Shadow and Molly are AMORE! The next puppy season has begun. This will be Molly’s fourth and final litter before retirement. She is such a perfect mom and loves babies so much (when she missed a heat she tried to adopt Jenny’s babies) that I’m already sad for her that this is her last. We only do four litters per mom.
This is a great time to explain why I breed every heat, as long as the mom bounces back well, instead of giving my girls a rest as some breed clubs require.
The short answer is that skipping heats increases the likelihood of mammary cancer (already much higher in dogs than in humans), pyometra (life-threatening uterine infection caused by psuedopregnancy when not bred), and endometriosis. For the long answer, see the links below.
Most reproductive veterinary specialists now recommend doing back to back breeding as long as the mom recovered easily from the previous litter. Then they recommend retiring a dog early.
We should have babies in about two months if all goes well and I can’t wait!
People often comment that it must be very hard to take my cattle to be processed into beef, and my response is always the same: they live an absolutely perfect life here and then they have one bad day. But it’s a day that fulfills their destiny and purpose.
Tomorrow Salisbury and Tartar will leave us and come back as amazing Dexter Beef in a couple of weeks.
Yes, I have a lot of feelings about it. I saw them come into the world, or met them within hours of birth. They are both as tame as can be with wonderful dispositions. I’ve loved on them just about every day for the past 27 months.
So, yeah, I hate to see them go. But I’m also really proud to be producing great, healthy food humanely. I put the word out that they are available yesterday morning and was sold out within three hours. I’m not surprised because good beef has become incredibly expensive; even poor feedlot, antibiotic and hormone-laced beef is outrageous now.
If you missed out on these guys, you can reserve for the future by sending me a note. Stroganoff, who is an angus/Dexter cross, will be available in July and then I have two older cows going in October.
I’ve put the trailer in their pasture so they can get used to it and they are getting extra treats and rubs today. Right now I’m feeling heaps of gratitude, and looking forward to a stocked freezer just in time for grilling season.
My first year as a beekeeper went great. My bees thrived all summer and fall, and got through winter just fine thanks to guidance from my wonderful bee mentor, Gerald Skaggs. He made everything easy for me.
My second year was going very well, too. I got lots of honey and left plenty in the hive for the bees. Unfortunately, we had a bad winter and the bees were tightly huddled around the brood to keep them warm so they couldn’t break the huddle to get to the honey one frame over and they starved.
Last spring I doubled-down and got a second hive and more bees. They were doing great until sometime between late-February, when I saw them flying on an unusually warm day, and mid-March, when both hives were dead. Apparently, one hive lost their queen and/or were robbed and another starved because I was ignorant and had their supplemental feeding tray in the doorway of the hive.
I admit, my confidence is not good right now, but I refuse to give up. My solution is to get more bees and call in the experts. For the next year, Mac Blount from the Savannah Area Beekeepers Association will be taking full charge of my new bees. My mentor, Gerald, has had some health issues and I don’t want to drag him out here every week.
Mac came out and inspected the dead hives before my bees arrived to figure out what went wrong. Once my new bees were here, he came to make sure they were settling in as they should, and he’s been back every week to keep tabs on them, often with his bee-pal Mike Armstrong. I watch everything Mac and Mike do, take notes, and do whatever they tell me in between visits, from feeding to resolving equipment issues.
Last week, they realized that one hive had lost its queen, which is a death sentence for the whole hive. Mac and Mike very cleverly took a frame that had larvae in it and moved it to the the queenless hive, prompting the bees there to turn one of the larva into a new queen, and today we saw that it’s working! (I hope I got all of that correct.)
My hope is that by next spring I will be capable of tending bees on my own without letting them die.
Please don’t die, bees.
Mac Blount and Mike Armstrong from the Savannah Area Beekeepers Association save my hives.
This week we welcomed two new faces to Juniverse Farm with the birth of Franklin and purchase of Abigail.
Our sweet four-year old girl Eden Garden Farm Aurelia gave us a darling little bull calf April 21st. It was a stressful day waiting and watching for him to be born because Aurelia’s calf last year did not live, and her first calf the previous year had to be pulled. I was very worried for her and had our veterinarian on stand-by, but all went wonderfully and both mom and baby are doing great!
Franklin
Four-year old Belle Fourche “A for Abigail” from Belle Fourche Farm in Georgia is an exciting addition for us. We are working to ensure that we have the best breeding stock we can find to help achieve our herd goals, and I believe Abigail has much of what we’re looking for. She has had two calves already, including a heifer and a bull calf born in January. One of the best things about this cow is that she has absolutely no “stranger danger” and I was able to touch her everywhere as she came off the trailer! She’s a beautiful cow with her black nose and eye makeup. I can’t wait to see the calves she and Billy bring us.
