Chicken Scraps Blog

We are offering our very nice naturally polled Jersey bull for sale or stud. He is from Shepherd's Hill Farm's closed milking herd of Jerseys from registered lines.  Almost all of their cows are A2/A2 and excellent milkers.  Barbacoa is a great bull; calm, medium sized, well built, polled, and a great example of a Jersey. I have A2/A2 test results in hand, and will be happy to email them upon request. Stud fee will be $50 per cow, if she does not need to stay overnight or be milked by me.  If she stays overnight or needs milking/ other special care, we will discuss further terms. Contact me at 352-745-3576  by call or text for more info, or send me an email at chickenscrapsblog@gmail.com This is one of his calves; our beautiful heifer, Bayberry.  She is polled and A2/A2, from our horned, A1/A2 cow, Blossom.  (Blossom is horned, but carries a recessive polled gene.)

In breeding Border collies, my first goal is to produce quality puppies, rather than quantity.  Thus I chose my two dogs from reputable breeders who breed healthy working dogs.  To make entirely sure though that Cleone and Duncan are free from the dreaded collie eye anomaly , I sent in blood samples last week to a lab in Tallahassee. Today I got the test results and they are both normal, non-carriers! To view results, click here .

Have you ever tried to herd a 16 m/o dairy bull?  It can be interesting, even when he is comparatively mellow, like Barbacoa.  Any bull that is sexually mature is potentially dangerous, and the closer they get to 18 months or two years, the more dangerous they are. Now, if you have to somehow move that beast from one pasture, past a 5 month old heifer, through the yard, into another pasture, what is the easiest way to do it? You call a high drive Border collie! Yesterday I tattooed our bull for permanent ID before we sell him, and had to get him into the milking stanchion.  While we didn't get the dragging him into the stanchion adventure on video, my 10 year old brother, Justice, did get some neat footage of Cleone moving him.  As you can see in the video, she is no expert, but that is my fault, not hers.  I simply don't know how to train a herding dog to the high level of skill that many reach, so while she is a great helper for me around the farm, ...

Feldman Family Pansy Pansy is a beautiful heifer with a great temperament.  She is well built, and in perfect condition.  She has been very healthy her entire life, and has been kept on a good regimen of milk, free choice kelp based minerals, grass, and alfalfa hay.  We do not practice feeding grain to our cows, as we feel that grass is their natural food, and the milk is much  healthier if they are fed exclusively grass. Pansy is used to having her udder handled quite a bit, and allows me to "milk" her without much fuss at all, if any.  She also picks up her feet, and leads okay.  (I am working on improving her leading training, and also teaching her to tether.)

As of May 2nd, Fenella is now officially a yearling! She is a very pretty little horse with a great temperament.  Spirited, yet very friendly and easy to train, she will make a great horse someday.  Recently my brother has been doing a lot of shooting in the back pasture, and she has become quite desensitized to the sound of firearms- to the point that she either ignores his invasion of her pasture, or comes over to fellowship with him and observe his target practice.  This has been encouraging to me, since I have considered training her for mounted shooting, or at least laying the groundwork for someone else to do so.

I have news:  We now have a Border Collie stud! Dandie Duncan, a beautiful black and white ABCA registered Border Collie, will be coming to our farm in July. Sired by Gage, out of Sunday, both owned by Dawn Boyce, an excellent breeder in northern Georgia. I had pick of the litter among the males, and can hardly wait to pick him up. Duncan in center. I'm looking forward to when he and Cleone can play together, and of course, to the time when they have puppies.  He is from great herding lines, and I expect him to be beautiful, hardworking, and most importantly, have a great personality.

     Pretty much everyone will have to deal with an infection of some sort at some point in their life.  This is especially true if you live on a farm, for you will not only have to watch over yourself and your family, but your animals will also claim your attention.  We have had our fair share of infections, and while prevention is always better than cure, we have found an herbal cure that works almost every time.  In fact, we have not had to apply a topical antibiotic for about eight years now, and rarely have we used an internal antibiotic.      This is because we use an herb called Goldenseal .  Goldenseal is an herb in the buttercup family which has been used for centuries, especially by the American Indians.  It is an effective help or cure for a wide variety of disorders ranging from the common cold to mouthsores; stomach problems to bad cuts/ scrapes.