Thursday, May 24, 2007

Baby Poultry

The baby poultry has been growing soooo fast! It's hard to believe that they're already six weeks old now. They're about 4 weeks in the photo to left, enjoying their temporary run outside their stall. They're now all out on pasture in their temporary paddock, which will rotate around a permanent pasture, moving twice a week. We bought our fencing from Premier, and it's wonderfully easy to move and hook into our existing electric. We bought enough to create temporary paddocks for all our animals, enabling us to move into an intensive rotation system that will help protect our pastures and our animals' health.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Touch the Earth Farm's first baby!

When we arrived home yesterday, this is what we found! Imagine our surprise, as we weren't expecting him for another 3 weeks. By the time we arrived on the scene, mama had him nicely cleaned, and he was standing and nursing and eliminating, so all is well. He weighed about 4.5 lbs and has beautiful coloring. Latte is doing well and probably was just as happy having her baby herself rather than dealing with me fussing over her. Apparently, his name is Dragon, which both Julia and Sam could agree upon—Latte being Julia's goat and it being the day before Sam's birthday. I didn't get a vote in this one's name, though I did suggest that Pegasus might be a bit too much of a mouthful.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Meet Maya

This is one of our most recent additions to our farm. Isn't she sweet? Maya is a tamworth gilt, and we plan on keeping her for breeding here at Touch the Earth Farm. In the left photo, she's not too sure about heading out into the great big world she'd been hearing from the safety of her stall, but as you can see, she adjusted quickly. Not long and she was ruling the barnyard, chasing chickens out of her holes and ruffling the turkeys' feathers. She's as sweet as can be and especially loves to have her belly scratched. She'll follow us around when we're out in the pasture and even fall asleep at our feet! Maya promises to be an excellent sow with her disposition, and I look forward to spending many years being her friend.