Oh the farm life... NEW PICS Pg 2! :D

[Sea_Breeze]

Jive is cute, you don't see many Turkeys on farms around here. My first pet was a Bantam, so I LOVE chickens, they are smarter than people give them credit for.. Great pics

[sarafina]

Adorable pictures!!  I love those goats and turkeys, in particular!  We have close to 100 head of cattle, 4 ducks, 20 chickens (coyotes just nabbed our rooster and lots of hens - boo), 2 pigs, and 5 sheep...I love them all so much. 

I'm really interested in getting goats at some point - what breed do you have?  We're also planning on merging our coyote-stricken flock of chickens with a different flock and then putting turkeys in the birds' previous run.  I can't get enough of that gobbling sound! 

[Diamond]

Love  them all, thanks so much for sharing.  Man I miss fresh eggs.

[Sunshine]

your animals are beautiful! they look so healthy and happy. especially your goats    are they dwarf nigerians? oh and they dont have to pests, if you breed and kid you can milk them

Thank you!!

And about the goats  -I know, heheh, they're just pests because they're always getting into stuff, so curious. We've learned how clever they are! But when we got Annie and Feli - she had just had Feli so we milked Annie the first year. We had a male goat, but unfortunately he was extremely aggressive and violent towards them and so he had to go, ALSO unfortunately he did not get either one pregnant before he left... so, we're hoping to drop them off at a friends farm this spring and he's got lots of male goats and said they can hang out there for a few weeks and then we can get them both milking again...

When we did milk them, we made goat cheese and mozzarella from their milk. It was awesome!! Best pizzas I've ever had, haha!

Sarafina - 100 head of cattle wow! I wish we had that kind of space! We probably could have 2-3 cows or horses, but the expenses are too much for ANY more animals. I think we have 10 geese, 25 ducks, 2 turkeys, probably 40 chickens, 1 guinea and then the goats. We have issues with losing birds too - foxes mostly. They do always seem to get so many more hens, I think because the hens get so loopy at night, at least the roosters crow when there's something amiss... I think that saves them, but then leaves us with flocks laden with roosters... we have also thought about consolidating our flocks - the Araucanas actually live separately with the turkeys, but we've been throwing around the idea of getting more female turkeys so Jive can have his choice of girlfriends (and a female Royal Palm would be FANTASTIC!)

As for the kind of goats - Annie - we have no idea, both of them were "junk goats" given to us for cheap, they were in super poor condition when we adopted them, had scars and bleeding spots all over their lips (they were only being kept in field of brambles and thorns to eat!) - and so, those people didn't know what kind of goats, but we were told that Feli is 1/2 Nubian - which is why she's HUGE compared to Annie now... so I assume the father was the Nubian, I don't know what Annie is. I always thing Saan or whatever, but I know she's not that.

[celticowgirl88]

Great pictures!

[ZennaBug]

So many animals!  And they all look so happy and healthy. 

[Aadra310]

As for the kind of goats - Annie - we have no idea, both of them were "junk goats" given to us for cheap, they were in super poor condition when we adopted them, had scars and bleeding spots all over their lips (they were only being kept in field of brambles and thorns to eat!)

So not only do you have a variety of wonderful pets, you've rescued some of them!  OMG.  I love you!    I hope to do something very similar to what you have going one day.  Goat cheese on your pizza?!!?  That sounds amazing! 

[plushroo]

CHICKENS!!!! Seriously, I love all your farm animals and think they are adorable, but I am a chicken owner myself and seeing your lovely's made me go "Aww"! Leghorn roosters are the best! Ours is named Omelet. Seeing your ducks and geese makes me wish I had a little extra space to raise them as well. Cute animals!!!

[Sunshine]

As for the kind of goats - Annie - we have no idea, both of them were "junk goats" given to us for cheap, they were in super poor condition when we adopted them, had scars and bleeding spots all over their lips (they were only being kept in field of brambles and thorns to eat!)

So not only do you have a variety of wonderful pets, you've rescued some of them!  OMG.  I love you!    I hope to do something very similar to what you have going one day.  Goat cheese on your pizza?!!?  That sounds amazing!

Aww I hope you do one day because it's a lot of fun, hehe... expensive and lots of work, but fun! And yeah, I mean we did buy the goats, but they were at the animal swap we go to at the local feed store and basically the owner said he was going to sell them or eat them... and since Feli was a baby at the time (like...2-3 months old?) - I literally pulled the bf aside and told him we needed to buy them with tears in my eyes, lol. I never liked goats so much because before Annie and Feli we only had the one very unruly male (he was also a rescue kinda, he was a Kiko mix that was living in one of those 9x9-ish chain-link dog kennels, with nowhere to go) - and then once they go to our place, and started eating feed and hay, their lips healed right up and Feli is SO FAT (omg is there goat weight loss programs? Cause she needs it!).

And goat cheese on a pizza is so MMMM omgosh, lol you make me want to get my goats milking NOW so I can make some, but if you continue with the goat cheese making process and then let it go a bit longer than the goat cheese says, you basically end up with mozzarella (goat mozz, obviously), and the combo of the two of them was awesome! I wish I could handle enough goats to really MAKE cheese but, no way, not until I get a fence to keep my animals away from my crazy neighbors lol! Oh yah and maybe win the lottery! LOL

CHICKENS!!!! Seriously, I love all your farm animals and think they are adorable, but I am a chicken owner myself and seeing your lovely's made me go "Aww"! Leghorn roosters are the best! Ours is named Omelet. Seeing your ducks and geese makes me wish I had a little extra space to raise them as well. Cute animals!!!

Thanks! Yay for chickens! They're so much more fun than I'd ever expect! Leghorns are the best! MAN they have the BEST crows! I was so super excited when we got Redbird, my bf and I had just uncovered an old cement pad in the backyard with some fencing around it (later discovered it was for dogs? but we thought it had been for chickens), so we went out on craigslist, found a lady selling roosters (YES, that's right, I went and SOUGHT out a rooster, and paid good money for him! hahah seems silly now because I have so many roos, but none like Redbird), bought the rooster first, and then realized he kinda needed some hens... lol oops - so had to go buy 2 hens so he wouldn't be lonely. Those two hens died like 2 months into having the birds - a raccoon got into their hutch, killed one hen in the hutch, took the other, and Red was in there, beaten up, but alive. Basically I think he fended off the raccoon for his own life. So Red's been through tough times, and even though he's not the top roo of the flock anymore, he still has the most lovely voice. I do love Redbird, will be sad when something happens to that guy!

[Ayalah]

I <3 goats! They are my favorite "farm animal"! Yours are so adorable! I also LOVE chestnuts! So I'm incredibly jealous It looks like a little slice of paradise there! great pics.

[gemini_pony]

Love the pics, you must share more. Oh and your turkey is so handsome!!!

[Aflame]

ha ha ha ! fluffy chicken !! xaflame

[unicornprincess]

I love your chickens, ducks, and geese. I as well have chickens and 3 ducks. I had goose many years ago but don't now. I wish mine could run loose like that but were I live if I was to let them run free range like that a fox, bob cat, wild dog, coyote, hawk or something else would get them. So sadly mine have to stay pinned up. 

Post Merge: January 07, 2013, 09:42:33 AM

CHICKENS!!!! Seriously, I love all your farm animals and think they are adorable, but I am a chicken owner myself and seeing your lovely's made me go "Aww"! Leghorn roosters are the best! Ours is named Omelet. Seeing your ducks and geese makes me wish I had a little extra space to raise them as well. Cute animals!!!

I had a white sliky rooster once that I named Deep Fried

[Sunshine]

I love your chickens, ducks, and geese. I as well have chickens and 3 ducks. I had goose many years ago but don't now. I wish mine could run loose like that but were I live if I was to let them run free range like that a fox, bob cat, wild dog, coyote, hawk or something else would get them. So sadly mine have to stay pinned up. 

Post Merge: January 07, 2013, 09:42:33 AM

CHICKENS!!!! Seriously, I love all your farm animals and think they are adorable, but I am a chicken owner myself and seeing your lovely's made me go "Aww"! Leghorn roosters are the best! Ours is named Omelet. Seeing your ducks and geese makes me wish I had a little extra space to raise them as well. Cute animals!!!

I had a white sliky rooster once that I named Deep Fried

Yes we have issues with fox, mink(?), owls, sometimes opossum and raccoons - we've had bobcat sightings in the area (not by us), and the coyotes around here seem a little too skittish to want to come near our yard (we have like motion sensor lights by the barn and coop and pen area) - but like, our goats and chickens do live in a pen. The goats have a run with electrified fence but even with that they tend to want to spend most of their time in the actual pen area (near their 'goat house'). The chickens have free range, but they don't really know it, lol, they have easy access in and out but most don't ever come out unless the door is left WIDE open (which we don't do because of the goats... they'll come and bang on the back door with their horns if they get out, lol!)... we have two other groups of chickens who are also free-range-pen - as in, they can come and go, but most choose to stay inside the fence... some are totally free range (like the turkey, ducks and geese and a few chickens). But everyone except the goats and their associated flock get LOCKED up at night... to protect them from animals. So every night we have to go lock the doors and put them away. It's relativly easy now that they're all trained, but when we first started this and had them going into different 'houses' at night to be put away, we had to pick up and carry like 30 ducks and 10 geese by hand and lock them away, lol!

The only time we lost birds during the day was to a fox, we lost about 6 ducks and 10 chickens over a period of a few weeks, then we finally caught the fox, and saw why it was eating our birds - it was in terrible shape, wounded already (old wounds), sprayed by a skunk (so it couldn't very well hunt much) and just gross and skinny. Had to put it out of it's misery, or it would've kept eating the birds...

That's one part of the "farm life" I haven't yet become totally used to... cute, lovely foxes that I would never want to harm are suddenly a problem when they start killing the other animals I love. Luckily, that is the only fox we've had issues with... there was one other fox who killed one of my favorite hens (Harriet), but that fox hasn't come back, so we're not trying to catch him or anything...

[Sunshine]

Heheh got bored... posting some more farm animal pics... I really need to go out and take more but omgosh with all the snow melt now it's sooooo muddy outside! The ducks are loving it... the goats, not so much.

Here's another recent pic of Jive taken a few days ago, see how nice his feathers are now!
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Doomer - our Barred Rock rooster

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Our Araucana birds when they were pullets - mostly roosters, though that's what you end up with when you get "free" birds from someone, lol...

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THIS is what happens when AnnaBelle and Feli get out... they come to the door to find us!

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Qui-Lo showing off his beautiful wings

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Our first two geese when they were young... Romeo (white) and Anastacia (Buff) - we still have Anastacia... Romeo... well he just... died one day. We don't know what happened to him, no one else has ever been sick... but he's buried with a very nice grave marker under his favorite tree spot... he was really a nice goose! RIP Romeo!

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And this is just cool - it's a Cayuga duck egg - sometimes they lay black eggs... it's pretty cool!