August on the Farm

Surely is in heat and has moved in with our buck

Yesterday Pam and I cleaned out the buck/kid barn and noticed that EV, our Boer buck was starting to smell like a buck in rut.  It's a strong, sweet odor, the first sign that fall breeding time is around the corner.  This morning Surely, our best milker that didn't take last year and is dry, was at the buck gate, her tail wagging (called flagging) and talking to EV.  I let her through the gate and sure enough, she was in standing heat.  Standing heat is where the doe will stand still and let the buck mount her.  Ovulation (the dropping of the eggs to be fertilized) in the female occurs 12 to 36 hours after the onset of standing heat.  I saw EV mount Surely three times but we'll let Surely stay in with him for 10 days or so.  Sometimes the eggs don't drop and she'll go into standing heat again - and I don't want to miss that.  If she settles this time we should have her babies January 3rd.

Pooh Bear taking another nap

Pooh Bear wasn't interested in the racket, just wanted to get more rest.

Mother Muscovy with 10 ducklings teaching them how to grab flies out of the air

Our Muscovy duck has 10 ducklings that are about ready to be sold.  We get $7 each for them at this age, $15 when they are fully feathered out, and $20 at six months.  If we sell a laying duck we get $25.  What we don't sell we'll butcher.

One of our new Sex-Linked hens

Egg production has really fallen off, from the peak of 12 eggs a day to three or four.  Our layers are going into their third year and they need to be replaced.  Our new flock should start laying next month and we'll butcher the old girls next spring.  Our plan is to add 15 each year and remove 15, keeping our laying flock at about 30.  Next weekend is our butchering day for the remaining broilers and we plan on including our two Rhode Island Red roosters.

A Sex-Linked Rooster - sex-linked is a cross of Rhode Island Red and Bared Rock

A nasty weed growing around here is Tansy ragwort, an invasive, toxic biennial weed from Europe most often found in pastures and along roads and trails.  It is a Class B Noxious Weed in Washington State and control is required.

Tansy Ragwort with the Cinabar larva eating away

When prevalent, tansy ragwort is on of the most common causes of poisoning in goats, caused by consumption of the weed found in pasture or hay.  Milk produced by affected goats can contain toxins.  Most goats will reject it, bukt some will eat it, especially if it is in their hay; its poisonous alkaloids are unaffected by drying.  Honey from tansy ragwort also contains the alkaloid.

They will strip the plant of leaves and flowers

The good news is the appearance of a moth that lays its eggs on tansy, called the cinnabar moth.  Spectacular success has been achieved controlling tansy ragwort in the Pacific Northwest region by releasing this animal, and we have it occurring naturally around our place.  In places where we don't see them we just pull the plant when it is flowering and compost the plant after cutting off the flowers.  Our compost pile is very hot with all of the goat manure and urine, so it can probably take the complete plant.