Smooth Sailing at the Farm Rotating Goats, Cattle, Pigs & Chickens + Teeming with Wildlife
Knock on wood, everything is going so smoothly at the farm in recent weeks!
And we’re really noticing the fruits of our labor in rotational grazing all the different livestock species, spreading compost, mowing down extra “green manure” behind the goats and cattle and taking care of hedge rows and ponds for wildlife. It’s really gratifying!
The goats spent last week in our house field, corralled pretty close to the house at night. The last time they were here was mid June. It truly never gets old to watch them from the porch or out the windows and see what they do when they aren’t aware of my presence.
Another thing that never gets old is seeing them bed down in their extended family units, snuggling with their mom, siblings, grandmas and aunts.
Now they are on to the next field and the egrets especially seem to love it because there’s no longer a tree line between them and the cattle, just a fence. So they can go back and forth between both herds of ruminants, eating flies and other bugs attracted to the ruminants and their manure. Win win!
All three chicken flocks are doing great! Last year at this time, frustrations were already mounting when we moved Flock 2 out from their teenage hoophouse digs to the pasture and they immediately weren’t respecting the fence, starting litany of problems including hiding eggs and attracting predators.
I swear I will never take for granted things going smoothly with the chicken flocks again! And our farm staffer Cade religiously moves them every week to the next grid in each of their pasture rotations, letting the pasture rest and regrow and keeping the supply of grasses and other greens and bugs fresh for the flocks.
I’ve been taking a lot of evening walks lately and seeing them foraging at sunset before putting themselves to bed is such a lovely thing.
Meanwhile the next generation of layers at the farm are growing out beautifully, too!
The Barred Rock breeding flock continues to lay well and the two roosters have clearly done a decent job as we’ve had good hatch rates. A batch hatched about two weeks ago and they’re doing well in one brooder stall and we loaded up a week’s worth of eggs right behind them and are holding eggs this week to continue to load even while the current batch is already developing.
Grant is also working on building a separate hatching chamber so that we can continue incubating eggs while chicks hatch out.
The oldest birds in the pictures are actually from hatching eggs from one of our mentor farms in Virginia and they’re doing really well, too. Grant has some specific ways he wants to cross the Barred Rocks with those birds (mostly Barred Rock genetics, as well) and bring in another line of Barred Rocks to shore up our genetics for nice, hardy duel purpose birds.
Nearly as much a the goats, I love it when the cattle rotate through our house field so I can watch them out the windows, too. They were in the house field the week before the goats and with all the recent rotations and moving several times over the past year, the grass is truly better than it’s ever been.
This field still has a ways to go as we haven’t ever has a large flock of chickens in it (just the small impact and fertilization from the breeding flock for the past few months) and it dips down a lot in the middle with wet, mucky soil, but the progress is encouraging. There’s been tons of earthworm and dung beetle activity in the cow patties and goat manure piles, too!
It is looking like we should be able to buy grass finished beef from another local farm next week, so if that works out in a quantity that fulfills demand a little, we will likely not process our steers just yet and keep them grazing. They’re more than ready, but we have so much beautiful grass right now!
The pigs are continuing their woods rotations in one corner of the farm. They’re on section three of four and after next week, we’ll load them up and trailer them to the complete other corner of the farm.
Grant did a bunch of work with the stump bucket on the bobcat last week to make some proper lane ways between a fairly thick section of pine trees and shrubs.
The goats and cattle have rotated through here many times since we finished the perimeter and internal fencing there two summers ago, but we’ve yet to have major pig rooting and tilling and we’re excited about it!
These pigs’ dad, our big Duroc boar, did rotate through here while their moms were all in the farrowing paddock and these piglets were being born, but the impact of one pig, even a big one, is much different than the 28 we’re about to move through!
And I can’t quite believe it, but the sow are only about a month away from the first possible date they could be delivering the next round of piglets. Their heat cycle is about three weeks, so if they took their first cycle, we could expect piglets between October 4th and October 25th or so.
We are getting ready to move them to another wooded spot for a few weeks, then bring the sows back to the paddock adjoining the farrowing barn by the third week of September.
Grant got silage tarps in place to get ready for a big fall and winter garden. Besides things we’re growing for ourselves, we’re looking at some greens and broccoli to cut to order for the market.
And since it’s peak summer, the farm is absolutely teeming with wildlife.
It seems like every time I step outside it’s just a cacophony of insects, birds and amphibians. There’s been lots of butterflies on my flower garden, the frogs and toads have been making lots of noise after recent rains and then there’s the rabbits. They’re everywhere on the internal farm road, with nests likely in the hedge rows on either side. Grant even saw a momma quail moving a teeny tiny chick across the internal road, too!