It’s been over a year since we did our last animal update on our pig Pebbles. As you can imagine, she has grown up quite a bit; and so, it was time to continue our normal cycle and get her a mate. We bought a medium-sized male from Mr. Bunker, and of course, had to call him Bamm-Bamm.
Here are Pebbles (left) and Bamm-Bamm (right) back in May:
And again, Bamm-Bamm (left) and Pebbles (right):
We thought, based on “action” we saw from the two that she was about ready to give birth late-April or so, but it ended up two estrus cycles past that.
And by God’s graces and mercies, she successfully gave birth! — a litter of nine, with two dead, and one little guy that just could never get walking properly, and he died as well.
After last year’s difficulties with Pebble’s mother’s delivery, we were really praying this one would go more smoothly; and the Lord was gracious in granting that to be so; and we are very thankful!
Here they are not too long after being born:
And here is a video of the journey of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, from meeting last December to piglets in June (it’s a little long, but to me, kind of fun to see the progression). Bamm-Bamm has since been “processed” as our food provisions:
We are very grateful to God for granting these new piggies to be born, for the safe delivery for Pebbles, and for the meat from Bamm-Bamm we have been able to store away.
Back in November, it was breeding time for the goats! We had decided in the past to basically in-breed only every other generation, and so we have two pure Nubian billy goats we use for that.
And so, without further ado, allow me to introduce you around the herd!
Our billy Shatner…
…was mated with the following does, producing the following offspring:
Winnie (center), and her new buck Obie (we call him Obie from O.B., standing for “over bite,” because he has pretty pronounced one):
If you are interested, here is a video of Obie’s birth, which Sue was able to capture. It’s a little graphic, for obvious reasons; but if you’ve never seen something like this, it is quite fascinating:
Betsy, and her new bucks Bo and Luke (think early ’80s TV show featuring a car named the “General Lee”):
Hannah, and her new does Rigby and Pippi (because their ears look like pig tails):
Pammy, with her new does PJ (for Pammy Jr., as she looks like her mother; and Sandy, like a white, sandy beach):
Lucy, with her new buck Lester (from William Shatner’s daughter Leslie, since he looks a lot like his sire Shatner):
And then, our billy Rocky…
…was mated with the following does, producing the following offspring:
Marie, with her new buck and doe RJ (front) and Raquel (RJ for Rocky Jr., since he looks like his sire; and Raquel, since she does as well):
Nellie, with her new buck Melvin (from his coat looking velvety smooth, and Mel Torme being called the “Velvet Fog”):
Gracie, with her new buck Albert (Princess Grace’s son is Prince Albert):
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Gracie had another kid, whom she sadly rejected. And so, we sort of “adopted” (and I mean that loosely, not like adopting a pet today), and named him Junior:
And here Junior and Albert are together. They do often hang out, so my guess is that they have a sense for each other:
And finally, Tapioca, with her new doe and buck Annie and Spot (Tapi is the goat to the far right in the second scene of the birthing video above). Tapi had a very rough delivery — she was a little older and this was her first kidding, although we’re not sure if that played into it. Whatever the reason, she had one teat squirting blood and water, and that whole side of her udder was purple (looking extremely bruised), and she wouldn’t really get up much at all and walk around and eventually stopped drinking water. It was very hot outside, and she had flies eating the skin of her udder, ears, snout, arms, etc. — I tried spraying eucalyptus essential oils on her udder, as I read that might help keep them away, and because we had some; but it didn’t work. We had a dilemma with that too — being as hot as it was, we made some shade over her, but it was too hot for the flies as well; so, her being in the sun was better to keep the flies away but had her in direct sunlight, and putting her under the shade brought the flies back in. Sadly, in the end, we decided it was best to euthanize her; and so, we had two more orphans on our hands — the doe we decided to call Annie (for Little Orphan Annie) and the buck Spot (because he looks like a dalmatian):
Here is a video tour of the new herd:
And here is feeding time with the orphans:
As I mention in the tour video, the Lord showed His graces with the orphans in allowing other kids to be born on the same day, so we could “steal” some colostrum from the other mothers to get some into the orphans, as the colostrum has things in it, which apparently are adapted to the local area, to help the immune systems of newborns. We have had to use some milk replacer to feed the orphans, but now that the kids are over a month old, we’re able to use mostly milk from the other mothers.
Both orphan experiences, for different reasons, were somewhat difficult; but we thank the Lord for His help through them, and for the health of the orphans and all of the new kids.
We are very grateful to God for the increase in the herd, for the colostrum He granted for the orphans, for the increase in healthy goat milk; and we pray for help in proper management and for provisions for the herd.
The Lord has shown extra graces this year in the amount of broody hens we’ve had. We almost can’t keep up, for which we’re very thankful!
And so, after the first round of chicks hatched for 2012, here is the next round from the hens that were in the “nurseries” mentioned in that previous blog post.
This was the next hen to hatch some out (this one wasn’t mentioned in that last blog post; these chicks are Group 2). We had her in our chicken pen area:
Going onto the “nursery,” this was the next hen to hatch her chicks (Group 3):
And then here’s the next one (Group 4). You can see the struggling one at the bottom — I didn’t think it was going to make it; and it looked like it had trouble walking; but by God’s graces it did, as you can see in the video below. I did add some “shackles” to its legs using duct tape, as it looked like it might have been spraddle-legged; I don’t know if it was for sure, but if it was, the shackles seemed to help (I got the shackles info from http://www.poultryhelp.com/spraddle.html, although our little chick didn’t look as bad as the example on that page). We have tried the shackles before on a very young rooster, and by God’s granting the shackles definitely helped:
And then here’s the hen and her chicks that are in the piano room (Group 5). This one also had a chick that really looked like it wasn’t going to make it — it had trouble standing, looked very sleepy, and couldn’t really get around very much. I actually put the spraddle-leg shackles on it too, but it was having so much trouble dealing with them (it was just falling over with its talons pointed backward) that I removed them. I thought for sure it wasn’t going to make it; but, again by God’s granting, it did, and it seems to be getting around pretty well now:
Finally, there were a couple of broody hens in our main chicken tractor that we just didn’t have a place for in any of our other buildings — they were both in the same nest; and so, we waited until they were supposed to hatch them, and they did hatch two before we could move them. Then, having removed the mother hen from Group 1 from the previous chick-hatching blog post, we also removed the mother hen from Group 2 that is in the chicken pen area, shuttled Group 1 to the chicken pen, and moved one of the mother hens (we just picked one), the chicks, and the rest of their eggs to the mini-tractor; and since, she has hatched out two more (Group 6):
And here’s a video about them all:
Whew! But, apparently we aren’t done yet, Lord willing — there are now even more broody hens; and so, we plan to keep the shuttling-to-the-chicken-pen area/opening-up-a-nursery-area process going.
This one is scheduled to hatch out next. She decided to get broody in an empty garbage can (which she leaves every once in a while to get food and water), where chickens sometimes lay eggs:
And here are the nests in the main chicken tractor. The game hen in the upper right is scheduled next after the garbage can hen, and then we just added eggs under the three Australorp hens on the bottom nests (the other hens I think were just “playing” broody at the time of the picture). I believe the hen in the bottom right nest is one of the ones that helped hatch out Group 6:
And so, once again, we are very thankful to God for this “problem” of many broody hens; and we thank Him for these many safe hatchings.
Last year, the Lord granted that some of our hens would be broody and sit on eggs — something that hadn’t really happened much until then. Well, God has continued to be gracious in that way, granted one of our hens to get broody; and by God’s graces, she hatched out 13 new chicks out of 14 eggs!
We’ve since lost one, but here is a picture of them:
And a quick video:
Along with this hen, we suddenly had an avalanche of broody hens! We’ve had a hard time finding where to put them, but we put one in our chicken coup in the chicken pen, and turned our summer kitchen into a chicken nursery.
Here’s one sitting in the piano room:
And another in the summer kitchen area:
And the pantry:
There are two (sometimes three in two nests) more in the main chicken tractor that we’re not sure where to put, but hopefully we will figure that out before the chicks hatch (if the Lord wills).
We are very grateful to the Lord for granting this “problem,” and we pray for continued healthy hatchlings, according to His will.
So, a little over five months ago, Sue saw Minnie, one of our does, with her hind-end backed up against the fence, and one of our bucks, Shatner, her sire, trying to perform his male duty. From a distance, it looked like he was able to accomplish his task — through the fence; but after Sue told me, I just couldn’t see how that was physically possible. But over the past couple of months, we saw Minnie looking pregnant; and I believe I felt one of the kids through her side.
Well, about a week and a half ago, I was looking over at the goats from our orchard and saw a black and white goat laying next to Minnie. I thought, “Wow, Minnie and Adeline (our black and white doe that is in the same pen with her) are sure cozying up.” But then I realized that the goat next to Minnie had long, floppy ears, whereas Adeline has the tiny LaMancha ears.
I ran up there, and sure enough, Minnie had given birth…to twins — a male and female.
Introducing Ralphie and Alice. Here’s Ralphie:
And here’s Alice:
And them together:
And here is a video of them a few days old:
Although the inbreeding situation wasn’t what we had planned, we are thankful to the Lord for the new provisions, and that they appear to be healthy, and for the safe and healthy delivery for both Minnie and new kids.
Once again, we were able to gather in the name of the Lord in thankfulness for His provision, spiritual and temporal, around the Thanksgiving table. This year we had the most folks participating we’ve ever had, I believe; and it was probably one of the most pleasant weather-wise we’ve had.
Here are some of the sights:
Before the meal:
The men:
And the ladies:
These are the meal tables:
And then the gathering of the brethren to break bread together:
After the meal, we sat around the tables and sang from our Psalter — a joyous time of praise!
We are grateful once again to the Lord for granting us this time of fellowship out here, away from the world, gathering in His name, in celebration of His glory and provisions, both spiritual and temporal.
Recently, another one of our game hens went broody; and so we put a bunch of eggs under her, once again hoping the Lord might grant continued perpetuation of the chickens, thus helping us be yet a little more separate from dependence on the world.
And He did!
When culling our roosters recently for butchering (since we indeed had too many), we had decided to keep a few more roosters than what we’ve heard is a typically normal ratio, in hopes more eggs would be fertilized, as we’ve had it where no eggs were fertilized for two broody rounds in a row; and it seems to have helped — 10 out of 11 hatched. At this point, we’re probably at 1 rooster to 2 or 3 or so hens that are currently laying; and we’re probably about 1 to 5 or 6 with all of the other hens included — we’ll see how that goes when the others start also producing, Lord willing.
Below are the new ones in live action. In the video I mention helping one hatch out. It had poked a hole through the shell, where you could see its little beak; but then it sat there the rest of the day. I would tap the egg shell, and it would open and close its beak, so I knew it wasn’t dead. By the time the end of the day drew near, I was bothered it hadn’t made any progress, and was trying to think of some way to help, but had heard it’s not good to help them. And so, I had decided to just let it happen as it was going to happen…until…I thought there must be some way to help it as I thought it was probably going to die if something wasn’t done. I looked up online regarding the topic; and the site I found said not to help, but also said that after a day of it not progressing it was possible to help, and the person gave instructions on what they did. And so, figuring it was probably essentially dead already if something wasn’t done, and that in helping it, even if it died, it was going to be in no worse a situation than it already faced, I decided to see what I could do.
The Web site I found with information about helping a chick hatch said to slowly chip away at the shell in pieces, as a chick would naturally do. In the case when an egg has been opened like this one was, the inner membrane dries out, and will I guess stick to the chick; and so, if you see bleeding, they said to stop and drop warm water around on the membrane to soften it, and try again in a little while. Well, in using some pointed tweezers, I didn’t actually heed that advice at first, and saw blood, but was able to chip away at the shell and gently pull back the membrane. I did this until the chick was free enough to basically move its whole body, which meant probably 2/3 or more of the shell was removed. After, I did go warm up some water, and with an eye dropper dropped some of it on the edges of the shell that was left, in hopes to help the chick more easily separate from the membrane. It just laid there all wet and on its side, and I figured it probably wasn’t going to make it; but the next morning quite happily, there were no dead chicks, and this one was running around with the rest of the hatchlings. You could see on it that day a few places where the membrane had pulled away the fuzz off its body; but in general, it appeared to be ok. I was quite thankful to the Lord, surprised, but very joyous too!
We are once again grateful to God for granting this provision, and we pray they are used for His glory and the benefit of His Church.
Heb. 11:8-10 - "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."
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