Posted on 04/30/2015 6:35:56 PM PDT by Roos_Girl
If you've ever dreamed of owning your own patch of land and a successful home-grown business then a 200-word essay and $150 is all is could take for it to become a reality.
Paul and Leslie Spell, of Humble Heart Farms in Elkmont, Alabama, are giving away their goat cheese farm - complete with their house, 20 acres of land, 56 goats, cheese-making equipment, recipes and even a dog - to the person who writes the best essay about why they should run it.
It will cost entrants just $150 to apply and, with an expected 2,500 applications, the couple say the fees will pay off the rest of their mortgage and leave $20,000 in operating funds for the new owner.
'It's for real,' Paul Spell told AL.com. 'We've had a pretty successful run here and I thought it was time for us to go help so
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Have you seen Kudzu in the South?
Ok. 20 dairy goats. That's also assuming high quality dairy hay is fed and pastures are on a daily rotation divided into at least seven sections for intensive grazing and rotation. Come August and September, pastures must be left to regrow to about six inches before the frost hits. Otherwise pasture quality goes out the crapper the next year.
Goats prefer to graze on brush over conventional pasture. The best thing goats are for is to fence them into an overgrown neglected woodland and let them eat everything below five feet tall. They will chew Kudzu infested land until there isn’t a stem left.
I wouldnt deal with anyone who sells a good dog instead of taking them along. Think about that Twilight Zone episode....lol
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It’s a trained guardian dog. It’s there to protect the goats.
It is a must for any goat farmer to have guardians, because goats are prey. They use dogs, donkeys, or lamas.
Plus, the dog would be miserable without it’s herd.
bmfl
Did I get your goat?
I had over 200 ewes and ran short of stored forage in April. It cost me $7,000 to purchase enough hay to make it thru those last two months. I should have kept herd size at 100 head. 80 acres was not enough for 200 sheep. Sheep and goats are about the same in nutritional needs if milking. My sheep went thru one large round bale per day. Each bale was between 800 and 1,000 pounds.
That being said, pound for pound, goats produce a lot of milk over dairy cows. Our dairy goats we raised for our own household milk produced two gallons per day per goat in peak production. Sheep produce about a gallon, but it's much higher in solids and fat than goats and cows.
You know, it is a good idea, it’s like entering a lottery.
Goat Cheese is good... I would need to get info on cheese making, but I could use it to promote traditional values... like traditional marriage.
bump
Ready to move to
Alabama?
I tend to think you’re right.
Those dogs are raised from puppyhood *with* the goats.
The goats are his pack, not the people.
He would undoubtedly be more stressed to be parted from his goats than his humans.
You can buy feed.
“High quality dairy hay” would actually be not good for goats.
They can get sick from more than a tiny bit of alfalfa.
It’s too rich.
The poorer the hay, the better.
I buy “crap hay” from the local hardware store and apparently, it’s from somebody who mows their wild pasture every so often.
Full of weeds and scrub.
The goats love it.
*Once*, I had to get them “real hay” and they refused to eat it.
Goats like weedy junk nothing else wants to eat.
The saying is “A goat eating grass is a starving goat.”
When I was about 8 our neighbors had a great pyrenee.
We used to rid him like a horse.
Hmmmm.
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