Return to the Top Paddock

Well, I’ve started on the top paddock and I now know more precisely, that it is a big job. I have to remove the existing fencing and replace it with goat proof fence. At the moment it is about 3 feet high three strand fencing. The fence between our property and the vineyard next door also has two strands of barbed wire. The fence between our property and the property above us is sadly neglected. Overall, there is some 313m of fence line to be replaced. I will be placing 2.4m Koppers (pine logs) in every 3m and they will be set 60cm down into the ground so that they are harder to push over. At @$15 per fence post, that’s 103 x $15 = $1,575. Then the fence wire will cost another $500. I want to run two strands of electric fencing along the fence (one at about 30cm off the ground and another at the top of the fence). The solar power supply for the electric fence is about $300 and then there’s the pig-tails and electric fence line coming to about another $300. So re-fencing the paddock will cost me just shy of $3,000.

The field is currently divided into three. The smallest triangle doesn’t have any gates or easy access … you have to climb the fence to get into it! The dividing fences have been brought down already and I just need to remove the rabbit-proof wire and some star-posts. The rest of it will be done is stages so that I don’t disturb my neighbours too much. I need to start with the leftmost fence first, as that’s the one between us and the vineyard. I don’t want their cattle to run rampant through my top paddock (not a euphemism). Then I’ll do the top fence-line and finally, our internal fence-line.

What was the chook coop in this field will be extended and converted into a goat barn. There is an enormous amount of crap in this field from years of being left (bits of iron; bits of fencing; broken concrete slab from some previous farming enterprise) it all has to go. I will need to hire a bobcat for a couple of weekends to clear all of this crap out … that’s going to be fun!

Fortunately, there is a large pit next to my workshop that used to be a rifle range; this is my readymade free and easy access garbage tip. This will be nicely filled up with rubble and detritus (Woohoo!)

Goat Feeder

I wanted to build a feeder for the goats so that I could put cut grass and grass hay into the field for them to eat whenever they wanted it. Originally, I was going to build a feeder shaped like a covered arbour (refer to last month’s design). However, I had some old scrap welded mesh that had 200 x 150mm openings (the sort that is used to reinforce concrete slabs) and I saw a simple feeder design in the “Raising Goats for Dummies” by Cheryl K. Smith book, so I figured that it would be an excellent short term solution.

Taking bolt cutters and angle grinder in hand, I rolled the mesh into a cylinder and closed it off with 4mm white wire. Then I trimmed any bits of metal that could cause the goats any injury and fixed it to the fence of the kid field with more wire. The idea here is that if I fixed the overlapped part of the feeder to the fence so that there would be little or no exposure of sharp bits for the goats to hurt themselves on. Also, the feeder is almost as tall as the fence, so it wouldn’t be a ladder for the goats to scale the fence.

With the feeder attached to the fence, the next task was to cut some grass and fill the feeder. The goats wanted to help me at every step of the operation; they were particularly keen on helping me to fix the feeder to the fence. But then they got distracted by the joys of their next favourite game “Jump in the wheelbarrow while someone is trying to push it along”. This is a fun game that all the family can play … but only the goats enjoy.

Over spring and early summer, the grass on our property has grown prodigiously. Mostly, the grass is only up to my waist. But some remote parts of the property, the grass is over my head! I use a brushcutter to cut the grass for the goats because the lawnmower and ride-on mower both leave petrol residue on the grass, and that isn’t so good for goats.

The feeder takes about three wheelbarrow loads of grass hay and this provides the goats with plenty of good fodder. The first time it was loaded, the goats ate the lot in just 5 days. I scaled back the load and they goats scaled back their enthusiasm for the grass hay. So we have reached a happy medium. Fat contented goats, grass getting trimmed, and lots of cud chewing going on well into the night.

Holly is a big fan of the feeder … in fact; Holly is a big fan of food. Millie values her interaction with us more than she does with food. Holly is often too distracted with eating to be bothering with coming when called or coming over for a pat.

I have left some of the garden in long grass so that I can give the goats a plentiful supply of grass hay.

I read in one of my goat books (I can’t remember which one) that said that grass hay looses 60% of its nutrients when left on the ground and a further 15% when exposed to rain. So I need to re-top the feeder after it has rained and make sure that there is always a good layer of old hay on the bottom. Not ideal, but it seems to be very satisfactory for the goats.

Goats need to have on-demand access to food like grass hay. Grass hay is full of fibre and, in plentiful supply, provides a good basis for their diet. The girls also get goat pellets laced with chopped raw carrots for breakfast and dinner (about 2 cups for each goat of pellets and one carrot – per feed).

We have sown some pasture mix in the kidding field (oat, alfalfa, and rye grass) so that they have some good conditioning forage in their paddock.

Goat News

The goats are doing very well and they are growing nicely. I’ve noticed, however, that Millie has a scur on her head where the disbudding didn’t remove all of the horn cells from the horn bud. I’m not sure what to do about this yet. She possibly needs to take a trip to the vet to sort this out before she gets much older.

She still loves playing on the Goat Ziggurat.

We take the goats up into the top paddock for a browse every couple of days and they love roaming around and biting the tops off all of the weeds up there. They never venture too far from us though and, if they do, they come bounding back to us for a quick pat.

Millie especially loves lying on me and having her neck and head rubbed.

We went to the stock-feed shop the other day (Rural Solutions in Sorell) and bought some shampoo and a slicker to clean them down because they were getting a little dusty. I thought that I would have a bit of a job on my hands to clean them, but once they were wet, they really seemed to enjoy the shampoo treatment and rub-down. Now I have a pair of shiny goats!

Chicken Run is Complete

Last month I told you about the completion of the Chicken Run and Chicken Coop. Well, I didn’t include any pictures of these, so here are some images of the coop and run for your enjoyment.

As you can see, the run now has bird netting over the top and is completely enclosed. This keeps those nasty hawks and eagles away!

The Chicken Coop was finished last month as well … but due to the timing, I also didn’t get photos of that for the newsletter. Here are some photos of the finished product.

The chicks from our previous hatching are enjoying the coop and scratching around in the bottom for food.

The nesting box comes out from the main coop so that there is lots of space inside the coop for the chickens to do their chicken things.

The roof is simply some roofing iron that has been screwed down to the roof trusses. I have left a gap of 10cm between the top of the panelling of the coop and the roof to provide plenty of ventilation.

My lovely wife provided roosting perches from some pieces of old cherry tree that we cut up.

Chicken Bread

When we had our ISA Browns, we noticed that the egg shells were very poor. I did some research and discovered that the most likely reason that the egg shells were either very thin, or in some cases absent, was that the chickens weren’t getting enough calcium in their diet.

We were merrily throwing the egg shells from the eggs that we ate, into the compost heap. Enriching the humus in our compost with lots of lovely … calcium. Well, enough of that nonsense I thought. More research into calcium deficiency taught me that when chickens don’t have enough readily available calcium in their bloodstream, they strip calcium from their bones. That’s bad.

So, how to fix this problem? My wife and I decided that the best thing for it was to feed the chickens their egg shells. The egg shells need to be cooked so that the calcium is more easily digestible. We could pelletize the egg shells, but that would not be either easy or cheap. It was my wife’s idea to make the chooks their own loaf of bread, cut it into slices and then feed it to them every morning with their feed and table scraps.

Initially, we cooked the egg shell in the microwave for about a minute on high and then crushed it with the kitchen mallet, dropped the crushed egg shell into the bread mix and cook. Hey presto, easy chicken bread.

Later we decided to add other “treats” and dietary supplements to the chicken bread:

· Linseed – for Omega-3. Honestly, I can’t prove that the Omega-3 passes through the chickens gut and benefits us via the egg at all, but the chickens like it;

· Soy Grits – vitamin B2. Not a very high dose of B2 (at around .6mg/100g) but very high in the products that we have available that are not meat based; and

· Oats – “treat” and good for fattening the chooks. We are less interested in fattening the chickens because we don’t eat them, we will probably change that policy with excess cocks, but our hens are safe from the oven;

With our White Leghorns, we have one hen who has curled toe. Research indicates that this is most likely caused by one of two things:

1. Too high a temperature in the incubator in the last week of gestation; or

2. Vitamin B2 deficiency in the mother hen.

Absolutely nothing that I can do about either of those for this hen, she does not suffer and is in no pain from the malformed foot. So nothing to do really. However, when two of our chicks had curled toe as well, it became more of a task for us to improve the chicken’s vitamin B2 intake. Enter the most amazing source of vitamin B complex on the planet … vegemite.

Vegemite is now added to the bread mix so that the chooks are well dosed up on their vitamin B. The next clutch of chickens did not get toe-curl so, either the level of vitamin B is sufficient, or none of her eggs hatched (we had a very high mortality rate with our last hatching, approx. 54%).

Preparing the Top Paddock

Our top paddock is a bit of a mess. There are old outbuildings, concrete slabs, mangled and disintegrating bits of old fencing, rusting detritus and unidentifiable ... stuff. Also, the top paddock is weed city; there are canola, thistle and blackberry. On top of all of that, the top paddock is sloped on too steep an angle for me to apply ride-on-mower mediation .

At one time, the top paddock was used to breed rabbits (I think for the pet rabbit trade, but it may have been for the meat trade). This was a venture of a previous owner of our property and, from what I understand from our neighbours, the venture failed when wild rabbits got in.

In the middle of the paddock, there is an old (and serviceable) chook shed that is about 3x3m on a concrete base. I plan to extend the chook shed to make feed stalls and a milking stall as well as to generally make the shed more liveable for goats. This will be the main goat living area. Around the goat shed I’ll put in a corral so that I can contain the goats when doing things like milking, drenching and other broad flock tasks.

I’ll be hiring a bobcat to do some clearing and landscaping, but that will probably be in December.

Electric Fence in the Goat Field

Well, the long term goal for the goat field is to be used as a field for kids and does in kid. The goat field has proven to be quite good in terms of proximity to the house to make it easy for us to access and in terms of its security and also in terms of the available forage.

To make this field more secure (as the fences are a little low) is to install solar powered electric fencing. This will help to teach the goats about “boundaries”. Or at least, that’s the plan!

Additions to the Flock

This month we have been cooking a new brood of chicks in the incubator. Our reconditioned auto-turn incubator gave up the ghost and I’m going to have to either get it repaired properly, or get another one. Our stop-gap incubator is a manual one. The manual incubator is pretty good, it does everything that you want an incubator to do ... it keeps eggs at a constant temperature and you manually manage the humidity and egg turning.

About half of our previous brood of chicks had curly toe. This is a condition where the toes of one or both feet are bent and will not straighten. Having researched this a little (seriously ... only a little) it is likely to have been caused by one of three things:

1. Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) deficiency in the hen (pretty likely as the hen has curly toe herself);

2. Temperature in the incubator too high (must be maintained at <= 37.5);

3. Foot bent in egg (I find this unlikely ... but then what do I know?)

At first I thought that I’d have to cull the chicks with the condition, but according to my reading, the condition does not cause the bird any pain, nor does it offer a health threat to the bird or to us. So, I am very happy to report, the chicks will not need to be culled. I accept that I will need to cull chickens in the future, but I am adamant that I will only do this when necessary.

I’ve looked into different ways of delivering higher levels of riboflavin to my chooks so that the reoccurrence of curly toe is less likely. There are a couple of food-stuffs that you can use with your chooks to increase the intake of riboflavin. Things such as raw soy flour, calves liver, etc. can be used. These carry a modest level of riboflavin and you could try them. I don’t like the idea of feeding my chooks calf liver, personally. Alternatively, a good source of riboflavin and other B-complex vitamins is Vegemite, good ole Aussie Vegemite. I hope it puts a rose in my chicken’s cheeks!

All that said, my current clutch of eggs in the incubator and the chicks that are now more than 8 weeks old are not going to benefit from their mothers getting riboflavin.

For the chicks that are already out of the brooder, there’s nothing that I can do. They will have to live with their curly toes and I will have to make sure that they are happy and comfortable.

For the chicks that are in the incubator, I will need to try to reset the feet of any of the chicks with curly toe. This is done, apparently, by splinting the toe to a light and strong flat “shoe” using surgical tape. The shoe should remain on the toe(s) for about 3 weeks after which time the toe should have resumed its natural shape.

There are a dozen eggs in the incubator at the moment:

Date Laid	# Eggs	Stop Rotating	Hatch Date	# Hatched
26/10	3	13/11	16/11	2 (died)
27/10	1	14/11	17/11	1
28/10	3	15/11	18/11
29/10	3	16/11	19/11
30/10	2	17/11	20/11

I will update this table throughout the hatching period to get an idea of my hatching success.

The eggs from the 26^th have not had any success. Two of these eggs hatched and the chicks died within 18 hours of hatching. One chick did not hatch, dying in the egg. I do not know what happened with these eggs, other than incubator failure in that period. Possibly, the incubator had not run in sufficiently when the first eggs were put in. I am heartened that the egg from the 17^th hatched (although it hatched late). This chick is quite hale and hearty.

The chicks have taken longer than the usual 21 days to hatch. I suspect that this is due to a combination of things. The failure of the auto-turn incubator to turn would have partially influenced this, but I think that the temperature in the incubator was a bit low. I also suspect that the hardness of the egg-shells may be causing my chicks some jip as well.

Completion of the New Chicken Run and Chicken Coop

Well, the chicken run and coop have been a bit of a labour of Heracles. I completed the bottom part of the run early in the month (welded square tubing between the uprights, painted it to make it a bit more rust resistant and finally attached the steel panelling).

Next, the chicken wire went around the run. This was a pretty easy job. I simply drilled through the upright posts and ran 5mm white wire cross supports around the run. The chicken wire was then hung from the cross supporting white wire and then fixed in place between the steel panelling and the steel tube to make it strong and secure.

My lovely wife bought a 20 x 5 m nylon bird net and set about making it into a 10 x 10 m net (lots of hand stitching and then by running a nylon cord to bind the two halves together). The bird net will be secured over the top of the chicken run and will be supported clipping it to more 5mm white wire supporting lines. We get lots of hawks and eagles in our little valley and I’m not terribly interested in feeding them my flock!

The coop has been constructed from recycled hardwood framing timber and 12mm exterior plywood. This has been a bit of a slog too as I’ve been suffering from injuries and various agues lately. Building and manhandling the panels have proven to be a bit of an overextension. I’d recommend getting at least one other friend to help you.

The panels for the coop were made outside of the chicken run and then carried inside. This is because there is much more room outside the chicken run to be operating the power tools and because the doorway into the chicken run is too narrow to carry the completed coop in (I’m glad I thought of that beforehand!).

Anyway, the upshot is that, the chicken run and coop should be ready for the foul inmates by the weekend of the 21^st of November. This (happily) coincides with the current clutch of chicks moving out of the brooder in time for the next (and final clutch for this season) of chicks to move in.

Goat News

Well, Holly and Millie are happy little does. I have been looking into training the goats so that they are easier to manage for the girls and also because I’m more than a little interested in the use of goats throughout history.

Goats were mankind’s first domesticated animal used for the provision of meat, fibre, milk, bone, sinew and also as a beast of burden. The role of goats as a cart animal only dwindled with the general availability of horses. Goats were used to pull ploughs, harrows, carts, buggies and any number of other draught implements of a weight up to 1.5 times the animal’s body weight. Additionally, goats were used as pack animals able to carry weights up to half their body weight (some sources indicate more). There are two great websites that I have found for people interested in these activities:

The UK Harness Goat Society (http://www.harnessgoats.co.uk/index.html) is a great website for information on goats as draught animals; and

The North American Pack Goat Association (http://www.napga.org/default.asp) is a great resource for information on goats as pack animals.

There are great photos on the site (under the members’ gallery) of goats on pack trails through some absolutely stunning American wilderness trails.

I have made myself a driving bridle for my goats and I am in the process of training my goats to wear it. Basically, this involves having the goats wear the bridle for brief periods while eating (and otherwise distracted) and giving them plenty of positive reinforcement.

I have ordered a ground driving rig (driving halter, long lines, and belly strap) so that I can train the goats with more tack and so that they get more experience with the sort of harness that they would wear for most types of ground driving equipment. More on that in future!

I am glad to say that the goats are now fully weaned. No more making up formula, yay! They are growing quickly and love long walks in the top paddock where they get to forage to their hearts content.

Another Welcome addition to the farm

My lovely wife and I have been talking about getting a new dog. Our dog, Salome, is a lovely Staffordshire bull terrier.

When Sally was only little, she was a wild and excitable dog. We named her Salome, because we believed that she would dance for the head of John the Baptist. I know ... probably bad taste, but it is a name that really suits her well.

She is a great dog, but a bit hair brained. When we open the gate, Sally will take to the hills without a care in the world. Several times in her life so far, Sally has run away from home and she has always turned up at the council dog lock-up. Sally is now nine years old, but she still has lots of years left in her (hopefully).

Sally isn’t a working dog ... she is only a pet. Not that there is anything wrong with that, she is really just not a working dog. We love her lots, but she is a dim thing.

Our newest Green Home Farm animal arrived on the 11^th of October is a pure bred Cardigan Corgi by the litter name of “Mighty Mouse” we very quickly realised that this was not the name that would do well for us. Our choice is much more simply ... Max.

Max is just twelve weeks old and is one hundred percent boy dog. Aww but he is so cute! It’s a good thing that our two dogs don’t get along together!

Goat toys

My lovely wife had a brilliant idea. Now when I hear the words “I’ve been thinking” issue from the mouth of one of the women in my life ... I run for cover. Usually, no good can come of hearing those words. I will also point out that what usually follows that particular conversational opening gambit is a good idea. In this instance, my wife’s excellent idea was to build something that the goats can climb on.

We had some old unused cement bricks on the property that were simply being used as free accommodation for scorpions. These bricks were simply stacked to make a series of steps (kind of like a ziggurat), that the goats can climb and jump off. This turned out to be an immensely pleasurable experience for the goats. We had two little kids who really wanted to help (by climbing on each brick as it was placed and jumping into and out of the wheelbarrow). When it was finished, the goats got stuck in and tried out their new toy.

It seems that the ziggurat is also a good way for the goats to wear their hooves down ... but not enough that they don’t need to be trimmed!

Later on the weekend, we went and picked up three large tree stumps and arranged them in the paddock so that the girls could jump from the ziggurat to the stumps.

As soon as the stumps were in place, the goats started climbing on them and jumping from stump to stump. I also noticed that they like kneeling on the stumps and nibbling the edges as well as using the stumps as a great way to get to those itchy spots on their heads that they just can’t reach.

Upgrading the Goats Shelter

The original goat shelter worked OK as it was ... but unfortunately, it quickly became draughty when the fence palings shrank when exposed to the weather. To fix this, I wrapped the shelter with an unused nylon tarpaulin and nailed some more palings around the edges (so that little goats couldn’t easily get to the tarp).

This has now made the shelter very weather proof. The shelter was also moved so that it faced north-east and it is now protected by a very large wattle tree.

Happy goats indeed!

My lovely wife picked up a couple of sections of a discarded picket fence, with the idea that this would protect our lovely little sugar gum sapling that shares the field with the goatlings. I diligently cut the picket fence into three sections and bound it together around the sapling so that little goat teeth couldn’t get to it. O contraire! The little servants of evil knocked the fence over and had a jolly good time reducing the sugar gum to a sugar twig. With the picket fence re-erected and reinforced, we are hoping that there is still enough life left in the root stock and young cambium material left to photosynthesize.

New Chicken Run

The new chicken run is progressing nicely. I have finished welding the structure together and the last of the colour bond steel sheets are fitted to the outside of the run. Over the past 3 weekends, I finished the run with colour bond and chicken wire. It looks pretty good so far!

My lovely wife and daughters went through the run and cleared out the last remaining bits of old swimming pool from the ground and I’ll be making another run up to the tip to get rid of it.

I bought some timber from the tip shop to make the new chicken coop. The timber will make the floor and the frame for the structure; I’ll get some external grade plywood to clad the outside. At the same time, I picked up some corrugated iron to make the roof of the coop.

I also fixed the old gate on the chicken run on the 1^st weekend of October. Over time the door had slipped making the door impossible to open. It was out with the angle grinder and welding on a new gate latch onto the gate frame. Now it opens easily.

The chicken run, with its colour bond steel cladding, is now suitable housing for the girls’ pets. “Fluffy” an overstuffed white rabbit; and “Flower girl” a similarly overstuffed white guinea pig. We made some shelters for the pets in the chicken run with some corrugated tin and old logs. This should give them somewhere to escape to should they be threatened by the birds of prey that live around our little valley.

The lovely wife also picked up four new apple trees from the tip shop (at $2 each): two royal gala, and two ruby red. These new apple trees have been planted in the chicken run. We are hoping to stick a lemon or a dual graft lemon and lime in the middle of the chicken run. The idea behind planting the fruit trees in the chicken run is two-fold. On the one hand, the chicken run used to be a pool, so water is a possible problem and the trees will help abate the “swamp” effect. On the other hand, citrus trees are gross feeders, and with the permanent supply of chook poo that’s exactly what it’ll get.

Chickens Growing Apace

The thing that surprises me so much about growing your own chooks ... is that they are not chicks for very long at all. They go from being the lovely little balls of fluff one minute, like the picture above, to being ungainly things half fluff and half feather with long necks. Nevertheless, they are still lovely little things that I am quite attached to. I think that there is one cock and three hens.

The chicks hatched on the 29^th of September. Now it’s only three weeks later and they have turned into half chick half chicken hybrids. They have grown wing feathers and their wings have grown bigger, their tail feathers are starting to grow strongly, their necks have grown longer, their wattles are starting to appear and their eyes have grown bigger.

Three weeks more in the brooder and these chickies will be heading for the new chicken run. Then the next round of chicks will be ready for the brooder.

Ideally, we want to have a dozen hens. Any cocks that we get from our breeding, will be kept with Raj until they are big enough for the pot.

The Incubator is Empty

Now that my latest batch of small yellow bundles of chirpy goodness have hatched, the incubator is almost empty again. I have now got four chicks (three more to hatch) chirping and running around the incubator. They’ll be moved into the brooder box soon so that they can have more room to grow.

This clutch of chicks is the second batch of progeny from my Rhode Island Red rooster and White Leghorn hens. They are very funny little creatures and give us hours of entertainment at night as we wind down from a day of work and watch television.

These little chicks are growing quickly and we will be putting them into the brooder box very soon.

The Army of Chickens is growing and I will soon have a vast horde of chicken minions (not mignon) at my beck and call! Mwahahaha my evil plans to take over the world with my legion of chickens is coming to fruit!

Eh ... not so much.

More Dairy Goat Stuff

Something that I have learned through these early days of goat ownership is that it is a very good idea to become a member of a local group relating to the animal that you are responsible for. The benefit of being a member of such an organisation is that you have ready access to a wealth of knowledge that has been grown over a much longer time than you have. This includes access to information on breeds, value adding the produce of your livestock, access to other breeders and members as well as tools and equipment that you would not normally have access to.

For example, Shelley Johnson provided us with a copy of her booklet “Dairy Goats in the 21^st Century” – taking goat owners from your “L” plates to your “P” plates. This booklet contains an enormous wealth of well considered and accurate information about raising dairy goats in the southern hemisphere.

As I have very little experience with goats and with goat ownership I have found that becoming a member of the Tasmanian branch of the Dairy Goat Society of Australia is very high on my list of priorities.

Sad News

I am sad to report that Molly died. Our lovely little Saanen doe kid died just two days after coming to our farm. After nursing her for a couple of hours in the night to rub her belly and try to help her (I believe that she had bloat), Molly died in the early hours of the morning.

The lovely lady in Burnie who gave us the goats gave me all of the support and advice that I needed to try to help Molly and I have nothing but thanks for her. Her daughters were very upset by the news too (not to mention my daughters).

This left us with a very distraught Millie who was in obvious distress at the absence of her companion. I contacted the President of the Dairy Goat Society of Australia – Tasmanian Branch, who provided me with the name of a dairy goat breeder who was likely to have goats with kid. The breeder (Shelley Johnson) was very helpful indeed, and offered one of her cross British Alpine/Anglo Nubian goats. My wife jumped into the car and raced off to Tinderbox to check out our new goat (Holly).

While I am very sad that we have lost a dear little goat that was only 6 weeks old, I have experienced a wonderful community here in Tasmania. The community of dairy goat owners and breeders in Tasmania is a wonderfully supportive and compassionate group of people. I cannot say enough in praise of this community. I am truly touched by their care and helpfulness.

New Chicken Run

As I mentioned previously, the new chicken run is being made by refurbishing an old disintegrating structure. The structure used to be a wall built around an aboveground swimming pool. When we moved into the property, the pool was gone except for some torn and shredded bits of pool lining. The structure itself consists of two walls of colour bond steel attached to steel posts. The other two boundaries of the structure were simply steel posts set into concrete. Overall, the area is about 6m x 10m.

To turn this into a chicken run, I needed to weld a supporting frame between the steel posts to support a low colour bond wall. The colour bond wall will reduce the wind flow into the chicken run and also reduce the access to the chicken run to unwanted animal visitors such as snakes and rats.

From above the colour bond wall to the top of the steel posts, I’ll be putting up chicken wire. The chicken wire will also cover the top of the run. The entire run will be enclosed to protect the chickens from some of our winged predators (wedge tailed eagles, common brown hawks and other birds of prey).

So far I have almost completed welding the supporting frame in place and I have clad 2/3rds of the colour bond wall in place.

Goat Shelter

The goat shelter that I built is a very simple structure. This was constructed by building a pair of square frames 1.4m x 1.4m from DAR framing timber. The frames were then connected with a further four 1.4m pieces of framing timber. Resulting in the construction of a 1.4 x 1.4 x 1.4 m cube. The roof and floor of the structure were reinforced with an additional piece of framing timber.

A roof was made by nailing fence 1.8m long palings in two overlapping layers. The roof, then, is a fairly waterproof structure that overlaps the shelter by 20 cm all the way around.

Similarly, a single layer of 1.4m fence palings made a floor.

Three walls were enclosed with 1.4m long pieces of fence paling. An area of approximately 15cm was left uncovered underneath the eves of the shelter to provide ventilation.

The shelter was then mounted on about 20cm of cement blocks to keep the timber structure above the ground and (hopefully) reduce the likelihood of rot and extend the life of the shelter.

Our Chooks

We have been keeping chickens at our property since 2006 and I think that chickens are the best and easiest way to introduce anyone to modest self sufficiency. They are great. Food goes in and eggs and compost comes out.
Our first foray into the lives of chook owners was a pair of Old English Game hens, Cleopatra and Boudicca (left). These were very flighty birds who didn’t like us much. Also they weren’t very good layers.

We added four Isa Brown hens to the chook pen and started getting eggs! Woohoo!
The Isa’s were great, except that they were not very robust. I’ve since learned that the main reason that my Isa Browns were not very long lived was that they were “rescued” from a poultry farm where they were given lots of medications to keep them free from disease while they were kept in batteries. This means that when the chickens were liberated, they were more susceptible to diseases because they had never developed a natural immunity to them.
Our Isa Browns laid very large eggs (on average the eggs were 70-90 grams) and we got five eggs every two days.
Cleopatra started to get very broody and would sit on the Isa eggs and not leave the nesting box to eat or drink. To solve this, I attached a food and water dish to the nesting box that she used and made sure that she left the nest at least once a day.
We decided that it was time to get rid of the OEG hens. Our neighbour took Cleopatra to use as a broody hen for his chickens (none of which were broody at all) and Boudicca would be re-homed to the kitchen.
I was quite reluctant to kill and clean a chicken, but I figured that if I was going to keep chickens, then I had to accept that some of these animals were going to end up on my table, and that I would be the one who would have to do it. If I learned how to do this properly, then there was little risk that either I or the chicken in question would suffer.
Suffice to say, that I believe that I can now dispatch a chicken and prepare it for the table without causing the chicken or the rest of the flock any distress.
Our Isa Browns were also very fond of the plum tree (you can see the plum tree in the picture to the right). When the plums were dropping from the tree, the chooks would eat as many as they could stuff into their crop. Unfortunately, these had a tendency to ferment in the birds’ crop. I had one embarrassing experience taking a chook to the vet only to have the vet tell me that the chook was drunk!
The Isa Browns didn’t live very long; unfortunately, they were all gone by the end of 2009. Now I have four White Leghorn hens and a Rhode Island Red rooster, Raj.
The White Leghorns are prolific layers and they seem to be very satisfied with their rooster. Raj is also very happy with the hens. We have produced one clutch of four chicks from the chickens as an experiment in incubation. The chicks from the first clutch are now happily living at a friends’ property in Collinsvale, Tasmania. Another seven eggs are currently in the incubator and are due to hatch this weekend!
To accommodate our growing brood of birds, I am converting a badly neglected outbuilding into a new chicken run for the hens and the old run will be a bachelor pad for the males. Raj will be the only breeding male so we won’t have to worry about testosterone driven fowl murder.
Read the article below about the conversion of the outbuilding.

Introducing Millie and Molly

Millie and Molly are our two new doe kids. We got these two goats from Burnie in Tasmania’s North from a lovely lady who had rescued a number of kids from a friend who normally puts excess goats down.
These two girls will form the core of our goat flock and we are hoping to use the goats for both milk and as a weed eradication approach.
Goats are very fond of new plant growth and have been shown to be very effective for weed eradication as they eat the flowers and fruit of weed plants. This means that the weed lifecycle is stopped before they can spread. Of course, this means that we will still have the old growth weeds in the top paddock, but new weeds will be less prevalent.
Our top paddock has loads of weeds such as wild radish, thistle, blackberry and flat-weeds. I’ve tried using the ride-on mower, but it is on the side of a hill and it’s too steep to do so safely. The weeds and grass need to be kept down as this is a bushfire risk for our property and for our neighbours.

The girls will be just 6 weeks old when we pick them up, so they will need to be inoculated with CD-T to prevent tetanus and overeating disorder. They will also still be on milk formula for a while yet, so I am very grateful that the lady who is giving these girls away is also providing enough formula to get them past weening.
To prepare the property for the goats, I had to make a shelter and I will need to improve the fence in the area where they will be kept. Initially, the goats will be kept in a smallish area of around 360²m. The fence between our property and our neighbour is pretty old and in poor repair, so I need to replace this with dog mesh fence. The length of fence needed is about 32m and I will need to replace the fence posts as well. Fortunately, I have a couple of tree lengths left over from a previous project, so I can cut these to size to make the sturdy fence posts that I will need.
I have also constructed a pretty basic shelter for the goats from pine framing timber and fence palings (see the Goat Shelter section for more information on construction).

Chicks

We have been experimenting with raising our own chicks. The rooster is a Rhode Island Red and the Hens are White Leghorns.

The first out of the shell was this little chick.
Soon we had more …

From the six eggs that we incubated, only these five hatched.

From the five that hatched, three survived. We had a problem and we didn’t know what it was.
After much researching and observation, we discovered that our chickens had Marek’s Disease (a herpes virus that affects chickens). This has a couple of nasty prognosis: Tumours grown on the chicks organs resulting in the chick dying of starvation, alternatively, their sciatic nerve is destroyed and the chick cannot move, also resulting in the chick dying of starvation. There is another alternative … the chick is not affected at all (very uncommon). However, the virus is carried in the dander (the skin and feather flakes that float around in the coop) and affects all of the flock. Typically, if the chicken has not been affected by 8 weeks old, it will not be affected. However, the chicken will carry the disease.
Our only course of action at this stage, is to wait for our flock to die naturally (those that are not affected by Marek’s) and then set up a new coop. The old coop needs to be thoroughly cleaned and left for about a year until the virus has died out in the coop (not guaranteed).
The eggs are unaffected by the virus and it cannot be transferred to humans, so we are just fine to eat the eggs. We’ve taken the decision to keep the chickens alive and let them live out their life as comfortably and happy as possible.

Top Paddock Plan goes into Action

Next weekend, I have ordered a 1.5 tonne excavator from a local hire store. I’ve had a pair of dying wattle trees cut down and the stumps ground so that I can extend the existing shed in the top paddock extended when I need to.
I am pulling out a useless fence between the top paddock and the little enclosed field (with no gate). It is hard going as the fence has been rabbit proofed. Thank goodness the excavator is more persistent than a rabbit!
I will be removing the old rubbish from the top paddock including an old bed frame, at least six fallen trees, a pair of rusty rabbit pens attached to a 4 x 4 m concrete slab and scrape the boundary in preparation for the new fence. The new fence will be a 6 foot fence made from 8 foot Koppers sunk two feet deep with dog link fencing between. Well, the plan is a plan J I just hope that I can maintain the desire to get the damn thing done.
There are a couple of hard landscaping items that I want to achieve in the top paddock. One of them is the building of a suitable barn for the goats. I want to have at least 4 milking does and a pair of wethers as paddock pals for the girls. During kidding, I may have from 4 to 12 kids depending on the fecundity of my does. So I need to be able to accommodate 10 to 18 animals. When the does have kids, their milk will be for the kids, however, I should still get enough milk from the does to be able to produce soap and cheese for the family. I want the barn to be able to serve the needs of up to 20 goats as well as milking up to 4 does. The barn will need to provide storage for hay and grain for up to 20 animals.
Another of the landscape items that I need to incorporate into my top paddock is: - goat toys. I’d love to build swinging bridge and platform for the goats to play on. At the moment, my goats tend to dominate the hammock that I made for my daughters. They don’t have much luck getting into the hammock and often end up landing on their sides on the wrong side of the hammock, but they luuuurve it.
One of the games that I have noticed that goats love more than any other is King of the Hill. I need to make the goats a decent hill for the little darlings. One of the good things about a decent goat hill is that it can be a great way to wear the goats’ hooves down if it is made from a solid and abrasive material (such as concrete or sandstone, etc.)

CAEV–Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis Virus

This is a condition that was almost eradicated in Tasmania a few years back. According to a reliable source, because Tasmania no longer exports goats for meat, the Tasmanian State Government abandoned its CAEV program and allowed a herd of CAEV positive Saanen into the north of the state. Now we have to deal with the virus through careful farm management and quarantining process. Even when we are sure that the farm that our new goat comes from is CAEV free.
CAEV is a disease that will kill a goat. It does it slowly, and painfully. The goat will suffer from swelling of the joints until they are rendered lame. Also, the goat may suffer hardening of the lungs and or stomach this will show as a persistent coughing and sneezing in the goat as well as poor appetite and a failure to thrive. The encephalitis part of the virus causes abnormal growth in the animals’ brain with far greater white matter in the brain than normal. This is shown by the goat being unresponsive, passive and eventually death.
Personally, I cannot accept that our State Government does not have a suitable response to this disease as it affects the viability of the dairy goat, meat, and textile industries in Tasmania. In my opinion, the State Government (DPIW Tasmania) should seek to destroy animals with that are CAEV positive and compensate the farmer. In this way, the farmer would not be financially set-back by the eradication of the disease and we can work toward a CAEV free state.
With a dairy goat’s productive lifespan being much longer than that of a meat goat, CAEV impacts the dairy goat industry much harder than the meat goat industry. In meat goats, the animal may be sold as chevon well before the goat every shows signs of CAEV, so it may never be discovered without an annual blood test (about $35 per animal).
I am now going to step away from the soap-box … I can feel my blood boiling … sorry about that.

Building a Quarantine Pen

Good farm practice gives that the goat-herd quarantines all new herd members for a period of time. There are a couple of considerations here that need to be addressed.
1. Goats are herd animals and separation from the flock is a distressing time for a goat;
2. Goats kept in close confinement are more likely to graze (close crop vegetation) rather than browse (a goats preferred eating style);
3. Grazing goats are more likely to acquire intestinal parasites;
When planning a quarantine area for goats, you need to make sure that you provide the space for the goats to be able to browse rather than graze, so an area of approximately 8sq meters per goat is sufficient if the goat is provided with plenty of hay and grain to supplement their paddock vegetation.
The quarantine area needs to be within proximity of the rest of the herd so that the goat(s) are able to communicate with the rest of the herd. It is recommended that quarantined animals are separated by double fences with an area of at least 2 meters between the two areas.
If you are going to keep goats, it is also a good idea to keep a microscope and learn how to perform simple faecal parasite load testing. This is something that I am learning at the moment, and I will be reporting on this technique in a later newsletter. Basically, you are taking some fresh goat berries, breaking the faeces up in alcohol and then counting the number of cooties in the poo through a microscope. All goats have parasites in their faeces. It is only when the number of parasites get very high that your goat will suffer.
I have started to build a quarantine pen that will provide two 3 x 6 m pens with shelter food and water. This will allow me to quarantine two goats at a time for as long as is needed. The reason that I am allowing for two goats at a time is that I have an immediate need to separate my older goat (Holly) from my new goat (Minnie). My two goats need to be quarantined for 60 days before I get them blood tested again for CAEV. Both Holly and Minnie are from the same goat stud, and are very unlikely to have come with the virus. Holly may have picked up the virus from Mille (the British Alpine), but that is also a low probability. Having said that, I am not going to fool myself into believing that Holly is not infected with CAEV.

Mareks Disease

The chickens are all doing well, with one notable exception. One of our last brood of chickens was found in the chicken run, unable to stand and very listless. She went into the brooder for a couple of weeks and was still unable to stand. Going through a couple of diagnostic observations, we saw that the chicken was not injured and did not have any unusual faeces. The chicken was not breathing poorly and her eyes were clear. The most likely diagnosis is a condition known as Mareks disease. Mareks (MDV) is a herpes virus that most often affects chickens up to 5 months of age and can present as sciatic nerve damage showing as lameness in one or more of the limbs, or as tumours growing in the skin and organs of the bird. She had never really been very steady on her feet and, as she grew, her hips were less and less able to support her. In the brooder, she found it very difficult to stand and would often lurch from one end of the brooder to the other in search of food. In the end, it was cruel to let her suffer like this so she was put down. Now with a second chick showing similar signs, I believe that our conclusion that MDV is the likely cause is more confident.
We decided that our chickens would not be table fowl, so when we were faced with dispatching a chicken, the only sensible thing to do was to put her down as humanely as possible and then dispose of the corpse. Some people may disagree with me, but to my mind, this means decapitation. The chicken is dead very quickly and does not suffer for more than a second. It still feels very crappy.

Welcome and quick blog catch up

This is the first post for the web log of Carembache Stud. In this blog, I'll be rambling on about the animals on my property. Mostly we breed Anglo Nubian dairy goats.
I started with an old Saanen doe that we got from the RSPCA, "Blossom". That was back in the days when we didn't know that one goat just means trouble. Blossom escaped once too often into our vegetable patch, so she moved back to the RSPCA ... lovely goat and really sweet natured.
Next we rescued a pair of kids from the north of the state, a Saanen and a British Alpine doe kid (Molly and Millie). Unfortunately, Molly died from scours very soon after getting home, so we very quickly raced around trying to find Millie a friend ... and then we come to Holly (pictured above). Holly was our first Anglo-Nubian goat.
Much later, we discovered that Mille had CAE (Caprine Arthritis/Encephalitis) disease and so she had to be put down. Again with the running around and trying to find a companion for Holly. This brought us to Minnie ... another Anglo-Nubian goat (actually, Holly's cousin).

We kept the pair of them (Holly and Minnie) in quarantine for a month while we waited with baited breath for the outcome of their CAE blood tests and were so very relieved to discover that they were CAE free!