Good day to all of you dear sweet farm followers! It has been a busy few months around here! We have a new A2/A2 mid sized Jersey calf growing like a weed! Her momma makes some rich milk for sure. Summer Thyme we believe lacerated her left rear teat with her dew claw several weeks back. At first we thought the poor calf (Zoe) was the guilty party but after reading some trusted organic Vet books the type of injury indicated dew claw. It is fly season! When she came in for milking one morning I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I said, Lord, this is beyond me! After He calmed my spirit down He gave me the courage to get to work cleaning it up and start the process of healing. Apparently it happened during the night so suturing it was out of the question. The swelling I understand would just cause the sutures to tear out. It was extremely painful for her so we quickly gave her some arnica and garlic tincture.That combination did the trick and she was a bit more comfortable. We then began rubbing some herbal infused olive oil on that quarter. We unfortunately could not milk her in that quarter at all without a potential injury to ourselves so we did the best we could. We are weeks down the road now and the laceration is completely healed but we do have some mastitis in that quarter. Thank God it is mild since the milk strains perfectly her CMT is barely reading a + 2 We are milking her twice daily and using some products from a company out of Pennsylvania called Synergy Animal Products. We expect a full recovery. Thankfully cows have an udder that keeps each quarter somewhat self contained. So mastitis in one quarter does not transfer to the other three unless you are sloppy and do not keep clean equipment. We milk that quarter totally separately and discard the milk. I cannot say enough about proper handling of raw milk. Milk as aseptically as you possibly can. Keep your cows clean and where they bed down as clean as you can. I have made myself a mini lab and I can now test my own milk for aerobic bacteria and coliforms. We do not sell raw milk as a certified dairy but we do want to make sure that our milk is a healthy and safe as possible. We work hard on our soil and do our best to strengthen our animals immune systems so they themselves can fight off any potential infections.
We have acquired some Narragansett turkeys! Yay! Three hens and two Toms. As well as three poults! We also have some Beltsville Small White turkey eggs in an incubator hopefully will hatch the first week of July. Also have some Silver Appleyard ducks eggs in another incubator due the hatch the second week of July. All of these poultry/water fowl breeds are very endangered. We hope to raise a few for our Thanksgiving table this year. Busy time here on the farm.
Last but not least we finally have a bee hive that survived the winter. It is getting so big we have to split it. I am so excited. we take a completely hands off approach to beekeeping. We check on them periodically but we use no treatments to keep them alive. We have plenty of pollinator friendly plants for them to thrive on and thankfully most of our neighbors garden organically. Lord willing we will be selling this farm before years end and relocating in the area to a place with much more pasture land and a lot less HOUSE. This beautiful old place just is too big for us. We need to downsize for sure and that is our prayer. We have a few sheep to sell so if any one is interested in a few Gulf Coast native sheep please email the farm. Enjoy your summer!