And I Will Call Her Bunny

Easter Sunday morning, at about 1:30 AM, we took delivery on two brand spanking new baby doelings, delivered by our doe goat, Sparky. In these first couple of days, saanen kids are reminiscent of rabbits, hence this one will be our Easter Bunny. The other is Bender. In Dairy goat naming convention, it's a 'B' year and the rest of the reference is too obscure for most folks.

We had been waiting for Sparky to deliver for a couple of days. It was a nice sunny day on her due date Friday. But she didn't deliver. Friday night was a windstorm with some rain. Saturday it snowed enough to stick. Saturday night was cold and wet. Sunday morning, early, more so.

Here is sparky with a pretty glazed look getting close to labor.


She kept licking us in the face and hands, like she was washing off the after birth. Getting practice for the real event.

In spite of the weather and late delivery, every seems to have turned out OK. Two Doelings, nursing, peeing and pooping. All good sings.

While all this goat delivery was going on, he was tangling with a Skunk. He'll be sleeping outside for the near future even if I wasn't out there sleeping with the kids and new mom.

On of the benefits of sleeping out with the goats, my wife brings me out coffee in the morning..

Cold, Cold, Cold

I waited for things to warm up this morning before I went out to milk. It was twenty one degrees below zero Fahrenheit when I did milk.

Milk pails have a have a habit of reminding me of the temperature while I am out there.
At about ten degrees, stainless steel on bare hands gets cold quick.
At about five degrees, there's a momentary adhesion as any surface moisture flash freezes to the pail's handle.
At negative twenty, there's a little epidermis left behind stuck to the handle when the hand is pulled off.

This morning, there was hoar frost in the hair of the goats when they came into the milking parlor. The milk parlor is just an unheated shed off the back of the barn, so it is not like it is warm, though.

The upside of cold weather like this, it's real dry. I can walk around outside in wool socks and my crocks as long as I stick to the packed paths. I think the crocks are just as warm as my rubber boots in this situation. In March, it will warm up and be much too wet and cold for crocks.

What I like about goats

We've been keeping goats for coming up on four years now. I don't consider myself an authority on goats, but I have had a chance to learn if I like them.

I got goats because I wanted a secure source of milk that I confidence in. I chose goats over cows milk because I liked the human scale of goats. A typical milking doe weighs in at 120 - 200 lbs. As a friend of mine is want to say, "When a cow kicks you, you stay kicked". There's also the issue of goat tough. Building to the international standard "goat tough" is a lot cheaper than building for "cow tough" certifiaction. It didn't hurt that I was offered a Saanen doe that I was sure of to get started with. Saanens are a large breed dairy goat and I knew the doe I was getting was a good producer because I had been milking her for close to a year at a friend's.

I find goats to have personalities similar to dogs. Friendly dogs. They seek human attention and are easy to train to routines. They can be skittish, but not hard win back over.

I have had challenges in keeping goats. I started from scratch, I didn't have any fencing or housing, I didn't even have that much grass. I chose to go with a high tension smooth wire fencing for their first paddock. While that might be handy for training a new goat to electric fence, but I now think those five wires are over kill. I have been quite successful keeping them behind three flimsy poly wires strands for most of the season. I am trying to do rotational grazing, something I am growing into. Since my first season, I have continuously expanded our pasture areas and I am able to feed them for about six months a year on pasture. For the remainder of the year, I have to buy in hay. The steady expansion of our pastures means that even though we have grown from two animals to 7, our hay costs have been pretty steady. I do face a dilemma about grain though. I haven't found a ready source of organic that I feel I can afford, so I am using a conventional grain to supplement the hay for milking animals. For housing, I didn't want to have something permanent. I didn't want to have lazy barn goats or the parasites and health problems go with them. I have found that goats do just fine in our cold snowy winters with three sided stock panel structures. And there are enough health risks to worry about, making sure the goats have access to minerals, don't carry a heavy parasite load and don't succumb to something like Johnnes or CAE. As big as anything is the daily grind of milking. My wife or I have to milk goats everyday if we are going to keep the goats in production. Because of that, we have only been away overnight together once since we got goats. My final challenge is breeding. I have found only one other Saanen breeder in my area. For some complicated reasons I have chosen to stick with purebred goats, but I am not a big enough operation to carry a buck for breeding. For the time being, I am lucky the one farm close enough is willing to provide stud service for us.

So, after all that, why would I keep goats? Primarily Daily milk. Before I got goats, I was buying three or four gallons of milk each week. I consume a lot of milk, it's an important part of my diet and always has been. Now that I have goats, I also have milk to make cheese with. On a weekly basis, I make chevre, my wife makes a nice mozzarella and quaso blanco. And this year I have started making a Gouda. There is also meat, an inevitable by product of lactation. We can't keep all the offspring created by freshening our goats for milk. Bucklings just don't have much use, and there will come a time when we can't keep all the doelings. On farm slaughter has meant that we also get a small amount of meat from our goats. Then there is the compost. Sure, everybody poops, but not every bodies poop is equal. Goat poop is ready to go from day one. It is nearly perfectly balanced Nitrogen Carbon. And with brush control like goats, I doubt I'll ever need to put a rear mower behind my tractor. Goats clear out many aggressive species like sumac and raspberry. And they love Japanese knot weed and honeysuckle.

I enjoy my goats. They are affectionate and likeable. I enjoy the work and the fruits of my labor. Even early morning milkings in the field are pleasant. There is something refreshing about a goat latte right from the teat on a crisp morning before the mist has cleared.

We are one buckling and three roosters lighter

Today was a slaughter day. Time to prepare the various unproductive males for their "next stage"...

Slaughtering is never pleasant, but a necessary evil if we are going to breed animals. The facts come down to we cannot support an ever growing population, maybe humans should take note.

I had been planning to keep the buckling, Alarm, through breeding season to breed to our one unrelated doe, Heddar. Alarm comes from one of our original does, Sparque, and Heddar comes from the other, Ruffles. But I realized we already have that genetic mix (last years bucklings, same dam and sire bred to this target doe gave us this springs doeling, Able). So there is not a lot of sense breeding Alarm to Heddar. It's further redundant because the other does from this spring all come from that Sparque Sire mix, either first generation or one generation out. Heddar is our only animal not related to Sparque and her suitor from last year. I bred Sparque to same Buck three times waiting for her to give us a doe. In the meantime, I bred one of her bucklings to Heddar and Ruffles last fall. So it's important that we get Heddar bred to a new line in order to get some balance back in our genetic diversity. Breeding Alarm to Heddar does save us $50 in breading fees, but that wasn't enough of a reason.

And now, we don't have to keep the buck separate from the does going into breeding season. That greatly simplifies our paddocks. Pretty soon the kids will be weaned and we won't need any subdivisions. Woo Whoo! Sad for Alarm, good for me.

So, Alarm was just about three months old. He was coming into sexual maturity and he yielded about 30 pounds of meat, bone in. That's pretty interesting because last years bucklings I slaughtered in Late winter and they were also 30 pounds bone in. It was winter, and they were on hay only. This buckling has been nursing and getting Lamb and Kid grain. In addition to the meat, he had significant organ fat and fat under the skin. The boys from last year had very little fat. Again, time of year and ration. But still interesting that going into the fall Alarm had as much meat and more reserve as the boys twice his age and similar genetics (they were all brothers from the same dam and sire). And the boys from last year looked good and performed well (the breeder buckling sired three does by Heddar and Ruffles).

I didn't face any quandaries about the Roosters. We had a clutch hatch earlier this summer and they are well along. The Roosters' days have been numbered since. It was just waiting for an ambitious day. It didn't help that the dominant rooster was attacking the back of my legs on a periodic basis. And they were waking us up at slightest provocation. Killing sucks, but I am not going to miss the roosters.


My PI cleared up by the way, in less than two days without more than a light rash. I am going to claim the prompt washing helped. If anyone cares.

Tilt'n back a couple of pints

It's been a very busy spring. Bottle kids on top of extra kids. We have twice as much ground planted. We have maxed out on daily chores with the new animals and farmer's markets. We have been working at learning to work smarter instead of harder, but finesse comes with experience and it's tough to learn much without making a mistep here and there.

But as the kids get older, our efforts are beginning to bare fruit. Literal fruit in the garden, Fruit of our labors with the goats. We had gyros from last year's bucks this weekend. And there is enough milk in the house for drinking again.

It's nice to be able to tip back a pint or two in the evening.

A telling of true events, only the names of the innocent have been changed

It was an adequately uneventful birthing.

Sparking started showing signs in the late afternoon / evening, goo and such. About 10:30 my wife came back from checking on her saying there were contractions. Sparque broke her water at about midnight. About 12:15 AM she showed the first sac, followed by a second. We hemmed and hawed about which sac to deal with first. The second one was the first to show a hoof, so that's the one we dealt with first. My wife had to reach in and reposition the head to get it to follow the front hooves and that kid went quickly afterward. It was the Doe. We did all the toweling off and cleaning up while we waited for second one. Checking Sparque's abdomen, I could feel the second kid, but it was a solid 20, maybe 30, minutes before contractions started again. That whole time, the second one's sac had been protruding about three inches out of Sparque's butt. Once I knew I had two hooves at or out of the birth canal, I pierced the sac. She was tired and laying down, so it took some gentle pulling, but it was probably only three contractions from the end. We cleaned them off and got the first feeding of colostrum into them. The doeling fed off Sparque directly, but I hand fed the buckling as he wasn't strong enough to stand or move around right off. Both kids are feeding off the Sparque's teats this morning. Sparque is a good and attentive mother.

Given that lag between the kids, I am really glad we didn't jump the gun and pierce the bucklings sac early. If we had chosen the wrong one to start with or pierced it right after the doe passed, we would have ended up "reachen in and fishen 'round" which I don't like to do. There was a certain amount of drama, but not enough to nourish anxiety in the future.

Ruffles is still in a funk. She has been barely eating since her kidding. She was only making enough milk to feed the one baby and we weren't sure she was making enough for even that. She had pretty much rejected the first kid, Amos, in favor of the second, Andy. Funny because Amos, the first, seemed bigger and more robust to me at birth. But early on Andy caught up and surpassed Amos. We went through the last of our freezer colostrum and have been feeding cows milk since. That smarts.

Ruffles has gotten a vitamin B complex shot and is due for another today. She has also been getting Nutri-Drench, which she hates. Given her obvious depressed mood, I hesitate to force the Nutri-Drench. She's had pretty much free choice grain, but she shows no interest. It ends up feeding the chickens and not her. She has been out on pasture, and she'll browse some, but doesn't seem to have a sustained interest in any food. I have made sure she has minerals, we've tried separating her from the herd with her kids and without, nursing and not. The best seems in the herd without her kids so she has companionship but the kids aren't running her ragged. I just haven't found anything that seems to make enough difference, she is wasting away to skin and bones quickly. And the latest is she's giving raisin poo. Normally her poo is nice big plump black olives. Now they are shriveled little wrinkled raisins. Maybe some yogurt or probios is the next thing to try. I am pretty unhappy about her progress. It makes us question if this is her last pregnancy. But with Sparque kidded out, some of the milk pressure will be off and hopefully we can make some progress.

A Buck and a Doe

Sparque final shared her secret with us.



Sparque was actually due on the 15th, so we were getting a little antsy to find out what was in store for us. After she was late a couple of days, my wife started reading all the goat books. One of them said call a vet if the goat is more than four days late as the kids can get to big to fit through the birth canal. That wasn't something I wanted to hear so I was glad that on the morning of the 5th day (roughly 12:23 AM) we had both kids out without calling on the services of a vet and very little reachen in. Keeping goats is already expensive, having a vet out for a delivery would pretty much spoil it.

So now we have two new kids to add to this years list, a buckling and a doeling. Alice and Alarm.

It's April, Remember?

It's fun to camp, and Ruffles has been depressed since the delivery. Companionship seems to help. Well, companionship that doesn't eat her grain, anyway. It's a little tight in there for Ruffles, the kids and me, but Ruffles does like to snuggle. No, really.

So I have been sleeping out in the goat house. Last night it rained. A lot. And I was reminded I should have put a plastic liner under an old tarp like this. I had over estimated the water proofness of that blue tarp. I got dripped on all night. I contemplated going inside, but I was warm and dry inside my sleeping system, so I weathered it. In the morning I awoke to snow on the ground. Maybe I should have gone in.

The other morning I tore down half of the winter chicken house, flopped the panels over the fence and reassembled it as a two ended goat shelter. With this, I have two nursery shelters and a main shelter. We have a delivery due any moment and another at the end of the week. Pretty soon, Little, the whether, will be the only adult not nursing kids. In there is a bed of coarse wood chips and straw on top of that. It gets everybody up off the ground, keeping them warm and dry. Even the drips last night didn't really get the area wet. This morning I salvaged a piece of plastic from the chicken house and used it to line the tarp to stop the drip. I'll find out tonight how effective it is.


It has been really nice weather for more than a week. Into the seventies in early April.



The Sunny weather was helping Ruffles ward off the blues. I'll have to pay attention to her to get throuhg this wet weather.

All the best laid plans of mice and men

...Are dashed by the relentless flow of nature.

That's Ruffles on top, her daughter Heddar below. They are both pregnant in the picture. Preggers as my wife might say. Ruffles has been ready to pop for a little while. As I alluded to before, I have been sleeping in the goat house for a while. As it turns out, I had the breeding date wrong. I was twelve days early. And it took me ten nights out in the goat house to go re check my notes. I started sleeping out in the goat house again as the new date approached. Another four nights. Mostly in the rain. As of this morning, no mucus plug, no nesting behavior, no braying, nothing. I checked again at about 10:30 AM, again nothing. I went out at just before noon to give the pregnant does their grain snack. From a distance Ruffles looked like she had some pink showing through the leg hair. "Does she have leg mites I didn't notice?" I thought to myself. Then I noticed the umbilical cord hanging down. Hmm, and umbilical cord, I wonder were that came from?....

After all those nights sleeping in the goat house. Mentally preparing myself for "Reachen In". Wondering if I had enough light out there. Trying to schedule my work around this unpredictable event. She went and had the kids without me. Two healthy doelings, just what we wanted. Ruffles is eight and we might only get one more pregnancy from her. She is by far the best producing doe and we were really hoping to have more does from her line. And we really wanted to get more does from her.










The doelings needed a little help finding and holding a teat. It doesn't help that Ruffles has not nursed kids before. In the past, we have always hand raised (bottle fed) Ruffles' kids. Part of the idea is the kids view the person who feeds them as a member of their herd, maybe their mother and are less skittish with them. And the Doe views the one milking them as their kid. Last year, with a different doe, we decided to try allowing the kids to nurse on the doe. We let the kids nurse freely for the first two weeks. After that, we separate the kids from the doe at night to allow her to build up some milk for a morning milking. Then the kids nurse during the day. At about two months, we separate the doe from the kids (which she was ever so grateful for). Allowing the Doe to nurse the Kids gets us off the hook for a lot of midnight feedings. It also gets the doe off the hook for an engorged udder for those first couple weeks where her production demands milking twice a day. I do have to work hard to get a good imprint with the kids since I am not bottle feeding them. I'll still sleep out in the goat house for a few more nights. But that makes it easy to ensure they are getting enough to eat and are staying warm at night. It also means we have to teach ruffles to be a good mother. She's never done it before, and so far, I am not so sure she is interested in learning. Sparky figured it out last year, so I imagine Ruffles will to.
Either that or we move back to the old model for her....

A little later the same day:

Ruffles wasn't real thrilled with this whole motherhood thing. I think I heard her say something about great grandmothers shouldn't have to breast feed. Or put up with infants. Here I am using my arms locked into a peice of stock panel to get her to hold still long enough for the kids to nurse. While I was doing it alone two hours later, I thought to myself, ya right, this is easier than bottle feeding... But the kids will be up and agile soon enough. They'll be running her ragged wanting to nurse.

Potential to rough the viewer

These are our bucklings from April 2009. A pretty pair of boys. We kept them to breed in the fall. Keeping them into the winter costs a lot of hay, but having them to breed two of our does saves $100 in breeding fees.



Just a warning, not everyone is going to see the happy ending in all this.

Having dairy animals has certain realities. Chiefly, without a pregnancy there is no milk. And chances are, the progeny of that pregnancy doesn't have a long term place on the farm. So, from the day they were born, the day these knives got sharpened was coming.



I used a pistol for the actual deed. I have used other methods, and this was the first time I used a pistol, but the pistol is probably the best method for me. It has the downside of introducing lead shot into the carcass. But I am probably not dedicated enough to do anything with the brain anyway. I borrowed a semi auto ruger .22 target pistol that uses long rifle rounds. A pistol gave me a lot more freedom of movement than my rifle and it was nice knowing there would be an immediate second shot if I needed it. I didn't though, they both went down with one shot behind the ear each. I led them up to the arch with grain and they we eating a little grain treat when I killed them so there was never any stress. They were never conscious of anything being wrong.




I used the Arch of the Garden gate to hang and bleed out the carcass. Hanging for the skinning and rough cuts helps keep the meat clean. Most of the skinning I do with the mini chef knife looking knife. The blade length is good and it holds an edge well. The utility knife on the end is good for separating joints. It has a thick strong blade and the serrations go through cartilage nicely. Down at the house, most of the work is with the boning knife.



I did the skinning and the rough cuts with it hanging. That's a change from what I have done in the past and it worked out much better this way. It meant I could piece it into a clean bucket to carry it down to the house. Carrying down the whole carcass would have been awkward. I separated it into the four legs, two sides of ribs, neck roast, the hips and chops.



Down in the kitchen, I completely deboned it. Last time we cooked the meat on the bone. With the ribs it was a detractment from the meal trying to find the meat on the bone. It was a curry in a thick sauce. So this goat I deboned everything but the neck.

I was a little surprised in the yield. 28 lbs before I deboned it. Heck, it's not that much bigger than a good sized turkey. And I am pretty sure the live animal was close to 100 lbs. He was 11 months old. Not much in the way of fat, but that is what I would expect from a goat.

It's not a pleasant task, but a necessary one if we are going to continue to keep goats for Dairy.

Goat Latte

I like a goat latte in the morning. Here's a video a friend of mine made that morning:

Goat Latte by WannBee Farm Productions

Having goats means milking every day, every day. It's an obligation, but it has its perks. Bruce, note the Canyon REO cup. When in Flagstaff, we use Canyon REO as our preffered outfitter. That cup is from a trip in 2000, I think. Damn fine cup, for the price.



I like to milk in the morning. We have tried it several ways, but mornings work best for me. I generally get up, put coffee in the press to steep, go out and feed the chickens. When I come back in I have fresh coffee to take up to the field when I milk the goats. While I am there, it's nice to get a little extra milk, blood warm, and foam to boot. Heddar doe doesn't seem to mind.



And if I am lucky, I get a few minutes to sit and enjoy the view from the milk house.

Field Milkhouse

That's our field milk house.

For a while in the spring I was walking the does up and down from the backfield to the barn for milkings. It was a pain, and invited disaster. It was a time consuming, we had to go by plants the goats liked but we didn't want them to eat and there was opportunity for mishap at every turn. There is a better way.

So I brought the milking stanchion up to the backfield and put it under a tarp covered stock panel arch. It gave me a place to hang the scale, store milking supplies and keep everything dry.

To improve on that, I built the field milk house. It's a hemlock deck (locally sawn, hemlocks the best choice available from my rough sawn guy). It has uprights for attaching the arch and is built on skids so I can pick up the whole thing on my loader forks, carry it to a new location and set it down. The skids also keep the rest of it out of the dirt so it will last longer.

It is certainly nice bringing the house to the animals instead of the other way around. Much faster and more productive. And it gives me a dry place to store nik nacs in the field. I moved it this afternoon for the first time. As advertised, slid under it with the forks, lift and carry.

Fencing

This morning I went out to milk and found these sumacs laying on the fence and blocking the path. It was the second time this weekend.



The fence was loaded pretty good, at least half way to the ground and very tight. It took a while to cut through with a bow saw and a pair of loppers. By the time I was done, the fence had regained it's line. Gotta love high tension fence and glad I put springs on it.

I have been dealing with fencing a lot lately.

Last year we enlarged our number of paddocks so we could have better rotation for parasite management. I moved the goats up to the backfield a couple of weeks ago. Now my push is to keep enough browse fenced in ahead of them. I am trying to move away from hay and more towards pasture only for the growing season.

This spring I fenced the new garden plot with the super deer fence. It is in the middle of th new goat pasture. Half of the garden is grown up with brush, poplar and small pines. Great browse for goats. So for the last month I have been browsing the goats inside the deer fence on the undeveloped half of the garden. But now that I am starting to use areas outside the deer fence, keeping ahead of the goats with new fence is challenging. I have a threefold goal of re-establishing old fence lines, keeping the goats fed and keeping the goats moving enough so I am not recycling pasture more than every four months. Someday, the goal is to have a lower perimeter fence forming a ring of goat pasture around the garden. But it won't happen all at once. For now, I am planting posts where I can and cutting through a lot of honeysuckle. After the goats have chewed their way through it will be easier to see the lay of the land and decide on the permanent fence line.

I also have two groups of goats to deal with. The Does and the Bucklings. Since I am keeping the Bucklings intact, it's important they are separate. Wouldn't want any hanky panky going on prematurely.

It took me a while, but I think I have finally worked out a cycle I think will work and am putting together the infrastructure to make it happen. I want the Does to see the pasture first and get the choicest bits. Then rest it for a week before I turn the Bucklings in to clean it up. That way I always keep a double fence between the Does and the Bucklings, no piece of ground sees animals for more than four weeks in four months, and I can keep a portable milking hut in the resting pasture. It beats moving the does back and forth from the backfield to the milking parlor at the back of the barn. The portable milking hut in the resting paddock between the Bucks and the Does was the key.

At present, I am just using three strands of poly wire to keep the goats in. Is nice because it is easy to work with, coils easily and doesn't require any tools. Also, a simple post in a reasonable hole for corner posts and fiber glass rods as line posts on long runs is all it requires to stay up. No need for corner bracing or getting elaborate. Sometimes I find the Bucklings need the extra convincing of a fourth wire, but that's not really a big deal. I hear a lot of horror stories about people unable to contain their goats. With our Saanens, I just don't see it. About the worst thing they do is play hard to get when it's time to put on a lead.

In the future, I would like to put up a 5 wire high tension fence around the entire goat fence. That way I could section for paddocks simply by stretching poly wire between the outer perimeter fence and the inner deer fence around the garden. I like the high tension smooth steel wire for permanent fencing. It is a significant physical barrier on it's own. But backed up with the fence charger, it is very convincing to those I want to keep in and those who should stay out. It isn't hard to string and I can take it down if I feel the need. If I turn of the charger, it isn't menacing to those who know it is off. And it takes a beating.

Update on the Kids

Here are the details about yesterday's kids:
Sparky (Sparque as she prefers it) delivered two bucklings yesterday afternoon at about 2:00 in the afternoon. As Jeff predicted, she waited until the weather turned and it was the most inconvenient moment. It had turned cold and rainy and we were expecting company at the house. I guess she decided that middle of the night wasn't inconvenient enough since I have been sleeping int he goat house since Tuesday anyway.

The delivery went well. Both bucklings came out front hooves followed by noses in diver formation. The first one spent a while coming out and going back in, but the second one didn't fool around. We did get nervous about the after birth. Last year Sparque had a retained placenta and it was unpleasant. We had oxitocin on hand this year and when Sparque hadn't passed the afterbirth two hours after the delivery, I intervened. She passed the after birth shortly after that. The oxitocin triggers the contraction of the uterus. It can also be used to induce delivery. It's possible she would have eventually passed it on her own, but given her history, I was glad to have it.

I did get to try my bounce technique out to check for additional kids after the first. It was quite obvious there was still another body in there, I could feel the hard parts moving around in her belly.

All in all, a good delivery. Nobody died and no reachin' in. The delivery was later than we expected and we were starting to get a little on edge. Last year, she was a day early, so this year we have been prepared since Tuesday and expect it by Thursday. She had gone into a false labor the Thursday prior. It does seem like we got a lot of rare bad experiences out of the way last year with two poor presentations, a retained placenta and a still born. We are hoping we have paid our dues for a while.

We are pretty sure we are done for the season. Our other doe that we bred does not look pregnant. But she still has nearly 1-1/2 months to go if she is, so it is possible.

Whealt, it's been a long day of over due equipment work and I still have to go out and check on the kids...

A promise made is a deed left undone

I promised I would get a blog post up immediately afterward...
they are in reverse order so steel yourself.

Warning Will Rogers....

Extra points for picking out body parts

I was moving in to gently pierce the birth sac when it burst.

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.

On Kids, Kidding and Breeding to have kids

We still have one goat milking, we hope she'll milk through. She has milked at least two years per freshening in the past and we hope she will continue.

Having a dairy animal in our family has brought us in touch with what milk means, and it is not an altogether pretty sight. Often people say they couldn't kill to eat meat, but milk has a charismatic image of wholesome goodness, warmth of motherhood. Having dairy animals has brought me closer to the more stark reality that milk requires breeding, and more often than not the resulting prodigy is not an animal that will live to maturity. For the success of the breed, most of that offspring probably should not complete the cycle of life. That means slaughtering kids. And that's the basic equation that becomes obvious after being in the dairy vocation for any amount of time. Milk equals killing kids. We get the doe pregnant in order to take the milk made for the kid for ourselves. And more than likely, we will slaughter that kid and eat him too. Milk has an unseemly side. The knowledge has not slowed our consumption of milk, but it is a sobering reality.

This idea is similar to many that have become lost in our anonymous industrial food system. The element of risk has been removed from the consumer's experience. Consumers never need worry about a failed harvest, weather events that destroy seedlings or an out break of disease in livestock. And just about any unpleasant experience, from washing off dirt to dealing with the slaughtering or butchering. The luxury if specialization has allowed our modern society to make huge gains in productivity. But I think that with the outbreaks of super bacteria and virus bred on a steady diet of low level antibiotics on CAFOs and the changes in our landscape from monoculture agriculture are beginning to make their costs known.

I don't think it is realistic to suggest that the average person should become food independent. But I do think the pendulum has swung too far towards industrial agriculture and anonymous food.

The south end of a north facing goat house

We like stock panel structures. They help us house goats and chickens, dry and protect firewood. They provide a wind break and keep their contents dry. They are easy to erect and economical on a small scale. They are easily adapted for a variety uses. They allow us to provide for our animals needs with flexibility.

Pictured above is Goat House North. It has a goat house in each end with access to seperate paddocks. There is a human section in the middle where we store a week or two's worth of hay, minerals, etc. We can feed the goats from the human side and check on things. The goat house is made from six arched 4 X 16 stock panels sitting on top of some wooden side panels that give us an extra foot of headroom. the wooden sides are attached to posts. the posts help us keep the first two feet of stock panel vertical. For this year we also added pillars at the ends and a 2x4 ridge pole to insure against heavy snow. I have been successful in the past just using bailing twine cords to keep the arch in shape. But now that we have a total of 4 goat stall houses, a green house and a woodshed made from stock panels, I decided I didn't want to have to stress about keeping the roofs clear after snow storms.

We get between 20 and 40 degrees of temperatur difference from inside the goat house to the outside, depending on how sunny it is. That often makes the difference between frozen water bucks and not. It also keeps the animals comfortable on hard winter days and nights.