September on the Farm: Goat Sorting for Breeding, Pig Moves, Drought & Quicker Cattle Moves & Declining Egg Production

It’s been a few weeks since the last farm update. I wish owning a small farm and market was just taking care of animals and selling food, but of course there’s also bookkeeping and filing sales and income taxes, insurance audits and all kinds of “fun” things like that that keep me busy, too!

But things on the farm have been fairly smooth in September, despite the continued drought. Somehow we missed basically all of the storms last week and just got a whopping total of one tenth of an inch of rain! So we could still definitely use some moisture. Going into what’s typically the driest month of the year, though, we won’t get our hopes up!

The goats were plugging away on their regular pasture rotations as a herd of just over 100 until two weeks ago.

We had a big sorting project to separate the does we are breeding for February and March kids and the does we are retiring, not breeding yet or hope to sell. All of the castrated bucklings who were born in February, March and April of this year were also separated into the non-breeding herd.

On sorting day two Sundays ago, we started by bringing the whole herd into the hoophouse and fed them alfalfa pellets to occupy them and get them full/not hangry.

We currently don’t have the goat herd ear tagged. When we got the original herd they didn’t have ear tags, the owners just gave me a binder with photos and their health records and names! And we haven’t gotten around to ear tagging them since and honestly, I mostly have no issues telling them apart because they all have such unique markings.

So then of 104 goats, it was my job to say who belonged in what group. We kicked all the non breeders out of the hoophouse. Once we were done, we took that herd to the next field over to start their grazing circuit over once again.

We kept 34 does who have kidded at least once, as well as 6 does born in November of last year to breed for the first time. We’ve had lots of goats kid around their first birthdays and do amazingly well and these would all be 15 months by the time they kid.

We also kept the kids born in May with their moms, whether in the breeding herd or the non-breeding herd. Goats are reproductively mature at just two months old, so technically keeping the doelings with the breeding herd is a risk of them getting bred and then kidding at nine months old.

However, the buck herd sires are so much larger than them and they can typically only cover about 20 does each and there are two bucks and 40 does in the herd now, between the size difference and all the other does in the herd, I am not expecting there to be issues with young doelings getting bred. Of course, I could be wrong, but this is based on 10 years of experience and my gut tells me it will be fine.

The reason I kept them with their mothers is that while they can be weaned as young as two months old, if we let them, our does always nurse their kids to five or six months, with no negative effects keeping their weight and conditioning, breeding back or teat issues, so I feel like allowing the kids to keep nursing is worth it.

Once we got the non-breeding herd to the next field, then we brought the breeders over to the woods section near where the bucks have been housed, let the herd start grazing and then let the bucks out to do their thing.

They got right to work and I have notes of who to expect to kid first right at 150 days from that first exposure. Others were not in heat right away, but we’ll keep the bucks with the herd for six to seven weeks total.

Goats’ heat cycles are about three weeks, so six weeks allows everyone to cycle twice if they don’t take the first time or don’t go into heat right away for some reason.

At night, we have been bringing the breeding herd back to our main acre paddock that has field fence versus electric net fence. Sometimes the breeding activity can get so intense that the bucks might chase a doe into the electric net fence, so we prefer to avoid that risk during breeding season.

So far so good! Grant always worries when we separate goats that they’ll break out to get back to each other, but the non-breeding herd has been content and mellow as can be as they continue their grazing rotations and the breeding herd is certainly occupied with their activities!

Of all the livestock on the farm, the pigs would appreciate some significant rains the most!

So instead, there’s a lot of hose downs and wallow filling happening. Pigs don’t sweat, so they roll in mud to cool off. And while this summer hasn’t been the hottest one since we’ve been farming, September has been above average just at the time that the feeder pigs are really packing on the weight and could really use the relief of cooler weather.

The feeder group finished their rotations in one wooded section of the farm and then we loaded them up in the hog trailer (in three separate groups since there are 28 of them and some stubborn ones) and moved them to the complete opposite end of our 60 acres to make some rotations through a thick wooded section there.

Up until then, we had just had cattle and goats in this section previously. Over the winter, we did rotate our boar, these pigs’ dad, through, as well, but there’s a big difference between the impact one pig has in rooting up the dormant seed bank, eating brush and vines and dropping a manure load to bring the soil back to life and the impact that 28 pigs have!

We also put several round bales of hay throughout each section for the pigs to nibble on, play with and spread out to add more organic matter and seeds for future grass growth under the canopy of remaining trees (we’ve thinned out several pines that were weak or too close together).

Meanwhile, we’re getting very close to the first possible dates for the sows to have their next litters of piglets. We separated them from the boar and brought them into another wooded section that hadn’t had pigs in it in awhile. That was just for a little over a week and then we moved them to a large section near the farrowing barn so that as soon as they start to show signs of going into labor, we can move them into their private suites to give birth!

The chickens! I’m so proud of the improvements we’ve made and the handle we’ve gotten on the predator issues, but then there’s just the inescapable realities of raising birds outside in natural light.

And right now that is since we’ve passed Fall Equinox and are getting less than 12 hours of daylight, the hens have started to noticeably decrease their egg production, even the birds that just started laying in earnest in June.

Fortunately, we do have 250 pullets set to start laying in late October and another 160 pullets of staggered ages that will start laying in late November through April. In many years, we have gotten an entire flock of day-old chicks in from a hatchery in February, in order for them to start laying in August and really increase to peak production by October.

This year, we got pullets from another farm in April to make up for the fact that we were already short on eggs in the spring, so the timing is a little off.

Part of the challenge in New Orleans is that restaurants and our produce farm partners that include eggs in their CSAs and farm shares slow down or stop in the summer, which despite the heat is the time of year when hens lay the most, as there is the most daylight.

I sometimes think about how much easier it would be if the economic seasons of New Orleans aligned with the egg production seasons!

With the lack of rainfall, we’ve picked up the pace in our cattle rotations.

We’ve seen a lot of positive results in clipping (mowing/bushhogging) the pastures behind the goats this year. Although the goats eat much more shrubby and viney and brushy plants than cattle do, they often just strip all the leaves off a central stem and leave the stalk left. So we’ve decided that now that we have the equipment, there’s no reason not to mow that remaining organic matter down and let it serve as mulch and additional organic matter to feed the decomposers that can turn it into soil.

The regrowth of grasses following clipping behind the goats has been better and better through the spring and summer. But very little rainfall and a pending change of season from warm season forages to cool season forages, the growth has definitely slowed down. That means that we are moving the cattle faster or in some cases, giving them an entire 6-8 acre field rather than subdividing it.

One thing that’s interesting though it that theoretically the forage right now is more nutritious without a lot of rain washing or leaching it out. It’s exactly like it sounds — when there’s a lot of rain and an associated quick blaze of growth, there can be a dilation effect where the plants don’t accumulate as many nutrients per unit of mass. And when it’s really raining a ton, waterlogged soil can even lead to oxygen deprivation for important soil microbes, soiling down the release of nutrients plants need to absorb.

So of course we definitely need rain to grow pasture, but since we are the wettest state in the continental U.S., I can’t say that dry periods are the absolute worst thing!

Between the butterflies in my garden and some gorgeous skies — bright blue with idyllic clouds, beautiful dusks and sunset and even a stunning moonrise, the views on the farm have been supreme lately!

And we want you here to experience all the beauty, too! Stay tuned for some news about November farm tours soon!