Elena Sparks

Tori Escobar wrote: Elena, thank you so much for your response. You have touched on things that I have been questioning recently. Firstly, I do have a decent shelter for them but I think I will go ahead and shore up the open side once it starts getting chilly.
We’re in southern Oklahoma so it’s barely become fall now.
I am definitely on the side of low input, stalwart and economical animals versus loads of milk. That may change at some point but I’d love to breed the Nubians with a meat breed (Boar) and then select offspring for those traits.
The goats have been doing a pretty good job clearing paddocks and staying in their electric netting surprisingly well. I will say it requires intentionally and more work managing in this rotational manner but I am really pleased with the results already.
I think the hard part is learning to determine if they’re ready to move or if they are being picky. I’ve noticed that they know when something really tasty is in the offing and then refuse to eat the less desirable things. With that in mind, I have allowed them to stay in paddocks longer than before and made them smaller.
I’m getting nervous about winter though because it’s like they will not touch any hay I put in their stall. I’ve tried three different times from local farmers. Any thoughts on hay for the winter?
I check their FAMACHA score every so often and they are looking very good.
When I got them one of the goats under lid was like white. Now it’s very pink so I’m pleased about that. I haven’t wormed them yet but I have some herbal wormer on hand from Mollys herbs.
One of the girls doesn’t like to be touched which concerns me, should I force her to get used to it?

Thanks again for your input! So helpful!!

You're welcome! I'm glad I could help out.
As far as crossing them, that's what we're doing (as I mentioned), and I've really liked the results so far. The only thing I would say is to look at all the options before settling on Boars. I've never raised them, but I've heard that they can have some foot problems. We went with Spanish as the winter hardy part of the cross, and the nice thing about them is that they bring a very nice, thick coat, but are also pretty nice dairy animals. Good luck with your cross, let me know how it goes!
Rotational grazing definitely takes more work, but the results, as you said, are way better! Gauging when they're done is definitely the fine tuning part that takes a while to get the hang of. The general rule (which you probably already know) is eat a third, leave a third, and trample a third. Sometimes that means that the pasture looks like it has quite a bit left, and you're tempted to leave them on longer then you should. Ideally, they should never stay in one place for more then a week, so I'd size their paddocks so that they are done with the respective 1/3rds within that amount of time. It sounds like you're doing a pretty good job of working towards that, so good job!
For hay, I'd wait to give them any until they actually need it. If you were given the option of a fresh pancake or a two-week old pancake to have with your breakfast, I'm pretty sure you'd pick the fresh one. The same is true of the goats. The hay isn't tasty to them until it has more nutrients then the living pasture. So if they're on lush and green pasture, they won't eat the hay. If it's bad hay then that's its own problem, but I wouldn't evaluate your hay on whether or not they're eating it right now when they don't want it anyways.
We use herbal dewormers as well (ours are from Land of Havilah) and have had pretty good success. What I'd suggest is to make sure you're sticking to a routine with it. Herbal dewormers are more for preventative care then emergency dosing, so use it regularly. I'm glad her eye is getting better! Whatever you're doing is working, so that's great!
When we get new animals, we lock them in a jug (small pen) for a week or two so that we can work closely with them multiple times a day. Give them treats by hand, spend time with them, and let them know that you're a good thing to hang out with. Once they're coming up to you consistently and easily, let them out in a bigger pen. Remember, though, that each animal is different. Give them the same treatment and some will be lap dogs within a week, and others will just come up for treats. It's ok for them to be different.  Mostly you just want them to not be afraid of you.

Not sure how useful this response will be, seeing as I'm so late in responding, but I figured I'd pitch in anyways.
My first question would be where are you located? Your location, and the climate there, impacts a lot of those questions. If you get pretty cold in the winter, you'll either need a well build shelter (not heated, just secure and highly wind resistant), or more goats. You should definitely have some sort of shelter, and the more well built the better, but the more goats you have the less you need to worry about them in the cold. Goats stay warm by piling together much like penguins do, and so the more you have the warmer they will be.
As far as inputs go, I would give them a salt and mineral block, but I wouldn't give them much else until they're being milked. Obviously you should give them hay during the winter when they can't forage. Once they're being milked, a lot depends on how MUCH milk you want. We're moving more towards a cross now, since Nubians don't handle the extreme cold here very well, but I do have several years of experience with Nubians, as well as Spanish and Nigerians. If you want lots and lots of milk, feed them alfalfa and give them lots of treats during milking. If you'd rather not supplement heavily, then you won't get as much. I prefer sturdier animals and low inputs to super high production (personal preference, I won't blame you if you choose something different). Because of that, I only feed them grain/alfalfa during milking time. They only get as much as they can eat while on the stand. I'll supplement them with some alfalfa during the end of their gestation when we're coming out of winter, but other then that they only get hay when they're in the barn, and pasture when they're out with the rest of the flock. My neighbor, on the other hand, only feeds them alfalfa. No hay. Her Nigerians and mine produce WAY different amounts. High input means high output, lower input means lower output.

Denise Cares wrote:

Lif Strand wrote: I know nothing about goats, so let me ask this dumb question. Smoky has big horns in all the photos, even as a lamb. So  how long does it take for horns to grow from birth on, and does the growth rate stay the same throughout a goat's life?

Elena, Smoky is a beautiful ram! Especially those horns add to the regal look!

Lif, let me chime in here...a ram and a goat are two different species altho both are ruminant animals. Male Sheep and either male or female goats can have horns. However, they are two separate species with different characteristics and uses. Elena's animals are sheep, not goats...and since I was not well versed on horns for either species I looked it up. I think Elena's sheep are a Merino breed and have those beautiful curved horns (I was reading her post about rooing which is another fascinating topic). Come to find out that some male sheep breeds like Jacob's sheep can re-grow from 2 to 6 horns yearly!  Their look is most startling! I had never seen a picture of this much less in real life. Wow!  On the other hand, goats (which both the males & females may or may not have horns) and rams loose their horns yearly and regrow them every year. It is another fascinating topic to read up on. So much to learn from the study of animals! Rams' horns get bigger every year for the purpose of defending their herd of ewes and establishing dominance. Here's where I read about rams horns: https://www.berrypatchfarms.net/do-rams-shed-their-horns/.  Goats and their horns are a bit more complicated and I read a little about that here: https://rurallivingtoday.com/livestock/goat-horns/.  There are many descriptions in Scripture about sheep and goats and so learning about this one aspect helps me to understand the meaning & intent of holy writ also.  Great topic and pics on this forum!

Firstly, thank you! He is a pretty awesome looking ram. Ours don't shed, and I've never heard of any non deer/antelope shedding their horns, but I'm by no means an expert. Jacobs sheep are definitely bizarre looking. Our goats have grown horns fairly similarly to our sheep as far as timing goes, but as you saw with the sheep, different breeds grow their horns differently than others. Our Spanish grow much bigger and more impressive horns than our Nubians ever have, and the Nigerians seem to be somewhere in the middle. We actually have Icelandics, not merinos. Merinos are a fleece breed and they are mostly white. Icelandics are a much rarer breed, so not as many people know about them, but only a small percent are white, and they are a tri-purpose breed. Interestingly enough, they come in both horned and polled. We have horned and polled lines (you can check them out on our website if you want to see some examples) and the genetics can be pretty complicated sometimes.
Lif, I'm so sorry I didn't reply sooner! This spring has been hard and busy, so I'm behind on everything. Needless to say, here we go: Some horns are weird, but the average horned ram lamb is born with probably an inch of growth already. By the end of the first year, they look a lot like the picture of Smoky as a "lamb." The growth after that depends largely on the individual, but they tend to be almost into the return spiral by the end of their second year, and they're mostly grown (whatever that means for the individual ram) by the time they're four or five. They keep growing after that, just REALLY slowly. They grow the fastest during their first year, and then gradually slow down.

Jasmine Mind wrote:Hi Kelley,

This wasn't your question, but I wouldn't graze sheep with goats unless you have really serious fencing, which is hard to do rotationally.
Goats - as you may have heard - are escape artists. Also they need a lot of browse (shrubs, trees) so they won't do as well on pasture as sheep will.

Goats are wonderful but they're tricky. The only way we can rotate our goats through different areas is to tether them to one spot, and that can be tricky because you have to make sure that they don't get caught or choked by the tether. Even so, they often break free and go for our nearest fruit sapling!

We run our goats and sheep together with our cows, alpacas and LGDs and they do just fine with our Premier1 Poultry netting. Our sheep actually cause more problems than the goats do, lol! They like to eat weedy stuff and trees, but overall they do just fine on the same pasture as all of our other animals.

I've been taking lots of pictures to update our website, and with lambing season there's a whole new assortment of pictures to take! Lambs are one of my favorite things to photograph, and I think I've been getting better at composition. What do you think?

I'm sorry!! It's always terrible when that happens. I haven't lost large numbers of chickens to predators, but I have had an owl, fox, and racoon come in on occasion. And yes, they always manage to find your best/close to the heart hens. I definitely know how it is with those old hens. I have a number of old hens from my initial crosses, and an old rooster (somewhere around 8 now, I think), that get to stay here till they die of old age.
As far as protection goes, either change the fencing, or look into a guardian dog or goose. Electric netting would probably work pretty well to keep predators out... my issue has always been keeping the chickens in. Granted, if you have larger and less flighty breeds, then it would probably work for you. Premier 1 has lots of different options, and Allibaba has quite a few as well. Ours are from Premier one ($120+), but Alibaba's are less expensive ($100+/-). I obviously can't speak for the quality of Alibabas fences, but you can always try them.
You could also think about running poly-wire around the perimeter of your current coop. I don't know if it would keep the dogs out indefinitely, but it might at least slow them down. The more lines you run, the more effective the protection. If your current coop keeps the chickens in, then you could just run 3 or 4 polywire lines at break-in level on the outside of the run. One more suggestion would be to make safe places in the coop itself that a dogs couldn't get to. I free range my poultry, which means they don't have protection beyond the LGDs and geese, but the chicken and duck houses have a cattle panel gate inside the normal door so that only they can get in. I did it mostly so that the dogs and geese wouldn't eat the eggs (yes, my geese are terrible about eating eggs), but it should also work for keeping larger predators out. The coop is their safe place, and they tend to run there when they feel threatened.
If you live in the city, LGDs wouldn't be an option (as well as being crazy expensive), but they are incredibly effective. Geese are also an option, although I don't know how well they'd handle a rogue dog. My geese are top of the pecking order, even bossing the guard dogs around.
You could also think about looking into different breeds of chickens that are more flighty and better at avoiding predators. If you look at hatcheries, they tend to say whether or not the breed is known for being predator savvy.
Whatever you do, make sure that you change something before buying chicks.

This is on a totally different topic, but do you have any un-refridgerated eggs left from your 6 year old hens? If I were you, I'd try to incubate those. Longevity in laying hens is pretty hard to come by (something I'm selecting for in my flock, along with other things).

I've had hens brood in the middle of the winter without any issues. In fact, I actually really like hatching in the winter and would highly suggest it. If you want your chicks to adapt to your temperatures, there's no better way to do it than have them raised outside by a mama hen in the middle of the winter. They can go under the hen when they're cold, but they HAVE to come out in order to eat and drink, unlike our pampered indoor raised chicks that have a heated house (which I've done frequently as well, so I'm not saying this is bad). That makes them hardier, builds endurance, and helps them feather out faster. Plus, incubating in the winter means that you're automatically selecting for winter layers. The chicks I've raised outside in the winter grew really fast, feathered out early, and are great winter layers. If the issue is that you don't want chicks, then just make sure to collect all the eggs. If you collect the eggs within a day of them being laid, regardless of whether or not a hen has been sitting on them, they're totally ok to eat. Having a rooster doesn't really impact a hens desire to brood, so butchering him isn't going to solve anything.

Just out of curiosity, tell me more about what you mean by "attacking." I know she ended up really wounded, but there's more than just one way for that to happen. Have you seen him actually fighting her? Did he try to breed her, she wouldn't stand for him, and so then he attacked her? Maybe (like a previous post said) she was picking fights with other hens, which made the rooster mad? Look for more than just the outward signs if you want to really understand what's going on.
I agree with Matt McSpadden about not de-beaking, and not culling straight away because of aggressive traits like that. De-beaking is unhealthy and could cause him to have a hard time eating or breeding any of the hens. I've only trimmed spurs once, and it was on an incredibly old rooster that was having a hard time walking around his five inch spurs. If she's getting head wounds, I seriously doubt that the spurs are causing the issue, so trimming them isn't going to do anything besides risk hurting the rooster,
One important thing I've learned from raising many MANY animals, is that you need to pay attention to their behavior on more than just a surface level. We had a Nubian goat in the pen with an LGD a couple weeks ago, and he was fine until he suddenly started acting crazy around her. Following her around licking her, jumping on her if she ran away, and refusing to listen when he was called off her. He got in trouble several times until I decided to look closer at the doe he was chasing, instead of trying to analyze the situation just based on his behavior. Turns out she had a puncture wound on her hip (no idea how she got it, and no, it wasn't from the LGD) that was badly infected. Chester, the LGD, had picked up on the infection and was trying to clean it out for her because he knew it was going to cause problems. When she ran away, he was trying to make her stay put because he knew how bad it was. We pulled her from the pen, cleaned the wound, and let it heal for a week before putting her back in... and he only sniffed at her once before walking away. I don't really think the hen has an issue the rooster is picking up on, but this gives an example of why it's important to look at more than just the apparent facts.
I don't necessarily agree with the idea that the rooster dislikes the hen, which is causing the attacking (it's always a possibility, but it wouldn't be my first guess). The more likely scenario, in my opinion, is that she's his favorite hen, and he's either being an overly aggressive breeder (my best guess); or, she doesn't like him, so won't let him breed her, which is making him mad. Roosters breed the hens by grabbing into their head feathers with their beak in order to hold on while they breed. That frequently causes hens to loose feathers and/or get beaten up. I have had hens get pretty ripped up (including having heads torn open so badly they needed stitches) because of breeding on multiple occasions. Roosters really do tend to pick a favorite hen, which they breed more often. She's different than the rest of the hens, which makes her stand out to the rooster. The fact that both roosters demonstrated the same behavior makes me think that she's the favorite. I would suggest getting more hens that look like her, if you want to push her out of the favorite zone.

As round one of breeding gets wrapped up for the year, I realized that there's a project we've been working on that I haven't really mentioned yet. Some of you might know TCE Glacier, who passed away this year. He was an incredible guy, and was a part of multiple breeders' flocks for many years. He threw incredible fleece, really nice udders, gentle temperaments, squared frames, great rooing... lots of awesome characteristics.
The last couple of years we've been working on trying to get some of the really awesome genetics from our polled lines into our horned lines (and vice versa). Pulling Glacier's genetics into a horned line is one of our goals, and we've made some exciting progress so far! We're breeding with a much more selective and controlled breeding group this year, so the Glacier crosses we've chosen are all really specific.
Shown below are the Glacier children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren we're breeding this year.
The horned and polled genetics are kind of hard to work with, and can be somewhat unpredictable (we've had fully horned lambs come from two polled parents, fully polled come from two horned parents, and everything in-between), so making crosses like this comes with the responsibility to cull anything that isn't top quality. We've chosen to breed a couple of sheep that have scurs as a result of a horned to polled cross, but the ONLY reason they aren't culls is because of how the rest of the cross worked out perfectly (frame, fleece, etc.).
Needless to say, we're excited for another year of these exciting crosses and to move this project one more generation forward!
Check out our website to learn more about our https://www.peacefulvalleyfold.com/sale-barn-sheep and our breeding goals

I sort of want to keep a purebred line of the Magpies because they're a more rare breed, but I'm fine crossing the others to make a landrace (which is what I'm doing with my chickens). With that as my goal, do you think the same methods I can use for chickens would work on my ducks and geese? Laying ability is important to me, and you can sort of predict a rooster's laying genetics by how wide his pin-bones are (here's the link to the video I used as a base when I was first getting into chicken breeding years ago). Would this work for ducks?