Honorable Mention

Our neighbor was interviewed by the local paper about home cheese making using our own goat's milk!  Read the article here...

image owned by The Burlington Free Press

image owned by The Burlington Free Press

You Grow Girls

Our keepers from this season, tail-to-tail, Xenon and Titanium.  Xenon (left) is out of our most productive milker, Constance.  She's only 5 weeks old but I can already tell she has a nice wide stance in the back, which is an improvement on her dam.  We are hoping sire Bandito also gives her tighter udder attachment.  She's an absolute doll, with flashy markings and a quiet but affectionate personality.

Titanium (right) is a huge long-legged blue-eyed doe who is putting on weight very quickly and looks most like her granddam, Willow Moon Farm Baba Yaga.  Her dam's udder is lovely in my opinion, so we are hoping her sire's genetics adds greater milk capacity from the prolific ARMCH Twin Creeks MB Stellaluna.  Titanium is extremely vigorous when it comes to eating and subdued and sweet in her personality.  I cannot wait to see who she grows up to be.

I'm also wishing we had retained Cadmium (center).  Her dam, Cordial, has a gorgeous udder with great attachments AND capacity.  Cad' is shaping up into a very nice little doe, who will be going home to her new owner soon.  We will be keeping a doe from Cordial next season, if she is so inclined to bestow us with one.  I'm already looking forward to our next kidding!  Holy cr*p!!

Coolin' It

Here we are pushing close to 90 deg F again and it is only the second week of April.  There are no leaves on the trees to lend shade for the animals.  My cold weather loving cabbages are dry and sunburned from the total lack of rain.  I don't need much more of an excuse to indulge in a raw goat milk and homegrown frozen strawberry milkshake.

2011 strawberries

Feeding Kids with Kids

Weaning always brings some sadness as it ends a period of bonding with our little ones.  Time passes too quickly and our babies leave us for new homes in eight short weeks.

My 18 month old daughter, in her comfort zone, giving the camera a steady glare.

And the 4.5 yr old wearing her most innocent "who me?".

Consequences

A few weeks back, we had at least five days in a row when the temperature (in the shade) was over 80 degrees Fahrenheit.  While this early March spring was great for getting out to the garden to plant carrots and other assorted root vegetables, it was not great for our baby goats.  After that unusual warmth, the temperature suddenly dropped back down to our normal overnight 20's.  Our 3 week old kids were just beginning to become ruminants by eating hay and exercising their extra stomachs, which is a big and very important developmental transition from a milk-drinking single stomached animal.  Adding to that stress we made the mistake of offering them some too rich 2nd cut hay.  By the time we noticed several kids bloating from their slowed gut and began to treat them, they were also becoming hypothermic overnight with the sub-freezing temperatures.  Walking out to the barn in the morning to find a dying kid after tucking them in the night before is not a welcome experience.  We have since added a new space heater and extra red heat lamp to warm their straw bale nest in an effort to keep even the younger kids, who were unaffected by bloat, from getting chilled at night.  This was a real eye-opener for me considering how they were fine with single digit temperatures their first few weeks after birth and now at one month old they need to huddle by an electric heater if it's less than 40 deg F.  I suspect this was a terrible coincidence of indigestion and weird weather, but it has made me question everything we have (or haven't) done for them since birth.  Too much milk or not enough?, at the wrong temperature?, too many visitors?, lack of sanitation or bleach residue in the bottles?, prenatal mineral deficiency or too many supplements?,  natural selection?.  After beating up myself (and others) for what has transpired, I am letting go and apologizing to those I've let down.  Every season brings a new hard lesson in livestock husbandry.