Dear Everyone, I am so very pleased that all of you are here to help each other. I am extremely grateful that there are a lot of you out there that are willing to take the time and help others. I have an update for you on the goat kids that had the bumps on their sides/ribcages,THE BUMPS HAVE ALL DISSAPEARED! The only remnant of even one appears to be where the bone has knitted together over a possible fracture or break that I was not able to feel. I believe that they were brutilized by the little guy with the horns. The rest of the Ranch is doing very well. I would like ideas from any of you as to what else I can produce and or any management techniques that I may employ that I might be able to use. I Am HOMESTEADING. And am asking for your help in the quest for self sufficientcy. This is what we are working with: I have 2 Jersey cows (one of which is registered and due any hour). If it is a bull calf I will keep it because it is so very far to any Jersey bulls in my area, and the vets do not AI here. I sell the milk and butter and cheese from these. I have all 6 breeds of dairy goats, I have very good bloodlines for my herds' foundation stock. I sell milk and I do make 12 different types of cheeses from the goats' milk. All are mainly soft types. I have a surge milk machine and 3 buckets (I need a couple more pulsators very badly though...Anyone?), I currently milk 4 head at a time. I sell kids by reservation (kids are sold out this year, taking reservations for next year now) and millkers when they are available. I have a runway system so that I can get all of the goats into their proper (Dry does, milkers, vaccination days, etc.) pens all of the time. All of the buck pens, pastures, drydoe pens,etc. are on float systems. My milkers are in a 3 acre pasture that has been eaten down into nothingness. It started out as desert scrub. There are problems with the water (We have a community well that feeds about 8 families here and they have 5 actual wells that are being fed into the one, and still the water hauling tanker comes almost daily to drop off water.) here or I would plant my own pastures. I keep White Leghorns,Buff Orpingtons, Rhode Island reds, and Barred Rocks for layers and I only have about 5-7 of each. I sell the eggs and any old layers are already spoken for. The hens are all allowed to run loose to keep the bugs down and get shut up in the aviary at night, and we have roosters (except for a White Leghorn.....anyone?) for each breed (who are in their separate pens with poultry water founts) I raise Registered Border Collies without whose help here on the Ranch I would be chasing some livestock forever. I have a bitch and a stud dog. The bitch's parents came over from Wales. I traded a goat for her. I will be selling pups as soon as I am able. I am in the process of building the interior of the house that I have had put on this 5 acres as a shell (outside and roof done, nothing else.)we are living in it as I build. I just got enough insulation for the house and any outbuilding by trading a goat for it. I also traded a goat for track lighting for the kitchen and tile for all of the kitchen and bathroom countertops. We have composting toilets. I do as much canning as possible, but since moving here in jan of 99" I have not been able to put in much besides a few roses and a herb garden. I do sell the herbs dried by the mason jarful. I also dry and sell the roses for crafts by the jarful. I do raise meat hogs, I raise them mainly on excess milk or whey, with some of Wal-Marts' finest all stock sweetfeed as the other ingrediant for feed, if we run low on milk. I make and can chilis, green chili stew, etc. to have for sale here, from the pork. I also sell feeder piglets when I have them, although I have'nt been real great about keeping them bred yet. I am much better with the goats. I bake 3 different types of loaf bread, I bake cinnamon rolls, fry doughnuts. Yesterday (for example) was a typical day in the bread thing, I made 8 loaves of potato buttermilk and 6 of honey oatmeal, and 3 dozen cinnamon rolls, by the time my husband came home from work I managed to keep 2 loaves of the potato in the freezer and there were only a few cinn rolls left and hubby saw those (Poor hubby) and crammed them into his lunchbox for the next day, before the people who drove in (They were coming for the last 2 loaves of honey oatmeal) when he did bought them. We have also just purchased a fullblood boer buck that I will use to cross with our Nubian herd for quality kids to sell as meat and to the poor 4-hers that are still using dairy for Market wethers here. I also raise meat rabbits and they are also on automatic waterers (lixits). I make crafts and quilts in my "spare time". If ANY of you have ANY ideas on how to make things better, less time consuming, or anything else, I WANT TO HEAR THEM! No matter how insignificant you may think that they are. The Ranch is in no way in trouble. I just want it to be the best that it can possibly be, and with any ideas from you I believe that we can make it even better. To all of you thank you in advance, Lawannea S. Stum of White Dove Ranch

-- Lawannea S. Stum (Whitedov1@citlink.net), July 20, 2000

Answers

Lawannea, I've got to go take a nap after reading your post. Sounds like you've got a water problem, do you have any sort of rain collection system or cachement? How about a porch swing so you can take a break now and then so you don't get burned out? You have an impressive set-up there, you could probably give a lot more advice than we could give you. Gerbil

-- Gerbil (ima_gerbil@hotmail.com), July 20, 2000.

LAWANNEA, I THOUGHT WE WERE BUSY. GOD BLESS YOU. PRISCILLA

-- MRS PRISCILLA WILLIAMS (GP83196@AOL.COM), July 20, 2000.

sigh...am going to bed now,realizing I will not live long enough to do all that neat stuff and dissapointed you are not my neighbor..kudos to you and Gerbil is right..get a porch swing (or build one)..you need a rest....God bless...

-- Lesley (martchas@gateway.net), July 20, 2000.

I love hard work - I could lie and watch it for hours.

Definitely build a porch swing - and a porch recliner. Use them as practice, so you can build them as a sideline business - something to fill in the empty hours when it's too wet, or too cold, to go outside. You can't let those minutes, let alone hours, slip by unused.

Seriously, take up a hobby you CAN'T make a profit out of - preferably something you can't make money out of. Amateur astronomy - comet watching - bird watching - they need people like you. I'd guess you're close to burnout, except how would I know. I can't see how you could keep up the pace and still be homesteading in twenty years time - or five.

Even more seriously, it's better to work smart than to work hard. Rather than putting in even more time working, put in some time thinking how you can work less, and still get good results. I'm tired now - I have to rest some more.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), July 21, 2000.

Do you realize that you do more in one DAY than most do in weeks? I am not sure I would want you as a neighbor, I would feel lazy!! Some days, I don't get anything done but what has to been done! What time do you get up? go to bed? The only thing I know you could do to make more money is to give classes on Time Management!Any large corp. would love to have just ONE employee who works like you do! Could I be in your first class????? Slow down some,enjoy!!!

-- Debbie T in N.C. (rdtyner@mindspring.com), July 21, 2000.

I am going to try not to insult your knowledge, which is probably greater than mine in many areas, but here are a few ideas, some from pasture management classes, others from reading and personal experience.

Because you have three acres eaten down to dust, it sounds as though you do not practice pasture rotation. I have to assume you are currently buying in most of your feed, and its probably pretty expensive. Rotating pastures can significantly increase stocking rates, and if done properly, can dramatically improve the pastures themselves at very little out-of-pocket cost. If you use a sacrifice area, divide the remaining pasture area into several small pastures, apply lots of organic matter (dung from the sacrifice area leaps to mind), and choose forages that perform well in dry areas, you can probably grow quite a bit of fresh feed without too much need for irrigation. You can then let the animals into a pasture from the sacrifice area, changing pastures when appropriate to keep the forage as healthy and productive as possible. Choose the size of your pastures and frequency of rotation to allow sufficient time to recover from each grazing. If necessary, you can allow the animals access to the forage areas only for a limited period each day, if thats all the use that the forage can take. At least then they would be getting some fresh green food each day. I dont know what rainfall is like in your area, but I do know that lots of organic matter in soil really helps to keep whatever rain does fall available for growing things.

You might also consider growing row crops for feed using greywater runoff from your house or barn, or if you hose down your milking parlor, using that water, for irrigation. There are a lot of good stock feeds that produce a tremendous amount of feed per acre and are not difficult to grow, although it can be difficult to find seed. I grew a few mangel beets last year on my tiny place. I was really impressed with the yield, and the animals loved them. Chickens like roots, too, if theyre cooked a bit. There are some enormous varieties of kale, marrow-stem and thousand-headed, that also make good feed, but you might have to get seed from Canada or the UK. Potatoes, of course, are great. Your choices would depend on your climate. These were the feeds folks used before grain became so cheap and available (and not genetically engineered and covered with pesticides and herbicides).

Gerbil had a great thought on roof-water catchment. Up on the islands around here, water is a problem, especially in the summer. The water table gets low, and some wells go dry or slow way, way down. I know a guy who is running a 10-acre CSA producing fruit, vegetables, beef, pork, and eggs for 25 families on a 3-gallon per minute well that is shared with another household. He runs drip irrigation to his fruit trees and berries. He has also installed in- ground cisterns to catch the water running off every roof on his place. He uses the stock tanks as a kind of roof washer. The water flows from the gutter downspout, through a cleaning screen, and into a stock tank, entering near an outside edge. There is a standpipe at the opposite side of the stock tank that is a couple of inches below the overflow outlet. The standpipe leads to an in-ground cistern. He has at least two cisterns, 3,000 and 2,000 gallons, I think. He gets into them and scrubs them out each year before the rainy season.

I hope some of this helps. Please feel free to contact me for further discussion.

Now I have a question for you. How do you manage to sell what you produce? How do you advertise? Also, do you have a Grade-A dairy? If not, how do you get around the regulations on milk, cheese, butter, etc? I would really appreciate any information in this regard. Thanks. Laura

-- Laura Jensen (lauraj@seedlaw.com), July 21, 2000.

Dear Everyone, Lawannea here again. I know that a lot of you seem to be thinking that I am absolutely working my butt off. I hate to dissapoint you but I am not. People in the "Olden days" used to wash on Tuesday, bread on Friday, quilt in the evening, town on Sunday. Well anyway I have a simalar approach to the work here. If I was in the "olden days" I could not put enough bread in the freezer to last us for two weeks (shhh, don't tell my customers.lol). Or since I have been a chef I am able to to manage at least 7-8 recipies on the stovetop (woodburning of course)at one mornings' time to can up into jars. Thereby getting a lot done at one time. When I dry herbs, I gather up about three dehydryators full (I do intend on making one of those soon.) so that when the first batch has dried I immediately take it out and put in the other, and do it while I am doing something else. It takes time for some things to work, such as bread,drying, cooking,(when I can my spaghetti sauce, it has to cook for all day) and I have lots of time for stuff in-between (in fact I read alot). All of my animals (you are not going to believe this of course)take a total of 2 hours per day to care for them. This includes feeding,milking and making sure that everone is ok. Any wormings, vaccinations,etc., are scheduled for a day when I have help here. I really would pasture out and thereby spend less time (and money) feeding but as I say water is a very large problem here. People are yelling at the lady up the street that filled a little wading pool for her kids! Wait & see what I would get for watering a small piece of ground! There is no rainfall here(if it does rain we usually go out & dance in it). I do use my graywater for watering the orchard, as we have composting toilets. We have a long summer,a little bit of winter thrown in at the end (just for kicks of course) and then Summer all over again. But of course I could just think that all of you are just lazy. LOL. I have set everything up w/the animals so that I can take care of it alone. Write me! Thanks Guys!

-- Lawannea S. Stum (Whitedov1@citlink.net), July 21, 2000.

Is the cost of another breed of buck going to improve things? Lots of diary folks use boers to breed to their first fresheners, as a cull tool. If she doesn't have a nice udder than her and the kids are sold. We didn't find the price to work out on paper. We sell our Purebred Nubian doe kids for 350$, buck kids soaking wet out of first fresheners for 50$ the day they are born, we do sell some bloodline bucks for 400$, but mostly out of Champion Does. Bred Boer these same kids would go for 150$ for market wethers or a 1/2 boer 1/2 nubian doe kid would be around 100$. Less work in that they can nurse their kids, and meat folks don't expect their kids to be bottle tame like dairy folks do. But our profit went down. Add to this 12 weeks of no milk sales. A kid receiving 3 16 ounce meals a day will drink 75$ in salable milk by the time they are 12 weeks old. Feeding saleable milk to pigs doesn't help the bottom line, unless it is unsold milk. (A lot less expensive to purchase a grown hog and butcher yourself.) Especially in breeding stock, I think you really can't do justice to having all breeds of dairy stock, you will monetarily have to take short cuts and that will always be in a lesser quality buck to breed to, even using AI, the success rate isn't 100% so to breed purebreds that means a buck for each breed, and new bucks to breed the replacement does with. If your goal is milk profit, than keeping only the very best milkers is always the goal, and though I am a Nubian breeder and we sold our milk because of the high butterfat, your very best milkers with extended lactations are very rarely Nubian. I think breeding Boer is a huge step backwards towards anything resembeling self sufficency. Very few folks find quality Boers that aren't going to hurt your feet and legs, milkability both in udder quality, amount of milk and extra teats. The amount of extra meat in these kids is not going to discount the fact that you will not be able to use their kids as replacements on the dairy end. This last part would be much different if you had pasture/browse instead of supplementing them 100%. Would love for some feed back...we have sold milk for a candy maker for years, grew Jalepno's, kept eggs, for our meat buyers. The greatest profit in goats is selling Purebred stock, semen (outside breedings) colostrum, and then milk, for us in that order. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), July 21, 2000.

Lawannea, where are you? And, just out of curiousity, how much land do you have?

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), July 21, 2000.

Keeping a Bull around for just 2 cows seems like a HUGE waste of time and money. I'm sure your local or state AG center can direct you to a Vet that does AI. I think you would need at least 20 cows to make it profitable to keep a bull. With AI you have the opertunity to choose from 100's of bulls from the best lines. Do a little leg work and I am sure you can find a qulifed Vet.

-- Mark (deadgoatman@webtv.net), July 21, 2000.

I'm worn out too! Just a note on the Jersey bull. My great grandfather had a Jersey grade A dairy when I was small and I will never forget the bull! Grown men have been killed by dairy bulls-I believe that was one of the big reason's AI was welcomed by the dairymen. It took longer for the beef guy's to come around, but alot of the smaller beef producer's (and probably some large one's) are using AI. One of our neighbor's kept an Angus\Jersey bull till he was two and sold him. Maybe the bull's aren't as mean as they used to be. But I breed my Jersey cow to Angus (Ok-I've also bred to Hereford) and have never had any problems. Great Granddad kept his Jersey bull in a small enough corral that he couldn't get a run at the 12 foot high log fence! He would still try and get at people. Good luck and God Bless!

-- Kathy Cox (kilatable@hotmail.com), July 22, 2000.

Lawannea:

You missed your calling. Sounds like you should be a management efficiency expert/consultant.

People seem to be forgetting the reason Boar goats were introducted to the U.S. was to increase meat production. The U.S. is still a huge imported of goat meat. Hope was if they could be cross bred with current U.S. meat goats it would help U.S. production. I don't think they were ever intended to be bred with dairy goats.

Amen on the earlier posts on keeping your own bull. You don't need AI either. It would be difficult for you to determine what was the proper time and AI ain't cheap. Surely somebody in your area has a nice beefy bull they will let you cross breed to. I have two herd bulls, an 8-9 year old Gelbvieh and a 2-3 year old Angus covering about 50 cows. I don't think either would intentionally hurt me, but they could unintentionally. We respect each other.

A guy in the local area raised one bull up as a bottle calf. Just the sweeting thing. One day apparently he got fighting with another bull and lost. Billy was walking through the pasture and apparently the bull figured, "Well, here's someone I can take." Put Billy in the hospital for several months and it was about a year before he could really get up and about.

My bulls are 'gainfully employed' from about June 1st to September 1st. By that time they should have covered every open cow in the herd and, if they didn't, the cow goes as I insist on a tight calving season from about March 15th to June 15th. I've had people bring by cows to run with my bulls for two to three breeding cycles. One brought by a Gelbvieh his Gelbvieh bull wouldn't settle. Next morning Mr. Bull was off to the side of the paddock having a cigarette so I figured he did his duty, and sure enough it only took him one shot.

If you really want to keep a bull either get a polled one or have his horns removed. They can do a bit less damage that way. Yes, an irate cow can hurt you also, but a bull is a whole different matter.

-- Ken Scharabok (scharabo@aol.com), July 22, 2000.

Lawannea, Can I come live with you? LOL It sounds like you really have a nice place going there. On second thought, I would have to work too hard because you would put me to shame if I didn't. It was really enjoyable to read your post and hear from someone who is not only homesteading but attacking it with so much gusto. You could tell that you really love what you are doing and doing is certainly what you are about. I'm afraid that I can't add much to what others have said because everything I can think of takes water. Just wanted to give you a round of applause.

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), July 24, 2000.

Hello everyone! Lawannea here again. I wanted to let you all know that Mountain Shadow's Topaz (the pregnant cow)has had a beautiful little heifer for all the world to see. Write me!

-- Lawannea S. Stum (Whitedov1@citlink.net), July 24, 2000.

Dear Lawannea: We also have Jerseys for family milk cows. Unfortunatley, my favorite cow died this summer of milk fever. She had calved the day before, and had a huge udder (she was always a heavy milker)and the calf was doing well. Overnight, she got down and was in terrible shape by the next morning when we found her. It was too late by the time help was available. Jerseys, especially heavy milkers, can get milk fever and go down suddenly. It apparently is a condition where the cow produces so much milk that all the calcium is exhausted from her system, and she can't handle the metabolic stress. If a vet or a seasoned dairyman is available, calcium can be given, but it is a terrible way to lose a faithful cow. Just watch them if they are heavy milkers, for the first sign of staggering or unsteadiness,so help can be there in time. Good luck on everything: and please never keep a Jersey bull; I grew up knowing that "many a man has been killed by a Jersey bull" and it isn't worth the risk.

-- Peggy Taylor (bptaylor@ccrtc.com), July 24, 2000.

On milk fever, you can help prevent it to some degree. Obtain a livestock catalog from Jeffers (800-JEFFERS) and see what products they have for milk fever. Generally it is what to do until the vet can get there.

-- Ken Scharabok (scharabo@aol.com), July 25, 2000.