It’s pumpkin season. Bins of pumpkins are overflowing outside of supermarkets.
In order to compete, farmstands show off spectacular mountains of pumpkins.
The selection gets crazier every year. Bumps, warts, odd colors and strange shapes galore!
There are big pumpkins. If you buy one, they’ll help you load it into your car. But, how do you carry it out? I know about this dilemma. One year I bought such a pumpkin for a party game – guess the weight of the pumpkin – we did a lot of guessing trying to lug it to the front yard!
Some pumpkins require a moving company to carry to your home.
Every year, I buy pumpkins for the hens.
This year, I bought one for the goats. It was an experiment. You never know with goats. They are very fussy eaters. (Yes! Their reputation for eating anything is far from the truth.)
It turns out that the goat boys love the rind, but not the innards. Which is great, because it’s the gloppy stuff that the chickens like the most. I’ll be tossing this pumpkin in with the chickens tomorrow, and buying a new pumpkin for the goats.
You can contribute to the fall pumpkin festival here at LIttle Pond Farm. Click here to buy the goats a pumpkin (via PayPal). Your support is much appreciated and helps to keep the cams up and running.
It must have been a good year for pumpkin crops The prices seem to be half of what they were last year.
I have paid less then 5 dollars a pumpkin this year compared to the 10 dollars a pumpkin last years…
I live like 30 miles west of Albany, NY
The pic of the boys on the stumps is priceless….should be entered in a contest and money could be donated to a pet rescue foundation. It’s such a perfect picture.
Wait, there’s a contest for silly goat photos and I could make money? :) I need to replace three cams, at $500 each. GoogleAd income doesn’t even fully pay for my web hosting and other necessary tech to keep this site up and running. (This is why I so appreciate the “pumpkins” and “coffee” – without such support I couldn’t keep doing what I’m doing.)
At the Pierce College farm last fall, I noticed a wagon full of pumpkins sitting in the goats’ pasture. Students would take some of these pumpkins to give to the cows, but I was wondering why the goats weren’t nibbling on the pumpkins themselves. After a couple weeks, the goats figured out what they’d been missing, some even climbing up onto the wagon to get those pumpkins! Lucky goats…
Our friends have a little farm and they just got some little pigs. Our pumpkins will be going there after Thanksgiving! I love the pictures today. So miss our yearly Fall trips to New England. Thanks for sharing. As usual the goat boys are always ready for a “close up”.
You never know about pigs. I was going to train a friend’s pigs (I needed to train an animal, not a dog, for the class I’m in.) Pigs are so smart, but his pigs wouldn’t eat any treats that I brought. Not marshmallows, not donuts, not cheese, not animal crackers! All they liked were their peanuts and pig feed, and since they got that all the time they weren’t motivated to work for them. But, some pigs go bonkers over pumpkins. You never know.
Ha ha ha ha…..Just picturing you feeding a pig marshmallows is a riot! That is not something that would ever occur to me that an animal would like…… :)
Many critters have sweet tooths!
Terry, let me know if you still need a substitute for your class. I’m an animal and will do just about anything for a donut, marshmallows or cheese. Silly pigs. Love the photo of the boys and their pumpkin!
The directions simply say “non-dog species” – you’ll do! :)
We grew pumpkins this year for the first time and also for the first time I gave my girls some pumkin to feast on….the very next morning under the roost were some round worms under one of our older girls….guess it’s not just an old wives tale!
There’s an anthelmintic in the pumpkin seeds. Dosage of whole pumpkin seeds is unknown, but research points to a large quantity to be effective, and that ground up seeds are preferable. So, how much whole pumpkin helps to reduce worms? Not known. But they’re certainly chock full of nutrients and keep the hens busy!
And to just think that every one of those pumpkins …. both big and small ….. start out as a small seed! I didn’t know you could feed one of the large pumpkins to the hens. How do ‘you’ serve a pumpkin to yours …. cut a couple of large holes in each side so they can reach the ‘goody’ stuff inside??
Some hens won’t peck at the hard shell, but my girls have pumpkin experience. I don’t do anything other than set the pumpkin down and they do the rest. Not only is the pumpkin a healthy thing for them to eat, but the pumpkin gives them something to do. In zoo terminology, it would be called “enrichment.” The girls just call it “fun.”
And they can peck through the skin of the pumpkin?? Now, I’m talking about the large pumpkins …. the ones people often use for carving for Halloween. Or, are you talking about the smaller ones … the ones called pie pumpkins?
Yep. The pumpkins that you see on camera are the ones grown for carving. Very thick skins.
OK. I’ve always hesitated at putting a whole pumpkin in their yard since I didn’t think they could peck through the skin … always thought I’d have to cut it in half or something. Think I’ll buy them one and see what happens. If nothing else, it ‘should’ keep them busy for a while.
The first time you might have to cut it in half. New things can make them wary, but I think they’ll like it.
When I put a whole pie pumpkin out in the run the first time, my girls ignored it. Then I cut little starter holes in it … still no interest. When I cut it in half, they happily cleaned out the insides, but still didn’t touch the flesh. I was hoping that it would provide some fun for them and keep them from getting bored. No such luck. They don’t care for cabbage in a suet holder either. Sigh.