March Chicken & Lamb Babies At The Farm!

Starting A Flock With Baby Chicks

I don’t think the incubator turned off for three full months! It takes 21 days to incubate a chicken egg and hatch a baby chick (chicken). We like to start our incubator early and let the temperature acclimate before we add and chicken eggs. I heard that chicken eggs with a round bottom hatch female chicks and that chicken eggs with a pointy bottom hatch roosters. I don’t care if this is an old wives tale or not. If I could increase my odd of more female, egg laying chickens, I was checking all 48 of those chicken eggs for rounded bottoms before they went into the incubator. I also did a video on TikTok about this and the comments are all over the map. Some swear this works and some swear this is baloney. Watch my video here and make sure to subscribe!

We hatched at least 100 chicks! I kept the majority of them but I also sold some. I’m hoping a lot of new egg laying chickens to add to my free range flock. My new chickens are a barnyard mix. I have chickens lay brown eggs, blue eggs, white eggs and green/olive eggs. My roosters are Black Australorp, Barred Rock, Black Copper Maran, and Easter Eggers. I just love to watch them grow.

 

Cute Lambs

As if baby chicks aren’t cute enough, it is Spring on the farm which means even cuter baby lambs! Last year the majority of the lambs were boys (ram lamb) but this year we had mostly girls! We had seven girl lamb and four boys. We have East Friesian Dairy Sheep. So the more girls we have, the more sheep milk to make sheep cheese and other cultured goodies. My best milker Chantel had a baby girl lamb, FeFe. Then Tootsie, had twin girl lambs (Chantel’s granddaughters)! We will have lots of nutritious raw sheep milk plus it’s like a cuteness overload!

Training Pineywoods Cattle

Ever since I learned that sheep can pull carts, I’ve wanted to train my sheep to pull me around. Can’t you see it?! I’ve also learned that sheep are a more delicate animal and I’m not sure if I want to burden them with the extra stress of pulling. Enter the Pineywoods Cattle (que the music). Pineywoods Cattle are one of the original breeds of cattle brought to America by the Spanish in the 1500’s.

 

Pineywoods cattle are a tri-purpose animal. Meaning they are good for milk, meat, and oxen! Once I learned that Pineywoods could survive and even thrive on poor forage, I was sold. We bought clear cut land that did not have pasture grass. It had brambles. Pineywoods are the goats of the cattle world. This was definitely the right breed for the land we were working with. It took me a few months to get comfortable working with a cow with horns. We previously had Dexter Cattle and I loved them but the Pineywoods have the most amazing personality. They are described as sleepy. I interpret this as they are very gentle, docile, and surprisingly friendly with little or no training. I started feeding them treats through a rope so they would be comfortable with putting their nose through something. Then I started combing them so they would get used to being touched. Then I bought two rope harnesses. Shockingly, Daisy Rose let me put the harness on her and immediately start waling her around the pasture. Heather took multiple attempts over the week but they all caught on much quicker then I ever could have imagined. I am currently reading a book on how to train oxen. It appears that I will have an animal to pull me around in a cart after all! Watch my Youtube of me halter training my cows here and make sure to subscribe.

Propagating Blueberry Plants

Don’t throw away the limbs after you prune. Many of these dormant branches can be used to propagate new free plants. Watch me take a blueberry branch to a little flowering twig on my Instagram channel and make sure to subscribe!

• How to use pruned blueberry branches to propagate new plants: watch here
• When to put blueberry cuttings into sand to form roots: watch here
• Don’t let new blueberry plants blossom: watch here

Purchase Free Range Chicken Eggs in Lawrenceburg:

• Dunkin’s Market
• Ray’s Produce & More
• Self’s Market & they use Healing Homestead eggs for their breakfast!

Purchase Grass Fed Lamb at Healing Homestead