Farm-ishness & Critters

For living on a ranch, it sure feels pretty farm-y around here.  That is, there is a lot more than just cows on the range around here.  

I just read a picture book to the kids about a farm family and on every page we compared it to us.  Everything they did, we do, and everything they had we have, or have once had: barn, Daddy on a tractor, milking cows, cats, dog, horses, sheep, turkey (except the ones that pass through our yard everyday are wild), feeding calves, pigs, a goose, chickens, hay, oats, a school bus picking kids up on a dirt road, etc.  They didn't have goats, though, and we do.  And they only had one boy who was named Bobby and one girl named Betty.  We had fun calling the girls "Betty" and the boys "Bobby" as they got ready for bed.  "Get to bed, Betty."  I told Kate that she really was a Betty, and she laughed and laughed.  

I've always been fascinated with farm life, and have always wanted to live on a farm.  Ranch?  Well, I'm no cowgirl for sure, and never thought I'd live on a ranch.  A ranch seemed so western, and I was not a western type of girl.  I'm still not a "western" girl, but I love this ranch and this lifestyle.  And as far as farm vs. ranch goes, I feel like we have both here.  It's like we have a little farm sitting right in the middle of a big ranch.  I love it! 

The Rancher plowing to get the field ready for oats.

Weston is really into the ranching thing, and is good at it, and I dig farms.  I'm just picturing the formation of a new blog:  The Farmer and The Rancher.  Of course Weston is the rancher and I would be the farmer.  Hahaha.  Weston could actually be called a grass farmer, since he grows acres upon acres of it to use for the livestock, and he did just plant a field of oats.  So he is a farmer and a rancher, right?  Really, farm or ranch, whatever, I just want to be self sufficient.  (That is a different post for another day, though.)  

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Kate made a list titled How Many Animals Do We Have on This Ranch?  

She listed them all, and then I helped her count them up.  We counted about 550.  Most of that, of course, is cattle.  And most of those cattle are Grandma and Grandpa's.  This list may be boring to you, but it isn't to my family, and it's nice to have a record of what is here.

1. Bulls: 14.  All of them are Black Angus.

2. Cows: 280.  Mostly Angus and Hereford and, like I said, mostly G&G's.  9 of those cows belong to Weston and I: Cookie (half Holstein and half Swiss - our favorite and our milk cow who is currently pregnant- Yay!); Cookie's 2 daughters - Cream and Coco; and then 5 Holsteins - Timo, Ma Lin, Wang Hou, Martini, Angel and Suzie.    I think most, if not all, of our cows are pregnant.  

Cookie and a bull.

One of the Holsteins.

3. Calves (bull calves or heifer calves): somewhere in the neighborhood of 235.  4 of those are bottle calves: Charger, Whiteface, Vicker, and Marigold.  I think that there are still more to calve out.

Zoe and Marigold.

My nieces, Olivia and Whitney, feeding Marigold.

Cute Livy.

The bottle-fed calves are fed in the morning and then again in the evening.  Weston always does the morning and lots of times the kids and I feed in the evening.  A typical evening of feeding calves includes barefoot, and/or pantless child(ren) piled on the 4-wheeler, and bottles that have gotten muddy and slobbery.

4. Dogs: 2.  Our dog is Mazy, a Border Collie, and Grandma and Grandpa's dog is Dora, a Healer.

5.  Cats: 3.  We are not big cat people.  We got them to be our "biological vermin control unit" (called by author Joel Salatin).  Hoshow (Ezra's) is the teeny tiny one, Peppy (Kate's - named after my childhood cat) is the small one, and Midnight (Spencer's) is the biggest (still small) one.

6.  Horses: 4.  Jackie, Justin, Stardust, and Whopper.  Tom and Willy, the draft horses, are now at Weston's brother Cameron's house in Nevada.

Jiles on Whopper.

Ezra, Whopper, and Grandpa

7.  Goats: 11.  Maximus, Lu Lyn, Mobias, Dream Girl, Mrs. Miagi, Rain, Phillip, Harriet Houdini,  Miss McKee, Strawberry, and Grandma. 

Kate with Rain

8. Chickens: 63.  

We have 8 hens and 55 chicks right now.   We have had 8 mature laying hens, and then we bought 10 layer chicks.  I've been wanting to get like 50 broiler (meat) chicks (Cornish) to raise for our freezer, so that we don't have to buy store chicken.  I was going to order them from Welp Hatchery, but Weston got a deal at the feed store in town last week on their chicks.  The owner really wanted to get rid of them because they were like 3 weeks old already.  The only thing is they aren't broilers, they are layers, and they are all pullets (female chicks).

Hanging in the coop.

So we are trying to decide if we should raise them for meat for us, or sell them when they are older and are just beginning to lay.  They don't grow as fast as meat chickens, and it seems a waste to raise a bunch of pullets to eat when they will lay such nice eggs.  We live too far out for an egg business.  There are Rhode Island Reds, Golden Sexlinks, White Leghorns, and  Barred Plymouth Rocks.

9.  Fish: 1.  Kate's Fin the Fish, a red Beta.

10. Ducks Geese: 1.  

We thought that Henry is a duck, but our friends who came over yesterday said that he is a goose.  We think that he is a Canadian Goose.  Cool.

Geese do not like bread; they like to eat grass.

Baby Henry snuggled up to Ezra.

11.  Hummingbirds: 1.

Okay, not really.  It was in our house and couldn't get out, so I caught him and let him go outside.  Spencer took this picture.  He flew away very nicely.



Man, that's a lot of little critters.