Welcome to Hope Refuge Farm Manchester, KY

June 9 marked our 20th wedding anniversary and we are getting ready to celebrate in a big way.  Jeff & I will be spending the next 2 & 1/2 weeks in Great Britain doing all sorts of fun stuff.  We’ll visit the Isle of Jersey and get to know the “original” Jersey cows.  One day’s plan is to go to the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show, mainly to see the Dexter judging, with the following day set for visiting some Dexter farms.  Then it will be off to Ireland for four days of horseback riding by the coast.  I’m so excited to be able to get a little closer to the roots of our dear little cows & learn more about the breeds & their history.  Be sure to come back in August to get a taste of the big trip!

Happy Independence Day from Hope Refuge Farm!  My prayer is that we will not lose the freedom we have left to raise our own and provide our family, friends & neighbors with fresh, nutritious foods from our family homesteads.  I enjoy being as independent as possible from the commercial food industry.  Last week I had a mini celebration as I walked past the shelves of milk in the grocery store, giving thanks for my little red cow.  Having our own fresh, raw milk and knowing it’s not tainted with pesticides, hormones or antibiotics has been wonderful.  If you’re hoping to soon be milking your own family cow, here are some ideas on what you’ll need to get started.

My parlor includes a sturdy stanchion with a neck chain and a movable feed trough.

Ready!

First of all, you need a clean milking area, and believe me, it’s nice to milk somewhere that you have storage space for your equipment so you don’t have to carry it all out to the cow each day. I decided I wanted a nice, well-lit, easily cleaned parlor with work & storage area right there.  It’s probably more than necessary if you just have one cow, but the last thing you want is dirt or soiled bedding getting flicked into your pail of milk. Read more »

1) Around 5:30 I checked on her & found that baby's feet were just emerging.

Finally, after all this waiting, we have a calf!  Sunday, May 30th, Eavie gave birth to a healthy black….bull calf (sigh).  We’ll assume daddy Mace is proud of him, but he’s in a different pasture right now & can only see his new boy through the fences.  Calving is an exciting time on the farm, but when you’re new to cattle & it’s your first go round you can have a lot of questions and uncertainties.  It’s hard to know what to expect.  So here’s a bit of our experience to help you prepare.

Sunday morning when I checked on Eavie before leaving for church, I thought it best to leave her penned in the corral with the barn stall.  Her udder was more swollen & hard and her vulva very relaxed.  It wasn’t as significant a change as some of my other cows have shown, but enough to make me keep her in.  When we got home later in the afternoon, she was showing definite signs of early labor – restless, frequent peeing & pooping small amounts, sniffing the stall over, keeping an eye on where the other animals were but not calling to them.  A couple hours later it was camera time.

Some people prefer to let their cows do their own thing, besides the Dexters don’t usually have problems calving.  With our mountainous pastures, though, I like to keep my girls in the stall & corral where they’re handy so I can keep an eye on them JUST IN CASE something does go wrong.
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It’s been a busy month on the farm, but I’d been struggling to come up with a good idea for my blog for the month.  Keira has helped me out with that.  Thursday we learned about hydramnios.

From the outside, this bull calf doesn't look like there's anything wrong with him.

I went out to start my morning chores Thursday and after a visit to the hens, I heard Keira greeting me from behind the barn. I went through the parlor to check on her & was horrified by the sight that met my eyes when I opened the outside door.  There stood a gaunt, forlorn Keira, looking like she had wallowed in the mud all night, cord hanging out and…….”Keira, where’s the baby?!?”  I soon found him – a perfectly normal looking red bull calf, lying dead in the mud on the other side of the fence.  Keira still had not milked up at all.  A few hours later, she finally passed the placenta, along with a river of fluid.

I had put in a call to the vet right away - he had just been out Tuesday evening to AI BoPeep for me, and when he saw Keira he commented on how enormous she was.  We knew by her breeding date that she was very near to calving, but I pointed out to him that she wasn’t milking up yet.  He returned my call shortly after she passed the placenta, and his first question was “Does she look like somebody gutted her?”  A definite yes there.  Then “Does it look like she had tons of fluid where the calf was born?”  Another yes.  He had immediately made the connection between her enormous belly & a dead calf – hydramnios.
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I LOVE SPRING!

The old apple tree in full bloom.

The grass turns green, flowers bloom.  It’s a time of new life…..and new babies on the farm.  It’s so refreshing and exciting after a long, cold winter.  So on Friday, as I made my rounds visiting the animals, I drank in the beauty of it all and enjoyed the new life around me.

Lacey & her newly hatched brood.

We had eggs in the incubator when one of the hens decided to go broody.  So I gave her the eggs for the last week and she did a lovely job of hatching them out….all 14 of them.  Of course none of them are genetically hers because she wasn’t among the hens I put in with that rooster, but as far as she’s concerned they’re all very much hers and she’s being a great momma.  Once they were all hatched & dry, she took them over to the feeder & showed them what to eat.  When she was satisfied with that proceeding, she headed to the waterer to teach the drinking lesson.  The mothering instinct  just amazes me!  And the miracle of birth fills me with wonder no matter the species.  Seeing these straggly chicks hatching out of their eggs is just as wonderful as seeing a foal or calf being born.  And now they’re energetic little fluff-balls, running around exploring their new world….what fun!
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