Ramblings-n-Writings

On Wednesday, I showed some photos of eggs and our chickens. Cyndi commented that she didn’t know we had chickens. That got me thinking that maybe some others don’t know what all calls our farm home.

I should probably be technically correct and explain that it’s actually my father-in-law’s farm, but our five acres butts into their property and our house sits directly across the road from theirs. To say that we are in the middle of the barnyard would be an understatement. LOL The farm is a family operation with my husband’s sister’s family sharing in the responsibility too.

So, now that I’m technically correct, what lives on our farm?

I’m sure you already know that we have a herd of cats and a plethora of dogs. Seriously, I think almost every breed of dog roams around the farm – beagle, chow/collie, australian shepherd, boxador, miniature collie, poodle, miniature pincher and … I think that’s it. Some are house dogs like the poodles and minpins, but others are mostly outside. To us, having dogs is important because they are the guardians of the other creatures.

We do have predators including foxes and coyotes. More recently, we’ve seen evidence of bear and bobcat. In fact, my father-in-law caught a bobcat in a trap on a neighbor’s property that backs into our farm. And we also have the standard wildlife like racoon, opossum, muskrat, squirrel and deer.

Besides the pets and predators, we have cattle. We have a registered Black Angus bull and a mixture of black and red angus mama cows. We raise the angus mainly for meat and sale. We also have two registered purebred Jersey cows that produce about 5 gallons of milk a day. From the milk, we’re able to get cream and make butter, yogurt and some cheeses.

Next to the cows, the chickens are the most productive. During the summer (or at least warmer weather), we’ll get a dozen eggs or more a day. I honestly don’t know how many chickens we have since they’re free range and never all in one place at the same time. Late last summer, we had about 40 (and obviously got more eggs), but the predators find chicken to be tasty, so we’ve lost a few.

Roaming around the barnyard are also 5 turkeys. The turkeys are the most recent addition to the farm and have been here for about 6 months. They’re neat to watch especially when the tom turkeys start strutting.

Perhaps the most annoying animal on the farm is the guinea. Guineas, if you’re not familiar with them, are members of the bird family. Basically, they look like an army helmet or a bike helmet with legs and a head. The annoying part is they’re noisy. Very. Noisy. They’re great for controlling bugs especially if you have a garden, but when they find a bug, they have to tell the whole world. LOL

Since we’re on the topic of birds, we also have ducks. Lots of ducks. Our ducks are here year round and spend time floating on the pond or splashing in the creeks. We don’t clip their wings so they’re free to fly if they want to. We did have a flock that migrated south to here for the winter too. Unfortunately, our duck “turnover rate” can be high at times because of the predators. Right now, I’d guess that there’s about 45 ducks on the farm, mostly mallards but there’s another breed that I don’t remember the name of along with some white ducks.

And finally, my sister-in-law raises goats and has a barn full of babies right now.

In the past, we’ve also had donkeys and geese. And last year we raised a litter of pigs for sale and for butchering. Now that we don’t have the pigs (except for in the freezer), I realize what great garbage disposers they are – they love eating all sorts of veggie and fruit scraps.

The only farm animal that comes to mind that we’ve never had, and probably never will, is horses. We just don’t have the manpower, knowledge, or space for them. However, our neighbor has some beautiful black mares that we drive by on our way out of the hollow.

Oh, if you want to see photos of our farm critters, explore the “down on the farm” category and the “pictures” category. Almost every farm critter has debuted on here at some point. LOL

Related posts:

1. Wordless Wednesday: Young Farm Babies
2. Which Came First…?
3. It’s party time!
4. Around the Farm
5. From the Farm Beagle

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