Good Afternoon,
We continue to grow and develop our farm and enjoy the direction Anchored Farms is going. Since our last blog entry, we've had four nannies give birth to multiple kids. Coconut, Pumpkin, and Snowflake gave birth to triplets, and Peach gave birth to twins. Unfortunately, Snowflake's kids did not survive. We don't know why, but we believe she experienced a significant complication, since she gave birth three weeks early. The remaining eight kids have survived and are doing well. This year's birthing cycle produced five doelings and three billies. As for milk production, we have a lot of goat milk and we recently invested in a automatic pulsating milker. Chris was able to get it set up, just a couple of days ago, and he, and the rest of us, are loving the fact that we no longer have to milk by hand. We did sell the remaining three billies, from last year's birthing cycle through the El Dorado Springs Livestock Auction, and we had a positive experience through that process. Pictures will be forthcoming.
Starlight, our rabbit doe, gave birth to seven kits and six of them have survived. We believe one of the kits suffered a broken back, probably from his mom stepping on him, because he had no use of his hind legs. He was put down to end his suffering. These baby rabbits are actually old enough to butcher, since they are pushing 10 1/2 weeks old as of this post. We look to carryout this process in the near future.
We also purchased 17 additional Guinea keets, 13 of which have survived and are actually developing feathers now. They have a few more weeks before they can be released to run with our seven adult Guineas. It is interesting, that we tend to lose one or two of the small animals after birth, and this appears to be normal, based on our discussion with others in the agriculture business. It would be nice to figure out how to prevent the loss, but sometimes it's not possible, so we keep pushing forward.
On the hog production side of the house, we purchased a boar and two gilts in an effort to start producing piglets. The boar should become "capable" in August. Our plan is to breed them in September, for December farrowing. All three are 100% Red Wattle. We bought our boar from Marilyn Judd, and our gilts from a family in Elkton, MO. We have a barrow as well, the boar's brother, which will be processed for the freezer in the next few weeks. The boars were born on 2 January 2018 and the gilts were born in December 2017.
Our garden is coming along, and Chris has done a lot of work to get our plants to producing vegetables. We enjoy the produce on a regular basis. We also discovered that we have multiple Mulberry trees growing around the property, and we've enjoyed that fruit. Our blackberries are coming in strong as well.
Well, I believe that's about it, and brings us to our current activities. If you would like additional information or have questions about our animals, please leave a comment. If there is something you'd like to purchase, we can have that discussions as well.
