JenLa

I thought I’d write a separate page about the farm because newcomers who find the blog in the middle of the ongoing story tend to have a lot of questions. So I’ll give you the brief version of the back story, then some pictures and info about all our current farm animals.

My husband, Jared, and I were film makers in Los Angeles until August 2005, when we bought a small, derelict horse farm in the north east corner of Georgia. It has 6.5 acres, about one third of which is still wooded, a barn and a 100 year old farm house whose charm has been largely destroyed by the “upgrades” of previous owners. There are always several “why” questions right about here in the story. Why a farm? We were fed up with city living. We were tired of endless traffic, mini malls, pollution, crowds and noise. We sought peace and a way to live that treats the earth gently. Why Georgia? For one thing, I grew up in metro Atlanta. For another, my mother had moved to the north Georgia mountains and Jared’s family was in Massachussetts and we decided it was time to be closer to either one side or the other so we could spend more of the precious little time we had with them. When you look at the prospects of farming in the South vs. New England, a few things become abundantly clear: New England is cold. With snow. And it’s still hot, muggy and mosquito infested in summer. The South has mild winters, which is kind of nice when your dream job is cavorting outside in damp fields with hay, water and poop. So my mother scoured the internet and found us this little farm in the out-of-the-way corner of GA and here we are. Our dream was to raise Alpacas.

The best laid plans and all that crap, right? Alpacas cost a lot of money. And yes, we knew this when we started, but what we didn’t count on was how much money it takes to buy a farm! Even stuff like making a billion trips to the dump to dispose of the garbage and debris left by the previous owners starts to add up after awhile. Slowly we are renovating and fencing and also trying to fix up the house, and that’s a financial balancing act at this point in our lives. However, we were presented with a Breach of Covenant because apparently there was a Land Use Covenant on the property that was not disclosed when we bought it that basically says it has to be farmed continuously for ten years or you shall pay a forfeit. So we did some quick fencing and some quick Angora goat buying and we were in the farm business. They were an inexpensive option that still provided us with fiber (and someday milk). And next came the guinea fowl, to help with our terrible tick and slug problem. They, of course, required a coop, so we put up a building with half devoted to coop and half to my potting shed. And then a barn for the goats. And built the goats a manger. Next, came some barn cats to keep down the rodent population and then the guard llamas to protect the goats from coyotes. And that’s how it happens. We’re still waiting for money to fall out of the sky to buy some alpacas. Jared would like to buy some mill equipment so we can turn our fiber on the hoof into yarn and roving. And that’s the story as of this moment. Now on to what you came here to see:

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Our Goats:

Carlina is the one who is most clearly visible here. She’s the passive, bottom of the totem pole, but she has beautiful fleece.

Tinkerbell, who is the smallest goat but has the heaviest coat. She’s kind of a butt [no pun intended], she loves to ram into Carlina for no apparent reason. EDIT: Tinkerbell died in the summer of 2007, a week after Mayflower. The cause of death was not determined, but parasites are suspected. Her silliness is missed.

Kitty is the biggest, the friendliest and the leader of the goat herd. She loves to be patted and to have nice long talks with you.

This is Mayflower, who considers herself second in command. She’s pushy, but Kitty keeps her in check. EDIT: Mayflower died suddenly, with no symptoms in the summer of 2007. Cause of death was not determined, parasites could be the culprit. We have since modified our parasite program. We miss her so much.

This is their new barn, before the manger was built and installed. [Yes, new. We built it from recycled tin roofing.] They really only need to be able to get out of the wind and rain after shearing, but because food happens there, they do like to hang out near it.

Then we built a stanchion to hold the goats while we trim their hooves. We call it “Chute-pacabra”. We thought they’d hate it because we lifted them up onto it, put their heads between the front boards and secured it while we “cut off their feet”. Of course, they were up high, which goats like AND being fed so the stanchion was such a hit that they take turns playing on it now. Carlina liked it so much, she decided to sleep on it the first night.

Angora goats produce mohair fiber. (Angora fiber comes from angora rabbits) They are named after their place of origin, Angora, Turkey. They like hot, dry weather despite that heavy coat and most mohair in the US comes from Texas. Angoras tend to be docile, sweet and not very malodorous [unlike many other types of goat]. They are sheared twice a year, in the spring before kidding and in the fall before breeding. They can be used for milk goats and can be eaten, their pelts and skulls are often sold after they have died. Their lifespan tends to be around 9-11 years. Females tend to weigh between 75-100 lbs and males 85-125 lbs. Their fiber does not contain lanolin, like sheep’s wool, but does contain yolk [dirt and sweat] and grease, which requires high temperatures [140 F and higher] to wash out. For more information about Angora Goats, try this site or this one. And you can learn more about mohair here. Our little herd was purchased in July 2006 from Daisy’s Hill Farm, and they were all 2.5 year old maidens. We plan to buy or rent a stud male in the fall of 2007 so we can begin expanding the herd. We got these goats as an investment, but we love them like pets. They all have such individual personalities. They bleat at us when they hear the back door open, they come running when we turn into the driveway and they are surprisingly low maintenance. They amuse us with their playing and cavorting, and particularly when we take tools into the pasture to do chores. The goats like to mess with anything they think you don’t want them touching. There is no greater joy to them than to sneak over to the wheelbarrow, open a box of screws and then grab it by the lid, shaking it really hard so the screws go all over. Then, of course, you have to meticulously pick each one up so no goats step on them, and that gives them the opportunity to pull on your clothes and chew your hair.

(Edited. We have sold our cashmere goat and his companions, but I’m leaving this information about cashmeres here. I may in future get more cashmere goats, but not until we have the commercial equipment to process it. De-hairing it by hand sucks.)

Cashmere is not a breed, but a type of coat that can occur in over 60 breeds of goats. The deciding factor is the micron count (width) of the individual fibers, which must be 19 microns or less. For more cashmere goat information, click here. A micron count of greater than 19 would not be called cashmere. I suppose it’s just “goat” then. The typical cashmere goat produces around 250-300 grams of fiber a year (around half a pound) and the fineness and small quantity of the fiber produced is what leads to such high prices. Most cashmere goats are plucked rather than shorn, which means you go out to the pasture when they’re shedding and just manually pull the tufts of undercoat out. Some people will brush or comb the cashmere out and still others shear. Nearly all methods lead to some further processing to remove the guard hairs.

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The Guineas:

The next thing we added to the farm was Guinea Fowl. Guineas are a type of African pheasant. They are a little bigger than your average chicken. They come in about 17 colors, but I ordered “pearl”, which is dark grey with white spots. Here is another site with guinea information. We started with an order of 15 hatchlings; they send them right through the mail the day they hatch. To a city girl, going to the local post office to pick up a box of tiny, peeping birds is quite something. And at that stage they are so tiny, striped and cute your urban heart just melts peeking at them through the air holes all the way home.

They’re already a couple weeks old in this picture. They are so sweet and make such lovely peeping noises when they are young.

Baby guineas aren’t called chicks, they are called “keets”. We lost a few right away, which is not unusual during and just after shipping, which is why you order more than you want. I wanted a dozen, and it’s exactly what I ended up with. [Until they started to free-range.] I raised them in the brooder for several weeks while we built their coop. In addition to their feed, I brought them fresh grass and hand caught bugs for weeks on end. Finally they moved to their new coop.

They had to stay in there for 4-6 weeks just to know that’s where they belong. I never pictured myself getting attached to these birds, I’m not much for poultry, frankly. But I hand raised these babies, hand built their magnificent and sturdy coop, caught them bugs twice daily and was constantly amused by their playful antics. All that said, these have to be the stupidest creatures on the planet. Chickens only need a couple weeks to understand where they live. At any rate, they had their coop and their human wait staff and they continued to grow. The idea with these is that they are amazingly good tick control, and I had had a terrible bout with ticks in which my [inside] dog nearly died of tick paralysis and not liking to use pesticides, I leapt on this idea when I read it in Alpacas magazine. They also help control slugs, which pass the very deadly meningeal worm to ruminants from white tailed deer. [both of which are plentiful right here in my own pasture.]

Finally, they were able to free range. In the picture above, they are still youngsters [keets] with “teenage” coloring. But they did learn to [mostly] come in at night. Especially if it’s raining. Oh, how I love the rain for it makes the guinea gathering a pleasure and not a chore. They come when I call them, they like to eat white proso millet for a treat and they love their coop with it’s food, clean hay, perches and heat lamp. But they are NOISY. Obnoxiously noisy. And the stupid doesn’t improve with age. We have so far lost four of them to traffic incidents and possibly coyotes. And if we close the gate on their yard, they have a difficult time remembering to employ the flappy things at their sides.

Here are a couple of “adults”. They’re actually considered “poults” at this stage. But they are mature, breeding and laying eggs.

Which are edible. They are half the size of chicken eggs and are lower in fat and cholesterol. But they are hard as rocks, as is befitting stupid birds who drop eggs from high perches. My guineas mostly lay inside the coop, which is apparently rare, but highly desired. When the weather is warmer, I will brood some of their eggs to keets and reinforce the numbers again, but right now it’s too cold to catch insects for young birds. EDIT: Over time, these birds disappeared one by one until they were down to five. Those five laid about 150 eggs. I incubated 75 in an electric incubator, and one hen incubated the rest. None of mine hatched, she managed 5 live keets. While they brooded and grew, three more adults went missing. About a month after release, the original parents and one of the new batch disappeared all in one day. Since then we’ve been holding at the four “babies” for several months. They never learned to be good tame guineas, but they also never learned to venture far from home. We will be adding to their numbers and possibly extending the color range this summer. In the past we bought them from Cackle Hatchery, which gave us good service and answered our email questions thoroughly and promptly. There is an excellent site for learning about guineas and the message board is an invaluable tool for those who raise them.

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Barn Moggies:

Long before we had plentiful feed and grain on the farm, we had mice. Again, I dislike the idea of poisons, so we are attempting to use nature’s solution to rodent overpopulation.

This is “Bobble”. Whose nickname is Bob, but we mostly do call him Bobble. He knows his name, too.

Here he is with his baby sister, “Loop”. She’s small and she’s quick and she’s black. To sum up, she’s hard to photograph.

They are brother and sister from the same parents but different litters. I got them from a very nice lady in my SnB who feeds loads of feral cats. Bobble was very protective of his younger siblings and it turned out to be what got him captured alongside Loop. We caught her, put her in a carrier in the garage and he came in to attempt a rescue. He was busy pulling at the front door of the cage trying to get it to open when we closed the garage door. After that we spent an hour trying to catch him. He was super feral. Obviously I got him [In a shoebox! I have a history with feral cats.] He still is very loving and protective of her even though she exerts herself in his daily torture. So anyway, they came home and got locked in my potting shed so I could take them to the vet. Miraculously they were free of deadly diseases, though they both had upper respiratory infections. I decided to keep them in the potting shed so I could medicate and so I could more easily catch Bobble for his bobble-bobbing. After a few weeks of that he was neutered and they were both released. They had enough time in the shed to consider it home, so they stick around. Their mother knew which side her bread was buttered on and it’s knowledge she passed to her progeny. They follow every step I take, winding between my feet as I feed the livestock; sleep in the sun on the back porch during the day; know exactly when 5:00 rolls around [feeding time] and think that “GUINEA GUINEA GUINEA!! Means “kitty kitty kitty”. So I usually tell them they’re the barn moggies. They’ve decided to respond to any verbalizations I make just in case. When it got cold, I bought them fleece blankets and sheepskin kitty cubes and a space heater. They eat canned food every day and each morning they get 2 “cookies” each. And Jared modified the potting shed so they could come and go by propping the window open safely and adding steps for their comfort and convenience. Barn cats, my ass.

For all my trouble they have presented me with a sum total of ZERO rodent carcasses. But Bobble sometimes lets me pat him, so I guess I should feel grateful.

EDIT: In the summer of 07, this little rat fink interloped her way onto the farm:

That’s Tangle. She was an ugly little mess of a feral kitten. Yeah, yeah, I know you’re going “aww she’s cute.” but the lighting flattered her, she was ugly. She got cuter with age, but she is only just beginning to allow patting and then only by Jared.
To give credit where credit is due, she catches a lot of things. Also, I didn’t get her spayed until she was about 9 months old and she managed to not get knocked up in all that time, so she’s part awesome, at least. They are all now catching the hell out of our rodents. There’s part of a rabbit on my back porch as I type this. What? That little bugger was going to eat my garden! Those cats were doing their jobs.

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Llamas:

As I’m finally getting around to writing this, the llamas have been here a year and we now have new, additional llamas. We needed livestock guardians. We have a lot of coyotes. We also have really good (expensive) fencing, but you need some extra insurance. Many people get dogs, especially Great Pyrennes. While I have nothing against dogs, big white hairy ones that live outdoors in red clay and tropical climates really don’t appeal to me. I was convinced we needed some Anatolian Shepherds, but they aren’t all that easy to get here. Jared wanted llamas. We did some research on both sides of the llama argument and I can’t remember exactly what the convincing factor was, but you know-LLAMAS! They’re so cool! They also have usable fiber and eat the same stuff and get the same medications and vaccinations as the rest of the fiber herd. We read that many llamas will bond with their cross-species herd and that they hate dogs and dog-like creatures, can see for amazingly long distances and were relatively easy to handle. At SAFF we had met some llamas, and saw firsthand how they reacted when some livestock exhibitor was walking his sheltie to his trailer. Every llama in the vicinity came hurtling out to the edges of their pens to glare at it. They definitely seemed wary of canines. It was also at SAFF that I learned we had a llama breeder right in our town. They were busy showing at the time and I couldn’t talk to them, but I wrote down their information and a few weeks later, we’d decided we were going to get a llama. We called these people up, went to have a look and talked with them for a bit. They were adamant that we have at least two llamas. We pointed out that most of what we’d read indicated that single llamas bonded with their flocks rather than with the other llamas, but they were insistent. We went home to think about it. For our twelfth anniversary, we got each other this:

“Ouchita”

“Tabakka B. Brown”

Both are former show llamas. We didn’t know how they would perform as guards, but we sure were thrilled to have them. They spent a lot of time vying for dominance, and being in the pasture closest to the road, we had a lot of traffic stoppage while neighbors watched them neck wrestle and scream. (Yes, they have a terrifying alarm call, but they don’t use it much usually) Within a day or two, they’d discovered that as they approached the goats, the goats moved away. Reactionary targets! They spent some time moving the goats back and forth, back and forth across the pastures. They thought it was great fun. When the goats stopped being intimidated, the llamas turned to wrestling and humping for their fun. Eventually, Bakka began to hump Ouachita somewhat relentlessly. He then started to chase down and hump the goats. We made the decision to geld them to avoid injury. Although after a few months, Bakka calmed down, Ouachita has never forgiven him for his abuse. Bakka loves Ouachita, but Ouachita gets irritated by the mere sight of Bakka. One day we brought in a ewe with her two lambs. The llamas were still separated as the testosterone slowly exited Bakka’s body and only Ouachita had access to the sheep. Immediately after they were unloaded, he sniffed them and began to follow them around. A few minutes later, we allowed Bakka in with them and Ouachita stood between him and the sheep and asserted himself. THESE ARE MINE, BACK OFF, BUDDY. Ouachita was an immediate and natural shepherd. He spends nearly all of his time with the sheep. He is gentle and concerned. He even saved the male lamb the very next day after their arrival. Jared and I were doing our taxes and we’d take breaks and go look out the window at the new sheep, but once we didn’t see one of the lambs. We noticed Ouachita lying in what was a strange place to see him lie, looking at something. It caught our attention and we went outside. It appeared that he was lying with a lamb. Knowing a Kodak moment when we see one, we went outside to take a picture. Only, the lamb was stiff and convulsing. It turns out he had tetanus, and if not for Ouachita, we would not have known. It’s rare to save an animal from tetanus, but we did, thanks to him. Bakka is no slouch, either. He once jumped a 4′ fence chasing down a coyote. I wasn’t home at the time and when I did get home-after dark-and he wasn’t there, I flipped out. Luckily for us, he jumped into a neighboring cow pasture and was not only contained, but frantic to get back home. He hasn’t jumped a fence since, but if they so much as see a little chihuahua at a neighboring farm, they both go running for the fence. We’ve been very happy with them as guardians and they have been loads of fun to have, as well as providing a spectacle for the neighborhood. Having two has in no way lessened their ability or desire to guard the pastures and now that we have had them for awhile, we are grateful that we were not permitted to buy only one as it would have been detrimental to their overall happiness in life. We love them so much that we added two more just a couple weeks ago.

“Mr. Showbiz” (Biz)

“Luckenbach Starr” (Lukas)

They’re little guys. Lukas is a year old and Biz is 9 months. They gave up potentially glamorous careers in the show rings and rebelled against their famous lineages to come guard sheep and goats. They are sweet and friendly and so cute you want to smooch them. Bakka and Ouachita haven’t been very kind to them, so currently they’re guarding Kitty and Carlina and learning to roll in the mud while they grow to a more defensible size. They also neck wrestle for passers-by and the goats aren’t the least bit intimidated by them. They have yet to be tested as guards, and we hope they remain so for awhile.

Here’s a video of Ouachita humming. This isn’t a noise they make often; the video was taken within the first few days of their arrival and it’s usually an indication of worry or anxiety. It makes me sad to hear it, but so many people are interested in it, that I thought I’d put this here for curiosity’s sake.

Another question we get about the llamas is “Do they spit?”. The answer is yes, they do sometimes spit. Our llamas do it rarely, and only to each other and almost exclusively over food. I did get spit on once by Lukas when they got here because we were feeding treats and Lukas didn’t think that Biz ought to have any. Since I was the one holding the treats, I was in the middle and I got nailed. Luckily for me it was all crunched up peppermint treats and not the angry green goo they get when they’re really having a fight.

One more video for you, of Llama Joy. Running around and pronking (pronking is when they get all four feet off the ground in traditional cartoon format) is something that happens mostly in the evenings, but also at other times of happiness. This is when they were let out on a big new pasture for the first time. Spring and sunshine were in the air.

Read more about guardian llamas here or here. And visit llama.org for general information on llamas or information on llama fiber. Also, I’d like to say thank you to Little Brook Farms, who not only provided us with our wonderful boys, but have been helpful and kind and generous with their knowledge and services. They are excellent people as well as llama breeders.
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Sheep: Corriedale crosses and Shetlands coming next.