News and blog
Kidding and lambing time has arrived at T3L! We are getting some really nice lambs from our new ram that we purchased last fall from A & B Dorsets in Newark, Ohio. He was not quite six months old when we put him in with our mature ewes in September but to our amazement, he got the job done! We are up to 35 lambs and still have 6 more to lamb out. We have gotten mostly ewe lambs, so we will be in short supply of meat this fall, but we should have some nice ewes to sell for breeding stock and 4H projects. Please contact us early if you are interested in either breeding stock or would like to be on our waiting list for fall meat.
Happy holidays to everyone! May you all be able to spend time with family and friends this holiday season. Just a quick thank you to everyone who has purchased animals and meat from us over the year.
Our kidding starts in a very short time, as in right after Christmas, and continues through January. The goat kids should just about all be born in time for our sheep to start lambing! Once we get through February and lambing and kidding, guess what? It's time for calving to start! Oh, but we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves like we tend to do. For now we'll try to enjoy the family get togethers between now and New Years and worry about losing all the cookie pounds later!
Just a reminder- we are all out of pork, goat and lamb meat until late spring. We still have a good supply of ground beef and different cuts of steak. Let us know what you're interested in!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Wow! I don't know where all the summer went, Halloween is over, and we've already had our first snow fall here in central New York. It's been a few months since the website has been updated and boy, do I have alot of catching up to do! I will continue to post new pictures and update the pages, but in the mean time, we have some does and our herd sire for sale, so check out the Boer goat page and see what's available!
We ended our first breed sanctioned show on a pretty good note, at least for our herdsire. On the first day he was Reserve Champion Yearling buck under judge Eddie Holland from Texas. On the second day he was Champion Yearling buck under Florida judge Julie Brown.
Our Powerhouse daughter, T3L Lady Jane also did well, receiving Champion Fullblood yearling doe under Julie Brown. We will post pictures when we get a chance, as we are on our way to another ABGA show this Friday in Kearneysville, West Virginia!
The cows and sheep are on their full grass diet as the pastures have finally started growing. Now if only the rain would stop!
The chores are calling, so that's it for now!
It's hard to believe April is over so quickly and with May comes the start of our show season. Our first show will be May 14-15 at the Syracuse, NY fairgrounds. It is an ABGA sanctioned show and is free to attend. We will be showing somewhere between 12 and 15 animals, including our herd sire and wether projects.
Our calving season is over and although at the time it seemed like it would never end-it did end and was realitively uneventful this year. Unless you take all the rain and cold weather of course! We ended up with more heifer calves than bulls for once and are looking forward to seeing them out on the pasture grazing with their surrogate moms.
That's all for now-this week looks promising for lots of sunshine and temperatures above 60, which we desperately need to get the pastures to GROW!
We had our first calf born what seems like weeks ago-the 7th of March. Since then, 75 more have been born. Crazy? Yes! Busy? Yes! Tired? Yes! The trade off for us is that only one time a year will we be bottle feeding calves. Only one time a year will we be waiting and watching for cows to calve in the middle of the night. Only one time a year will we have to make sure the cows get bred back on time.
All these last few busy weeks will be but a memory when two months from now we can look out on the lush, green pastures and enjoy watching the cows graze along side their calves. We will be filling our bulk tank with the rich milk that these green pastures provide. And we will know that we don't have any more cows to calve until next year, that we will have no more bottles to feed, and we will sleep peacefully through the night!
In the meantime though, it's calving checks at 2am, bottle feeding babies, and short, restless nights!
It's snowing like crazy here in Cortland, NY. Spring should be just right around the corner, right? Didn't the groundhog say so? Anyhow, we're gearing up for our busiest time of the year-calving. In about eight weeks time (from March 8th- April 30), we hope to have 116 new calves on the ground. A lot of work for just the two of us and the kids helping when/where they can. To help bring on spring, I'll leave you with a nice reminder of summer from years past!
We are almost done with this spring's kidding and lambing. We have four more does to kid and one more ewe to lamb. Unfortunately, we did not get any kids out of Big Cat or Main Attraction, but the kids from our herd sire are growing like crazy and doing great. We already have our eye on some for this year's show string and wether projects. We will have kids to sell as well.
The goats have been busy the last two weeks! So far, we have 22 kids total from our herd sire, Heavy Hitter, from the 2009 ABGA National Champion Ennobled buck 2 Dox Luger, and a few from Ennobled Lary's Cryin. They are all looking awesome and we will have a few wether prospects and 4H animals for sale. We do still have seven more does to kids yet in the next two weeks. After that, we will have more does kidding in late June and early July.
The sheep also started having their lambs and so far we have 12 lambs on the ground. If you will be interested in lamb later on this summer, please let us know as we will only be keeping a few wethers for custom butchering this year, as the rest we will be selling shortly after weaning.
Keep warm and think spring!
The excitement is building here! Not only are the Phillips kids excited about Christmas, but perhaps more importantly-the first goat kids are due on or around Christmas! This will be our first year (out of ten years raising goats) that we have ever had babies this early. Our first few does are due with kids from our herdsire Heavy Hitter. We will post pictures when they are born! In the mean time, happy holidays!
