I sort of lost my way there
In my previous post I set out to talk about some things I have had to come to terms with since getting dairy goats. And I made a good start on it, the relationship between milk and the fate of the offspring that made the milk possible are an important aspect. But I did get side tracked.
Another aspect of all livestock raising is the element of risk. All us living things are finding new and different ways to end our existence every day. Some are hardier than others, but in general, at it's core, there is a spark of life and if, for even the briefest moment, that light goes out, it can never be lit again. Life is not only precious, it is fragile. Some short story I read, maybe in a college lit class, the author said a chicken can die from a thousand different ailments. I think he may have under estimated.
When we got our dairy goats, they were both in milk. One of them I had been milking part time for a friend for about a year before I bought her and brought her home. The first day we brought the does home, we milked them and had that milk to drink. That spoiled us, I fear. We had an immediate return on our investment and it continued to return for eight more months. Since then I have read a lot more about goats. Many of the descriptions talked about first time goat owners buying a spring kid and raising it up over the summer, getting to breeding weight, finding a buck, sheltering it through the winter and kidding in the spring. Going through all that without getting a drop of milk until the very end. That takes a lot of faith. All the things that could go wrong, even if it didn't extinguish the spark, if it just failed one of those tests, all could be for naught.
I think our first introduction to fear was coming up on kidding. We had read many books and sought advice of experienced handlers. But the anxiety starting about a week before kidding was due was acute. And, as it happens, it was not completely without reason. We had a not so smooth kidding from both goats. Two bad presentations, a still born and a retained placenta. The retained placenta was probably our fault, at least in part. While the first goat was kidding and things weren't going so well, I had enough spare thought to think about where it might lead. If that goat could die in childbirth, well, then the other could too. What would losing one or both goats mean to us? We had invested in our fencing, feed and housing the goats. We had accepted that we were drinking expensive milk in order to gain more control over our food sources. But what if that source were of a sudden not there. And it would put us at least a year back on breeding up a critical mass of our own herd. And if things went wrong on the first try, would we have the fortitude to try again anyway? I'd like to think so, but when I had half a kid sticking out of Our Doe Goat Sparky the wrong way, there was some doubt.
And now, nearly a year further into it, I have found ever more issues to dwell on. Are we doing enough to protect them from parasites? Do we practice enough bio-security to prevent someone else's problem from becoming ours. Are our gates and fences strong enough to keep them in and out of the grain bin? If they did get bloat, would we react soon enough? Will the neighbors dog be a problem. Will the neighbors kid be a problem (I worry more about the kid, by the way). What if we don't spot the heat and miss our breeding window? Does Sparky have scar tissue in her womb from the hard kidding? Can she still conceive? Will we be able to get hay for winter? Did I buy enough? Is the barn dry enough to prevent mold? None of these were worries when I got my milk in a plastic jug at the store in town.
I don't want to discourage anyone from trying their hand at goat herding. It is, in general, a pleasant pastime. It rewards us with sustenance and moments of triumph and joy. Our animals are sweet, even Sparky who complains too much. But it is not without anxiety or dark days. I don't think it is something you can put in a balance scale, though. There is not a beam strong enough to weigh these matters and the pans would never accommodate all the details needing to be weighed.
Another aspect of all livestock raising is the element of risk. All us living things are finding new and different ways to end our existence every day. Some are hardier than others, but in general, at it's core, there is a spark of life and if, for even the briefest moment, that light goes out, it can never be lit again. Life is not only precious, it is fragile. Some short story I read, maybe in a college lit class, the author said a chicken can die from a thousand different ailments. I think he may have under estimated.
When we got our dairy goats, they were both in milk. One of them I had been milking part time for a friend for about a year before I bought her and brought her home. The first day we brought the does home, we milked them and had that milk to drink. That spoiled us, I fear. We had an immediate return on our investment and it continued to return for eight more months. Since then I have read a lot more about goats. Many of the descriptions talked about first time goat owners buying a spring kid and raising it up over the summer, getting to breeding weight, finding a buck, sheltering it through the winter and kidding in the spring. Going through all that without getting a drop of milk until the very end. That takes a lot of faith. All the things that could go wrong, even if it didn't extinguish the spark, if it just failed one of those tests, all could be for naught.
I think our first introduction to fear was coming up on kidding. We had read many books and sought advice of experienced handlers. But the anxiety starting about a week before kidding was due was acute. And, as it happens, it was not completely without reason. We had a not so smooth kidding from both goats. Two bad presentations, a still born and a retained placenta. The retained placenta was probably our fault, at least in part. While the first goat was kidding and things weren't going so well, I had enough spare thought to think about where it might lead. If that goat could die in childbirth, well, then the other could too. What would losing one or both goats mean to us? We had invested in our fencing, feed and housing the goats. We had accepted that we were drinking expensive milk in order to gain more control over our food sources. But what if that source were of a sudden not there. And it would put us at least a year back on breeding up a critical mass of our own herd. And if things went wrong on the first try, would we have the fortitude to try again anyway? I'd like to think so, but when I had half a kid sticking out of Our Doe Goat Sparky the wrong way, there was some doubt.
And now, nearly a year further into it, I have found ever more issues to dwell on. Are we doing enough to protect them from parasites? Do we practice enough bio-security to prevent someone else's problem from becoming ours. Are our gates and fences strong enough to keep them in and out of the grain bin? If they did get bloat, would we react soon enough? Will the neighbors dog be a problem. Will the neighbors kid be a problem (I worry more about the kid, by the way). What if we don't spot the heat and miss our breeding window? Does Sparky have scar tissue in her womb from the hard kidding? Can she still conceive? Will we be able to get hay for winter? Did I buy enough? Is the barn dry enough to prevent mold? None of these were worries when I got my milk in a plastic jug at the store in town.
I don't want to discourage anyone from trying their hand at goat herding. It is, in general, a pleasant pastime. It rewards us with sustenance and moments of triumph and joy. Our animals are sweet, even Sparky who complains too much. But it is not without anxiety or dark days. I don't think it is something you can put in a balance scale, though. There is not a beam strong enough to weigh these matters and the pans would never accommodate all the details needing to be weighed.
posted by MMP at
5:31 PM
4 Comments:
Over on my Sugar Mountain Farm blog on the Burning the Furniture post you mentioned about the joy of very dry kindling on hot coals.
A trick we use is to dry most of the wood we burn on a rack over the wood stove. When we need wood for the fire we take it from the rack and place a new piece on the rack to dry. This means the wood going into the fire is super dry. I learned this trick from reading a book on masonry stove and bread oven construction where they discussed the bakers leaving their next day's wood in the still warm oven It works most excellently.
By
Walter Jeffries, at 4:42 AM
I am planning to breed my gals this weekend! I have three pygmy does and two wethers and they all bleat about the weather! This week they are a struggle to get out of the barn, today being the worst because it is now pouring rain, on top of all the snow we've had...I'm sure you can imagine the moaning that is going on here.
I've never bred my goats before. It is nice to read about your experiences and worries, I'm not without those either and on top of your list I add cougars and grizzly bears eating them right in my yard (an issue that adds to my desire to move before investing more into a goat herd). A friend took a loss of all her chickens to two grizzly bears in early Jan, it was a massacre and 'grizzly' site. I was devastated just looking at all her little carcasses lying there in the snow.
By
Anonymous, at 8:38 AM
I might offer a suggestion about your kidding problems, even though I don't have goats, I have a lot of experience with cattle gestation and the resulting lactation. One thing that shouldn't be practiced, (and is too common)is milking the animal longer than they would be lactating if humans weren't harvesting milk. Your does may have been run down by a long lactation. Natural Goat Care, by Pat Coleby is a great read, if you haven't already read it. She sees dis-eases as we know them, as a mineralization problem, which in some cases can be cured easily.
Cows have a calf every year, giving milk for 8 - 9 months before weaning their young. Common dairy practice is to only give 6 - 8 weeks rest, before starting the process again. I like 12 weeks, the fetus grows tremendously during the last 3 months, just like a human baby in utero.
Also timing birthing after spring feed (green)has been available for some time helps the mother do a little detoxing after a winter of dry, "long way from the sun" feed. So many animal babies are born in winter, to take advantage of having a higher weight at marketing or showing time. This type of "logic" does not have to apply to a small operation.
Your last two posts, show that it is more than just milk in the fridge. It is hard to start out, with dairy animals, because so much of the info. available is geared towards conventional methods, just on a smaller scale. I have friends who have conventional dairies, and they are literally milking their cows to death. They don't even drink their own milk, their line of thinking tells them that what they produce at home is the same as what they buy at the store. And, I guess they are right.
Good luck with your goats, and know that you and your family are providing them with a good life, and if need be, a humane death. I don't always think the answer is to not drink milk, or eat meat, but to honor the animals and their products we use, in a meaningful way.
By
Throwback at Trapper Creek, at 9:20 PM
We do ave the Coleby book. It can be a heavy slog, but I do use it as a reference.
I agree that mineral difficiancy is part of the trouble with one of our does. Giving her zinc last spring helped clear up her skin issue and we are in a selenium deficient area and we pay special attention to that.
The doe who milks through is actually the less problematic animal. Dispite her age, the only trouble she has had was the two forlegs back presentation in her last kidding. If I had been up early enough that morning, we probably could have re-positioned before she got so far along and avoided the drama.
The doe we have had the most trouble with (skin problems, problematic presentation, retained placenta) is actually the one we haven't milked through. And she had three months between drying off and kidding.
We haven't been at this long enough to claim a lot of hard and fast rules, but I agree that a pregnant doe needs her energy to take care of the fetus. And a doe who's condition is drawn down isn't going to freshen well and provide us with abundant milk. A pregnancy rest period makes a lot of sense. My general approach is dry off three months prior to kidding in april. It is nice to have the security of one doe milking through so we have drinking milking until freshening and there is milk for kids available if we have trouble with a doe. And that doe will get dried off early in the following season and have a long rest before we breed again. We don't aim to breed every year with every doe.
I aim to kid around mid April, so there is not a lot of new forage out at that point. I don't think I would want to move further into the season though as we do not have a long summer season. And having trouble getting bred can easily lead to a later kidding (as it did this year, one doe won't kid before mid may).
By
MMP, at 8:53 AM
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