This week I have been thinking about what type of hay should I buy for my small goat herd in Florida. Usually, we can get alfalfa, peanut, or coastal hay all year long. I tend to supplement only in the inter for maybe 2-3 months before spring. Where I am in Florida my fields start to grow back up again in early spring. In March my pastures are already lush and green so hay supplement is not a year-round thing. Below is an example of a pasture in March. As you can see there is not much growth but its green and growing

Lately, though the prices have gone way up for square bales, a coastal square bale is about $10 right now when two or three years ago it was $7. Historically i have been buying square bales, they last about a week for the kidding does and I can switch between alfalfa and peanut hay while their milking. The problem is that the prices of square bales have gone up but the price for large round bales has stayed basically the same. It now makes more sense to buy round bales.

The tradeoff is that with round bales I can’t switch varieties that much since they will last a while considering the size of my herd, about 25 does. I will have to either buy several varieties at once and put different types in different paddocks or just buy one or two for the season. Determining the hay for my small goat herd will be different this year since the last two years I have been getting underweight and slow-growing kids which I think in part is due to not having enough hay in the winter.

It has been busy on the farm, some projects went well, but a lot of other projects didn’t really work and I have to regroup and decide what to do next. I will break the updates up by enterprise to make them easier to read.

Goats

The goat herd continues to be difficult to increase in size. Last kidding season I got up to 42 goats, sold 7 of the kids, and kept 4. However, I continue to lose old goats to worms and some of the young doelings, especially after the year mark. Johne’s disease testing will be required to make sure that the symptoms that I am seeing and assuming are worms are not actually something worse. The buck seems to be doing fine and I have plenty of does that require minimal worming but I still have to cull more proactively. Yearly I have been averaging about 25-30 does before the kidding season, far behind my target of 50 does and one buck for the herd.

Sheep

I made a big mistake with this herd this year. The ram was very aggressive so I sold him too early in the summer and was not able to get another ram until October. Lambing will be late this year because of my mismanagement. I lost fewer sheep to worms than the goat herd so that’s positive. This herd is for internal consumption so the output has been able to keep up with our demand for lamb meat. There are 10 ewes and one ram in the herd.

High Tunnels

Growing crops has been easy, but marketing and selling them have not been. Peppers, Okra, cucumbers, and squash all are very easy to grow in the tunnels. I have yet to find a buyer for anything other than peppers and even this has been sporadic.

Overall I have had some successes on the farm over the last year but a lot of failures. I learn from those though so I can’t complain.

2021 Kidding season

The 2021 kidding season has not been bad on our small farm. So far we have had 17 kids, 8 doelings, and 9 bucklings. There are two does still pregnant so I still have some more kids coming.

This batch of kids is from a new 100% New Zealand Kiko buck, the does are Purebred Kiko. I have had more twins with this buck so far. I have a Purebred buck with a smaller herd and those have mostly been singles, although they are sturdier and healthier. Besides the goats I also have 10 sheep on the field this spring, 5 of those are lambs.

Crops in the High Tunnel. Small Farm challenges

Setting up the cash crops in the High Tunnel has been difficult. I put the habanero peppers, beets, and cucumbers in the racks in December. Germination for the beets and cucumbers was easy. The Habaneros didn’t really germinate until about 6 weeks in, and pests immediately took over, they didn’t make it out of the racks so that was a complete waste. I have regrouped and put peppers in the racks again last week. The Cucumbers were easy to transplant from the racks to the high tunnel. They were also easy to keep going, which is good on a small farm. I had about 100 cucumbers plants at one time but then didn’t follow up properly with watering. The yield was low too, about 4-5 cucumbers per plant but overall the experiment was not bad. I need to put them on racks earlier, probably around November, and plant at higher densities.

Cilantro; the only “success” story

The only “success” story so far has been cilantro. It has been very easy to grow, basically direct seed to the high tunnel. Grows fast, at least here in Florida it takes about 2 weeks. It also requires very little watering, about every 2-3 days I had to water but sometimes it was a week before I had to. Overall I can’t complain about the Cilantro. I also found a buyer, a Vietnamese restaurant, fairly easy and might have enough to get to a farmers market.