It has been about 2 years since I did an updated post about the animals of our homestead. We have gained some and lost some but we are doing our best to continue to grow. We have been living here on our homestead for 8 years now. Starting out with a few dogs and living in tents to having a home and all these animals is a huge blessing. We still have far to go but the dream is coming true through lots of hard work, sweat and tears.
Ronny's service dog Whitney died earlier this year and we are still heartbroken over it but Ron made a nice grave for her that we can walk to each day.
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| Whitney, our beloved deceased Pom. |
We no longer have our sweet Whitney but we still have one other house dog, Esther. She is very gentle and loving. Since Whitney is gone, we tend to spoil Esther a bit more. :-)
We also have 2 watch dogs: Cheddar and Sheera. Cheddar is 1 1/2 years old and is fiercely protective of us.
Sheera is 8 1/2 and is getting older but still will protect our property with her life. Both are great dogs and super loving to each of us.
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| Cheddar, our most protective guard dog. He will fight to the death to protect us and has the scars to prove it! |
Sheera is 8 1/2 and is getting older but still will protect our property with her life. Both are great dogs and super loving to each of us.
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| Sheera, one of our guard dogs |
We have one house cat too: Fred Elmo. Ronny named him as you can probably tell. We rescued him out of a shelter when he was just 12 weeks old. He is now 5.
In March of 2015, we got 14 baby turkeys. We now have 7 left (3 Toms and 4 Hens). We sold 3 and ate the others. We plan on incubating some of their eggs soon to grow our flock. Yes, I know the real term for a group of turkeys is called a "rafter"but that still seems weird to me.
This was a bad year for our goats. We had a lot born this year but also lost 6. We usually don't lose that many but as I said, it's been a hard year for the goats.
We have a total of 18 goats now. We raise Dairy goats and meat goats and some pygmy ones to sell as pets.
Our Dairy Goats are primarily Saanens. We have 7 Saanens: 3 males (Billy & Casper & Cooter who is a mini Saanen) and 4 females (Sunday, Elsa, Dainty Girl and April). Since Cooter is a blue eyed mini Saanen, we mate him with our pygmy goats.
The other dairy goats we have are LaManchas and we have 3 of them. Two males: Jethro and Giblet and the female is Sweet Pea. I am thinking about breeding the males with some of our Saanens to get some different colors. LaManchas are smaller than Saanens but are good milkers nonetheless.
We have 3 pygmy goats. The male is Little Moo and the females are Brownie and Daisy Mae. Brownie is a pygmy fainting goat and her daughter is Daisy Mae.
We have a Nubian/Pygmy cross who is a female and her name is Gracie and her daughter Belle. Her son is part Boer and we have not named him yet. We also have Dorkling who is pygmy cross and her daughter Midnight.
We have 2 standard donkeys: Minnie & Jasper. Minnie is now 6 and Jasper is 4.
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| Minnie & Jasper |
We have 11 ducks. We use them for eggs and eventually for meat. We have 2 male Pekins and 6 female Pekins. We also have 3 other ducks (1 male & 2 females).
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| Some of our Pekin ducks |
We also just got into guineas. We have 15. They are still young but I believe we have 7 males and 8 females.
Chickens are raised for meat and eggs. We only have 40 chickens now. We have 26 hens and 14 males. We have Phoenix, Rhode Island Reds, Red Rangers, Freedom Rangers, and Ameracaunas.
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Love the animals! We also have guineas, chickens and a dog. We want to add turkeys, goats and ducks. Maybe one day soon.
ReplyDeleteI hope you can. Goats are by far our favorite homestead animal.
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