Homestead Happenings: Random Pics From First Half of May

Things have been rather busy around here, lately, and I've not had time to record much of it.  I did take the camera out a few times and got some pictures, however.

The meat rabbits are still doing well. 

Simon and Timothy enjoy taking care of them!

Our Angora rabbits are also doing fine.  Christina tends to them everyday.

Matthew, Christina, and Simon went on a fishing expedition down the river the day before Mother's Day.  Lisa was hoping for some catfish for her Mother's Day dinner.  They had a nice time on the river, and saw several geese and a couple of mama ducks with their ducklings, but the fish weren't biting.  Maybe next time.

Chief is rather old, for a Great Pyreneese, but he is still with us.  I think he has the sweetest face!

Christina did not want to wear the helmet, but since they were going to be on the road, we insisted.

Augusta (long u in the middle) is a good dog and loves her family.  Wherever we go, she is sure to follow!  Luna is still with us, also, but she didn't make it in a picture this time.

Timothy, 'Gusta, and Sandy looking around up the mountain.

Tigger is one cool cat!

I didn't take pictures of the other cats, but they are all cool cats as well. 

Since I'm thinking about it, I'll report that Fritsie has had her kittens!  The children found them in a box in the wood shed.  I think there are 6 of them, but Fritsie hasn't brought them out to play yet.  When they start appearing in the open and playing, I hope to take several pictures of them.  It's been many years since we've had the kitten experience!

The chickens enjoy their free-range time! I like to let them out early in the afternoon, as long as they don't go to the highway in front of the house.  When they get into that bad habit, they find themselves staying in their lot much later into the day!

One of the White Rock hens is setting right now.  If all goes well, we should have baby chicks around the first of June.  But I'll not count my chickens before they hatch!

We still have 2 hogs at the moment.  We will be butchering them if we don't see piglets pretty soon.

So, I've reported about our dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens, and pigs, but I've not said anything about the cattle or bees. 

Well, one of the hives swarmed earlier this month before we could divide it.  We lost them because they swarmed to the highest point in a tree in an impossible location for us to capture.  We need to try to divide the other hives before they swarm, too.

I haven'tt gotten a picture of the cows in their lots for a while.  Right now we have Violet, Dandelion, and Rosebud  here, close to our house.  They have both barns and the hill lot that we originally fenced off for goats.  It's not a very good pasture, but at least they have room to move around and they like to eat some of the leaves and branches from various trees and they find some grass and weeds that they eat. 

We plan to start trying to milk Dandelion soon, but are concerned about her cooperating with us.  Rosebud was her first calf so she has never been milked.  Violet should calve sometime in June, we think.  She is starting to show some signs already.  But after our experience with Dandelion, we're not going to expect any calf too soon!

Meanwhile, Gracie and the two bull calves are at Pure Water Pastures.  There has not been much change over there in a while.  I plan on doing some more fencing work over there.  I already have all the materials laid out there for a second lot, but I need to find the time to invest the sweat equity required.

So, that's a bit of what has been happening around our homestead.  We've also spent several evenings getting our garden out.  I hope the garden will do well, even though we've had some cold temperatures in May.  Last week we even had a few nights in the 30s!  But I'll save the garden news for a future post, because we still have some room out there to plant.

Thank you, Lord, for your many blessings!

Enter: Rosebud!

On Friday, March 15th Dandelion finally calved!  We think the little heifer must have been born around noon.  Here was the scene shortly after Matthew discovered the calf, around 3:30 in the afternnon:

We named the little calf "Rosebud" and she seems to be very healthy.  It has been fun watching her prance around playfully as her leg strength improved during these past couple days.  She has had plenty of energy!

Dandelion, the proud mama, has some trouble, though.  Her back two teats are not working and we are afraid she has mastitus in them.  Her front ones have been overly full and have been too large for Rosebud to nurse off them.  That's not related to the mastitus, but since Rosebud was not nursing, we have been taking the milk from Dandelion's front teats and bottle feeding Rosebud, and we are afraid Rosebud might not nurse even after Dandelion gets straightened out.  Dandelion has been cooperating wonderfully, but we would much rather Rosebud nurse naturally.

We got some mastitis medicine for Dandelion yesterday from Tractor Supply, but was unsuccessful getting the syringe into the back teats.  We are very concerned that this will mess her up as a family milk cow for the future.  Today the vet is supposed to come and look at her and see what he thinks.  As soon as he gets finished at the office he is going to call and meet us at the barn.

I'll post again with an update after we know more of what is going on with Dandelion.

Update After The Vet's Visit:

I am very happy that Mark Ratliff is such a fantastic veterenarian and doesn't mind making house calls!  He knows his stuff, charges what I consider a very fair rate, and is rather personable as well.  I guess we visited for about an hour in the barn after he had examined Dandelion and looked at Rosebud!  He's a good Christian fellow and it seems that we have a lot in common.  If he had more time I think we could have found many more things to talk about, but he had another call to make at a farm in Blaine.

Concerning Dandelion, Mark had some good news and some bad news for us.  The good news is that she does not have mastitis!  She is perfectly healthy as far as any bacterial infection or anything!  The bad news, however,  is that she has what he called a couple of "blind teats", which means that she was born without any milk canals in those two back teats.  That is why we could not get any milk out back there even though her udder was so swollen!   

Dandelion's two front teats are producing plenty of milk for Rosebud and we saw more good news today:  we got Rosebud to actually nurse off Dandelion on her own!  I had to guide Rosebud's face to the teat, but when she found the teat, she latched right on and drank!  We did this several times on both teats until Rosebud got full and laid down for a nap!

Hopefully we got enough colostrum milk into Rosebud within her first 12 hours of life.  Mark said if she did not get the colostrum needed, then she will be sick by the time she is a week old and would likely then die.  She is very playful and energetic right now, but we really won't know if she will make it until she passes that one week mark, which won't be until this Friday.  But she did drink over a half gallon of her mama's milk from the bottle that first evening, so I think she should be fine.

The two front teats will be enough to raise just one calf, and we will still be able to get a large quantity of milk for the family over the next year.  Mark recommends that we do not breed her back, however, because it is too risky to have those back milk glands fill up so full with no place for the milk to go, which he said would happen every time. 

So the bottom line is that we should be able to raise Rosebud and milk Dandelion for as long as we want, or until she starts to dry up, and then we will probably need to sell her.  Mark said that this condition is not necessarily hereditary, so Rosebud could likely grow up to be a good milk cow. 

We are thankful for God blessing us with this adorable little calf, and for the fact that both mamma and baby are basically healthy!  We'll feel much better after we know that she is nursing on her own whenever she wants to, and after she is a week old.  I'll try to get back for an update, especially after she passes that one week mark if I've not checked back in by then. 

It's time now for us to go back to the barn to make sure that Rosebud has nursed again and that everything else is ok.

Here A Cow, There A Cow, Everywhere Cow, Cow (and a horse, of course)

We've been busy here at Pure Water Hollow with some brand new farm animal experiences, but I haven't yet recorded anything about it here on the blog.  On September 23rd we jumped head first into a grand bovine adventure! 

Lisa has always wanted a family milk cow, but we've never felt like we were ready.  I guess we still weren't ready in September, but the cows were, and the price was right!  We made the trek to near Mt. Sterling and brought home a 4 year old Jersey cow in milk with two bull calves and bred back to have another calf around June, as well as another 2 year old Jersey cow bred to calve in December!  We got them to Pure Water Hollow and introduced our horse Gracie to her 4 new room-mates.  We then hastily put up some new fence around our old barns and had to decide how to get a milking station ready.  Our "getting ready" process took several days.  The milk cows were patient and took to their new names as if they were born with them.  The 4 year old is named Violet and the the 2 year old is Dandelion.

We have been enjoying wonderful fresh milk and butter since October 1st!  None of us had ever milked a cow before, but we were quick learners!  We had a few rocky sessions at first, but soon things ironed out into a smooth routine and Violet seemed to forgive our inexperience.  We've been doing a system of once a day milking by keeping Violet up through the night, milking her in the morning, and then letting the calves have her milk throughout the day.  Most of the time Lisa and Christina have been the milk-maids, but Simon, Matthew and I have taken turns with the milking as well.  I mainly help on Saturdays and Sundays since I am home on those mornings.

Throughout October we worked on fencing in a good area of our pasture field down the road at our other property and also getting the barn in shape to house some animals.  There was much more work done there than I can do justice to with this writing, but suffice it to say, Pure Water Pastures has now been well christened!

We moved Gracie and Dandelion to the pasture some time ago, but kept Violet and the calves here, close to home, to keep the milking easier.  Today we decided to re-unite the entire gang and took Violet and the calves to the field.  Today I also finally took some pictures of the animals!  It was a cold, frosty, morning but things warmed up nicely with the sunny day.

Here is Violet with one of her calves in tow:

 The other calf is a twin, but a bit smaller:

Here's Gracie and Dandelion looking at the camera:

There they go!

Here is a closer picture of Violet.  She has a darker face than Dandelion and is a bigger cow:

All 5 animals in one picture:

I think Timothy is listening to Gracie's heartbeat:

Dandelion is wearing a red halter:

We also took a nice walk along the river below the pasture.  Here is a plant that we would like to identify:

A couple of good shots of Simon:

When we got finished with our little hike the sun was getting ready to set behind the mountains and we decided to put a bale of hay under our "in-progress" shelter.  Part of the field we fenced in is overgrown and this is where we are setting up the shelter.  So far, Matthew has been the carpenter on this project with Simon and Christina as helpers.

And now for the sunset.  Sunsets are a bit different here in eastern Kentucky compared to places where everything is flattened out too much.  I've seen some awesome sunsets on the Caribbean Sea, and hope to see some more, but I still like the way the sun sets here in the hills as well.  The sun goes down earlier here compared to at the ocean so these pictures were taken between 4:43pm and 4:46 pm in the afternoon!  Here is the sun saying farewell to us from behind the barn at Pure Water Pastures:

A different angle:

This one was taken from the house at 4:46 pm:

For some reason I hear a certain song in my head at the end of this post.  Maybe it's because of the horse and the sunset, but I'm hearing "Happy trails, to you, until we meet again...."