came. I called the store and was assured that if it was scheduled for delivery, it would come. By 7:30, I realized it is not coming. 

I call the next day and I am informed that it is not coming that day, or any day soon. It is coming on the 27th. I am now doing dishes for eight by hand for almost 2 weeks. Lots of people for lots of years did dishes by hand...I however, do not WANT to do dishes by hand! .

I then get a phone call on the 22nd that the dishwasher will be here on Sunday the 23th, slotted for delivery on the 24th. YAY! 

Sunday comes and I received ANOTHER phone call telling me that even though they filled out all the paperwork correctly, the dishwasher that came was not the correct one. I have a choice of reordering the one I wanted (and have it come in 7-10 days) or take whatever they had that had the three features I wanted. I just wanted a dishwasher!!!

So now, $1400 later, I have a new dishwasher and oven, neither one of which are the ones I wanted. On the upside I learned how to install a dishwasher. 

Moral of the story: Do not buy anything from Lowe's you cannot walk out of the store with! 

Wendy Muckey: Rabbit Breeder

If you would have asked we 3 months ago if Mediocre Acres would be producing meat rabbits I would have emphatically told you NO!! We were doing a colony setting and our rabbits were just not breeding (so we thought). We just kept feeding them, and they just kept hopping around. No one was producing anything.

We were also having issues with the dogs getting to the rabbits. They killed both Elliot's pet rabbits and one of the breeder bucks. Then one day on October, Elliot came in with a baby bunny and said, "Don't worry, mom, Wilma didn't kill it!" Unfortunately, later it died. And at that point I knew breeding had been successful...but now we had no buck. 

Before we knew it we had 3 litters, but still no buck. After researching I realized that first time rabbit moms are usually bad and a lot of their babies die. Also, given that they were breeding in the summer, they had an even lower chance of survival. Now that the weather was changing, and the moms had a few litters to practice, we could really get an efficient meat breeding program going. Without even trying, we ended up with 12 babies (1 of which we still have to catch) and we believe there is another litter under the shed. 

As a compromise, I decided to build a grow-out pen, and individual hutches for each of the breeders. While they cannot hop around as much and they have wire under their feet, they are not killed by the dogs. If I was a rabbit I would think that wsa a fair trade. (We bought a New Zealand cross buck to round out the breeding set.) Leigh thinks the dimensions are ridiculously large for a breeding set up, but I am comfortable with the grow out pen of 10'x3'x2' and hutches of 4'x3'x2'. 

I never realized that I would have loved breeding rabbits so much. Leigh asked me if I thought I would like it when it came to harvest time. I don't see it as any different than harvesting the chickens and pigs. As a matter of fact, the rabbits spend less time on our farm than either of the other two kinds of animals, and the offspring all look the same. I enjoy producing safe, toxin free food for my family. 

We decided our breeders needed names. I decided to combine my new love of rabbit breeding with my other love of family history. I named the buck Sylvester after my great great grandfather who immigrated from Portugal. Doe #12 is named Delilah after Leigh's ggg grandmother's twin sister. Unfortunately, Leigh's ggg grandmother's name was Ulilah. Doe #2 is named Clarissa after Leigh's gggg grandmother, and Doe #3 is named Mercy after my tenth great grandmother.

Mercy Sprague was one of my favorite relatives and this is why:

In march 1651/52 Mercy was before the court to "answare for mixed dauncing". She was cleared of this charge with an admonishment(PCR III-5) At court held 3 March 1662/3 Joseph Rodgers "complaineth against Rebeckah and Alice Pierce" asking for damages of 20 pounds for saying that he and Mercy Tubbs were seen lying under a blanket. However, Joseph did not appear when the case was called and was non-suited. Therefore it seems that the gossip was factual. At the next session of court 1 Jun 1663 "the court being informed that Joseph Rodgers Namasakeesett hath frequently and from time kept companie with Merceye, the wife of William Tubbs, in a way and after such manor as hath given att least to suspect that there hath been laciuiouse (lasciviuos) actes committed by them, the Court...hath required him to remove his dwelling...and that att anytime he shall bee taken ... in companie of the said Merceye Tubbs...he shall (be) surely whipt." (PCR IV-42) 

     Not daunted, the couple persisted. So at October Court "Wee present Josepth Rodgers and Merceye Tubbs for that were both lying together on a bed, under a rugg, before the fier. And also the same Mercey Tubbs for that att another time she carried unseemly in the prescence of Josepth Rodgers." The jury gave a verdict of true presentment (guilty). Joseph and Mercy were each heavily fined. Mercy apparently left home at this time. Shortly after this time William Paybody (Peabody) granted William a divorce, but the court overruled him 8 Jun 1664 fining Paybody for" making a writing regaurding William Tubbs marriage vows". (PCR IV-66) At the same court session William published, with regaurd to Mercy, that he was "disowning all debts that shee shall make unto any from this time forward." (PCR IV-66) John Arthur was in court 1 Aug 1665 "for entertaining the wife of one Talmon and the wife of William Tubbs" (PCR IV-104)

     William periodically petitioned for divorce until 3 Jun 1668 when his pleas were recognized and a notice sent to Mercy through the government of Rhode Island, where she was living, to return to William or lose all rights and claims against him. (PCR IV-187) Her negative reply was recieved by 7 Jul 1668 and the court that day gave William his divorce "Mercy have for 4 yaers and upward absented herself." (PCR IV-192)

And you thought our court systems were bogged down! Aren't you glad every person caught lying under a rug in front of the fire is not hauled into court?! Ya, me too! 

Well anyway, Sylvester and Delilah mated yesterday. We should have babies on the 31st. We will be mating Sylvester and Clarissa on February 1st and Sylvester and Mercy on March 1st. Our plan is to breed each doe once every 3 months. While they can be breed almost immediately after giving birth...that's a whole lot of babies we have to feed and harvest! We're going to go slow in the beginning. 

Bouncing Baby Bunnies

We have meat rabbits. Well, we have rabbits...of a breed that is conducive to eating. We have 3 Californian does. We had 2 New Zealand bucks till Wilma and Seamus killed them a few weeks ago. We had plans of giving the does away because they were not breeding and we were tired of unsuccessfully trying to breed them.

As a side note, we have a colony set up. So many people tell us that it is a waste of time and it is not the most efficient way of breeding rabbits. To them I say, I am not interested in efficiency. I am interested in HUMANELY raising rabbits. Rabbits need to be able to hop and stretch out fully. We kept a bunny in a cage for almost a year, then introduced her into the colony setting. The change in the rabbit was amazing. When we got the New Zealands and plopped them into the colony they did not even know how to hop...and they were 18 months old. 

Granted the mortality rate of our rabbits is high, due to the dogs (we are working on that) but the lives they have are natural bunny lives. They dig and forage and hop and stretch. So, before you tell me how much more EFFICIENT cages are, live for 18 months in a cage unable to stand up or take a full step. 

Anyway we decided that if we could not do the rabbits in a colony successfully, we will not do rabbits. Then Elliot brought me THIS:

This is a 3 week old baby bunny he rescued from Wilma and Seamus. Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do for it and it died. But this was the first I had seen of ANY babies.

I went outside and crept very quietly up to the pen, and we had babies!!! LOTS!! 2 large ones maybe 4 weeks old, and 4 small ones, about 3 weeks old. 

One of the "little" babies

One of the "big" babies

Yesterday, Thanksgiving, I delayed doing my chores. I regret that now...very much. When I did go outside to feed and water the livestock, I found that the final doe had had her kits. 

First time mother rabbits are not good mothers. Sometimes they eat their babies, sometimes they have them and walk away. And sometimes they have them out in the open on a very cold fall morning. That is what our rabbit did. By they time I went outside, I found 6 dead baby rabbits, only a few hours old. I imagine all but 1 (he was deformed) were born alive but did not live long. I was collecting the bodies and I followed them back to the "nest". It was very poorly made and out in the open. I was pulling bodies out when I felt something move. As I pulled them out I found 2 babies still alive. 

They were freezing. They felt as though I had pulled them out of the refrigerator. I ran them into the house, handed them to Lea and said, "Keep these warm!" She immediately put them under her shirt while I madly Googled how to take care of orphaned baby bunnies. 

We set up a little box for them and braved Wal-Mart to buy Pedialyte and puppy formula.

I am happy to say they bunnies survived the night. 

They only eat 2-3 times a day. I got up and 1 am and fed them. I will probably do that for a few more days, then they can eat 3 times a day. Their eyes should be open in a week, and they are fully weaned by 3 weeks. (They should have hair by this time next week)

If these rabbits survive, we will keep them...and not as food. We will add them to the breeding stock.

We have also decided on a happy medium as far as colony raising goes. A week or so before the rabbits give birth, we will put them in a large cage. They will kindle in there, and as soon as the babies are close to being weaned, we will allow mom and babies back into the colony. So colony raising with a nursery! 

They will still be bad mom's the first few times, but it seems as though this might be the most EFFICIENT way to raise in a colony.