My last post to this blog was in 2006. After almost 5 years and a LOT of changes in life we are back and will be sharing bits from our journey. The farm is no more. We now live in suburbia and are working on our first garden as well as rain water collection, compost and more. I'm going to begin by trying to archive our old posts - for posterity sake. Please check back regularly as we share our journey towards suburban self sufficiency.
Read more...
We've recently migrated our web site to a new tool called Joomla CMS. We're going to move our blog there as well in an effort to ease administration and your ability to keep up on the events at our farm.
Take a look at our new site at http://www.mastfamilyfarm.com and click on BLOG on the menu to see our updated blog.
See you there! 
I found this online and thought I'd share it here. I'm not sure who deserves the credit for this:
What would a farm be without a few barn cats?
One of our female cats, Esther, just had a litter of cute little kittens. She's enjoying the pampered life, living in the house for a bit until she and the kittens are ready to venture outdoors. We wanted one litter of kittens, now we need to find a vet who can economically fix these cute critters and our other three cats. If you know of any economical solutions please let us know!
This is the goat kid box that we built to help us safely disbud the goat kids. It measures 6x24x18 and took about 45 mninutes to build. We purchased the stainless steel neck piece from http://www.caprinesupply.com and the kit included specifications that we used to build the box. The box is constructed out of 3/4" plywood and we used screws to secure the pieces together. The only change I plan to make is to replace the cover with a wider piece; the 5 1/2" piece is just a bit to small for my tastes. The box worked well and is sturdy; it even supported me while I sat on it to hold the goat kids heads during the disbudding exercise.
Dehorning/disbudding of goats is a controversial topic among breeders, although most breeders seem to fall on the side of disbudding versus not. As we have both de-horned and horned goats, we feel STRONGLY that dehorned goats are preferable. Not only are dehorned goats safer for us to handle but it is safer for the goats themselves.
We've heard stories about the horrors of disbudding (the process of dehorning the goats as very young kids) and we've seen the hassles and problems with adult goats with horns . . . therefore, we've decided to disbud our new kids.
As you can see in the picture, when completed there is a copper colored ring around the horn bud of the kid (and assuming we've done this properly) the horn should not grow. Many thanks to http://www.goatwisdom.com/ for their pictures, videos, and text describing the process of disbudding. We're glad to report that the whole process took less than a minute and the burning lasted less than 20 seconds total. The kids did indeed scream while we were burning their horn buds, although within seconds of being done they were begging for food, running around, and looking for our son and the other goat kids to play with.
This was our first time disbudding - it will not be the last. There is no doubt in our minds that the 20 seconds pain is better for the goats and us than dealing with the risks of horned goats. One recommendation - buy the BEST (hottest) de-horner you can afford. The hotter the dehorner, the less time spent burning the horn bud and the easier the job.
This is Reece our newest kid. He is from Endora and is 75% LaMancha and 25% Nubian. He's a big boy and growing quickly. Even though he was born about 10 days after our other kids, he's already a bit bigger than either of them. We thought about naming him "Guzzler" after his bottle drinking tendancies . . . or should we say bottle "inhaling" tendancies. Welcome Reece - we're looking forward to watching you grow!
April May had a beautiful set of twins this afternoon. I had just stopped home for lunch and as I was leaving noticed two small figures in the grass by April May. I walked over to investigate and was pleasantly suprised to find Larry and Louise. Both of the kids seem to be doing well. One boy, one girl. Larry (boy) is the black and white kid, Louise is the tan kid. This is our first kidding experience and we're a bit unsure of what to expect, despite reading most everything we have been able to get our hands on in print or online.
Neither of the kids seem to be nursing well yet - we did milk April May a bit to get some of the Colestrum to bottle feed to the kids. They aren't drinking a lot, although Larry drank a few ounces around 7:00pm and Louise just drank 3 or 4 ounces at about 9:30pm. As of 9:50pm they were both up and walking, albeit shakily, around their pen. We did move April May and the two kids into a pen in the barn for the evening. Hopefully tomorrow morning will bring with it the joy of two healthy kids!
Although we've enjoyed the Shetland Sheep we've decided that we have too many types of animals to focus effectively. As a result we're putting our Shetland sheep up for sale. Following is a list of the animals we have and approximate ages - note these are not registered although all are in good health. Contact us for pricing . . .
2 year old silver ram
2 year old light brown ewe
2 year old silver/black ewe
1 year old black ewe
1 year old black and white ewe
1 year old black ram - (should be for meat only as his horns will become a problem in the future)
2 month old brown ewe lamb
2 month old black and white ewe lamb
2 month old black ewe lamb with white feet
All sheep have been on pasture and are grass fed with grain only fed in limited amounts when we need to catch them. If you're interested in the entire herd please contact me for a herd price. Contact us via email for more information.
Meet April-May. I found out last weekend that she is so named because she was due in April but was born in May. Again, thanks to Dad & Mom Barney for the new goats . . . THANK YOU!
Meet Pansy. She's the mother of Josey and Bambi. She's currently the only one of the does that we're milking . . . a process we're learning about quickly!
Meet Bambi. She's only got one horn at the moment as she had her horns banded and one of the bands fell off prior to the horn. She's a sweet goat although we've learned she seems to have a sense for the electric fencer turning off. We turn off the fence charger when we get Pansy out for milking and Bambi generally steps through the wires as "the grass is greener on the other side of the fence!" Good news is that she never goes far and is easy to get back in when we're done milking Pansy.
Meet Josey our newest doeling (Sire Billy, Dam Pansy). She is two months old and loves everything . . . although she's not too used to other goats having been bottle fed to keep her tame. She is VERY friendly and loves attention! Here she's grazing in the pasture with the other new does whom she's starting to become aquainted with.
This is Billy - our new registered LaMancha buck. Billy is about three years old (I could look at his papers, but candidly it's not that important to me at the moment). He's a beautiful buck and friendly too! A huge thanks to Dad & Mom Barney for Billy and the other girls you'll see shortly . . . THANK YOU!
Since Beeri got his moment on the web (see my previous post) I thought I'd also give Naomi and Esau their moment online. Naomi is on the left and Esau, on the right, is our other tom cat.
This is Beeri, one of our two tom cats. I was taking some pictures of the new chicks and the cats were lounging on the hay . . . so I thought I'd let the rest of the world enjoy the sight.
Here's a picture of some of our chicks. We incubate them in the basement (constant temperature and humidity). We have two Little Giant incubators - one with an automatic turner that holds the eggs for about 18 days and another without an automatic turner that gets the eggs on day 18 or 19. The chicks hatch in the second incubator and then get moved to our brooder after 24 to 48 hours. We use a large galvanized stock tank lined with wood shavings for our brooder. We rarely lose a chick that makes it to the brooder, although we have been known to lose a few in the incubator - typically those that are the late hatchers. We don't hatch a lot of chicks, although we have been adding about 15 chicks (give or take a few) every three weeks. Additionally, we picked up 10 Rhode Island Red pullets on Friday at Family Farm and Home in Wayland. They had their chicks on sale for $1 each and although we probably don't need any more chicks, well - some new chicken blood in the flock might be a good idea.
FYI - the green Lipton Tea cap in the picture is filled with chick feed on for the first day or two until the chicks get accustomed to using the chicken feeders.
We normally incubate our eggs and hatch them out that way. We decided to let a few or our broody hens hatch out some eggs . . . for something different. This Rhode Island Red hen has hatched her first chick. You may notice that the chick is black - not a Rhode Island Red chick. While most of our chickens are Rhode Island Reds we do have a few others . . . including some Barred Cochin bantams (which are black).
We had thought the chicks would hatch on Friday or Saturday. This hen is sitting on about 15 eggs and has so far only hatched two chicks. We'll give them a few more days to see if we have any more luck. Although, at this point, it looks like we'll have better luck with the incubator than the hen(s).
Our 
goat herd will be expanding this summer (Lord willing). We got the wonderful news from my wife's father and step-mother this week. They live in the UP (that's the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for those of you outside of Michigan) and had a lot to do with us getting our first two girls. If it hadn't been for the postitive things we heard from them about the joys of goats we may not have ventured forth and purchased our own goats. Regardless, they informed us this week that they're don't want to have all the chores associated with the goats, and that we could have an early Christmas if we wanted their beautiful buck "Billy" and their does and kids. They are all Lamancha goats and we're absolutely thrilled to know that they felt led to give their small herd to us.
Billy, the buck, is a remarkable animal and will add some great strength to our small group of goats. We're going to attempt to get them over Memorial Day weekend when we go up to visit them . . . although we have not finalized this with them so it may be July before our group of goats expands. We're planning to put the does and kids in with our does and sheep - although we need to figure out how to de-horn the does as our goats don't have horns and the does we're getting do . . . a potentially lethal combination. I'm confident that disbudding the kids will be relatively straight forward, yet I've heard that de-horning the does could be quite a tramatic experience - for them and us. I'm going to be calling our vet this week to determine what he recommends. We're fortunate to have a vet in the area that specializes in goats and sheep . . . they're insight has been very helpful in the past and we're thankful we can call on them once again for this.
Shortly after we purchased our land we rented a dozer and in addition to digging our daylight basement, we dug what may someday be a pond. The "pond" does hold water - a foot or two at least. Our son went down today to do some wading and called me over to look at the tadpoles . . . this picture only shows a SMALL portion of them. I would estimate that we saw at least a thousand tadpoles total - quite possibly many more. I don't know what the survial rate is for a tadpole - nor how many eventually turn into frogs, but I have a feeling we'll be hearing plenty of frogs later this summer.
Do you know anything about tadpoles? Feel free to post a comment and share what you know with us . . .we're naturally curious.
I don't have any particular news on Clara . . . at least nothing new. She has miscarried so we're not expecting a kid from her this year. We're not sure what caused her to miscarry and we hope that it won't happen again . . . although as one of our first two "girls" my wife has informed me that her ability to kid won't have much to do with her longevity on the farm (meaning Clara's staying regardless.)
We just opened up the second pasture area yesterday for the sheep and goats. The sheep were INCREDIBLY hesitant to cross the old fence line into the new pasture. They actually refused to go into the new pasture until we lured them there with grain . . . and then only three of our six adults ventured into the new pasture. The goats on the other hand - don't seem to care much about fence lines and walked right out into the new lush grazing. As of tonight - about 24 hours after we opened the new pasture, the three ewes with lambs have still not ventured into the new area. They don't have access to the old pasture any longer (only a 10 foot strip from their barn to the new pasture . . . so we expect that they'll get over their paranoia in the next day or so. In the mean time - they're lucky enough to be enjoying the best alfalfa hay we have in the barn.
Meet Nellie . . . named after the infamous characturer on "Little House on the Prarie." Nellie was born last week Sunday and has managed to be a project already. She had diarrhea the first few days and we chose to give her an anti-biotic to counteract whatever was ailing her. She's now doing fine and is actually the tallest of the three lambs as of this morning!
This is Mary, our first lamb of the season. She's growing nicely and has turned into a deep brown from her original black coloring. We have been blessed with three female lambs this year and no rams. As we already have two rams in the herd we do not need any more! Mary has been starting to stray a bit from her momma, although not too far away and is always quick to return when her momma
bekons.
Meet Alicia. She's our third and final lamb for the season. She is a VERY TINY Shetland lamb. Her mother is a first year ewe and we were initially concerned that she wasn't going to allow Alicia to nurse . . . thankfully this proved not to be an issue and Alicia seems to be doing well. It's hard to see how small she is here - literally I doubt she's much over 2 pounds and stands less than 8" tall. My wife thinks she's more like a pound than two - and that my 8 inch height estimation is too tall. Needless to say, Alicia is the smallest lamb of the season and a joy to watch frolic.
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