Our journal of what we pray is our sojourn of life along the narrow way, even the old paths, submitting to the Bible as a light unto both.
We just thought we’d do a catch-up on the Spanish Longhorns we raise here before we hopefully started continuing to pare down the herd, including the old girls (20 and 22 years old) out in the sun eating hay on a super-scorcher day this past summer…
As always, we are grateful to the Lord for His provisions!
— David
Well, with the loss of Elvis and the gift of Reggie from the Lord via our normal goat-kid-buyer back in spring, the things that male and female goats do did take place, as evidenced by the birth of 7 goat kids!
A couple, actually, weren’t expected, as we didn’t really see the mothers being imminent. Plus, one of them has a real problem with her udder, which we’ve been trying to resolve, and just shortly after she gave birth, there was a large blister-ish bubble on the back of her udder, and I accidentally popped it internally, and I don’t know if it was related, but both her right legs started acting injured. Now, she may have injured them, maybe laying too long on that side or something, but she’s still down, and so it was bottle feeding time for the little guy, which we’re calling “Ned”, after his mom Nellie. 🙂
Also, our nanny Adeline has a prolonged udder, so for the first while, Sue “gets” to milk her and bottle feed her kids until the udder is higher and the kids figure out how to suckle her. Well, one has figured it out, the boy, but the girl Sue is still bottle feeding. 🙂 We actually are planning to keep the girl to back-fill for our buck, Shakespeare. We wanted to keep her as she comes from the line of Winnie, our original goat, as she was part Lamancha, and we wanted a little something of Winnie to continue in the herd. 🙂 And, in honor of the barbershop name of her mom (from the song “Sweet Adeline”), we wanted to carry that through, so we’re calling her “Lida Rose”, or “Lida” for short. 😀 We named her brother too as “Liam”.
One other anecdote: our nanny Lily gave birth to triplets, and we thought they were three doelings, so we named them, “Marsha”, “Jan”, and “Cindy” (think 70’s large-family sitcom; Cindy has long ears, like TV Cindy’s pigtails 😀 ). Well, come to find out later, one was a buckling….”Marsha”….so, he’s now called “Marshall”. 😀
Finally, our nanny Hassie had a little girl. 🙂 So, 3 bucklings and 4 doelings in total.
But, without further ado, here’s their video:
This is a new experience for us, having winter kids, so we’ll see how it goes through the times of bad weather. But, we thank the Lord for His provisions of the new baby goats!
— David
After our last 2024 turkey chicks update, there was some more progress on the last ones that were still growing in the summer kitchen, and then the addition of two other turkey chicks!
The video takes you through the release of the last group plus the new ones’ intro. And then to release day of those last two new ones, with sadly, the one of them not doing well…
This is the last known update for turkeys this year at this time. We are always grateful to the Lord for His provisions, and His graciousness of all the new turkeys this year!
— David
Well, this kidding season was different. Elvis our buck we thought last year had gone sterile, and that was confirmed this year as his four does had no kids.
Then with our other buck Shakespeare, we believe one of his does miscarried after getting her head stuck in a gate and apparently getting beat up by other goats, because her back end was bloody and the like, and she didn’t have a kid.
But, we had one mama left — Lucy, our part Spanish, and she did. It was twins initially, but the doeling was still born, but her brother was fine, and he ended up being the lone goat kid this year. 🙂 We called him Louie because of his mom Lucy, but in the end went with Louis. He’s in the picture above.
Then, the fellow who buys our goats each year had an extra Lamancha buck in his possession and offered him to us, and we took him to replace Elvis. That was a gracious gift from the Lord, and the nice gentleman! 🙂
In Spanish, gift is “regalo”, so we decided to call him Reggie 🙂 We decided to put him in with all our females, so we’ll see if we have late fall/early winter babies this year — something we’ve never done, we don’t believe:
But then, Elvis ended up with an infection in his leg that we didn’t realize was there, and perhaps with worms we couldn’t conquer, we found him one day on the verge of death, so we expedited the matter. Always sad to say goodbye, and then having to do that to an animal stinks but does put them out of their misery.
Goodbye, Elvis. We thank the Lord for all of the kids He granted from you. And we thank the folks who gave him to us all here initially:
Lastly, here’s the video of Louis and Reggie, and a quick goodbye to Elvis. Plus, a guest appearance from a dog that comes all the way over here during thunderstorms sometimes whose owner lives about two miles away. 🙂 :
Even though it was only one kid this year, we are always thankful to the Lord for His continuing provisions!
— David
Once again, the Lord graciously granted a hen get broody, and we put eggs under her in the mini-chicken tractor, and by God’s graces, she hatched out our 5th group of 2024 chicken chicks!
One sadly died fairly soon after that, but the rest are still going today, and we are grateful!
Here’s another picture of them:
And here’s their video. You can see it wasn’t yesterday they were hatched. 🙂 I think I’m planning on moving them into the summer kitchen to grow up some more due to their current quarters becoming more cramped, although I don’t like to take them out of a more natural environment. But, hopefully it won’t take long, and then we can move them back outside into the chicken pen area.
Again, we thank the Lord for Him granting these continued provisions!
— David
Just a catch-up video on the turkey chick goings-on since our May turkey post.
I believe in the video below we cover pulling 3 groups of young turkeys out of the summer kitchen and putting them in the barn at night to begin their life with the turkey flock.
Funny too, but apparently a couple of chicken eggs ended up with the turkey eggs because we ended up with a couple of chickens in with the turkeys. 🙂
Here’s another picture of them in the summer kitchen before moving them out:
Something we learned: One turkey hen ended up sitting outside and hatching out quite a few turkey chicks. We thought we’d experiment and let her raise them out there and not move them into the summer kitchen, but sadly all of them ended up disappearing or dying, so we have decided to not do that again and just grab any turklets (my name for turkey chicks, kind of like “chicklets” 😀 ) and put them in the summer kitchen.
And on another very sad note: Our “matriarch” of the flock, Trina, died since the last update. Originally, she just showed up on the homestead one day and moved into the barn, we bought her a mate, and the rest is history. Here’s the blog post we did about her arrival from back in 2016.
This should be she, and should be her first chicks…
Goodbye, Trina…we thank the Lord for bringing you here in His kind providence, and for the huge flock He granted from you…
But back to current day, as far as I know, all the turkeys that we have moved out into the barn this year are still alive and doing well, and we are grateful!
And without further ado, here’s the update video. Be on the watch for the turklet cam! 😀 :
Again, we are thankful to the Lord for granting these provisions!
— David
The Lord graciously granted another two rounds of chicken chicks this 2024! 6 from one mommy and 3 from another, both about the same time.
Sadly, with one of those hens no longer with us, I thought the other hen might adopt the other chicks, and so I put them with her, and thanks to the Lord it has worked out.
Sadly again though, I found one of them dead this morning in the coup part of the mini-chicken tractor, but we are always thankful for any God continues to grant.
Here’s another picture:
And here’s their quick video:
Again, we thank the Lord for His provisions of these new chicken chicks!
— David
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