# What's happening with your livestock today?



## Wellrounded

We've been dividing pig paddocks up into smaller pens. We'll clean them up, pick up all the rocks and fill in holes, then get them ready for autumn planting of fodder/root crops.

Discovered a few mites on the chooks (chickens) so they'll be moved to a new pen, dusted with DE and sprayed with a teatree oil mix. Their pen will be pressure washed, then sprayed with eucalyptus oil and then walls and perches will be dusted with DE. The floor will be cleaned out then heavily limed. We'll leave these pens empty for at least 6 weeks.


Took this pic of Ashcott our Wessex Saddleback boar just before feeding time


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## jeff47041

For some reason, my hog waterers are staying frozen in this 18 and 24 degree weather. So, I've been carrying water to them 4 times a day. Really not that big of a deal, I just hate that they only get to drink when I get it to them instead of when they want it. Hopefully, I'll get this fixed tomorrow.


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## *Andi

We were to have two horses fixed with shoes and the other trimmed (along with the donkeys) but with the ice and now mud mess... I think we will put that off a few days. (or more )

Not much more going on ...


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## UncleJoe

The chickens that have never been through a winter are trying to figure out what's going on.


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## bacpacker

My chickens are havin scrape the mud off the claws before they go in the coop. We have all kinds o mud.


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## redhorse

Dealing with moon blindness with my friesian colt AGAIN. I think it was the glare off the snow that set it off this time. Friesians are beautiful creatures, but I think I will just stick with my 'grades' and quarter horses. He has been one problem after another and isn't even three yet. 

Had to plug in the chickens' heated water bowl tonight. I sure do love electricity when it is available! Carrying water is quite the chore. And I'm with Jeff in wanting them to have free choice, not just when I am doing barn chores.


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## Tirediron

we dug another path to the bales with the loaders, and gave the cows a bale of straw and a bale of hay, glad my son bartered for as much straw as he did, he gave the cows the last carry over straw bale today, well there were too but I kind of wrecked one with the big terex loader when I tried to pull it out of the snow bank. it will have to wait for the snow to drop enough so that we can get it with the oliver with the farmhand with the bale grapple.


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## LilRedHen

Got a baby calf in the barn, turning the mama cow out in the morning and back in the afternoon. Monday and today the calf had not sucked when I went to the barn and NO she was not coming outside. A hickory walking stick didn't make her budge an inch. I had to make another trip two hours later, then she went outside. I have more boot sucking mud than I want to see for years. YUK!


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## Country Living

A guy not too far from here put up rolls of green hay in his hay barn earlier this year. By the time the fire department got there everything was gone including two tractors and some other equipment. He just didn't think it would happen to him.

And then you have the idiot who starts burning brush and goes inside because it's just a small fire. Too bad she didn't pay attention to the wind. It caught the fire, ran it across a hay meadow, and burned down the neighbor's house. At least they were able to save the barn and the animals. She claimed it was an Act of God because God makes the wind.


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## *Andi

Country Living said:


> A guy not too far from here put up rolls of green hay in his hay barn earlier this year. By the time the fire department got there everything was gone including two tractors and some other equipment. He just didn't think it would happen to him.
> 
> And then you have the idiot who starts burning brush and goes inside because it's just a small fire. Too bad she didn't pay attention to the wind. It caught the fire, ran it across a hay meadow, and burned down the neighbor's house. At least they were able to save the barn and the animals. She claimed it was an Act of God because God makes the wind.


As a firefighter I remember my first fatal fire... which started out with a guy burning a small bush pile ... Not pretty... He will be in my mind always. 

Sorry ... off topic back to the OP!


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## Wellrounded

Moving all the livestock into a bush paddock. We're about to have a heat wave and they'll have a cool valley and two good water sources. All our paddocks have good shade but some can get pretty hot. 

Pigs wallows will need checking every couple of hours too, this kind of heat can really knock them around. 

Poultry will have their runs hosed down a few times and the roofs sprayed to cool the pens.

Dogs will have access to water troughs big enough to lay in and cool down.

Making sure all our water storage is at full capacity and all pumps are working.

We don't have air con. so we might join the dogs


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## valannb22

My rabbits are doing just fine in the cold. On the other hand, one if the dogs killed all my chickens a couple days ago


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## Wellrounded

6 Maremma puppies born today. 

So happy as they will be a big part of our income this year  

I'll take a few pics tomorrow when their Mum is settled in with them.


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## UncleJoe

Wellrounded said:


> We're about to have a heat wave


We are too. We got above freezing yesterday for the first time in two weeks. Up into the 60's for the next few days. Took the blankets off the horses until the cold returns later on next week.


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## bacpacker

The past week I've lost 3 of my chickens to a hawk. I happened up on the first kill (which was my wifes pet bird) with the hawk on the ground in my pen. That was the first time in months I haven't had my pistol on me when I go out. 
Not knowing what to try I went to the chicken forum and did a search. I found a couple post where folks had the same problem. Both of them used fishing line or string to run across their pens. I had picked up a spool of twine a while back so I took it out and started running lines back and forth. Two days later lost another bird, so I got another spool and started running a checker board pattern. Couple days later, lost another bird. Since then I have been adding lines much closer together in both directions and I'm now down to about needing maybe 4-7 more passes to have what I think will be pretty secure. The past two days we have saw a hawk sitting in a tree not far from our pen. Seems like it has finally slowed him down. 
Time will tell if this is my answer or not.


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## LilRedHen

Another baby calf in the barn, this one is on the bottle since I can't get its stupid mama in with it. This one is a red heifer out of a gray cow & gray bull. I have really enjoyed going to the barn the last couple of days in short sleeves, but that is about to come to an end. I caught feed on sale and stocked up. I had 3 ton delivered, so I am ready for bad weather now. The Rooster doesn't want me to turn the 2 week old calf out with it's mama, so I'm still turning the cow out in the morning and in a night.


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## Wellrounded

Putting up fences today, a small 1/8 acre paddock to feed the horses in. We're really close to the end of our pasture feed for summer and will start feeding out a lot more. The small paddock is to separate the horses from the sheep so the won't eat their (expensive) feed, also so we can collect their poo . The cows will go into this paddock overnight once the horses are out and we'll collect their poo too.


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## Wellrounded

Two little stories to tell.

First is about poo.... We have set out two feed paddocks for the horses and cows.
No. 1 has easy access to the main pastures and we have 2 horses being fed in there and the milk cows overnight in there before we milk. This is an area that has had nothing done with it in the last 20 years or more. It's full of poo, piles of it, we'll pick it up and compost it. 
No. 2 This is Darcey's paddock, he's our biggest, hungriest horse, eats what all the others do combined. Now he has almost no poo in his paddock, in the early hours of the day the paddock pulsates (kinda creepy really) with dung beetles dragging the previous days additions underground. Only difference between the two paddocks is the lime added in spring. Dung beetles LOVE calcium. Easiest soil improvement I've ever done.

Second story is about our Maremma puppies, what a nightmare. We have been advertising them all over the place and about 75% of our ads have been removed!
WHY? Because we don't promise micro chipping, vaccination and vet checking before sale or advertising for sale. 
The LAW in our state, NSW, allows for rural working dogs to be without ALL of these things. We will gladly do all of this IF the person buying the dog wants them, but we will sell a dog (according to the LAW) without, if a customer asks. If it's NOT AGAINST THE LAW then IT'S NOT ILLEGAL, what the hell is wrong with these people.


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## Navajo

Butcher one of our lambs...made about 12 ponds of ground meat from the legs and look forward to ribs, and stew. Made fajitas from back bone meat...mmmmmmmmmmmmm


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## *Andi

Do you ever ask yourself, "How in the hell did they do that?"

I saw one of the calves laying down next to the fence this afternoon ... Didn't think much about it at first.

At a second glance... I thought I would check her out. Some how she had both front knees stuck in the woven wire. :scratch I had to cut the wires and help her out but after about 15 minutes, she was up, no worse for the wear.

I guess she hit the snow, went down and slid into the fence. (?) :dunno: 

Note to self: Need to repair patch work done on fence...


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## valannb22

I've got baby chicks hatching in my incubator. 3 out of the 12 have started breaking through


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## LincTex

I give the chickens a lot more cracked corn when it's cold so they have the calories to keep them warm. No complaints so far!! (it's like candy to them)


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## goshengirl

Chickens: This month we acquired some just-starting-to-lay girls off of craigslist (and a free roo ). The new girls are a lively bunch, and it seems to have rubbed off on our older girls - it's just plain fun to watch them these days.

I know chickens are cold hardy (well, our buckeyes and rocks are), but we've had days where it's gotten down to -15. I know 'cold hardy' can handle low temps, but I don't know how low - and negative 15 is pretty low. So we put a heat lamp out in the coop, just for the days under 0 degrees. We don't want to make wusses out of them, but we don't want to put them in danger, either. We also give them extra scratch during these cold times.

Really looking forward to this spring with the chickens - we'll be building a tractor to take them to various places on the property that we want them to annihilate.  Such as where we're working on converting the vegetation to native prairie species (we're going no-mow ) - we'll let them eat up and scratch and debug and fertilize and area before we use the suppression method of laying down new plantings. 

goats: we're researching Nigerian Dwarf goats as our next possible livestock adventure... Anyone here raise them?


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## Wellrounded

First lamb of the year yesterday . 
Cows are doing really well even after a hot dry year, plenty of milk from my little girls (Dexters).
We have finally had some rain and have spent the last month and a half working on pasture improvement and putting in fodder crops. 
This years poultry have been great. My daughter has started using turkey as her main meat bird. She kills at 8 weeks, less feed per pound of meat and they taste great. 
Pigs will be farrowing in about 5 weeks, hope we have good size litters, plenty for us and the dogs. 
Our last Maremma pup went yesterday, so glad not to be feeding them anymore. We ended up selling them off for far less than we hoped... it's getting damn hard to sell dogs in this country, too many damn regulations.


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## bbrider

Horses are loving spring green up. Chickens are out at daylight to debug the yard. We have 8 New chicks about to enter the general population. Our bees have gone from 2 hives to 4, soon to be 5. Garden is growing with potatoes, beans, beets, onions, carrots and lettuce showing. The rest will be planted in the next week or so. Moving the hog pen and making it much larger. We want to try breeding and selling next go round. We almost have the pasture ready for beef calves, come next spring. 
Thank God for rainy days or the wife would never allow sitting during the day!


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## NavaBoer

My goats are all hiding from the light rain we are getting today. There's always that one that stands out in the pasture alone though lol. 


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## Wellrounded

Five new piglets two days ago and another litter due soon. Both our older sows have not farrowed though so I think we'll be making some ham and canning a lot of pork over the next few months. We will probably have to look for a new boar as well as 'Derringullen Creek Ashcott' is getting a bit too big for the gilts. 

We finally made the very difficult decision to put down two horses, we have been trying to re-home them for more than a year with no luck. We were left with sending them to the horse abattoir or shooting them here. We chose to save them the stress and destroy them here. It will take hubby and I a while to get over this one, not a nice experience. We have our stock numbers low enough now to cope with the seemingly endless drought years without doing damage to the pastures and all the livestock earn their living, no freeloaders. 

Finished dog proofing another small paddock today, Maremma bitch is very happy to be in a beautiful new home. Put our two lurchers into another "dog proof paddock", they clean jumped the 5 foot fence. I knew they would but it was worth a try . They will have to be happy with the small orchard as home , only fence that will keep them in. Their great grandmother could jump onto the top of three large square bales of hay on top of the farm dray, pretty sure she would have made it onto four if we'd ever stacked them that high. 

Dried off one of our Dexter house cows. I've been dreading it as they have a bad habit of bellowing all night and all day for a week but she was very well behaved after the first night. She's due to calf in 12 weeks and we want her nice and chubby by then. 

Something else I've been half dreading and half looking forward to is a change of neighbour. Better the devil you know etc. New neighbour is lovely, thought one of our cows was in with his and instead of the usual swearing and threats from our old neighbour, new neighbour looked quite embarrassed and thought his cows were teaching our well behaved ones bad habits. Wasn't one of our cows but so nice that he was really good about it (he still doesn't know where it came from). Next I'll have a talk to him about our guardian dogs... Previous neighbour would shoot a dog on sight, even if it was on our side of the fence. According to him if it wasn't with us it was a problem. Same with pigs. Our farm is not that big and not being able to use the outer paddocks during lambing or to graze the pigs has been a pain in the behind. Might send new neighbour a side of pork next time we kill .

All our young ewes have lambed, older ewes will start in about 6 weeks or so.


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## LincTex

A month ago we got two bronze turkey chicks,
3 brown Americaunas
1 Americauna/Australorp mix
2 Barred rock/Americauna mix
2 Barred Rock Pullets
2 Brahma something-or-others

All doing well, but lost one turkey


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## piglett

2 of my hens (chickens) are sitting on duck eggs


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## valannb22

Got another new bottle baby goat, and my son has his first successful litter of new zealands in the nestbox.


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## HomegrownGal

My nigerian dwarf doe kidded quads last night while I slept! She was fine when I left her last night and hadn't yet lost her plug. All the same size and color. A buckling a doeling were nursing this morning. Two were dead in their sacks. Wish I'd been there to free them!!

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## HomegrownGal

This cute tiny doeling is now 3 1/2 weeks old and triple the size of my new babies! I love goats!!

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## Ezmerelda

My chickens are getting bigger, and will be laying eggs by the end of next month (or possibly sooner).


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## Dakine

Country Living said:


> A guy not too far from here put up rolls of green hay in his hay barn earlier this year. By the time the fire department got there everything was gone including two tractors and some other equipment. He just didn't think it would happen to him.
> 
> And then you have the idiot who starts burning brush and goes inside because it's just a small fire. Too bad she didn't pay attention to the wind. It caught the fire, ran it across a hay meadow, and burned down the neighbor's house. At least they were able to save the barn and the animals. She claimed it was an Act of God because God makes the wind.


WOW!!! that's shameless even here in Kommiefornia.

grats to her for being the biggest D-bag of the county...


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## valannb22

To continue with the cute baby animal theme, here is my son's New Zealand litter
































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