Category: animal husbandry (Page 8 of 13)

Fred and Wilma, and New Chicks

December 19, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 2 Comments

Just wanted to give a quick animal update on some of the new animals here at the homestead:

Pigs

In exchange for taking care of the Bunker’s boar Wilbur for an extended period of time, we were given one of their males to be the mate of the one piglet we kept out of the last litter of piglets the Lord granted out of Wilbur and Missy, our gilt. We kept the smallest female (in hopes of having her and her offspring of more manageable size: in just dealing with, and in feeding and butchering them), who was also quite feisty — she never had a problem getting in to suckle amongst the rest of the larger piglets.

And so, in honor of her sire Wilbur, we decided to call her Wilma. And given that, we’re calling the male Fred. In this picture, Fred is on the left, and Wilma is on the right. If you’ll notice from the above piglet blog post, Wilma looks just like here “daddy” too:

How romantical!

New Chicks

Also, we were able to find a local man who inherited an egg incubator and has been hatching out and selling bunches of chicks. We bought 20 from him and have kept them in the mini chicken tractor until they’re ready to run around the chicken pen area (which is our staging area for the main chicken tractor coop). They are all still alive, with thanks to God.

And here they are:

As always, we are grateful to the Lord for allowing us these provisions; and we pray they are all productive resources for the homestead and community.

— David

Hens and Hannah

August 18, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 4 Comments

Hens

Our chicken flock has been dwindling over time, due mostly to them just getting sick or dying, or getting crittered; and so we’ve been looking to find some adult hens or were planning on buying some chicks to get raising while it’s still Summer hot here, since the chicks would not have feathers yet and would hopefully be able to make it without special heating. But, the Lord granted we find someone from the local town selling her hens for a fairly good price; and we jumped on it.

We ended up with a Buffy (Buff Orpington), a Rhode Island Red, two Game Hens, and a chick that one of the game hens was raising. Before we had a kennel for the dogs, we had kept them in our chicken pen area, which was our staging area for chickens we would raise that were too large for the chicken mini tractor but too young to be with the main flock. Sadly, the dogs had pretty much torn up the fencing; but I was able to add some chicken wire and do a little repair work and get it at least workable for the new chickens:

Soon we hope to start putting them in with the main flock at night so that the main chicken tractor will become their home.

Hannah

We’ve also been looking to sell most of our goat bucks; and in someone responding to our ad about them, initially wanted to trade a buck of theirs for one of ours, as I had also indicated in the ad that I was willing to do so for our outbreeding purposes. Well, by the time we communicated further about it, they had sold all of their bucks. But I thought, maybe they have a dairy doe they would trade one or more of our bucks for; and so I asked; and they were indeed willing to trade their supposedly pregnant Lamancha-Saanen doe for our pure Nubian buck Donny.

Here is the link to the blog post we did on Donny when he was first born.

And here he is now:

And here is our new doe Hannah. I’m pretty sure they disbudded the horns; and Lamanchas have the tiny ears, although hers are really small:

We thank God for His provisions of the new chickens and goat, and pray He grant them to serve their purposes here in bringing forth sustenance.

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: New Kids “Desi” and “Lucy”

August 10, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 4 Comments

Our goat Minnie (see Minnie in the middle of this blog post when she was first born) didn’t get pregnant when she was with our buck Eastwood during the Winter (Eastwood died during that time). And so, we borrowed a buck from our neighbor Chris, a Spanish billy (see him at the top of this blog post); and lo and behold, new kids!

Please meet Desi and Lucy (we named them that because Desi Arnaz was kind of Spanish-ish 🙂 ):

Here they are just shortly after birth:

And here they are today, three weeks later:

We are grateful to the Lord for the increase of the herd.

— David

Goat Shed Redesign

August 3, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 5 Comments

In my initial design for our goat sheds, I wanted to be able to enclose the goats in the shed if necessary for protection, especially for when a doe might have new kids; but I wanted to be able to have the door completely out of the way during the hot months to allow as much breeze in while offering shade. And so, I made the front door completely removable. Well, that became somewhat difficult in having to pick up the door and maneuver it into place. Also, strong winds would blow the sheds over backwards, so we strapped them to a ground hook. Over time though, I thought of a different way to accomplish the same thing while keeping the current general design of the sheds but making it easier to manipulate the doors.

So the idea would be to have the entire door on a hinge while having another smaller door cut out of the big door, allowing the main door to be closed while a portion of it remained open to allow for the goats to move in and out. This would allow for the shed to be more enclosed when it is cold, or completely when necessary, and would also allow the entire door to be completely open during the hotter days, as before.

Here are the shed and door originally designed:

I cut off a part of the big door:

Added the missing piece of the frame onto the smaller door:

And attached the hinges, joining it back to the main door:

I attached 8″ hinges to the shed, using 1 5/8″ deck screws through #8 washers, the hinges, the siding, and into 2×4 blocks behind the siding. I then did similarly to the door, making sure it was raised up 1/4″ so the door frame doesn’t sit completely on the shed frame, making it difficult to close:

Here are the 2×4 blocks:

I then installed a 2×4 the width of the shed just above the door frame on top, to keep the top of the door from pushing in:

And then I installed two bolt latches, top and bottom, to the door frame. The bottom one uses the latch receptacle provided with the hardware; the top latch latches straight into the 2×4 above it:

Finally, I added a small hook and eye latch to the little door to be able to keep it held open; and installed a larger one to the side of the shed to keep the larger door latched. I drilled appropriately sized pilot holes for each before attaching the latches; and also, for the main door, I had to put a 2×4 block behind the hook latch that was attached to the siding:

Here the shed is completely closed:

Here it is with the small door open only:

And here it is completely open:

This redesign has made things much easier to handle when dealing with the sheds in various types of weather. We’re thankful to the Lord for granting us the land, goats, sheds, and ideas to be able to husband animals, we pray, for His glory.

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: New Calf “Nohemi”

July 28, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 3 Comments

Our last cattle update mentioned our new heifer calf Celestina. Well, we recently saw all of the herd together, except for her; and we’ve come to realize that she is probably gone. We don’t know what happened to her, but the Lord in His wisdom and of course since they’re His anyway (Ps 50:10) determined He would have this one removed. But we praise the Lord for His infinite goodness!

And He continues to be gracious and merciful, and has granted us another calf, a heifer to our cow Catalina. We don’t have a story for the name on this one — we just liked the name itself: we decided to call her Nohemi, which in Spanish means “my pleasantness, my delight.”

Here are a couple of pictures:

And here’s her moving picture:

Here is a little something we thought you might like on what is apparently herd culture:

We thank the Lord again for His perfect wisdom in all things, and for granting the provisions of this new heifer calf.

— David

William of Orange

July 12, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 3 Comments

Recently, the our neighbors captured a garbage bandit in a live trap they had set. The culprit was an orange tabby cat, a male. He ended up being quite friendly, and some of their children wanted to keep him, but the decision was made against that, and he was offered to us actually.

Sue had been wanting a cat for some time, but we really need things to have utility value around here. We have had some mice problems in our barn; and so, I decided that he could be beneficial to have for our barn; and I could do a little something for Sue as well, especially given how friendly he seemed.

So, we decided to take him; and here is how we decided on a name:

On March 17 of each year, we have a tradition around here of having an orange party, with orange being the somewhat official color of Protestants, in protest of the Roman Catholic St. Patrick’s Day and their green color. Some time ago, Protestants in Northern Ireland and Scotland took the color orange in honor of William the III, also known as William of Orange, and for his stands against the Roman Catholics, especially on this day, July 12, where he defeated the antichrist Roman Catholic forces at the Battle of the Boyne (see the “Antichrist” section on our “Soul Info” page regarding our belief that the Pope and Roman Catholic Church are the Antichrist and religious system of Antichrist).

And so, since orange, being the color of Protestants, was derived from William of Orange; and since our cat is also “of orange” — of orange color, that is — we decided to call him William.

Here are some pictures:

Cats apparently like to lay around a lot it seems, especially during the day — at least, this one does:

Also, I must say that he is the friendliest animal I think I’ve ever been around. We keep him inside with us during the day, unless he wants to cruise around outside; and he really likes to just hang around people:

But, here he is earning his keep:

William’s fun to have around; and he seems to be doing his job, at least to some degree; and he doesn’t cost too much to maintain.

We’re thankful to the Lord for granting us this living mouse catcher, and we pray God grant that William fulfill his duties. We’re thankful for this friendly gift of creation, but we pray the Lord grant us a continued proper perspective on animals without sinning by having inordinate affections. Also, we stand with our Protestant brethren throughout time who have been faithful to Christ against Antichrist, even to death: see Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: New Piglets

July 8, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 6 Comments

Well, it’s been a while since we’ve had some piglets born; but the Lord has graciously granted a litter to our gilt Missy. She was one of two that survived her litter, and was the smaller of the two, but was a fighter. She had a fairly large gash on her leg when she was young, but God granted her healing. Also, she got caught in a hail storm some time ago, which we believe was the cause of her ears swelling up like pillows. In researching the condition, there was basically one remedy suggested: lancing the ears.

That was fun. I took a folding disinfected razor blade knife out there with some hydrogen peroxide; and being this was the first time I had ever done something like that, I basically just poked it in. It burst, shooting out blood and fluid, which surprised me probably more than her. Sadly, that didn’t do the trick; so over time I had to go at it again a couple of times; but I modified my technique by poking it in and slicing down. That sure got it bleeding all right. Also, each time, I chased her around until I could pour that hydrogen peroxide on her ear. In the end, that worked much better; and her ears haven’t been swollen since; but they are somewhat deformed now.

Missy also took a long time to get pregnant. I believe we had her with two different boars, and several months with this last one; but after many estrus cycles, which we were able to track, they finally stopped.

Here is Missy (left) with the second boar Wilbur (right), borrowed from the Bunkers:

And here they are again, opposite sides:

And sure enough, almost to the day (which is 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days for gestation), 11 piglets were born, all alive. This is the largest litter we’ve had; and at this point, only two have died:

Here is their introduction video, taken around the time they were born:

And here they are two and a half weeks later:

We thank God again for His gracious granting of these piglets, a healthy delivery for their mother, and for granting her a good motherly instinct.

— David

Category: animal husbandry (Page 8 of 13)

Fred and Wilma, and New Chicks

Hens and Hannah

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: New Kids “Desi” and “Lucy”

Goat Shed Redesign

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: New Calf “Nohemi”

William of Orange

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: New Piglets

Receive New Blog Posts by Email

Usually only 1-3 a month. We will never share your information nor solicit you.

Archives

Categories