puppies and piglets

We've got a litter of airedale puppies that are a couple of weeks old that are doing great. I bring this up because we had a piglet at the farm that just wasn't thriving, and brought it home so that it could get some individual attention, see if it would perk up.

The problem is that the piglet is used to an environment where it sleeps in a big pile with all the other piglets, and was pretty restless on its own. So the solution was to put it in with the puppies when mom is taking a break. So here's the two week old piglet in with the two week old puppies, and everyone is sleeping peacefully. Nice when it works out that way.

The $5 calf goes to market; thoughts on the last 18 months

This is pointy, an 18 month old holstein steer that was slaughtered Saturday morning. Pointy is one of my $5 calf's. I slaughtered this steer a little earlier than I'd like because he'd been getting aggressive and had learned that he could walk over my 5' field fence at will. I'll be improving my fences later this year but I don't have the time right now, and it's been a while since I've had beef in the freezer, and he was plenty big enough to go.

I've got two more of these steers, but I'll probably wait until the end of the summer (at 22 to 24 months age) to process them. Put a little more fat on them, let them take advantage of the summer grass and put some fat on.

These cows are my first, and for the most part they've been pretty painless to handle.

My experiences over the last 18 months, in no particular order:

Bottle feeding a calf is no big deal, especially if you use a calf dome. When they first arrive, you stick your finger in their mouths, and then lead them over to the bottle holder. Sometimes you have to hold the bottle for a day or two, but once they clue in that the bottle holder is where the milk is, it becomes a 15 minute per day chore to heat the milk replacer (powdered milk mix) and fill the bottle and drop it into the slot. It's just as easy to bottle feed 5 calves as one, so I'm going to buy batches of calves, 5 or 10 at a time from here on out.

I transitioned these guys from milk replacer to alfalfa and mixed feed at about 4 months, and then out on grass. I think i'd do a better job on shelter for their first winter; a simple run-in shed made them much more comfortable and seemed to save me money on hay and feed.

The next cows that I get I'm going to spend less time with. Unlike the pigs, where being able to get up close and personal is an important husbandry issue, having 800lb puppy-friendly cows is a bit of a pain in the ass. it's hard to herd them when they run right up to you and mug for attention. I'd prefer a more normal "flight zone" reaction. Even if they aren't being aggressive, having your foot stepped on is sure to wake you up. I understand why dairy boots have steel toes now.

The amount of feed required wasn't much in the first year; but the last 6 months each of these cows have been eating 60-80lbs of hay a day. I'll still buy small square bales to use as bedding or whatever, but the bulk of my hay purchases from here on will be either large square or round bales. It's about half the cost.

I won't mix cows and turkeys in the same pasture ever again. I lost a bunch when the cows stepped on their feet, and the cows really liked the turkey feed and would do their best to break into the turkey tractors to get it, including walking on top of it. I will follow cows and sheep with poultry, but be careful to seperate them via electric fence.

FarmSpam

I'm getting a pitch for some new thing pretty often recently. I'll run down a couple of them:

Your website can be on TV! Ramon Chevalier called and said he was a producer for Living In Style and wanted to talk about a program segment called Innovative Online Solutions; that my website interested him. He gave a number of 561-995-5352, x 133.
Their website is probably here.

What's funny about this is that I don't have a website for my farm. This blog is as close as it gets, and it really doesn't seem to be something that matches anything that they list on their site. So what are they after?

Unfortunately for my budding stardom, this is a pretty common pitch. If you can spare $19,000 (or $5900, or $3900) you too can have your own cheapo infomercial produced. They'll claim it's seen on "any or all" of a variety of networks. So they might play it once on a satellite tv station that no one subscribes to.

Folks who send a long email claiming to "eliminate the middleman between the farmer and the consumer" -- apparently by becoming the new middleman between farmer and consumer. that's the pitch from profarmproduce@hotmail.com, excerpt from the pitch below:
"... My brother and I were sick of the way we saw farmers get treated in this industry. They did all the hard labor all year around, and then the fruit warehouses and retailers controlled the price market.
Last year we decided to take matter in our own hands and start our own wholesale company in the Portland and Vancouver area..." They'll even sell you their product and allow you to mark it up and sell it to consumers. Isn't that called "retailing"?

A good one is a group of folks who send realistic looking cashiers checks in amounts over what is owed on a purchase. So they'll purchase $100 worth of stuff, and send a check for $500 or $700, and then an email asking that you just cash the check, subtract what you're owed, and send the balance back to a western union account. Sometimes they even offer to let you keep $200 for your trouble. Quite generous of them. Of course the check is bad and will bounce if you try to deposit it, but they sure look real. Embossed paper, watermarks, different colored inks. Pretty darned official.