Beaman's Fork Farm Blog

Friday, February 9th started off as a normal day in the barn, but as I was doing chores and feeding the horses and goats, I quickly suspected that Greta, one of our La Mancha goats, was showing early signs of labor. It was her due day, so I wasn't surprised. I removed her from the herd and placed her into one of the three kidding stalls in our barn so that she could have some peace and quiet. Four hours later at 10:46am, she delivered two beautiful big twin boys. As per her normal (this is her third year with babies), she was quite proud of herself and insisted on showing them off to me nonstop. The twins were up and wobbling around in no time and Greta was a busy mom fussing over them. Saturday morning was uneventful and Greta and her twins were comfortable in their kidding stall, but by early afternoon, something wasn't right. Greta wasn't finishing her meals and she just seemed tired. I took her temperature at 3pm and it was normal -- 101.9 -- even though she...

    This past Spring we invested in a milk machine that has proven to be a great addition to the farm many times over. Our milk production has increased from previous years and my arms just couldn't take the manual labor of hand milking any longer. I was spending my days with aching elbows and my nights tossing and turning because my inflamed muscles were causing my arms to fall asleep far more than I was sleeping.  We've enjoyed the milk machine and didn't even mind the daily cleaning and weekly disassembly for deep cleaning anywhere near as much as we thought we would. (For those interested, the machine we purchased after a lot of research was the Simple Pulse, with the additional 6 gallon tank) However now our milk season is coming to and end and we've dried up all but one goat. She's our highest producer and doesn't seem to fair as well with stopping milking cold turkey like the other, smaller producing does can. Abbie is living milk machine herself and will...

Spring has sprung into full life here on the farm in the form of baby goats everywhere (ten to be exact) who are growing fast and doing great. During the last few weeks we have begun the weaning process of separating them from their mothers at night and reuniting them after the morning milking. [gallery link="none" size="medium" ids="749,750,751"] Some of them will be leaving for new homes in a few weeks, which will quiet things down in the barn a little. They all have different personalities and they are all happy to see me every time I walk into the barn even though they were dam raised, not bottle fed (I'll be elaborating on this subject more in a future post). [embed]https://youtu.be/RkCQvDYFe3w[/embed] Life is also moving along well with the new batch of chicks for this year, who are 8 weeks old now. They are still in a pen separate so that they can grow, but will soon be introduced to the free ranging flock. They are overseen by our very patient ...

It's that time of year... Time for my hopefully well rested arms to get back to work hand milking goats every day. Last night we separated Molly and Abbie from their combined six babies and then milked them this morning. The babies were then reunited with their mamas and will have full access to all of the milk they want from her all day long. At night they will sleep in separate stalls in encourage the babies to start eating solid food (which they've been nibbling at for a week now already). And each morning we will strip the mothers of their night's production of milk and back with the babies they go.   I think the mamas actually like the break from the babies at night, quite honestly. Eventually they will be fully weaned and the boys will be sold to their new homes. And so it begins... Milking equipment and glass bottles and sanitized work areas and fresh milk. I'm ready for yogurt and cheese and ice cream and cereal for breakfast!

It has been a busy few weeks here on the farm, especially on the goat side of things. Late in the evening on March 5, our Alpine/Nubian doe Abbie delivered quads. Yep, that's FOUR.  Full term, all normal size, two girls and two boys. She has always had two so we weren't expecting to walk into the barn that evening and find four balls of wet fur in the stall. Like clowns in a clown car, they were. No wonder mama Abbie was so miserable for the last few days before delivering all of these babies!  She has successfully been feeding them all, unassisted. These babies are 3/4 Nubian, 1/4 Alpine and named Arlo, Alice, Abner and Annabelle. Barely three days later on March 8, one of our Lamancha does Molly had twin girls with impressive paint jobs. Molly has a history of only having one big baby, so we were surprised that she had two.  We named them Matilda and Mabel and they are half Lamancha, half Nubian. Three more days go by and our darling Greta (who was born here two years ago to ...

Like many people with livestock, this time of year is crunch time for hay supplies. Our goats wasted more hay this winter than we had planned for (a problem that we have since fixed, and will continue to improve upon this summer) so our hay supply has been running short. Our regular local grower is sold out, like most places, but I was able to get a lead on ten bales from another source so I set out early this morning and claimed it. This definitely takes a stress off of me and should get us through until spring. Now I can take a deep breath and turn my attention back to the anticipation of goats kidding soon. We pasture bred all of the does this year so we don't have exact due dates, just estimates, but we are pretty sure Abbie (pictured) and Molly are ramping up to kid soon. Abbie is definitely ready to go soon so we are keeping a sharp eye on her right now. I think Greta and Sage both have a little ways to go.

A nice break in the weather yesterday gave us chance to kick the goats out of the barn long enough to strip their stall, put in their new rubber mat flooring and re-bed it with fresh shavings. Just in time, too, since kidding season will start here around March 5.  Ten more days, and then things start really getting busy around here. The bedding we remove from the goat stall gets repurposed and given to the chickens, who love foraging through and cleaning it up. After they break it down naturally by scratching through it for a month or so, we will transfer it to the gardens to use as mulch and fertilizer. [gallery link="none" size="medium" ids="654,653,652"] Abbie really wins the prize every year for the biggest pregnancy display. I always think there is no way she can get any bigger, yet she proves me wrong each time. Not only does she currently look like she's smuggling two beach balls in her belly, but she's moaning and groaning a lot as the gro...

We recently installed heated water buckets in the barn, one in each stall for the horses and one for the goats. I probably should have done this years ago but I think I've finally had enough of busting ice in the morning only to have it refreeze a couple hours later. The buckets have cords, so you have to put some thought into where you are going to hang them. The cords are wrapped in a protective metal spring to deter chewing, but especially with goats, the cords need to be completely out of sight of them. I don't trust their wandering mouths. I placed the goat bucket pretty much on the ground (still attached to the wall by a bracket) so that it is low enough for the chickens to access it also if needed. They frequently come in the goat stall for water, especially if all of their drip waterers are frozen. The cord goes through the slats in the wall so they can't reach it. I also put a bungee cord around the bucket to keep them from moving it at all (and possibly exposing...

I've been putting off a much needed barn improvement project for a while in hopes of catching the necessary materials on sale. Specifically, high grade rubber mats for the stalls and aisle way. The heavy stall mats I needed finally went on sale today so Seife & I headed into town. We will need to remove the old mats in the stalls and do some leveling of the clay floor before we put the new ones in place, as well as have some sand brought in to raise the floor level in the aisle way because we occasionally have flooding problems when it rains a lot. Project benefits: Reduce bedding costs (which are at an all time high) because rubber mats keep the bedding from being ground into the dirt/clay floor. Reduce flooding problems by allowing us to raise the floor level and then protect it with the mats Reduce dust issues... our barn is very, very old and the aisle way is made up of very, very old fine dusty dirt that gets on everything. This will also help keep our milking stat...

After getting 100 lbs of soap poured this morning, I scurried outside to prepare everything for the threat of freezing rain coming in tonight. Stalls are all clean, water buckets cleaned and filled, hay feeders full, corn out for the chickens and ducks. Abbie supervised most of the work. And that belly.... Oh my. Every year I think she is going to explode with babies way before her due date because she gets so big. She is due the first week of March and already looks like she's going to pop.