Friday 31 December 2010

Return to the Top Paddock

Well, I’ve started on the top paddock and I now know more precisely, that it is a big job. I have to remove the existing fencing and replace it with goat proof fence. At the moment it is about 3 feet high three strand fencing. The fence between our property and the vineyard next door also has two strands of barbed wire. The fence between our property and the property above us is sadly neglected. Overall, there is some 313m of fence line to be replaced. I will be placing 2.4m Koppers (pine logs) in every 3m and they will be set 60cm down into the ground so that they are harder to push over. At @$15 per fence post, that’s 103 x $15 = $1,575. Then the fence wire will cost another $500. I want to run two strands of electric fencing along the fence (one at about 30cm off the ground and another at the top of the fence). The solar power supply for the electric fence is about $300 and then there’s the pig-tails and electric fence line coming to about another $300. So re-fencing the paddock will cost me just shy of $3,000.

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The field is currently divided into three. The smallest triangle doesn’t have any gates or easy access … you have to climb the fence to get into it! The dividing fences have been brought down already and I just need to remove the rabbit-proof wire and some star-posts. The rest of it will be done is stages so that I don’t disturb my neighbours too much. I need to start with the leftmost fence first, as that’s the one between us and the vineyard. I don’t want their cattle to run rampant through my top paddock (not a euphemism). Then I’ll do the top fence-line and finally, our internal fence-line.

What was the chook coop in this field will be extended and converted into a goat barn. There is an enormous amount of crap in this field from years of being left (bits of iron; bits of fencing; broken concrete slab from some previous farming enterprise) it all has to go. I will need to hire a bobcat for a couple of weekends to clear all of this crap out … that’s going to be fun!

Fortunately, there is a large pit next to my workshop that used to be a rifle range; this is my readymade free and easy access garbage tip. This will be nicely filled up with rubble and detritus (Woohoo!)

Goat Feeder

I wanted to build a feeder for the goats so that I could put cut grass and grass hay into the field for them to eat whenever they wanted it. Originally, I was going to build a feeder shaped like a covered arbour (refer to last month’s design). However, I had some old scrap welded mesh that had 200 x 150mm openings (the sort that is used to reinforce concrete slabs) and I saw a simple feeder design in the “Raising Goats for Dummies” by Cheryl K. Smith book, so I figured that it would be an excellent short term solution.

clip_image002Taking bolt cutters and angle grinder in hand, I rolled the mesh into a cylinder and closed it off with 4mm white wire. Then I trimmed any bits of metal that could cause the goats any injury and fixed it to the fence of the kid field with more wire. The idea here is that if I fixed the overlapped part of the feeder to the fence so that there would be little or no exposure of sharp bits for the goats to hurt themselves on. Also, the feeder is almost as tall as the fence, so it wouldn’t be a ladder for the goats to scale the fence.

With the feeder attached to the fence, the next task was to cut some grass and fill the feeder. The goats wanted to help me at every step of the operation; they were particularly keen on helping me to fix the feeder to the fence. But then they got distracted by the joys of their next favourite game “Jump in the wheelbarrow while someone is trying to push it along”. This is a fun game that all the family can play … but only the goats enjoy.

clip_image004Over spring and early summer, the grass on our property has grown prodigiously. Mostly, the grass is only up to my waist. But some remote parts of the property, the grass is over my head! I use a brushcutter to cut the grass for the goats because the lawnmower and ride-on mower both leave petrol residue on the grass, and that isn’t so good for goats.

The feeder takes about three wheelbarrow loads of grass hay and this provides the goats with plenty of good fodder. The first time it was loaded, the goats ate the lot in just 5 days. I scaled back the load and they goats scaled back their enthusiasm for the grass hay. So we have reached a happy medium. Fat contented goats, grass getting trimmed, and lots of cud chewing going on well into the night.

clip_image006Holly is a big fan of the feeder … in fact; Holly is a big fan of food. Millie values her interaction with us more than she does with food. Holly is often too distracted with eating to be bothering with coming when called or coming over for a pat.

I have left some of the garden in long grass so that I can give the goats a plentiful supply of grass hay.

I read in one of my goat books (I can’t remember which one) that said that grass hay looses 60% of its nutrients when left on the ground and a further 15% when exposed to rain. So I need to re-top the feeder after it has rained and make sure that there is always a good layer of old hay on the bottom. Not ideal, but it seems to be very satisfactory for the goats.

Goats need to have on-demand access to food like grass hay. Grass hay is full of fibre and, in plentiful supply, provides a good basis for their diet. The girls also get goat pellets laced with chopped raw carrots for breakfast and dinner (about 2 cups for each goat of pellets and one carrot – per feed).

We have sown some pasture mix in the kidding field (oat, alfalfa, and rye grass) so that they have some good conditioning forage in their paddock.

Goat News

The goats are doing very well and they are growing nicely. I’ve noticed, however, that Millie has a scur on her head where the disbudding didn’t remove all of the horn cells from the horn bud. I’m not sure what to do about this yet. She possibly needs to take a trip to the vet to sort this out before she gets much older.

clip_image002She still loves playing on the Goat Ziggurat.

We take the goats up into the top paddock for a browse every couple of days and they love roaming around and biting the tops off all of the weeds up there. They never venture too far from us though and, if they do, they come bounding back to us for a quick pat.

Millie especially loves lying on me and having her neck and head rubbed.

We went to the stock-feed shop the other day (Rural Solutions in Sorell) and bought some shampoo and a slicker to clean them down because they were getting a little dusty. I thought that I would have a bit of a job on my hands to clean them, but once they were wet, they really seemed to enjoy the shampoo treatment and rub-down. Now I have a pair of shiny goats!

Chicken Run is Complete

clip_image002Last month I told you about the completion of the Chicken Run and Chicken Coop. Well, I didn’t include any pictures of these, so here are some images of the coop and run for your enjoyment.

clip_image004As you can see, the run now has bird netting over the top and is completely enclosed. This keeps those nasty hawks and eagles away!

The Chicken Coop was finished last month as well … but due to the timing, I also didn’t get photos of that for the newsletter. Here are some photos of the finished product.

clip_image006clip_image008The chicks from our previous hatching are enjoying the coop and scratching around in the bottom for food.

The nesting box comes out from the main coop so that there is lots of space inside the coop for the chickens to do their chicken things.

The roof is simply some roofing iron that has been screwed down to the roof trusses. I have left a gap of 10cm between the top of the panelling of the coop and the roof to provide plenty of ventilation.

My lovely wife provided roosting perches from some pieces of old cherry tree that we cut up.

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Chicken Bread

When we had our ISA Browns, we noticed that the egg shells were very poor. I did some research and discovered that the most likely reason that the egg shells were either very thin, or in some cases absent, was that the chickens weren’t getting enough calcium in their diet.

We were merrily throwing the egg shells from the eggs that we ate, into the compost heap. Enriching the humus in our compost with lots of lovely … calcium. Well, enough of that nonsense I thought. More research into calcium deficiency taught me that when chickens don’t have enough readily available calcium in their bloodstream, they strip calcium from their bones. That’s bad.

So, how to fix this problem? My wife and I decided that the best thing for it was to feed the chickens their egg shells. The egg shells need to be cooked so that the calcium is more easily digestible. We could pelletize the egg shells, but that would not be either easy or cheap. It was my wife’s idea to make the chooks their own loaf of bread, cut it into slices and then feed it to them every morning with their feed and table scraps.

Initially, we cooked the egg shell in the microwave for about a minute on high and then crushed it with the kitchen mallet, dropped the crushed egg shell into the bread mix and cook. Hey presto, easy chicken bread.

Later we decided to add other “treats” and dietary supplements to the chicken bread:

· Linseed – for Omega-3. Honestly, I can’t prove that the Omega-3 passes through the chickens gut and benefits us via the egg at all, but the chickens like it;

· Soy Grits – vitamin B2. Not a very high dose of B2 (at around .6mg/100g) but very high in the products that we have available that are not meat based; and

· Oats – “treat” and good for fattening the chooks. We are less interested in fattening the chickens because we don’t eat them, we will probably change that policy with excess cocks, but our hens are safe from the oven;

With our White Leghorns, we have one hen who has curled toe. Research indicates that this is most likely caused by one of two things:

1. Too high a temperature in the incubator in the last week of gestation; or

2. Vitamin B2 deficiency in the mother hen.

Absolutely nothing that I can do about either of those for this hen, she does not suffer and is in no pain from the malformed foot. So nothing to do really. However, when two of our chicks had curled toe as well, it became more of a task for us to improve the chicken’s vitamin B2 intake. Enter the most amazing source of vitamin B complex on the planet … vegemite.

Vegemite is now added to the bread mix so that the chooks are well dosed up on their vitamin B. The next clutch of chickens did not get toe-curl so, either the level of vitamin B is sufficient, or none of her eggs hatched (we had a very high mortality rate with our last hatching, approx. 54%).