Brooding Chicks
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. When you pick up your first chicks, they will need to stay in a brooder for several weeks. If a mother hen had hatched them, they would spend most of their … Read More
Hog Fencing
Although many people say that goats are the most challenging animals to keep fenced in, I find pigs much more challenging. It only took us a couple of years to figure out how to keep goats in their pastures. However, … Read More
What Floppy Kid Syndrome Is — and What It Is Not
Because of the simple name of this syndrome, a lot of people assume they have a case of floppy kid whenever they have a kid that’s, well, floppy. However, it is a well-defined condition that only occurs between three days … Read More
Goat Disbudding Options
Disbudding is every goat owner’s least favorite task. Disbudding is burning the horn buds at a very early age so that horns don’t grow. If you don’t want your goats to have horns, they should be disbudded within a week … Read More
Save a Fortune by Starting Your Own Seeds
When a seed costs only pennies and a transplant costs a buck or two, you don’t have to be a math wiz to know that you can save big bucks by starting your seeds from scratch. But how exactly do … Read More
Do Goats Need Baking Soda?
When I got started with goats in 2002 it was common practice for goat owners to have baking soda available free choice. The logic is that baking soda is a rumen buffer. If a goat’s rumen pH gets a little … Read More
Heritage Shorthorns: Dual-Purpose Cattle for Grass-Based Production
At The Livestock Conservancy conference in November, mother-daughter duo Winifred and Martha Hoffman (BestYet A.I. Sires) gave an excellent presentation about Dutch Belted Cattle, which I wrote about in this post: 5 Reasons to Add Dutch Belted Cattle to your Homestead. … Read More
Zinc Deficiency in Goats
In the middle of an especially cold January in 2010 with temperatures falling below zero most nights, my bucks began losing large chunks of hair. There were bare patches of skin as large as two or three inches across in … Read More
Kinders: A Dual-Purpose Goat Breed
This guest post is written by Sue Beck, president of the Kinder Goat Breeders Association, whom I first met at the Mother Earth News Fair in Wisconsin, along with a couple of her beautiful goats. Life changing moments are never … Read More
Need a Chicken Health Reference Book?
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Gail Damerow’s second edition of The Chicken Health Handbook has been sitting on my shelf for a few months. I was really excited when the publisher sent me a review copy, … Read More
