1/31/2019 0 Comments RuthieOh, that sweet face! Ruth came to us in June 2018 along with her best bud, Ivy. They hail from the Treasured Sunrise herd in Idaho. Ruth's registered name is Treasured Shimmer. She was born January 14, 2018 as a triplet, 3 doelings! She is a petite goat but with excellent, sturdy confirmation, a gorgeous dark golden coat and wonderful temperment. Her milk lines are very promising with long steady lactations. She is the happiest and spunkiest goat here on the homestead, always greeting us with a little maa and a wagging tail! She has matured and filled out quite a bit since she's been here. She was raised as a bottle baby but she has a very sweet, unassuming personality, and the older goats are teaching her about being a part of their Guernsey herd. There is safety in numbers. Despite our cold winter, Ruth is growing well and enjoys playing in the snow with us on sunny days. She loves ear scratches, chest rubs and being brushed! We like to give our doelings a bit more growing time so we plan to have them kid for the first time at about 15 months if they are on the smaller side, so that was our plan with Ruth. She is due to kid April 23. We are really looking forward to this little lady freshening and seeing her continue to mature. She is registered with BGS as an HB2 Guernsey, and with the Guernsey Goat Breeders of America as a 2nd generation American Guernsey. She is bred to our Purebred buck so her kid(s) will be registered British Guernsey, and 3rd generation American Guernsey.
Until next time, keep looking up!
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1/28/2019 0 Comments Delta MamaDon't tell the others, but Delta is my favorite. She is a Guernsey of excellence, and I love her! Is that crazy?! Delta and her 2 doelings came to us in March 2017 from Ruit Farm North on the Pemaquid Peninsula in Maine. Before that she was born and lived in Vermont at Ardelia Farm. I recently learned that Delta was born a triplet and the only one to survive. The birth was so traumatic that even her sweet Mama passed. Despite rough beginnings, Delta is an excellent tempered doe and fantastic dam and grand-dam. Guernseys are a heritage breed originating from Britain. If you are interested in these easy going, quiet, mid sized milkers of sweet milk, I highly recommend researching them and getting in touch with a breeder near you! Before switching to all registered Guernseys we had Oberhaslis and the Ober-Guernsey crosses were not only long haired and adorable, but very hardy! Delta is our herd queen, gets the best hay, the best sleep spot (sometimes she shares with her daughter, Olive) and gets milked first. She keeps order in the herd, like training our new yearlings that were bottle babies about being a goat, bringing everyone out to the winter sunshine for a sunbathe, and leading everyone in at dinner time. She also is the one always on alert to keep the herd safe, sounding the sneeze-snort alarm that sends everyone running to the barn for safety. Last year Delta kidded with buck/doe twins and her belly is on track for looking like another set of twins is in her future beginning of March! She seems to pass on her deep capacity, excellent udder attachments, good milk production, parasite resistance and beauty to her doelings. Her bucklings will obviously carry all this awesomeness, plus Bo's influence, into their herds. Her kids are not to be missed! She is bred to our Purebred Guernsey buck, so all eligible kids will be registered American Guernsey, and available for sale....if I can let them go! I can't wait!
1/28/2019 0 Comments AbeTruth be told, when we were first looking in to getting a ram, I was nervous. I had researched, read and talked to many folks about battering rams, rams not being trusted and thought, "What am I doing bringing a ram to the homestead!" While there are many rams that are too aggressive and even if they have superb genetics, aggression is just not a trait we want running through our small flock's veins we have found our Katahdin ram to have a great temperment. The key to working with any male animal is RESPECT. Mostly, Abe just wants to hang out with his ewes. It's his job and he does it very well. We respect the order that he helps create with the ewes and if he gets pushy at all with us, we flip him on his rump and that reminds him that respect has to go both ways! We picked up Abe in July of 2017 from Waldoview Farm in Winterport, ME. With Tom's help we picked him from out of about a dozen ram lambs. Three things sold us on him. First, his confirmation and stats. He's put together very well, excellent muscling and very high parasite resistance, all on grass. Second, when we were looking at our top 3 choices, he stood very well being handled by our 12 year old daughters, while the other rams fought being handled. Third, he's super handsome! I like a little splash in my flock! Abe is a pretty easy going guy, for a ram! He's always been housed with bucks and wethers, getting along with everyone. We housed Abe with the ewes from September until mid-January to ensure the ewes all took this year. Beginning in January he really wanted to tussle more often with the ewes and they just didn't want any part in it, being big and pregnant and all so the timing worked well to move him and Bo in together to hunker down for the winter after a job well done. We have noticed his temperment has greatly calmed and he is quite relaxed when we come in to fill water, hay and minerals.
Now, I am impatiently waiting for the first lambs to drop mid-February! 1/26/2019 0 Comments Lovely VioletViolet was our lone lamb last spring, so we kept this sweet one to add to our breeding stock. It was a crazy October last year with wind storms blowing over massive trees, crushing our fencing and power outages for over a week so we had to cut the time of the ewes exposure to the ram to only a month. Only Buttercup took, but she gave us this beauty! Buttercup had been acting a little different, an her udder had really filled out so I put her in the jug that night just in case she was ready to lamb. I walked into the barn early that next morning and saw Buttercup standing there nursing this fuzzy one and her tail was wagging like crazy, happy for all that milk! When I saw it was a ewe, I fell in love and knew we'd keep her. One of our goals with our sheep is to maintain a flock that does very well on pasture and hay, needing very little grain. Violet has grown very well on milk and pasture. Our second goal with our sheep is to maintain breeding stock with very good parasite resistance. Violet is still young but she continues to do well on our herbal parasite management, garlic-ginger paste supplements and sheep minerals. Our third goal is to have very friendly sheep! Buttercup is very personable and she has passed that trait onto young Violet. She seeks out ear scratches and chest rubs just like mama and Aunt Iris. Violet has grown into quite the beauty and we look forward to her first lambing around April 2nd.
1/22/2019 0 Comments Stumphollo JeroboamTime to focus the spotlight on our herdsire, Stumphollo Jeroboam. We call him Bo. Bo hails from the excellent Stump Hollow farm in Pennsylvania. Only the most promising bucks that will continue to improve the Guernsey breed while maintaining breed specifications are kept. We are eager to see how his genetics will improve upon our does! Improved udders and pasterns in particular. This buck is so handsome, well mannered and comes from great genetics. He keeps well on hay, pasture and minimal grain, all traits we look for in our herdmembers. Plus he looks like a yak when running in the snow! We kept Bo in with the does from October until mid-January to ensure all the does were bred for March-April kids. His yearly job is complete and now he is hanging out and keeping our ram, Abe, company. I am not so sure he is happy with the new accommodations, but he's making the best of it! Here they are before the big snow storm enjoying their sunny hut. Both Abe and Bo have excellent winter coats but we need to keep the wet cold wind off of them since that's what they are used to. So their hut is now winterized and cozy for these gentlemen.
1/19/2019 0 Comments Ardelia OliveThe introductions continue with Olive, our own Guernsey teddy bear! Olive's winter coat is impressively fluffy, inviting lots of pats and ear scratches. Currently, her day's events include eating hay to feed her growing kid(s), and staying out of Deb's way. Even though Olive's dam is Delta, our herd queen, Deb reminds Olive often that she is higher in rank than little ol' Olive! Olive is also our token Uni-Guernsey, sporting one long scur and one short. We are hoping the remaining scur will fall off this year like the other one did! Olive came to us in March 2017 at a few weeks old along with her sister and Mama Delta. Guernseys are a heritage breed and, in our experience, tend to grow and mature slower than the Swiss breeds so we breed our first timers to kid when they are about 15 months. Olive kidded very quickly and without any assistance, a doeling and buckling twin set in June 2018, one morning when we had some friends over. All 8 of our children got to witness the whole birth! She took to motherhood easily and has a high, beautiful udder with excellent fore and rear attachments, just like her dam, Delta. Olive is registered with the GGBoA as a 2nd generation American Guernsey. She is bred and her offspring will be registered 3rd generation American Guernsey. We are eager to meet her kid(s). But for now we wait, rest, and eat until the beginning of March for Olive to freshen again. Until next time, keep looking ahead.
1/16/2019 0 Comments ButtercupAlong with our Guernsey milk goats, we have a small flock of Katahdin sheep! Buttercup, and her sister Iris (stay tuned for that intro next week) came to our homestead in the early spring of 2017. Our daughters entered a little essay writing contest about Katahdin sheep and why they would like to own them, and they won twin ewes! We called them Buttercup and Iris to begin our flower name theme for the ewes. We added Katahdins as a sustainable meat source for our family. The breed are fantastic browsers as well as classic grazers. Our ewes came from a flock that was only fed grain as a treat, so they have done very well on our hay and pasture. We only feed an organic sheep grain and organic barley in late gestation and early lactation and that has supported them well so far. Katahdins are a hair sheep. They grow a wooly/hair for the cold weather and shed out for the summer...no shearing! Their easy keeping and no shearing make this breed perfect for the new sheep owners. Last year Buttercup lambed with a beautiful, 10 lb single ewe. We named her Violet and kept her as part of our breeding flock. Buttercup is due to lamb on March 5th. We are hoping for twins!
1/10/2019 0 Comments Starring...Ms. DebutanteHello, my name is Debutante, friends call me Deb. Deb came to our homestead in June 2018, from a farm in Delaware. She made the trip with her doeling, who is now in northern Maine as part of another growing Guernsey herd! Stumphollo Debutante was born May 17, 2013 into the Stumphollo herd. She spent her first few years in their breeding program, where a number of her offspring were retained and others sold as quality breeding stock. She is registered with the British Goat Society as an HB1 Guernsey, and with the Guernsey Goat Breeders of America as American Guernsey. Her offspring will be registered HB2/American Guernsey. Last year she kidded with buck/doe twins. This year she is due to kid around April 2, 2019. Deb has the highest production of my current milkers, producing a steady #6.5-#7 a day. She is a good mother, weans her offspring easily, and her udder and teat structure are easy to milk. She milked well until October when she went into heat. In the interest of trying to extend her lactation and spread out our breedings so we'd have a longer supply of milk, I didn't breed her that first heat. She became very upset with me, escaped from the barn at evening feeding time and high-tailed, tail wagging, maaa-ing it to the buck pasture where both bucks were waiting and calling to her! We got her back to the barn after a few minutes but then she refused to eat her grain for the next 2 weeks, eating hay only, and essentially dried herself up. Note to self: Just breed Deb first so she'll give me the milk! Until next time....
1/2/2019 0 Comments Welcome 2019I am a fan of winter. Some, like Ivy, prefer to stick their tongue out at winter and long for warm summer days. Oh, I love summer too, it's filled with fresh foods, swimming, gardening and late nights around camp fires. But winter is a time of slowing down, of reflection, quiet days by the cookstove. As of late, Bo seems to be reflecting on why his beard is frozen and why I haven't gotten him a new collar....hot pink really is not his color.
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We are the Lowers....a homesteading, homeschooling, family of seven living in central Maine. We aim to be purposeful in what we do each day as we strive to be good stewards of God's gifts. Archives
February 2021
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