Welcome to our Piggies

Welcome dear friends,
Well so much has been happening her lately but I want to share our latest additions 😉
We are gradually adding to our little homestead and are actually getting to the point where we can not add many more animals where we are living now.
While my last year I was able to get some beautiful Anglo Nubian Goats for my birthday and absolutely love them, some of the children have wanted to have pigs for ever so long.

Vellvin has always wanted a pet pig and take it for walks around town.

While I don't think she will be walking around town with these pigs I think we will walk them around the property.  

Naming our animals is always a fun task and this time as often we had already decided on a name for our boar. Years ago we watched Frontier House and they had a pig called JoJo Pumpkin. The children always said if we got a pig we would call it that. Beatrix Potter is a loved author in our home and her  Pigwig from The Tale of Pigling Bland is also a favourite.

Rogan has been chief researcher and he and I had a difference of opinion on the breed of pig we were going to get.

While we both agreed we wanted to have heritage breed pigs I wanted Gloucester Old Spots and he wanted Large Blacks.

We did compromise on this with Rogan winning me over with the fact that the Large Black is protected somewhat from sunburn due to it's skin colour. However one day I would like to get a Gloucester Old Spot 😍

What we have found with having any sort of livestock, whether it be poultry, rabbits or goats is that it's often  the housing of the animal that adds up in the setting up costs.

This time we decided to try and source pallets that are often around for free as our fencing materials.

We incorporated the fencing into the sty for the pigs and so eliminated the need for extra materials.

We didn't (Rogan and I) even try to 'square it out' much to Stephen's disgust but 'eyed it in' as we put the two separate but adjoining pens together.
We will add another one next to it when we have piglets to fatten up and sell.

We used the pallets and just ran star pickets down the center and have a crude gate system of opening and closing.
Now I know people say that pigs will get out easily but we are hoping that the 'docileness' of this breed will keep them in for now.
One day when we have our own homestead we will free range them a bit more but till then they will have to be content with a daily walk .

God Bless,
Stephen and Gae

Our First Chickens- a blast from the past

Welcome dear friends,
As we have been  changing and adding to our poultry over the last year or so. I thought it would be interesting to see how our getting chickens was  the first of our Homesteading activities.
So enjoy this post from the past about getting our first chickens.....

A couple of weeks ago we were given two chickens too keep.
This has been so lovely as we have wanted chickens since we moved to this house as it already had a chicken coop.
Well, actually we have wanted chickens for a long time and in fact I have wanted some since we were first married.

The children loved having them and kept going to 'check on the chickens' at any opportunity they had. In fact it is a great distraction for fussing little ones too.
We actually were not sure that they would lay eggs and so imagine our surprise and pleasure when we checked over the first couple of days and then discovered  our first egg.

On the same day we  got our older chickens we were driving home from town and saw a truck with chickens for sale in it.
Rogan had some birthday money and bought three for himself and we bought two more as family chickens.
These ones are only 9 weeks old and so are not ready to lay yet.

Stephen and Rogan had made a nesting box for the chickens quite a few weeks ago in anticipation of the chickens and so then made some roosts for them to climb up on and perch on using materials that were lying around.

Completed chicken nesting boxes.

As we have a very large chicken coop for them it was lovely to see them walking around doing all sorts of scratching and pecking and of course giving the chickens the left overs and scraps is quite rewarding.

This was our first egg and the kids just had to put it in different situations and take photos.

I love this one!

We had this cute little egg carton left over from Easter and the children loved putting the egg inside until we had more than four eggs that is.

Aren't they just so sweet. Rogan had actually started cleaning this coop area up almost form the time we moved in here in anticipation of this day.

So the the two older chickens both seem to lay one egg each per day. So over the first week we collected the eggs and saved them for a special morning breakfast of bacon and eggs.

I was amazed when I started to cook them  how they did not spread all over the fry pan like the ones we have bought always  did.

The first four of our very own home range eggs!

See the difference here. I just happened to add a store bought free range egg, on the left, to one of our own home laid eggs, on the right and look how different they look.

I can only tell you how happy we are at this next step we have taken in  growing our own food.
And it just keeps getting better and better!

What do I mean?
Oh yes today we got two little virtually new born lambs so be prepared for lots of lamb pictures soon too :)

God Bless,
Stephen and Gae