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Who has animals in milk right now?! If you are milking for the first time this year, this one’s for you! After you’ve collected and strained the milk, what do you have to do to it before drinking or cooking with it? Some people swear by raw milk, but you don’t consume it without taking on some risk. While it may contain good bacteria and other probiotics, it also can contain harmful bacteria such as E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria, and Campylobacter. If you’ve ever experienced any of these infections you can attest to how horrible it is to endure. Some...

Dusty and I recently needed another animal shelter and we didn't want to spend an arm and a leg building it, so we decided to try and reuse as many pieces as we could out of an old pole barn that had fallen in. Ultimately, we were able to reuse the telephone pole supports and also some old tin lying around. We did end up having to purchase 2x6 and 2x4 boards to build the roof and the sides of the barn, partly because a winter storm was coming and partly because the old boards from the barn weren't in...

Have you looked in your pastures lately? A good portion of pastures in our area are made up of tall fescue (and most likely the endophyte infected version). While this variety of fescue has many benefits, such as a hardy nature and long growing season, it also has a downside. As new beef producers who have invested a lot of money in our herd, we were quite alarmed when several of our cows started losing the ends of their tails last summer. We had heard of fescue foot and other problems related to endophyte infected varieties of tall fescue (E+...

Growing up in a family of ranchers and farmers definitely has its benefits, especially when you are starting your own farm or ranch. The wealth of wisdom and experience is invaluable. It can, however, be easy to fall into the ways of others simply because “That’s how my folks did it, so that’s how I’ll do it.” While those old ways may very well be the best, it doesn’t hurt to do a little research to see what you think would be the best way for you to do it. I’m specifically talking about when to plan for calving in...

I don’t know about your chickens, but ours are eating A LOT right now. When we crunch the numbers it is hard to justify keeping our flock of laying hens because we spend so much money on chicken feed. Of course, free-ranging chickens can significantly reduce your costs, but we have so many predators around us that we wouldn’t have any chickens left if we turned them loose. But what if you could reduce your feed bill and improve the health of your chickens by slightly changing what you are feeding? I have been seeing a lot of people talking...