Memorial Classic Dairy Goat Show

Yesterday was a loooooooooooong day, but it was fun! We left the house at 5:30 in the morning and got home from the show at about 10:30 last night. I'm really upset that I forgot my camera, so all we have are a few really crappy cell phone pics of Belle, and none of Blossom! The girls did really well though for their first time out, I was super happy.

Belle placed 2nd out of 19 in ring 1, and 5th out of 19 in ring 2. Blossom placed 3rd in both rings, out of 7. Everyone at the show was super sweet and we really had a good time. We're looking forward to showing again at the Brazos Valley Fair in September. By then the girls will be 7 months old.

This isn't the winner's lineup, but it's the best I've got

Bare Nekkid Ladies

Show day is fast approaching! I shaved the girls on Sunday.. I didn't do a great job, but hopefully it will do for the judges! I snapped a couple of pics. Unfortunately they're not the best as I didn't have anyone to hold the goats (they're clipped to the fence) but it shows their haircuts at least. I'll update Saturday or Sunday with better pics, and results from the show. 

Belle

Blossom.. she's never been tied to the fence before.

Updates

I haven't updated in quite some time as I've got a new job and have been there way more than I thought I would be, and by the time I get home and take care of my own animals, I'm pooped! I want to try to start blogging regularly again but it won't be every day, probably once a week or maybe once every two weeks.

I'll start with some good news.

We got a new goat, thanks to LaNell at White Oak Bend Dairy Goats. She got this little cutie from DreamFire Farm and we are so excited to have her. Love the little elf ears. So I shall formally introduce, miss DreamFire A Blossom, aka Blossom! She was pretty shy at first as she was mostly dam-raised but she came around and is now just the sweetest thing. Belle is super happy to have another goat her age around, too. 

I don't have many pics of her yet, I need to get out there with the camera!

We have a show coming up! May 25th Belle and Blossom will be heading to the Memorial Classic show in Brenham. Wish us luck there! The girls are getting shaved on Sunday in preparation for their show debut. 

Now the bad news. :( 

This past week, we had our very first coop invasion. A raccoon broke in and over the course of a few days (we would fix where we thought it was getting in, and it would get in again) has killed all six of my adult laying hens. For some reason it didn't kill the youngsters, so we still have the flock of 12 plus one new easter egger pullet (named "Dale," thanks to the friends we got her from). 

It's really sad to lose the girls at all but especially in such a violent manner. Twice we found chickens who were beyond repair but still alive and had to put them out of their misery. They were all special little individuals and are missed very much.

Rest in peace to our dear Toast, Miss Bockbegack (Missy), Dr Emmett Brown (Emmy), the Red Twins, and the little lady we just called the Game Hen. 

Missy and the Red Twins enjoying a dust bath as Emmy looks on

Toast takes flight

Missy the Innkeeper

Little Game Hen, who laid a perfect white egg every single day

Toast frequently invited herself in the house

Black and White Sunday 2

Little Belle!

Omg, I've been working a lot lately.. sorry for lack of blogging! 

Black and White Sunday

Goatie kisses from Belle

Rooster Noodle Soup

A few weeks ago, we had a rooster show up. He was a handsome fellow, so I figured I'd let him hang around if he behaved himself. Well, he didn't. He tore up my Barred Rock hen, Missy, pretty bad. He bloodied the back of her neck so badly I had to put her in the "infirmary" (old chick brooder) for a couple of days to give her a chance to heal. So, he is becoming rooster soup.

I figured I would document the process (after butcher- didn't get any pictures that day) for anyone interested. I'm working with very limited ingredients, but here we go. First, I made the noodles. Now, I've never made noodles before, but I figured I'd give it a go. We don't have any in the pantry but I had eggs, milk, flour, and salt. That's all I needed!

Ingredients
2 cups flour (I used 1 cup whole wheat, and 1 cup all purpose) 
2 eggs (fresh from the chickens' butts) 
1/4 cup milk
 a few pinches of salt
I did end up using a bit more milk and a bit more flour to get the consistency I was going for. 

 I mixed all of the ingredients in a bowl and then tossed it onto a piece of floured wax paper. I later learned that I should have used WAY more flour, as my dough stuck and I ended up having to scrape part of it off and re-roll it.

All rolled out

Once it was rolled out, I left it to sit for about 20 minutes so it could firm up a bit. Then I attacked it with a pizza cutter. I thought this would be better than a knife, but my pizza cutter is dreadfully dull so it took some doin' to get it done.

This is once I re-rolled the stuck bit. Way better than at first.. live and learn.

Then I put them on a floured towel to dry for about two hours. 

They're "artistic" noodles..

Lucky for me, I have a great kitchen helper who was super enthusiastic about this whole process.

Helpful dog is helpful

Later, we got Mr. Rooster out and stuck him in the pot, and covered him with water. 

Take that, rapist bastard. 

Brought it to a boil, and left it simmering for about an hour. Older chickens/roosters can be tough so you want to cook them for quite some time. 

Once it was pretty well cooked, I cut up some carrots, a good bit of garlic (*cough*8cloves*cough*), and some onion..

At this point I simmered it for quite some time.. I wasn't completely paying attention so I don't know exactly how long. Basically until I could easily pull bits of meat off. Then, I put a collander over a big bowl and strained the broth through. I removed the skin (I hadn't been able to get all of the little hairs off when plucking) and shredded the meat. At this point, the broth looked like real-life chicken broth out of a box. Except, you know.. better. 

Delicious golden broth

And the meat looked like.. meat. 

This guy had the thighs of a linebacker

I returned the meat and other goodies as well as my homemade noodles to the broth and boiled. Again, not sure how long. It took probably 20-25 minutes. Next time I think I'll make my noodles a bit thinner, but they certainly weren't bad. I added a bunch of herbs/spices like salt, pepper, rosemary, parsley, oregano, paprika, and a few other things. Don't tell the husband but I may have added a dash of cayenne pepper. 

Mmmmm. Smelled reeeeally good.

And here's the finished product. It's not pretty, but it was pretty damn tasty. 

Yum! 

 

For real now

Okay, I'm actually going to get better about posting here now. I made a blog for my dogs, and I feel like I'm ready to be more active on this one too. Not as active as the dog blog, but at least once a week is what I'm aiming for. Who knows, maybe more! The layout will be undergoing some changes here shortly.

Poor little blog..

I have neglected my poor blog, and there is a LOT to tell! I'll shorten it and suffice with pictures of each new critter.

Rabbits
We still have the California buck, Oliver. Still have all three Satins. We ate California doe Flower as she failed with two sets of kits, had mastitis, and a horrible temperament. She was tasty.

The new rabbit additions are.....

Harli, who was supposed to be a Rex but is clearly not. Thats ok, she's cute and she should make some decent meat mutts in pretty colors.

Harli, bred to Rhett for 2/23/12 kits

And Juliet, who actually belongs to a friend but she lives here with us. She's a mini rex, and will be bred to Rhett probably.

Juliet pictured with Vixen, a california doe we had to cull for severely misaligned teeth

Also, Scarlett was bred to Rhett and gave us 7 live popples, however they did not thrive and so we've just got two remaining. They are almost 4 weeks old! Obviously I need some updated pictures. 

Scarlett and one of her kits at 2 weeks

We acquired one more chicken, so that brings us to 5, and we built a new coop. We also have 9 chicks on the way. They are Buff Orpingtons and Delawares. I'm hoping for a Delaware roo to keep, and as many pullets from the others as possible. I'll use the buffs to brood chicks! The Delaware will hopefully produce some nice dual purpose babies. Here's our coop!

100% free materials. "The Chick Inn"

While on the topic of structures, we built a rabbit barn as well that I am just so pleased with.

The Meat Locker. Hehe. The only expense was the roof, so about $100.

Now for a big announcement... We finally have goats! Just two for now but we're on the waiting list for another LaMancha doeling (at which point we might find a home for the Nigeran Dwarf wether, I think I don't want a horned goat in my herd. We'll see)

ND wether, no name..

Belle, my beloved LaMancha doeling! Love this girl! 

I'm hoping to borrow a rototiller and will be getting the garden space prepped here in the next few days, so hopefully that will go well. I'll update with pics!

Don't touch my poo bucket

I should start this post by mentioning, in case you are not aware, that rabbit droppings are considered gardener's gold. It is classed as a "cool" fertilizer, which means you can put it immediately on your plants and it won't burn them, like so many other fertilizers do. 

Right now, I have a very small (2' x 4') square foot garden box. It came with us when we moved from the rental house we had prior to this property. I just have a few things planted that I am feebly trying to nurse through the colder months. I decided I would very much like to try "compost tea" made from my very own rabbit droppings which have until now been staring at me tauntingly from the dirt beneath the cages. 

Bunny Tea on the brain, I set to work raking the droppings into a pile and into a bucket. This I dumped over a piece of hardware cloth with very small holes, as our soil is incredibly sandy with the consistency of dust and I wanted my tea to be mostly bunny berries, not sand. I sifted like a gold prospector until I was satisfied that most of the dirt was gone. Not only did I have a bunch of poo, there was a ridiculous amount of wasted hay courtesy of the rabbits who think it is truly the greatest joy in life to pull all of the alfalfa from the feeder. This I picked through (yes, by hand!) the worst of before deciding that it was good enough, because I had a plan! 

The alfalfa/poo mix was returned to the bucket. I then filled it with water, and left it alone. For some reason I was deeply paranoid that an unknowing family member would come by, see poo in a bucket rather than beautiful tea steeping, and dump it out. They saw me filling the bucket with poo. They saw me picking pieces out of it with my bare hands. They did not, however, ask me what the Hell I was doing, which leads me to believe that they have accepted my sanity is not all there. I considered telling them not to touch my poo bucket, but decided that such a conversation would only end in my being laughed at. 

My tea went untouched and I came back to it around a day and a half later and decided it was time to try it out. Using my handy-dandy-super-small-squared hardware cloth as a filter (hubby held it, bless him), I poured the poo water into a new bucket and was delighted to find it quite near the color of the iced tea my grandmother serves for lunch each day. I am home most of the day completely by myself. Small things such as this make me happy. 

I fed it to the plants and hope that soon I will be able to report great progress in their growth. I'll let ya know. 

New Additions

We picked up two new hens last night. They are Isa Browns, 18 months old. 

They also gave us our first egg! The other hens are still currently freeloading, urgh!

Aaaaand today I picked up four new rabbits! They were free from a kid who is no longer showing them in 4H but they did really well for her last year and she won $800 with them so I guess they're pretty nice! Three bucks and a doe, I'd rather the ratio be flipped but that's okay. We are still hoping to keep a doe from each of the Satins so I will just do some crossbreeding. Originally I wanted to cull two of the Californian bucks and just keep one buck and one doe for that breed, but hubby really wants to keep all of them so we'll see how it goes. Definitely need more does though. Anyway, here they are!

Buck 1, related to the doe so he'll be a cross breeder.

Buck 1 again just 'cause I like the picture

Buck 2

The Doe

Buck 3, biggest of them so will probably breed him to the doe

They even gave me their huge cages which I was very excited about. I have them stacked right now but I need to hang them up, they're bigger than I was expecting so I'll have to rearrange the rabbitry a bit! 

Thanksgiving

The bunnies, ducks, and chickens are all thankful for fodder!

Missy the Brave is the first to check it out

Suspicious

In the end, Thelma got the first bite

It looks so vibrant against the dirt

Lovely Scarlett really enjoyed hers

Aero wants to see the rabbits

I'm currently working on getting the necessary materials to make fodder a full-time part of their diet. Thanksgiving was the day our practice tray was ready to feed so that's all gone now. 

New Additions

I have been wanting to add rabbits for quite some time and finally we were ready and an opportunity to get some good stock came along. We found a breeder in Waco who is getting out of the rabbit business. He had several breeds, including Satins. We brought home a buck and two does.

Blue doe. Bred to our buck, due date 12/19/12

Copper buck

White doe. She's bred to a broken black Satin buck.
Babies are due 12/16. 

The buck is a little shy still.  

They are too cute.

Overall I'm really happy with them. I've been handling them on a daily basis so they'll be nice and friendly. Their babies are mostly destined to be meat to feed our family. I am hoping to get a nice buck and doe to keep out of my white doe. If I do that will bring in some more genetic diversity since she's bred to a buck I don't own. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a safe delivery to a bunch of healthy kits. These guys won't be eaten since they're breeders, so at some point they'll get some names.

Cooped Up

I didn't have time to let the girls out to free range today as we had to go into town. However, I found something special in the front yard for them.

Dandelions! Yum.

I was expecting them to like them, but they absolutely POUNCED on them. Even the ducks had a sample, but Missy was even a little territorial of "her" dandelions. Unfortunately there are none growing where they can free range, but I don't mind picking them and performing room service. :)