Farm Report #5: Animals Come to the Farm

It will be a year in October that we bought our farm.   We have poured lots of work into the farm over this past year.  We had hoped to be living at the farm by now, but our house has not sold.  If you are looking for a good 3 bedroom house in Mayfield we can set you up!  Despite the fact that we are still commuting to the farm, we have made a lot of progress with four small kids and very limited time to work. After finally getting water and electricity done through the Spring season we began adding animals.

The kids have loved adding the animals and we are all learning so much. We have several aims with the animals: 1) to provide experience and responsibility for the kids, 2) to provide good, healthy, less expensive food for our family, and 3) to in the long run provide some income through the sell of grass-fed meat.  

The biggest challenge of getting animals has been working on fencing. Fencing is time consuming and lots of hard work, not to mention expensive!  We went with woven wire or American wire for our perimeter fence around the main pasture.  My wife has been a great help, along with my sister-in-law and the kids.  We spent one weekend doing the main work, but have still been trying to finish over the last month.  Currently we have the fence installed, but now I am trying to add a couple of electrical lines inside.  This will keep the animals off the fence and allow us to divide the pasture easily into paddocks with electrical fencing.

The kids also got a lesson in “how a donkey can learn to stand up.”  We got a “jack” donkey that was still intact to help protect our sheep.  He went after our mare very quickly.  He was good for the kids, but not good for the horse or sheep.  We were going to get him cut if he worked with the sheep, but he almost killed one of them, so we passed “Radar” on to another farm.  In return, the gentleman gave us 12 bantam roosters and hens.  So now we have chickens too.

Here is a rundown of the present animals on the farm.

photo

Our first two animals were two American Guinea Hogs. They love to eat, though they are still small! We have had them since July.

 

This is another picture of Red.

This is Red our Quarter Horse.  

This is another picture of Red with our two Black-belly sheep in the background.

This is another picture of Red with our two Black-belly sheep in the background.  Austin loves Red and does a great job of taking care of her. 

Caleb feeding the sheep which are expecting lambs.  They are very "sheepish!"

Caleb feeding the sheep which are expecting lambs. They are very “sheepish!”

This was Radar our Donkey, but he has already moved on to another family!

This was Radar our Donkey, but he has already moved on to another family!

See the post to learn why Radar didn't work on the farm!

See the post to learn why Radar didn’t work on the farm!

These are our four Dexter cows.

These are our four Dexter cows.

 

Here the kids are feeding two of the younger calves.

Here the kids are feeding two of the younger calves.

Here are the roosters on the day they were delivered.

Here are the roosters on the day they were delivered.

 

So begins our adventures on the farm with animals.  

 

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  1. I enjoy your animal posts! Very interesting!

  1. […] have not given a farm report since September.  I wanted to give an update on the farm and share some reflections on our first […]

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