Friday, January 7, 2011

Life on "The Farm"

So technically, I wouldn't call it a farm. We have meat rabbits, laying hens, a rooster and two goats. One of whom might be pregnant. And when and if she has her baby, we will be able to milk her! So, I wouldn't call it a farm, but its a pretty decent start, right?

Here are a few pics:

The different colored eggs... the white chickens lay white eggs, the brown chickens lay the green eggs, and black and white chickens lay the brown/light brown eggs. We just recently started getting the green eggs and Colt is SO exciting to have them!

This is one of two of our meat rabbits. They are huge! We got a male and female and yes they are called meat rabbits because we intend on breeding them and eating them! I believe that animals can be used for our liking, only if we eat them sparingly and not in a ravishing manner. So, we're not just going to be slaughtering hundreds of rabbits all the time. We have read that rabbits are really easy to skin and prepare and rabbit meat is high protein and super low fat. Doctors have often put patients on rabbit meat diets because it is so lean and healthy. So we'll look forward to that.

The boys after egg collecting.

Charley hangin out with our boy goat, Al.

Colt getting the eggs from the nesting boxes. We are not getting a steady flow of eggs because the hens egg production goes way down in the winter. Some days we will get 6 eggs, some days we will only find 2 or 3 in there. We have 9 hens and they should be laying an egg a day each. So maybe in the summer when its warm we'll get all the hens to lay an egg a day each.

This is our chicken coop. on the bottom left there is a little ladder for the chickies to go in an out. And inside is their food and water. On the back there are the nesting boxes. This coop is cool because you just lift the back door there and grab the eggs. That's Colt, its heavy.

The goats are a bit annoying when we let them out to just roam. The goats and chickens have a really big fenced in area with their own shelters and food. And most people would just keep them all in their area all the time. Its big enough, it really is a big area. BUT its dead! The chickens plucked all the grass and the goats eat the trees. So if its a nice day out and we're just hanging around, I'll let them all out. Our 10 acres is all fenced in so I don't worry about the animals straying. But holy cow! These goats are so annoying! This is a pic of them just standing at our front door, waiting for food. Literally, they will eat anything and they act like they are starving all the time! Most people wouldn't even buy hay for them, but we do. Because they have 10 acres of grass and trees and shrubs to roam around and eat whatever they want! But no, they sit there at our front door and wait for leftovers. Yes, they've been spoiled, we always throw out leftovers for the goats and chickies

Our flock