Tag: 4-H

New to the Farm

This past weekend we welcomed two Guernsey cows, Buttercup and Tulip, to our farm! Buttercup is a 4-year-old cow and Tulip is her 10-month-old daughter.

Getting ready to load them in the trailer.

We have been looking for a Guernsey for several months because Colton asked for one for Christmas and his birthday. He has wanted to do the dairy cow project in 4-H for a couple of years. This year Lance and I decided he was old enough to do most of the work caring for his cattle by himself, with our supervision, so we said yes.

I found Tulip on Facebook in a Guernsey cow group. When I found out that Buttercup was available too and they checked all of our boxes I was excited! A bonus is that Buttercup was recently AI’d so hopefully she will calve again in December. We will test her in a few weeks. The only problem was that they were in Ohio! Thankfully, the family that we purchased them from was able to hold them for us for a couple of weeks until we could get there to pick them up.

Early Friday morning we loaded up and headed to Ohio to pick them up. We spent about 11.5 hours in the truck Friday so we could pick them up early Saturday morning. It was so nice that the previous owners had halter broke them because it made walking to the trailer and loading very easy. After loading them up early Saturday morning, we started the drive home. They have settled in nicely and everyone is getting used to each other and the routine.

Tulip was still nursing on Buttercup. We decided to put a calf weaning ring on her nose to start weaning. She was not happy at first but is finally not hollering at us every time she sees us.

We milked Buttercup for the first time on Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, she stepped in or kicked the bucket three times. And since we are currently hand milking, the milk was gross or on the ground. Wednesday was much better, with her giving us just under 2 gallons of milk! I am looking for a milking machine to help us keep the milk cleaner and make milking a little more efficient. My patience while looking for the perfect cow paid off so I will continue to be patient until I find a machine that will work for us.

Several people have asked us why we decided on the Guernsey breed, especially when there aren’t very many of them in Kansas. I have always loved heritage or old breeds. Guernsey’s are a heritage breed with lower numbers and being a small part of helping to boost the numbers to keep the breed alive is something I enjoy. They are also a breed that does well on grass and a variety of forages with a lower feed-to-product conversion compared to other dairy breeds which is important to us. We don’t want a breed that has to have a ton of grain to keep milk production and body condition.

Here are a few facts that I find interesting about the Guernsey breed. These are quoted directly from the Livestock Conservancy website. “A distinctive characteristic of the breed is the golden color of its milk, which results from exceptionally high levels of carotene, a precursor to Vitamin A. It is thought that the Guernsey excels in its ability to absorb this nutrient and transfer it to butterfat. Guernsey milk has been promoted under the trademark “Golden Guernsey.” Butter made from the milk is distinctively golden. The milk is also naturally high in A2 Beta Casein.” “Cows are noted for their quiet dispositions.”

We are all very happy with Buttercup and Tulip. They have sweet personalities, are easy to lead around and work with, the kids can handle them by themselves, and we think they are the perfect fit for our family.

Colton’s ultimate goal for his little dairy herd is to start an ice cream business using milk from his cows. We have been experimenting with ice cream recipes using milk we purchased from a friend for several months and have finally found one we like. He is anxiously waiting for the first batch of ice cream using milk from Buttercup!

P.S.

I never did get a new product of the month post up and March is half over so our Goat Milk Soap will continue to be our featured product for March. Use code Featuredproduct24 for 10% off of your order!

P.P.S.

The cattle were one of two new species we will be adding to 14 Hands Ranch this spring. Stay tuned to see what the other species is! Hint: it will be a new 4-H project for Lane! One of my favorite things about 4-H is that it gives the whole family a lot of learning opportunities!

Here are a few pictures of Colton’s new dairy cow herd!

Tags 4-H, guernsey

4-H Agriculture Goals Livestock Projects Recycle Uncategorized

Projects

Early this past winter, Lance and I made a list of projects we wanted to get done this spring and summer. I’m pretty sure that neither one of us ever expected to get very many of them completed, at least not well or timely. We have five kids and four of the five are involved in some kind of activities. Spring, especially April and May, are typically crazy for us. We should have been at track meets at least two days a week, soccer practice and games, church, 4-H meetings, Horse practice, and piano lessons. However, we all know that everything was brought to a halt in March because of Covid19. A silver lining in all of this though has been the gift of uninterrupted family time. It has also allowed us to get several of the projects on our lists completed!

The first project tackled was building three new shelters for all of the 4-H sheep and goats, preferably before we brought all of the animals home. First, all of the pens we had put up a couple of years ago were taken down so that we could reconfigure them and reuse the fencing. We wanted each shelter to have two pens off of it and have a hay/grain feeder in the middle of the shelter to divide it. I wanted a walk through gate in each shelter as well. Each shelter is held down by posts that are 2-3 feet deep in the ground so that they don’t blow away. It is important to mention that we live on a bed of limestone rock and that we do not own any kind of machinery, such as a skid steer, that could dig the holes for us. In most places, there are only a few inches of topsoil before you start to hit rock. This has made digging post holes by hand even harder work than it would be normally. Hailey and Cody have dug most of the holes by hand. They have definitely got their workouts in during school at home!

The shelters are made out of completely recycled materials (except the screws – those are new). An old hay barn had fallen down at Lance’s grandma’s house during a storm last summer. Lance and the kids took it down, went through all of it, and were able to salvage almost all of it. The tin on the shelters have a beautiful burnt sienna color (rust) on them in several places. I really do love the character it gives them! Lance also made gates that swing and latch easily. If you have ever had all of your gates held shut by wire, baling twine, or chained you will understand how big of deal this is!

After the small shelters were completed, Lance started on what we are calling the Chicken Palace. Kinzie wanted chickens for her birthday so this required building a chicken coop. We are calling it the Chicken Palace because it is a little bigger than the typical chicken coop. When Lance builds something he usually goes all out. Our Chicken Palace will have two sections in it with a hallway in the middle. From the hallway you will be able to collect the eggs from the nesting boxes by pulling open a drop down door. Kinzie and I want to put twinkle lights on it as well because every Chicken Palace needs some twinkle lights! We ordered chicks for Kinzie and ducklings for Lane a couple of weeks ago. The ducklings will be here in June and the chicks in July so we have plenty of time to get the Chicken Palace done. The best thing is that the Chicken Palace is also being built with all recycled materials!

Another major project on our list was cutting down as many cedar trees as we can. Cedar trees will take over a pasture quickly if left on their own. They also draw a lot of the moisture out of the ground and we want to keep as much water in the ground as can. We have several rows of them along the creek or that have grown up in the tree lines. While Lance has cut many of the cedar trees down there are still hundreds to go, or it at least seems like hundreds. Over the past week he has cut down a big portion of the cedar trees that lined the dam of our pond. It completely changes the view and has exposed an old rock wall that is there. Many of the trees will be burned but several have been repurposed into raised beds for my garden. We have a few other things we would like to make out of some of the cedar trees as well. I love the beautiful red color that is inside of a cedar tree. Plus, they smell wonderful!

There are still several more projects on our list but most of them require quite a bit of money. So far we haven’t spent any money and our budget is pretty small. It’s fun to dream and make plans though so we will see how many more projects we get crossed off of our list this summer. Right now, it looks like we will be home more this summer than we have been the last several years so we might get a lot accomplished!

Hay/Grain feeder that separates the two sides of the shed.
Another piece has been added to the feeder to add a small section for mineral.
Obviously the goats have approved of it!

You can kind of see in the background where cedar trees have been cut down.

Tags 4-H, farm, livestock, Projects, Recycle

4-H Agriculture Kansas Livestock Spring

It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Post author By Jada Sharp
Post date March 31, 2020
No Comments on It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

I love spring and everything about it. I also love summer and fall, and maybe a few things about winter but I really love spring. For me, spring really is the most wonderful time of the year. It is starting to warm up outside (YAY!) and color is finally coming back to the landscape. The browns of winter can be really depressing, especially after looking at them for several months. In spring it appears that everything is waking up and coming back to life. The trees begin to get buds and often it seems that they leaf out or bloom overnight. Each spring rain brings a little more green grass, clover, and flowers into the colors of the landscape.

Here at 14 Hands Ranch, we do most of our kidding and lambing in the spring. All of the babies racing around the pens and pastures makes springtime wonderful and exciting! We are anxiously waiting for our Lamancha goats to kid and sheep to lamb at the end of April/first of May. We feel like following natures natural rhythms with our kidding and lambing gives our livestock a better chance to perform how God created them to. The only exception to this is with our Boer goats. We want them to kid in January or February so that our children can show them at the 4-H fair in July. When we allow nature to work how it is intended the livestock generally can kid and lamb on their own, we don’t have to worry about any babies freezing, we don’t need heat lamps set up, and we are much more eager to spend time with the babies when it is nice outside.

Growing up, my family had a Limousin and Red Angus herd of cattle. We were one of the few in our area that calved in the summer. My dad always said that the cattle were there to work for us, not us work for them. We have adopted that philosophy on our farm as well. This means that we don’t introduce the buck or ram to the females until around Thanksgiving so that we are kidding and lambing in spring.

The other thing that that makes spring so wonderful is that we purchase and bring home all of our 4-H show animals in March and April. We typically start talking to breeders about what they will have available in February or the first of March. So far we have our show pigs, lambs, and bucket calves here. The Boer goats that we purchased will be picked up in a few weeks. There’s something so hopeful and optimistic about a new set of show animals. Everyone has goals and dreams of how they would like their animals to do. It takes a lot of work, discipline, time, dirt, and hard days to get to the end of the summer with the projects. Sometimes, there’s disappointment at the end of the summer because the judge didn’t like your animal on that one day or maybe the animal didn’t grow as well as you had hoped. Sometimes, it’s because the animal wasn’t worked with as much as they should have been. And sometimes, it all comes together and that animal wins the banner. But it all starts out every spring with hope and dreams.

The Corona virus has gave us a lot more time than we would typically have in the spring, so we started working with 4-H animals over the weekend. The pigs were all weighed and walked. This is usually a very chaotic event the first couple of times we let them all out to walk them but this group of pigs have been very calm and well behaved. The sheep were also all weighed and are learning to stand tied. The bucket calves were haltered for the first time. Midnight (the black one) didn’t seem to mind the halter but Sunset fought it the entire time. Violet our Boer/Alpine cross was also weighed and haltered for the first time. She didn’t like the halter either so Colton decided he would just carry her instead until she gets to big for him to carry. It won’t be long and he will have to teach her to lead because she is growing fast. Then he will learn it would have been better to start working with her on leading when she was small! The kids have also started riding the horses to get them back into shape for the summer shows. We also started working on our garden much earlier than we have before. I’m hoping to get a few things planted in it this week before it rains again.

I hope that all of you can find something or many things that bring you joy and hope this spring. Maybe its the green grass, the birds singing again, baby chicks, blue skies, sunshine, baby animals, or the warm weather. Spring has so many things to offer that make it the most wonderful time of the year!