Welcome to Dairy Orchard Farm

Nash County, North Carolina

A BIT ABOUT DAIRY ORCHARD FARM

We believe nature knows best on most occasions. Thus we will not use pesticides or antibiotics in or on our animals if we can find a natural alternative. For example, we feed our chickens and ducks garlic and garlic water if they appear to be getting sickly or their parasite loads appear a bit high. Our chickens and ducks are also free-ranging critters that are released early in the morning and only confined at night, when those other free-ranging, predatorial-type critters like to hunt.

Our chickens and ducks receive oats and shell calcium as daily supplements to their outdoorsy diets.

Like our poultry, our Icelandic and Corriedale sheep also enjoy a free range of motion on their pastures, where they munch on a natural diet of grasses and forbs. The sheep are given a small supplement of oats during breeding season and parts of gestation (and as bribes when necessary).

We have incorporated wormwood into our pastures; in this way, the sheep can eat this herb as needed to self-deworm and, hopefully, we can keep them off the harsher dewormers. We recently started adding garlic cloves to the sheep's water, which seems to help keep the parasite load down; we are not certain, though, what mechanism (whether immune boosting or direct kill of parasites) is in play here. We do reserve the right when parasitism or infection threatens the life of our sheep, however, to employ veterinary strength medicines.

We raise pigs for pork and bacon production. At the moment, our piglets are streaming all over the pasture with our sheep while the adult pigs are stocked on a small piece of what used to be pasture; they have overturned this area better than any plow known to man. Pigs plow this way for good reason--they like to eat worms, grubs, roots. But the pigs also receive locally raised sweet potatoes, vegetarian slop, and oats. The whole lot of pigs will be placed on their very own pasture soon.

Our Angora rabbits are raised for fiber production and on wire to prevent parasite overloads. They are fed a pelleted diet (Southern States Big Red) along with daily Timothy hay and snacks such as apple slices, carrots, and greens, much of which is grown organically (not USDA-FDA certified) in our backyard garden. Unfortunately, we can't quite figure how to allow these particular critters to free range it without losing them to parasites, predation, or their own natural instincts to run away from humans. We intend to add meat rabbits in future in the form of Florida Whites. The meat rabbits will be pastured when acquired.

At this point, we are actively staying away from genetically modified grain/feed, the rabbit feed being the exception. The rabbit feed appears to be alfalfa based and may or may not have corn in it, can't tell by the label. We buy our feed from local dealers--about a five to ten minute drive from the farm.

At this time, we have small amounts of pastured/free-range eggs available but no dairy products. Next spring, we should have several lambs available for processing. We should also have some pigs ready for processing by that point. We sell in whole or halves (halves require you have a partner willing to buy other half). If you want to pay for your animal and pick it up, we can accomodate. If you wish us to deliver your animal to the processor, there will be a delivery fee in addition to the cost of the animal. You will be responsible for picking your meat up and paying processor; they will call you when your order is ready. This year, we are also working on obtaining a variety of meat chickens not prone to leg splay; these will be pastured. Reservations will be taken on these chickens when they are acquired.

Our webstore can be found here: www.dairyorchardfarm.com/webstore. Handmade soaps, knits and crocheted items along with homespun and millspun yarn are available on the webstore. Please see our Facebook page (link above) for farmers' market attendance announcements and for announcements as to new fiber products being added to the store as well as availability of pasture-raised meats.

We can be found at the Farmers' Market, Rocky Mount, NC, with fresh eggs, organic veggies, handmade soap, and fiber products from April through November, on alternating Saturdays.

If you need us to answer any questions, please drop us a line at customerservice@dairyorchardfarm.com. We'd be glad to hear from you.

Thanks for dropping by.

Sherryl, Andrew, and Forest
Last updated 6 May 2012