Yes, our Jersey girl finally has a name – Holly. She and Bangers have settled into life on our farm really well and have quickly accepted the routine I have started for milking in the morning and ‘getting to know you’ sessions during the day. I am just so thrilled that this cow is such [...]
Continue reading about Our first week with Holly and Bangers
Our jersey girl has settled in really well, is already gaining back some weight and is proving to be a real pleasure to work with. When I I have gone out to milk her the past three mornings, she has already been up near the cattle yard where I lock up Bangers overnight. I push [...]
After what seems like forever waiting to find one, we went and picked up our new house cow today. She is purebred Jersey, will be four years old in October and has a five month old steer calf at foot – he has tentatively been named “Bangers” as in ‘bangers and mash’ to go with [...]
While much of Australia over the Summer and early Autumn periods have been getting quite a bit, or even excessive rain, much of the South West of Western Australia has been getting very little. Our own location here at Eagleburra has only had 29.1mm with the biggest fall on a single day being 4.6mm. The [...]
Continue reading about April 2012 | Some rain would be nice….
Ducks are another addition that we have wanted to make to the farm for ages, but I have been unable to find any reasonably local until now. I was extremely fortuante to get these five young adults, a pekin drake, three pekin hens and one khaki campbell duck. They are just finishing their moult and [...]
The lovely Josie has gone home today, but by the time she left she was rapidly drowning us in her yummy milk. Because I am greedy and don’t want to share it with the dogs or chickens, I’m planning on making some clabber and using it as a cheese starter (not sure which one I’m [...]
Thanks to all the glorious cream that Josie is giving us on her milk, I thought it would be a great idea to have a go at making butter. As I don’t have any cheese cultures at the moment, making cultured butter to get cultured buttermilk seemed like a good way to go. The process [...]
I am babysitting my friends jersey house cow for a week while she is interstate. She is a lovely old girl (Josie the cow, not my friend;) with a dropped rumen, a broken tail, a blind quarter, an uneve udder, a dicky hip that makes her shuffle when she walks and a mumified fetus inside [...]
Even though I knew that is what they were bred to do, the meat chicks grew at an amazing rate that was only eclipsed by the amount of food they consumed and the amount of very stinky poop they created! I definitely would not get more than 12 in the future, given the size of [...]
Continue reading about Success and not so much Success with Meat Chicks
For the time being at least. I have perservered for over four months training Charlotte the dexter to be a house cow, but its finally time to give it in and concede that she is just not cut out to be a house cow. I have learnt so much from her (such as cows can [...]