Chick with a Whistle Farms

Settling In

Enjoying the long weekend, I am happy to announce that the trio of goats are settling in and getting along. Aspen and Charlie are still putting Vanilla Bean in line but they take breaks to enjoy the good weather. I am also excited that the goats are getting large enough that only Aspen can sneak out of the fence. As soon as Aspen escapes and realizes that she is the only one, she quickly returns to everyone else.

All the goats are really like family pets enjoying sitting in your lap or just taking your seat when you are not looking.

When they are not taking our seats they were trying to cool off in some dirt.

Besides being entertained by the goats we have had the neighbor cat coming over daily and tonight found a mouse. At first I thought it was a frog, but as I got closer realized it was a mouse- which was quite disgusting as the cat (which I later found out is named Oliver) was crunching on it’s body. ugh.

Before the cat episode, I watched as one of the red stars start running and realized she had a frog. Once the rest of the hens noticed the excitement it was a game of keep away with the frog. As soon as we noticed, I had to run and grab my phone to try and capture. Here is my attempt.

The greatest though is the video:

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Part two

On the chicken side there have been some new updates:
* Lahaina is still broody so no eggs 😔
* The larger chickens have been terrorizing the younger silkies so I needed to get rid of them. Unfortunately, I believe that is how I lost the tan one earlier this week.
* One of my bantams has a bright crown and tall tail feathers. As of today he has also been crowing, since he is so small you really can’t hear anything yet.

* The kids have continued to bother Ringo and lately he has been finding little ways to get back at them. Today he pecked at Sadie’s boot and back of the leg. I’ve told Dustin if Ringo gets out of control he will be stew.

*The middle chicks are getting larger and will probably start laying in the next month. I figure they should get names now that I know they are hens. More details TBA.

Finally, we have continued to tackle the garden which is turning out to be pretty cool. Tonight the girls helped Dustin clean out the last raised bed.

I will post pictures of the larger garden tomorrow.

The complete family

After several weeks we finally received our third goat Vanilla Bean from South Dakota. This has been a bit of a journey with the original plan of us purchasing the sister of Aspen and Charlie. The breeder decided to retain the doe and offered this as an alternative solution. Just when we finalized details to pick up Vanilla Bean, one of her sisters unexpectedly died. Everything was put on hold until the vet could identify the issue. They concluded it was something she ate and no other goats had issues. So, finally this weekend we have the trio. Charlie, Aspen and Vanilla Bean. Sadie will show Vanilla Bean and Eli will show Aspen.

There has been some adjustments but so far they are doing pretty well.

She is much larger then the other two and has much coarser hair. She reminds us of a dairy goat.

Here are the other two

I was also excited because i am now a registeted breeder with the dairy goat association and received the official paperwork for Aspen. The kids also got their official paperwork for completing ethics class for 4-H. They can officially enter the county fair.

Today started with a suprised of the kids making Dustin and I breakfast in bed. You guessed it… several different versions of eggs and toast. Eli even experimented with Tony’s spices.

As we headed out to the barn to let the girls out we were sad to see we had lost a silkie during the night. Several weeks ago I had guessed it was a rooster. More recently, Bob had been making a point to put it in its place. Last night he was hiding by the fence acting pretty mellow after an episode with Bob. Not sure if it was the harassing of Bob or something else but didnt make it through the night. All the others are fine. No tears this time but still sad to lose one this way. We lost the tan one.

As the flock headed to bed, Lahaina found a spot to sleep near the little chicks. Partly due to me locking her out of her previous spot to get her to move instead of sitting in a nest being broody. The little silkies were missing one in the pack and it was humorous to me to see them inch closer to Lahaina hoping to make a 4 pack again.

Broody Hens and Goat Training

Broody Lahaina

This is our first hen to go broody. I had to do a google search to figure out what exactly it looked like. What I found were descriptors such as your hen refuse to move, flattening her body, etc. The suggestion is to pick her up and move her away from the nest to snap her out of it. When I did that, I discovered she was all bare on her belly. So, I did another google just to make sure that was normal and discovered that when hens go broody they also lose their feathers on their belly to keep the eggs warm. So, we will see how long this lasts. We are on day 2 so far.

Goat Training

The kids and I have decided to get our feet wet by signing up for a youth goat show in June. There have been lots of little details to start showing goats- registering for a scapies number, registering the goat, trimming hooves, clipping, transporting, registration and lastly, teaching your goat to walk on a leash. Who would have discovered that the last one would be the most difficult.

So far the goats can handle having a collar on but as soon as you try to walk them they progressively get lower and lower to the ground. First, they drop to their knees and evently are laying flat on their bellies being dragged across the ground. The funny thing is we take them for a walk off their leash and they stay right next to you the whole time. It is the true definition of a toddler. It reminds me of a family trip we took to the ice caves at the Apostle Islands a couple of years back. The hike out to the caves is several miles and many parents discovered how long it really was and kids were melting down along the trail. As you walk along the banks there were many kids crying and tired from the hike and parents trying to handle the situation. One parent had their child on a leash and was dragging them behind. The kid was literally laying flat on the ground with all their limbs straight out. Identical to the goats.

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Escape Artist

We thought we had solved the problem of Aspen sneaking out of her pen this last weekend but this morning she was found wandering around the backyard. Dustin put her back in the pen and went to work. When I came home from work I found Aspen in the chicken part of the barn. Again on the wrong side of a different gate. We barricaded the additional exit points and hope that we have outsmarted a 9 week old goat.

It has also taken us some time to maneuver the goats and chickens together in the barn. The goats want to eat the chicken food and the chickens want to eat the goat food. Tonight Sadie helped me serve dinner by blocking the chickens.

I have started to get into the routine to take the goats for a walk around the back pasture to give them exercise. It is fun to enjoy the view and play with the neighbors (goats and horses).

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The little chicks have also enjoyed the evenings of relaxing and enjoying the view.

As the sun sets, the chickens head to bed and when I was checking on all of them I was surprised to see one of the younger chicks roosting with the big hens. She is a barred rock that is just over 10 weeks old. She is on the far left side behind Ladybird. Last week when I was getting the barn ready for the goats, I mixed up all the chickens. They did a good job getting along and had spent several weeks in separate pens but could all see each other. All the chickens did great, even the little bantams.

If you look further down the roost one of the red star hens was fluffing her wings and appeared to be either imitating a superhero or KFC.

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While she is showing off her muscles before bedtime, the other chicks have found a roost by the stall door which makes them look like they have all been exiled to prison.

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Finally, my view tonight:

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Settling In

I was pretty adamant to get the goats on a Friday because I knew it would take me all weekend to get them settled, and boy was I right. I was returning to toddler years and these two were reminding me when my two children were that age.

The first night was a chorus of noise for the neighborhood between the goats bleating and the chickens yelling danger calls. We then transitioned to the chickens calming down but the goats crying every time we left them. At this time I also discovered how small of a hole the goats could sneak through.

After 3 escapes- one was caught by the neighbors, we finally set up a goat proof pen.

Since these guys are pets, we also took the time to build them a play gym out of old pallets.

You know it was a good weekend when the kids are still smiling at the end of the day.

Some may have noticed there are still only 2 goats. Vanilla Bean, the third goat was suppose to be delivered from South Dakota, however, another doe passed away in the herd and the breeder wanted to make sure it was not contagious. She believes it was something the doe had eaten. So hopefully it will be a complete package soon.

I also wanted to do a quick garden update. I have rhubarb ready to cut and corn, carrots, onions and sunflowers all sprouting.

The BIG day has finally arrived

It was the big day to pick up some of the goats. We had put a deposit on them back in November and wondered if the day would ever come. We have also had some bumps in the road as we figure this goat ownership journey out. The mother goat we selected had triplets and we had wanted 3. It was a perfect match. However, as we neared the date the breeder informed me that she was retaining one of them. We were pretty shook up by hearing this news. We had already visited and named them all. We decided to purchase a different goat through a acquaintance of the breeder. When we set the details, the breeder had a goat the same age and could be delivered this weekend.

Anyways, here are the first two-

Aspen and Charlie

Part of the reason I wanted to get the goats as soon as possible (the sain decision to fight rush hour, weekend lake traffic and summer road construction on a Friday night) is I knew it didn’t matter how prepared I thought I was for the goats it still wouldn’t be enough.

That couldn’t be more true than with toddler goats.

Trying to keep them in their spot while still giving the chickens freedom has been the challenge and so far the goats are winning.

Not quite as we had planned.

The family has been patiently waiting since last fall for the delivery of 3 safe nigerian dwarf goats. We were ecstatic with the news of triplets and were beginning to countdown 8 weeks till they would be home on the farm. We were unfortunately shocked to receive a phone call informing us that the breeder was going to be retaining one of the does. She explained that she needed to think ahead around breed lines and apologized.

She explained my options:

only take home the 2 (doe and wether)
take home the 2 and get another one later
she did have some leads on another breeder who had a goat of similar age that she could add to our 2.

We talked as a family and decided that we would still like to have the 3 come home. I am still waiting to hear back from her but we are hoping the next couple of weeks go as planned. We have tentatively scheduled pick up for Mother’s Day Weekend.