80+ Kids & Counting, New Flock Settling In, Piglets Close to Weaning & Summer Heat Coming in Hot!

Another batch of kids has been hitting the ground over the last week and a half, our new egg layers are settling in and hopefully should start laying within the next week or so, the piglets are chunky and getting weaned later this week and the heat is setting in big time!

A whole slew of kids were born in the last week in a half to the portion of our herd I call the varsity squad, bringing the count of kids born since November 2024 to more than 80!

The does kidding now are same ones that had kids in mid November. Gestation is five months, so they got bred on the first heat cycle after kidding.

This is not a practice we aim for, but we hadn’t set up an area secure enough for the bucks not to break out of when they were kidding in November. Often, does do not get bred back immediately after kidding.

All I can figure is that since they kidded in the fall and they are somewhat of seasonal breeders, they had strong heat cycles in early December. Whereas when the bucks have still been with the herd during kidding in January and February, the does often don’t cycle in those months.

In any case, kidding twice a year can be hard on the does bodies if it is a long-term, regular practice, but they are so healthy and have such nice conditioning, that this one double season should be fine.

It can be challenging to have multiple different groups of goats rotating, but we will likely be running some wethers and doelings we don’t want to bred separate from the main herd when we breed in September and I will determine then if we need to put some of these varsity does with them and give some them a season off from gestating, lactating and motherhood!

All that is to say we will continue to have lots of goats available for sale. There are a few candidates left in the November 2024 doe group and I will put more information together soon about the 2025 doelings as well as the wethers and in-tact bucklings.

We are still anxiously waiting on our new flock of young hens to start laying! They are 20 weeks old this week, so we should starting seeing their first tiny eggs in the next boxes this week and hope for a quick ramp up.

Getting the predator situation under control has been a huge focus of Grant’s over the past six weeks or so.

We are coming to terms with the fact that problems from Flock 2, the birds we got as chicks last February and starting laying in the summer, have snowballed into all kinds of more intense predator issues than we’ve had for many years.

For whatever reason, they are a very flightly and wily flock and never really respected the electric net fence. They figured out how to duck under it to forage in the thick patches of cogon grass outside of their paddocks and lay their eggs in the ditches. We responded by making sure laneways were cut short around the fence so tall grass didn’t create pockets for them to slip out of and using extra posts to secure the middle sections of fence.

Last summer we were constantly putting birds back in at night, only to have them start flying over the fence, too. We rounded up and sold some of the worst behaved birds, but they still kept getting out. And of course this made them easy targets for raccoons, possums, coyotes and foxes at night. The electric fence works very well, but not when they’re not inside of it!

And then long term, the predators seemed to get used their chicken meals and even once fewer birds were out of the fence at night, they got bolder to go through the fence! About a month ago we started putting an extra single strand of electric wire around the outside of the net fencing to further deter predators and that does seem to have stopped the fence break ins, at least!

So Grant is now doing some training on professional wildlife control practices for varmints to up our game. Other farms like ours are able to utilize Livestock Guardian Dogs, but since our property is a failed subdivision and close to houses and roads, we think a dog is too risky to get out and attack neighbor’s dogs or get hit and cause an accident running on the road.

One of the most frustrating things is that through all of the soil and habitat restoration we’ve done, our property is teeming with life as never before — there’s so much prey for these predator species to eat other than our chickens! If only I could have a talk with them and come to an agreement! ;-)

The piglets are continuing to grow like weeds and will be ready to be weaned at the end of this week!

I’m so proud of these sows and their big litters of piglets. Being near the house has allowed me to visit them more frequently than the last group and better socialize them through belly rubs and ear scratches. Piglets are insanely curious and want to chew on your boots and pants and fingers if you let them, but they also can still be really jumpy if you don’t start petting them at a young age.

I will most likely pick out a few gilts (the term for a female pig before she has a litter) to keep back as potential breeders.

These current sows are obviously very fertile and good moms, but two of them could definitely have calmer temperaments and one of them only has 12 versus a full 14 teats. So I’d love to improve on that in the next generation!

Feels like summer around the rest of the farm! The mimosa trees are blooming and even though they’re invasive, they’re so pretty!

The cattle have been moving right along on their daily rotations, including grazing the grass in the internal roads.

We’ve got a nice little Smart Pot garden right by out front porch with potatoes we can soon harvest, plus herbs, a few peppers and tomatoes and I just planted some late green beans, basil and zinnias. Meanwhile our farm staffer Cade has a lovely garden patch by our old tiny house that these zinnias came from.

My dad just brought down the maple syrup from my cousins’ woods for 2025 and also some benches and tables for our porches that he cut/partially built in Wisconsin and finished assembling here. We will wait until they dry out further for a few months, then stain them the same color as our doors.

It’s been about 7 months and I’m still pinching myself that we were able to get this house built and really live here with the amazing view of the farm and space to host people inside. Especially going into the brutal summer months, it is an absolute game changer and we are so grateful!