Big & Lil Pig

So I have decided against naming the pigs this time around.  So I refer to the pigs as Big Pig, for the bigger one and Lil Pig for the little one.  They seem to like it. :)

 

The pigs are doing great and starting to become much friendlier.  They of course love feeding time and run around like crazies when they see one of us coming with the yellow bucket with their feed in it.

 

Big Pig (l) & Lil Pig (r)

 

I decided to measure the pigs also last weekend. This took much longer than I thought it would.  They were very weary of the tape measure.  They didn't want it near them and then they decided they wanted to try to eat it to see if it was food.  Finally after about 20 minutes I got their measurements.

 

Big Pig - 105lbs

Lil Pig - 75lbs

 

They are will be 5 months old on December 15th.  They are growing well and love their feed and any extra's we give them.  Mostly our leftovers.  This pair of pigs are funny too because they love to eat hay.  They go crazy when they see me bringing in hay to their pen.  I shake it all out in their bedding area and they go in an lay down and start munching away.

 

Check back in another month or so to see how much they have grown.

 

 



Chuck & Tbone

Last weekend I was out taking some measurements of the goats so I decided to measure the cows too.

 

They are about 7 1/2 months old now and doing great.  Just plugging along with growing.  I don't think I realized how long it takes to grow a cow to full size.

 

To help with the feed bill we have decided to cut back a little on their grain.  Most people don't feed grain at all until a few months before the cows are going to be butchered. We thought that it couldn't hurt to continuously feed them grain over the winter to help with keeping them growing.

 

Tbone (back) & Chuck (front) eating some hay

 

I went ahead and measured them and they are currently at the approximate weights.

 

Chuck - 480lbs

Tbone - 415lbs

 

They are both growing nice and slowly and eating everything we give them.  Hopefully one of them will be ready to go to the butcher in spring.

Welker Turns 1

Welker, 1 years old

 

On December 4th, Welker turned 1 years old.  He is doing excellent.  He is with our other buck Brady full time and they have finally become buddies.

 

Welker weighs 80lbs.  He is still a little on the small side in my opinion but he eats well and is growing every day.  I also think its hard to judge just how much he has grown since he is always standing next to Brady who is a full year older than Welker, therefore much larger than him too.

 

We are in anticipation waiting for Welker's first kids to be born here.  He bred  Priscilla who is due January 21, 2013, these babies will be our first purebred Nubians born here.  Also he bred Maddie, who is due January 29, 2013.  We are really hoping for spotted babies but we will just have to wait and see.

 

For now Welker is doing wonderful.  Walks on a lead and goes where ever I say without a fuss.  He stands extremely well for hoof trimmings. He is friendly and loves to have attention.

 

Check back in a few months to see his babies.

Second Deer of the Season

We got another deer a few weekends back.

 

Buck

 

I am so thankful that we got this buck.  It has helped fill our freezer.  We got about 8 big packages of steaks.  All the other meat was canned.  We were able to get 18 wide mouth pint jars of canned venison.  Jamie & Hailey love it.  They make venison stew or just heat it up with some onions and peppers and eat it with egg noodles. They are both happy that we have some stored up for the next year.

Hailey likes to pose with the deer

 

I am still out hunting here and there, hoping to get a big buck.  Not sure if the tall 6 is still around but I would love to get him and mount him on the wall.  That way Jamie & I both have a deer hanging on the wall.



First Deer of the Season

Jamie finally got his first deer of the season during muzzle loader.

 

Jamie & his deer

 

Jamie had taken some time off of work for hunting. He had gone out every morning and evening for 4 days straight.  Finally he got this beautiful buck on the 5th morning.

 

There is an interesting story that goes along with this deer.  We had seen him numerous times on the trail camera pictures and had named him Scar.  He had a very long scar on the side of his body, probably from fighting with another buck.  Archery is the first type of hunting you can do when deer season opens.  Jamie actually shot this very deer with his bow.  The deer had run away and was never found.  Jamie was feeling awful thinking he had wounded a deer and it was just going to lie down somewhere and die.  Thankfully a few weeks later we saw him again on the trail camera doing just fine.  Scar ended up showing up at the right time for Jamie to shoot him during muzzle loader.

 

Jamie's deer -9 point

 

Jamie with Scar

 

This deer came just at the right time.  We had finished our last package of venison in the freezer just a few weeks ago.

 

Jamie got the deer skinned out and it hung for a few days for the meat to age.  Then he went to work cutting it up.

 

We ended up with 12 packages of deer steaks.  Each package will feed us for one meal.

 

Venison Steaks

 

With the rest of the deer meat, Hailey and Jamie ground it into burger.

 

 Hailey grinding venison meat

 

We ended up with 13 1lb packages of ground venison.

 

Ground Venison burger

 

 Jamie liked this deer so much he decided to mount it.  Jamie decided he wanted to try to do an European mount himself.  He researched how to do it quite a bit and got it done.  It came out great.

 

European Mount that Jamie did himself.

 

It's nice to have some venison in the freezer now but I'm still hoping that Jamie will get a few more deer this season for our family.

 

 

 

 



The End of the Garden 2012

Well the garden is done for the year.  Hailey and I went out last weekend and picked the rest of what was left.  Not much out there except Hailey's cabbage and some jalapeno and green bell peppers.

 

Jalapeno & Green Bell Peppers

 

Hailey's cabbage

 

What was really exciting was Hailey's cabbage.

 

Hailey with her cabbage

 

Hailey got her cabbage as a little bitty plant from school in 3rd grade.  They were giving out cabbage plants to the 3rd graders to promote taking care of something.  She did super with her plant.  She took very good care of it making sure she watered it everyday.  For awhile we thought it was going to die.  Some type of bug kept eating holes in it.  It stayed alive and after a couple of months it was finally big and strong enough to move out into the garden.  Hailey still continued to check on it to make sure it was growing.

 

Our first hard frost was coming so Hailey and I went out into the garden and finally picked it.  She was super excited at how big it got.  She was really proud and said that she thinks she should grow cabbage again for our garden next year.

 

She took off the outside leaves and fed them to the goats for a treat. We have the cabbage in the fridge and Hailey wants to eat it with cornbeef.

 

I am already thinking about next years garden. For the past two years we have bought tomato and pepper plants.  I'm hoping to have enough time to start those plants from seeds for our garden next year.  We also should have enough compost for the whole garden come spring.  Hopefully we won't have such a drought next year and the garden will do better.



First Year Hunting

Jamie has been hunting for years now.  With the kids getting older they are becoming more interested in hunting also.

 

Last season, Hailey sat out with Jamie while he was hunting.  This year she wanted to actually hunt.  Drew thought he would like to also.  So we decided to invest in a gun that both the kids and I could handle and shoot.

 

We bought a 243 Rifle with a scope.  This gun is super light weight.  It is only 1 shot so very easy to load.  I was excited to actually have a gun that I could take out of the gun safe and know how to handle, load and unload and actually shoot without it hurting my shoulder.

 

The kids and I started practicing shooting right away when we got the gun back in August.

 

This is us all shooting for the first time.

 

Me shooting

Drew shooting the target, the little white mark downhill

Hailey shooting, even is a dress, that's my girl :)

 

The kids and I practiced shooting a few other times on the weekends up until hunting season started.  Want to know something?  Hailey is the best shot out of all of us.

 

The weekend of October 27th was youth weekend here.  Which means that only youths can hunt on the weekend.  Hailey was the first to go out Saturday morning.  She did a great job getting up and ready with Jamie.  They did see some deer but not close enough to shoot.

 

Hailey ready for hunting

 

Drew went out with Jamie Saturday afternoon.  They didn't see anything but then Drew went out with Jamie on Sunday morning.  They did end up seeing a deer, but it appeared so quickly then walked off that Drew didn't have enough time to shoot.

 

Drew ready for hunting

 

Both kids had a great time.  I know that Jamie loves spending time with the kids and teaching them about hunting which is one of his passions.

 

Rifle season should be starting soon and there will also be one more youth weekend before hunting season is over.  The kids are excited about going out hunting again.

 

I'm patiently waiting for rifle season to start also so I can go hunting for my first time too.

 

 



Toasty Warm

With the colder season well on its way, we decided to check with our local fireplace store for some replacement parts for our wood stove.

 

Jamie & I went to the fireplace store and wow did we get an education on our wood stove.  The woman was extremely informative on our stove and gave us lots of information.  We decided to go home and check certain parts to make sure they were working properly before we bought any replacement parts.

 

Well, lets just say our old wood stove was shot.  The main component needed to be replaced and would have cost over $1000 to fix. 

 

Old wood stove

Old wood stove in parts

 

The old wood stove was super heavy and Jamie had to take it apart to get it out of the house.  He decided to take the parts and old stove down the street to the scrap yard.  The scrap yard took the old stove and in return we got a check for $34.  Not much but still something.

 

Now we needed to go back to the store and buy a new wood stove.  We choose a much simpler design.  It is also is much easier to operate since it only has one lever for air flow.  We also got a blower which is very handy. We use the blower in the morning to warm up the kitchen and dining room quick for the kids while they eat breakfast.

 

Jamie & I picked up the stove on our trailer and our friend Jeff was nice enough to come over and help Jamie get it in place, since this stove was really heavy too.  Since Jamie is handy we were able to connect the piping to the stove ourselves.

 

This is our new stove.

 

New wood stove

 

We had to do a series of fires to condition the stove, which went fine.  The stove is now being used daily as the temperatures have dropped.  As we did with our old stove we plan to heat the whole house with the stove every season.

 

All summer long we worked on harvesting wood and have what we hope will be enough for this years winter.  We are very pleased with the new wood stove.  It is defiantly more efficient as we use less wood than we were before.  We have been keeping track and we use about 7-10 pieces per day to keep the house warm.  In Jamie's and the kids opinion hot since the house is usually around 80 degrees.  Of course the dogs and I like it.

 

I'm glad that we were able to get a new stove, since the other one was so unsafe.

 

 

 



Russell's Ridge Nubians Website

2012 Babies -Cole (l), Claire (r) & Chloe (b)

 

Spent the morning updating our website. Information on breeding's have been updated.

 

Come check it out.

 

www.russellsridgenubians.com



A Few Barn Renovations

We decided that we needed a few barn renovations done to the goat barn.  One of the main reasons why was because Chuck and Tbone, our two 6 month old steer calves, are getting big.

 

The goat barn is a good size but the issue is half of the barn is on stilts.  Why would the barn be on stilts you say? Well our land is super hilly and has lots of slopes.  So instead of the original builders of the goat barn putting in some type of foundation to make the floor solid.  They just built the barn walls up from the flat ground they had available and then extended the barn by putting it on stilts and building the rest of the floor on top.  So yes half of the floor in the girl's goat barn is wood and the other half is dirt.  We actually have those big black padding mats on the dirt area to make cleaning easier.  The builders were smart though and put a drain in the middle of the dirt floor. It makes cleaning and hosing down the mats much easier.

 

You can see the back side of the barn on stilts

 

With that said, we needed to do something so the cows could no longer get in the barn so when they are even bigger than they are now they won't collapse the floor.

 

Months ago Jamie built a 1/2 door on the barn so we could either lock the goats in or out.  He came up with a great idea to build another half door but raise it up so the goats could come in and out of the barn but the cows couldn't come it.  Cows have trouble bending over and trying to get under things, where goats do not.  I have seen a full grown goat crawl across the ground.  Granted she was rubbing her belly on the grass because it must of felt good but with knowing that we knew they wouldn't have any problem going under the door.

 

New door

 

The above picture shows you the new door.  It's approximately 3 1/2 feet up from the ground, plenty of room for the goats to go under.  We still need to paint it though and Jamie is going to cut a square hole out of the door near the latch so I can open it from the outside and not have to crawl underneath it myself if it's still locked. The other half door that goes all the way to the bottom of the doorway opens from the outside.  We still have it up and use it everyday.  It is very helpful because once all the goats come into the barn waiting for their turn for feeding time we just close the other door so the goats can't get out and bother the cows while they are eating outside.

 

 Once everyone is done eating, goats and cows, we open the longer half door and secure it so it stays open and then we close this higher half door and lock it so the cows can't get in.  It's a very genius idea that Jamie came up with.  It will also be nice for winter time because it will block some of the wind that otherwise would come through the whole door if it was open.

 

This door will be wonderful for when it comes time for kidding.  The mama's and babies will have the barn to themselves and a place to go where they won't be bothered by the cows.

 

Chuck & Tbone on the other hand do NOT like it.  Not so much I think about being in the barn but being away from the goats.  They think of the goats as their herd and they want to stay with them all the time.

 

Chuck & Tbone saying "AAWWW come on, let us in!!

 

The other part Jamie renovated was the milking area.

 

New Wall

 

We decided to build a wall here which is the separation from the pasture to the milking area.  First the wall is nice because before we used to have a fence here, the goats would hang over the top trying to get more food because you know their starving.  All day they are starving, not really but they sure do act like it.  Even Bruschi, our biggest goat, got over the fence one day trying to get more food.

 

So this wall is nice to keep the goats out of my milking area unless I want them there.  The wall is 4 feet high so hopefully they won't be able to get over it.  With Jamie building this wall it actually increased the size of my milking area also, which is really nice.

 

New milking area

 

As you can see in the above picture,  I have plenty of room for both of my milking stands, grain buckets and room to move goats in and out or around if I need too.

 

Yes, I'm sure your asking why I have two milking stands.  I have two because I am not always milking all of my girls.  This way one girl can be milked while another who is not milked can have her grain at the same time.  It cuts down on chore time greatly.  Milking stands are great and since Jamie is so handy he builds them for me.  I'm sure one day, since Hailey is already a great milker, that if we decide to milk all the girls I will use both stands and Hailey can milk at the same time as I am.  I have all of my goats, even the boys, trained to the stand.  The milking stand is not just for milking. I use it to hold a goat while I am administering shots and also to do hoof trimmings.  You should see the boys.  I open the gate and they just run over and hop up onto the stand and start eating their grain while I go ahead and trim their hooves.  They know exactly where to go because remember they are starving and they know that grain is in that bucket.

 

The wall will also be nice to block out the wind in the winter time when milking starts up again in hopefully February.  The unfinished part of this area is the floor.  It is currently just dirt. I try very hard keeping it clean with raking it every other day.  I've talked to Jamie about it and hopefully in the spring we will be cementing this floor in.  That will make it even easier to keep the floor and everything else clean as I'll be able to sweep it everyday and wash it down when it's needed.

 

The other reason for this wall is because we needed an outside hay feeder.  We were going to build a separate structure but thought that was silly because I wanted the wall anyway and we still had enough room on the other side to build the feeder and it would be under the roof so they hay wouldn't get wet.

 

New outdoor hay feeder

 

The feeder works really well.  Right now we are using it for the cows but it will work great for the goats too once the cows are gone.  Actually the goats use it now too when they sneak over to steal some of the cows hay.  Remember they are always starving.

 

I've talked to Jamie about getting rid of the pallet creep feeder and building a permanent structure off of this wall to the side of the hay feeder.  We won't need that for months, not until the babies are born and starting to be weaned.

 

I think the renovations came out perfect.  Drew helped his dad with some of it.  It amazes me that I can explain an idea to Jamie and then watch him make it become real.  We are slowly but surely making the barn the best it can be functionally for us and the goats.  Still a few more things I would like to change but everything takes time and money.

 

Oh that reminds me, all of these renovations cost us under $150.  Not bad huh?

 

 



Report Cards

Drew and Hailey got their first report cards of the year a week or so ago.

 

Both of the kids did absolutely wonderful and we are so proud of them.

 

Drew

 

Science            A

Math                A

English            A

Reading           A

Social Studies  A

 

Hailey

 

Science             B

Math                 A

English             B

Reading            A

Social Studies   A

 

Hailey was a little bummed about the 2 B's.  Especially the English mark since it was only 1 point away from being an A.

 

We told her that as long as she is trying her hardest then she is doing great.  She said she is really going to try even harder this period to make all A's.

 

The kids took their report cards to Dairy Queen over vacation for their free meal.  For all A's you get a hamburger, fries and drink. Four A's you get a fry and drink and one A you get a drink.  You also get the meal if you have perfect attendance which Hailey had so she was able to get a full meal too.

 

Check back in 9 weeks to see how they do on their next report card.

Chuck & Tbone turn 6 months old!!!

Chuck and Tbone our steers are now 6 months old and doing awesome!!!  They are super healthy and eating like champs.  If you guys don't remember, Tbone & Chuck are our beef cross steers (can't have babies) that we are growing for meat for our family.

 

Chuck scratching his head on Tbone

 

The boys have done a super job with keeping the pasture down this summer.  They have also been getting a daily ration of grain to help keep them in good condition.  Chuck and Tbone will be with us over the next 5 months for winter.  Once the spring arrives we will retape them to see how big they have grown and decide what will be done next with the boys.

 

Today I tape measured them to see how much they weigh.  This is where it gets tricky.  There is 2 ways to measure. The first way is just to measure the heart girth, which is around their body behind their front legs and then from their take that number to a chart I found online and convert it into pounds.  This chart is for beef cattle so I know that it will be a little off since my cows are beef crosses.

 

The chart shows the following weights:

 

Chuck (brown & white) 436 lbs

Tbone (black) 390 lbs

 

The second way to measure is suppose to be a little more accurate.  You still measure their heart girth, around their middle behind their front legs, but then you also need to measure from the front shoulder all the way back to the tailbone.  Once you have these figures you need to do a little math. 

 

Math is heart girth X heart girth X Length.  Once you have this figure you divide it by 300. You answer is how much they weigh in lbs.

 

Using this measuring method the following weights are:

 

Chuck (brown & white) 378 lbs

Tbone (black) 341 lbs

 

I measured them this morning before they had their grain and had been out in the pasture all day so I feel that it was a good measurement.  The only problem is the cows look big to me.  Now if you know me well, you know that I have NO perception when I look at something.  Meaning I can look at an animal and have NO idea what it weighs, same thing if I look at an empty room, I have NO idea if a certain piece of furniture will fit.  So with that said, I think the boys weight are somewhere in between both these measurements. 

 

Chuck (brown & white) approx 400 lbs

 

Tbone (black) approx. 370 lbs

 

Here is a pic of Hailey standing next to the boys so you can get and idea of how big they are now.

 

Chuck with Hailey

 

The top of the cows back comes up to Hailey's shoulder, (she is standing downhill next to them)  So that makes them approx. 3 1/2 ft tall right now.

 

With the cows getting so big we have done some renovations to the barn so they can't go into it anymore.  The reason for this is that 1/2 of the barn floor is on stilts, because the lay of the land, and we are afraid that once they get too big they will collapse the floor.  They do have another smaller shelter they can go into that is on the ground to help them stay warm and dry but they aren't happy about it because they want to be with the goats, who they consider as their herd.

 

Jamie has built a half door on the goat barn so the goats can still get in and out but the cows can't get in at all.

 

New door to keep the cows out

 

We still have a door that goes all the way to the bottom so the goats can't get out too.  The doors have been working out nicely.  I close the door that goes all the way to the bottom so the goats don't bother the cows while they are eating.  Once the cows are done eating I open up that door and close the half door so the goats can stay in the barn and not be bothered by the cows if they want.  This was also done so when kidding time comes for the goats the babies will have a safe place to go to get away from the cows.

 

Chuck & Tbone peeking under the door to see what's going on.

 

Jamie also built an outside feeder.  The feeder is for them for now but will be used by the goats too once the cows are gone.

 

New Outdoor Feeder

 

They still have their separate personalities too.  Tbone, the black one, is not very interested in people unless you have food for him,  He will run when he see's that red bucket and will stand by the hay feeder mooing for some hay.  He does like to have is head and chin scratched but most of the time he likes to just hang out and watch what everybody is doing.

 

Chuck on the other hand loves people,  he will be the first one to come up to you if your out in the pasture.  He loves to have his whole face rubbed, especially his cheeks.  He will stretch his head out really far so you can rub all of his cheeks and neck.  He loves the grain too but is a little more patient for his turn.  He also loves to moo.  He will greet you first thing in the morning to say hello and will moo for hay also.

 

I know that your not suppose to have favorites but I clearly do with these two boys.  I think I like Chuck so much because he is so laid back and relaxed, where Tbone is a little more hyper and unpredictable.  This makes me nervous.  I know that these boys are big and will get even bigger and for me it makes me nervous to have a hyper animal that big around.  For this reason I am trying to convince Jamie to have Tbone be the first to go even if he is a little smaller than Chuck.

 

We still haven't decided on what we are going to do.  We hope that once the spring arrives one of them will be big enough to send to the butcher.  I would like to send one in the spring and then keep the other one for another year, which will help with the pasture for the summer but then we would have to pay to feed it over the winter.  Jamie is still deciding.  He is thinking about maybe selling the second one after the summer to get some money back on what it cost us to raise them but I think we should keep it and butcher it since he has told me that one should feed our family for the year. This way we wouldn't have to worry about any beef we would eat for at least 2 years.

 

I will do an update on them in about 3 months just to show you all how well they are and how much more they have grown. 

 

Here are some other cute pictures of the boys.

 

Tbone peeking over Chuck's back trying to figure out what I'm doing

Chuck, my cutie -you can see he is missing a little piece of his ear, we are not sure what happened but it healed fine and doesn't bother him at all

Chuck scratching and yes their tongues feel like sandpaper

Tbone's sweet face



Pork is Delicious

We have gone through more than half of the pork we got back when we had the pigs butchered back in March and of course there is NO bacon left either.

 

With all the talk of the increase of prices for pork meat, really any meat because of the drought and feed prices going up, we decided it would be best not to wait till the spring to raise another pig.  We have decided this time to raise 2 pigs again but we are going to keep all the meat for our family.

 

Two weeks ago we went ahead and found two pigs, to pick up to raise for our meat.

 

 Pigs the day we brought them home, 2 1/2 months old

 

Pigs enjoying running in their pen

 

Both pigs are girls this time.  They were born in the middle of July so they are now just 3 months old.  We butchered the other pigs at 7 months old, so we will have these girls with us at least until February/March.  That will bring them up to 7/8 months old or 250lbs, which ever comes first.  We will be checking their weight every month like the last pigs.

 

We do not have names for them, not sure if we will name them either.  I just call them girl piggies for right now when I talk to them.  I am trying to spend a little time with them each day to get them used to us.  One of them let me touch her on the snout yesterday, so I'm sure with another few weeks they will be letting us touch them.

 

Here are some pictures of them that I took today at 3 months old.

 

Girl pigs

Girl pigs eating grass

 

 

 

 



First Fire of the Season

By no means is it cold here in TN right now.  By the temps dipped a few weeks ago in the evening and we got to have our first fire of the Season.  I'm sure my MA family and friends are thinking that 60 degrees is not cold by any standards but going from 75-80 degree weather down to 60 in a few days does make it feel chilly.

 

We decided to have it in the fireplace we have in the living room.  This fireplace gives off some nice heat but its not overpowering like the wood stove we have that we use to heat the house.  We were sure the weather was going to warm back up so we only wanted to warm the house for the evening.

 

The house was warm and the fire is so relaxing, we ALL enjoyed.  Even Jamie.

 

 

Lou & Bryce enjoying the first fire of the season



Kids & Sports

Football is finally over for Drew.  It was such a busy season.  Practice schedule was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and games were on Thursdays.

 

The season didn't go so well. They actually didn't win one game but the boys played their hearts out and did a good job.

 

Here are some shots of Drew playing. He was number 4 this year.

 

Drew on the kick off team

Drew lined up on defense

Drew playing defense.

 

Drew has decided not to play any other sports this year so I'm sure he will be playing football again for next season.

 

Hailey is right in the middle of her soccer season.  She is playing for the
Y again on the same U12 team as last year.  Her team is doing great.  They have either won or tied for all of their games so far.

 

Hopefully they will go to the championship again this year and win.

 

Hailey before her first game

Hailey's team Fall 2012