rachels.haven's Journal

Baymule

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You have done a great job on raising the Robins. It won't be long now, your baby birds will fly away. I would imagine the speckling color on them is to help hide them until they perfect their flying techniques.
 

rachels.haven

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Got the buck pen finished at 3, at 4:30 I brought the goats and Bailey with the neighbor to their new home. A bunch of them have log poo now from so much fresh wet grass. I suspect this will resolve itself. One milk stand is here. We'll get the other and the rest of the stuff here later.

Our biosecurity screen came back. All clean.
 

rachels.haven

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Yes, it was great I didn't have to fence the main pasture. It was too big. The buck pen was my doing because it needed to be panels and I needed to hurry so we could quit doing the back and forth thing between properties 2x daily. I'M SO RELIEVED. (Edited to add: and SORE. Rocky ground here!)
 
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rachels.haven

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Today was my first day milking at the right time. It was good. I can't separate the babies right now so I only got 3/4 gallon between all the does. I might up it to twice daily despite the kids and see if I can encourage production.

I turned the robins out today as well. Having them escape and go flying (pooping) around the house was too much. They flew off and summoned all the birds in the neighborhood wether we were outside or not. I hope they got someone to feed them.

Hey, @farmerjan what do you think of milking a JerseyxPinzgauer? There is an 8 month heifer for sale not super close. We should probably still go mini on our acreage, but I figured I'd ask.
 
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farmerjan

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Any jersey(dairy) beef cross will not smother you with milk. We had a few pinzgauer mixes years ago. Decent dispositions, good mothers. You could "share" with her calf and not get overloaded with milk, and then if you had to go somewhere, the calf could get all the milk for "a milking away".... The subsequent calves would be beefy if you bred her back beef, so good to raise for beef for the house.
I would say if you just milked with no calf sharing.... 1-2 gallons per milking? So 2-4 gallons a day... and that depends on how much grain and various things.... and if she is more "dairy" or more "beef".
Sometimes a dairy/beef cross will take after the beef, some will take after the dairy. So the thing to do is see how beefy the calf is. The more jersey, more than likely the smaller it will be. And probably more production. But you are still looking at an animal that will weigh 8-1100 lbs at maturity. Pinz's are not a "huge breed" but they are not mini sized.
If you rotated grazing, then you could get some decent foraging... but 6 acres, plus your goats, would be still stretching it. In Va we figure 1 1/2 acres per cow average, during the grazing season. If you did a good job of fencing and rotating, then you would get a fair amount of grazing. I don't know how many goats you have or how much they are eating.... You will have a little less grazing time than we do.... our grasses are heading out already, it always seems that they sit there then just jump out of the ground in the spring.... but we will have some decent grass growth into Nov and sometimes Dec. For the sake of comparison, a mature cow will eat 1/2 to 1 full square bale a day.... 50+ lbs of hay. So a cow/calf pair will eat a whole sq bale once the calf gets over 3-4 months. We figure 1 big roll (1000 lbs) per cow for 20 days... or 20 cows per roll per day. That's about 50 lbs. m/l....

I see nothing wrong with the cross...
 

rachels.haven

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I had never heard of the breed. I think I should wait for a barn on the cow. The goats don't eat much grass or wander far, yet they are already looking fatter.

I contacted a local barn fixing guy. The problem is, contractors around here have enough business they can pick and choose who they get back to and work with and a tumbling down machine shed and a 1930's poultry shed is not very interesting compared to the old, old barns that are around. On top of that our barn may not have much time. One of the corners is starting to creak and groan and pop throughout the day while I am milking. At some point probably the last guys redid the front wall including that corner and now it looks like the wood is starting to bow. It's too little too late, but yesterday I opened all the first floor windows. They've been closed for decades and that with the condensation from the floor has been a serious contributor to killing the structure. Somebody took out the ventilation from the barn and replaced it all with closed windows or pieces of wall so the wood is rotting and the cement floor is heavy and supported by rotted wood...poor old building. I hope it doesn't crush me while I milk. That corner is LOUD. I should probably not be milking in there.
 
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