Neighbours

A good neighbour is better than a far away friend is a Dutch saying. We have wonderful neighbours! Look at the path they made to connect their farm with ours. No cold feet anymore to get to their place.

sheep and goat webinars

We are again following a series of webinars from the University of Maryland - this Winter they are on Sheep and Goat Nutrition and Feeding. They are free and everybody can join... you only have to get up at 1.30 am once a week (at least when you live in Slovakia).
We are feeding alfalfa silage, grass hay and a commercial sheep concentrate (mainly cereals and a mineral mixture). We don't exactly now how balanced this is since our silage and hay hasn't been analyzed. However both goats and sheep are doing very well - growing bigger every week..... baby-watch has started - three weeks to go!




Our sheep eating alfalfa silage - they love it!

Winter (walk)

A month ........ or two

The ewe on the left picture has one month to go (look how her lovely udder starts to develop) and the one on the right picture has another two months to go - tiny udder but what a big belly! Will she get two babies?

Big friend

This spring we bought a goat kid to get some better bloodlines into our herd. She turned out to be the smallest goat of our herd so not (yet) a real improvement. Being at the bottom of the social order she has become close friends with the biggest guy of the flock - our horse Trol. She sleeps next to him and eats the hay out of his mouth. Interesting since Trol is not at all such a big friend to most of our goats.

not a sausage?

Without pigs of our own we risked not to have sausages this winter. When our friends had a half one for sale this 'problem' got solved. Lost of lovely Slovak klobassa are drying on our attic.

Big (before: very small)

Big ladies with big bellies bearing big promises for the future. They have another 6-12 weeks to go before giving birth.

And on the left a picture how they looked just nine months ago (!) when they arrived on our farm.

New housing

This is finally a picture of our sheep stable. We put a new part in front of the old one (first picture) so it is very deep and spacious. But since plenty of exercise is good for pregnant ladies they can also walk outside during the day.

Modern or ancient times?

We bought a milking machine! Compared with hand milking we are now very modern! However some of you might remember old times when most cows were milked with this type of bucket milking machines.

Getting ready

We are preparing for lambing season. Modular pens are build to be able to separate new born lambs and moms during their first days. Now the first two are occupied by our (unhappy) ram so that his girls get some rest and peace during their last weeks of gestation.
Yesterday I made a 'due date' calender for the sheep and goats. most of them will give birth in March but first are expected around the 19th of February.

Winter