Rancho Bajo La Luna

04/23/2025

Well… even more a reason to have cows and goats in milk…
The FDA has suspended quality testing milk and other dairy products…

Happy to know what is in my milk. These girls give us 4-5 gallons of milk a day after the babies and my lamb have been fed.

My goats give about 2 gallons after babies have been fed.

Located in Grottoes VA

🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄 🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄

Bueno... una razón más para que las vacas y las cabras se alimenten con leche... La FDA ha suspendido las pruebas de calidad de la leche y otros productos lácteos...

Me alegra saber qué hay en mi leche.
Estas cabras nos dan de 4-5 galones de leche al día después de alimentar a las crías y a mi cordero.

Mis cabras dan unos 2 galones después de alimentar a las crías. Ubicadas en Grottoes, Virginia.

04/18/2025

Come play with these cuties!
Here til 4pm

04/18/2025

River Edge invites you to a fun-filled Easter celebration on Friday, April 18th, from 1 PM - 4 PM at 1221 Rosser Ave, Waynesboro, VA!

Easter Event today in Waynesboro!
Paquita & Valiente our calves and our baby lamb Michi will be there!

Event link ⬇️
https://www.facebook.com/100089664517459/posts/639695362362609/

04/16/2025

Yesterday we had the first purebred Brahma bull calf born.
Valentina & Canelo’s son, Valiente

04/13/2025

Find us on MeWe & Bluesky!

04/13/2025

I love having a homestead 💕
Fresh milk daily, cheeses and other recipes with milk.

04/09/2025

Looks like we may have a busy time!
Two Easter events.
Cyclone is still dealing with getting turned into a steer 😅

So his little Sister Paquita will be coming with a few of her little goat friends!

April 12 starting at 1pm
Hoppy Days Easter Bash
3809 Churchville Ave, Churchville

April 18 Starting at 1
River Edge Easter Event
1221 Rosser Ave, Waynesboro

If you are interested in having these cuties and more at your events find more info on our site

https://ranchobajolaluna.carrd.co

04/08/2025

See more on MeWe & Bluesky! MeWe: https://mewe.com/ranchobajolaluna
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ranchobajolaluna.bsky.social

04/07/2025

As we see the increase cost of groceries, products and services with big companies, many are trying to stop paying the middleman and go DIRECTLY to the farmers.

We have a person in the community taking in forms to make a "Food Map" of sorts. The community just needs to know where they are:

https://forms.gle/3XRtneVh5x7NcJsZ6

Please fill out if you are a farmer, homesteader who sells surplus or do agricultural services.

For more info you can go to Olivia Hathaway who made the original form!

Hello! The recent tariff announcement has made many people unsure about their finances or what will be available in the grocery store in the near future. The purpose of the survey below is to 1) Find sources of local food, 2) Find where it goes overall, 3) Find where individual people can access it....

04/01/2025

Now that the babies have been weaned and gone to their new homes we got PLENTY of milk.
Getting 4-6 gallons daily! If you are interested in a milk share message for more info!

https://ranchobajolaluna.carrd.co/

Ahora que los bebés han ido a sus nuevos hogares, tenemos MUCHA leche.
¡Consiguiendo 4-6 galones diarios! ¡Si usted está interesado en un mensaje de compartir la leche para obtener más información!

https://ranchobajolaluna.carrd.co/

04/01/2025

This is no April Fools joke! We are moving platforms!
We’ve been working on adding more to our YouTube & Mewe account.
With Tik Tok potentially getting banned and a lot of issues here on Facebook we are going to try out other places.

Bluesky is where we will do updates kinda how we do on Tik Tok.
Currently working on adding a subscribe option to our website for updates similar to how we do on here.

Mewe will be our Facebook alternative.

2025 has a lot in store but not here.
We have set
• Goat & Dairy cow milk shares
• Getting our chicken numbers back up for eggs.
• Travel Petting Zoo events are starting this month.
• Setting up a new pen locally on the homestead for kids to do the petting zoo here.
For more info save our site
https://ranchobajolaluna.carrd.co

03/27/2025

Hi everyone guess what? Cyclone gets to be a Bunny Calf on April the 12th!

Come meet the Easter Bunny, play with Cyclone, swap seeds, face paintings, a bouncy house and more!

https://facebook.com/events/s/hoppy-days-easter-bash/9329860373767804/

03/26/2025

Not the best pics but I’ll have dad help me pose her tomorrow.
We have a Nubian doe cross (NOT A MINI) in milk with her buckling born today!
3/26/2025

First Freshening. Nice udder. Picture after hes drank. Will have pics of a full udder this weekend
Located in Grottoes VA
Will be available together only.
Last pic is size comparison to one of my Nigerians.

Do remember to find us off of Facebook on MeWe instead!

Rancho Bajo La Luna https://mewe.com/ranchobajolaluna

03/21/2025

I want to say happy birthday to the best man I know. My dad 💕
he’s always gone with my crazy ideas, both the farm and spiritual.

Has always been my right hand man when trying to convince mom on another animal 🤣
Has built pens, huts for my pets, coops, cages and anything while bickering with me.

Has taught me the values of life and death. How to help a cow give birth, how to humanely and with dignity end suffering of others.

Has held me when I cry for animals we had only days from livestock sales and surprised me with someone new.

He finds animal skulls, bones or odd things and first thing he does is think about me. Given me deer skulls, huge ram skulls, longhorn bull skulls, raccoons and other even helped me skin road kill 😂

He’s made me all proud of my Mexican Heritage, showing me his roping skills, Pajarete, teaching me to make some Mexican dishes.

Honestly I could go on for days. All I wanna say is Happy Birthday Jose Gonzalez
Te quiero papi

03/20/2025

Eggs costing too much? Think getting chickens is better? PLEASE RETHINK THAT!

In the past 3 weeks we have seen an influx of posts looking for chicks. We have also had dozens of people calling or messaging asking if we have chicks or hens available. Because of this we wanted to break down the cost for newbies.

STORE BOUGHT VS YOUR LOCAL HOMESTEADER/FARMER
Even at $10 a dozen for eggs homesteaders and farmers are not making bank as you think and in a minute you will see why. At most you would be paying $10 a dozen per week, $40 a month, $480 a year for ONE dozen eggs. Lets look at starting and maintaining chickens.

SHELTER
Its not just the chicken. You need to have proper shelter for them. A decent coop and fencing and, more so, need to check your zoning. Most cities do not permit chickens and local counties Ive seen max 6 hens and NO roosters.

Even a Cheap coop will cost you about $500 if you reuse a lot of stuff like pallets, spare wood etc. Nails and Screws aren’t cheap. Chicken wire keeps chickens in but not predators out; you need Hardware wire for that. Most people will try to buy from Tractor Supply. Many of those coops are made poorly and last maybe 1-2 years. A large enough coop for 6 hens would be over $1,000 from there.

To have proper space the smallest is 3 square feet of coop space and 8 square feet of run space. You are already over $20-$500 what you would have paid for eggs.

CHICKS
Are you looking for more common breeds like production reds, barred rocks, Easter Eggers? More hardy or dual purpose breeds like Brahmas and Orpingtons. White Eggs? Brown eggs? Pink? Blue? Green?
Your more common breed chicks under a week old can cost you now about $5-$7 EACH.
Your more pricier breeds can go for $10
More exotic breeds like Cemanis can go as high as $50-$100 each depending quality.
Be ready that for the 10 you get, you will likely lose 2-3 chicks. Either by sickness, them accidently drowning, somehow suffocating themselves, possibly picking at each other.

CHICK QUALITY
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! If you are going to get chicks, get them from your homesteaders or breed specific farms that grow for quality and not quantity. You will notice more issues with chicks from hatcheries. Many places like Tractor supply will have them be smaller, thinner than the standard for the breed. ALSO never trust “Sexed chicks” unless its breed specifically bred that way. There are countless stories of people going to Tractor Supply buying sexed chicks and out of 10 guaranteed “pullets” they get 2-3 roos. The Unsexed is worse. Ive seen many and myself get more than 50% roosters. Another big issue in quality is that with such large amounts of chicks splay legs is commonly seen. If corrected quickly they can live a good life but many new chicken owners don’t know. Finally its common for people to want egg laying hens but there are also “Broiler Chicks” “Cornish Cross” Those are your meat chickens. Some people have sadly been sold the wrong breeds and then struggle on needing to process them when they didn’t want to do that.

ROOSTERS
You WILL get roosters at some point if you want to have chicks or hatch chicks. Are you allowed to have them? Are you willing to process them? Are you going to raise them and know they will go for food? Selling them? Lucky if you can give them away UNLESS its a pricier breed and even then. Roosters can start to crow as young as 3-4 months. Some ive seen try to crow at days old.

SKIP CHICK STAGE? PULLETS & HENS?
Pullets used to cost $10-$15 since they weren’t laying yet. Many now cost $20-$30.
An egg laying hen can cost now $40-$60, Some at $100.
One year of growth, 2-3 years of constant egg laying, 2+ years of slower egg laying. Average age of a hen is 5-10 years old but there are some who have been as old as 12-13. Are you ready to do all the work for 2 good years of eggs and the rest just caring for them? Or will you sell them once they dont lay anymore.

FEED
Most want to go the organic route. Layer feed, crumbles, mealworms, vitamins, can easily go for $200-$300 a month. More “Basic Food” can easily still be $100 a month.

TOTAL COST.
Essentially you will be paying about $2,000-$3,000 to set up with shelter and the chicks or hens.
And be paying about $1,200-$2,500 on feed.

So why do we homesteaders, hobbyists, and farmers do it? We know what we are eating as we grow it ourselves. The experience is something I would never trade in the world. We honestly love our chickens. We will go in single digit weather days, the pouring rain and sun blazing heat and complain while doing it but will smile when we see our chickens happy and safe.
I didn’t even touch on winter care in this post but please if you are going to get chickens, they are a commitment just like cats and dogs.

03/17/2025

Update: Sold at Auction
Not just cuz they are mine BUT
We have 3 beautiful little heifers available located in Grottoes VA
2 two month old Red Angus cross heifers
1 five day old pure black angus heifer.

The two reds are on grass and grained and starting to wean.
The little black beauty is currently being raised on our jersey but can be bottle trained.
Message for more info.

03/17/2025

The Mosby Foundation will be gratefully accepting those treats your dog doesn't like now. The cat food that didn't suit. The litter that seemed like a good idea at the time...

Is the bag open? No problem, we have tape!

Drop by your pet's rejects at Old Wharf Tattoo, 21 N Augusta in Staunton from 12-7! We will find a pet that loves it!

03/08/2025

Are you a homesteader? A farmer? Someone with livestock? They have a survey at the very bottom of the link.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3WBCJ8J?

I think personally we need to start “Certified” Classes to help with basic training and care that farmers could do to help ease the load on vets. I know multiple Facebook groups that have helped a lot of people with alternatives to vet or even more knowledge than vets based on experience.

Virginia is experiencing a shortage of large animal veterinarians and efforts are ongoing to resolve the issue.