Kidding Season 2012

Our four pregnant does all had their babies this week, so here's an update!

Mercedes had her kids early last Wednesday.  I mentioned this in my last post. 

She had one buckling and two doelings, and they're all doing well.  Mercedes is a great momma.  These babies are getting bigger, and they are very playful.  We will probably be keeping both of the girls (the brown ones), and we may keep the boy.

The black one is the boy, and the brown ones are the girls.

Thursday morning, I went outside and noticed Star standing with one of Mercedes' girls, but that seemed really weird, so I went to take a closer look.  The baby goat was a boy, so that meant it wasn't one of Mercedes' babies after all.  At first I thought there was just one, but then I realized there was a baby goat crying from somewhere in our yard, away from the barn and the other goats.  I looked, and eventually I found this:

Last year I wanted to fence an area that I could use to garden, and I dug holes for the fence posts, but we never finished the project.  So, somehow this poor baby goat fell into one of the holes.  Whoops!

He was totally fine, though.  I took him back over to Star and his brother, but Star acted like he wasn't her baby.  Any time he tried to nurse, she shoved him away.  Sad!  So this little guy started to hang out alone, outside the barn.  Then, he tried to join Mercedes and her kids, but she wouldn't let him.  Poor guy!  I milked Star and began bottle-feeding this baby goat.  (Now, he is very friendly.)

Star laying down next to one baby.  The other baby is curled up by the entrance to the barn.  Poor guy!

Caroline kidded the same day--Thursday afternoon.  She was obviously in labor, so I put her on the other side of the barn (Mercedes has been monopolizing the main side of the barn since she had her babies first).  She had a doeling (!) and then she tried to have another baby.  It took a really long time--maybe half an hour, and she really struggled.  She didn't clean the baby off right away, but the goopy blob moved a little bit, so I thought it was still doing fine.  Turns out I'm terrible company for a laboring goat, because what I actually should have done was helped clean up.  Instead, I waited so that Caroline could bond with her baby by cleaning it.  When she did start cleaning the baby, I was really sad to discover that it was not alive anymore.  And, it was actually two babies.  They were both doelings (!) and neither of them made it.  I thought the blob moving meant that they were alive, but I think actually it meant "WE NEED AIR--NOW!". 

So, that was really disappointing, and it made me feel pretty bad.  I remember that last year I had read up on how to help a goat at birth, and I used to know that you're supposed to clean off their nose and mouth if the mom doesn't do it right away.  I don't know why it didn't occur to me this year.  I think there were a couple other problems, though.  For one thing, goats are usually born one at a time.  And for another thing, one of the goats was born in a really bent up position; it almost seemed like her back was broken in birth, or something, probably because she was born in a big blob with another goat.  I don't know.  So, it was pretty exciting that Caroline had triplet doelings, and pretty disappointing that I failed to intervene in a helpful way. 

 
But, in happy news, Caroline's first doeling is doing great.  She's pretty big for her age, and very friendly.  It's actually been kind of funny over the past few days, because Caroline "loses" her doeling I think at least once or twice every day.  Caroline looks around, and sniffs a few other baby goats, and begins to become distressed because she can't find her baby.  The funny thing is, though, every time this happens, her doeling is actually "lost" inside the barn, with all of the other baby goats!  So, we guide Caroline to where her doeling is, and put the baby in front of her, and she calms down.

Caroline is a good mama goat to the doeling, but even though she is always willing to let her doeling nurse, the doeling is a real opportunist-- the little girl is constantly trying to nurse off of other mama goats.  They push her away, and she comes running right back.  She's very assertive.

So, after Caroline kidded, we were just waiting for Claire to kid. 

Claire had her babies on Sunday morning, before Jeff and I went to church.  I went outside to bottle-feed Star's little guy, and found Claire in the barn, cleaning off a new kid.  So, I hurried inside and let Jeff know that Claire was kidding and I thought she would probably have another baby pretty soon.  Jeff hurried outside with me and several minutes later, Claire did have another kid.  It was fun because it turns out Jeff had never seen a baby born before, except for in movies.  So, it was a new experience for him.  ("OH, wow!  That's amazing.  Wow.")

I was really grateful that we were there for Claire's second birth, because it was completely different than Caroline's second birth.  It made me feel a lot less guilty about losing Caroline's babies, because I realized that Caroline's experience was really not typical.

Jeff and I had the great idea to take the little guy that Star rejected and cover him in Claire's goopy fluids when she was having her babies, so that she could clean him off, bond with him, and adopt him.  Since we were there for the kidding, we were able to try this out.  We covered him in goop, she cleaned him off, and it looks like she has adopted him.  I am no longer bottle-feeding him, and he is getting fat!  We were happy that that worked out.

Oh, and both of Claire's babies were doelings!

Claire's second doeling.

So, our final count is: 5 girls, 3 boys.  (Plus 2 girls that didn't make it.)  Not bad!

Pregnancy and [Goat] Kids

For a little while now, Jeff and I have talked about taking a picture of me with the goats, since we're all pregnant right now.  It seemed like kind of a funny thing.  By now we're all far enough along that we look obviously pregnant, and some of the goats have started to moan more often, so on Saturday I suggested we finally take a picture. 

Jeff and I feel no confidence whatsoever in our ability to judge when the goats will kid, because last year Caroline seemed like she was ready to kid any day now for over a month.  She totally faked us out.  But, it seemed like there was a good chance that pretty soon not all of us would be pregnant anymore.  And if we were, we could always take another picture later. 

So, we decided to try to get a picture, and this is what we got:

Hm.  Not exactly what I had in mind.  But, they lost interest in our picture, and that was the best that we got.  So, we tried again the next day after church, and got this:

Not really much better.  Goats just are not very good at posing for pictures. They're all too close together, so you can't see that they have huge bellies.  And Tank (the buck) snuck into the back of our picture, even though it was supposed to be girls only.  We didn't notice.

Whatever.

So that was Sunday.

And then, very very early this morning (Wednesday) there were some noises outside and Chalcy started barking.  It wasn't cat noises, but I told Chalcy QUIET and sent her back to bed.  I fell back asleep too.  I woke up at about 2:45 this morning to the same noise, and it occurred to me what it was: BABY GOATS!

Once I figured it out, I was super excited.  I got dressed and hurried outside to see whose babies they were!  And how many!  And whether they were boys or girls!

When I got outside, Mercedes had a baby goat with her, and they were outside the barn, with all of the other goats. 

It was especially exciting, because just last weekend I told Jeff that I wanted a particular young goat from the dairy that we get our milk from.  She was a black goat with white stripes on the side and a brown belly.  Pretty!  But, she is a Drake doeling, which means that she probably costs $400 or $500 at the cheapest, and maybe $900-1000.  So, instead I realized that we have two black goats and our buck has stripes on his sides, and maybe we could end up with one that looked like that anyway.

So, I was really excited to discover that the baby goat near Mercedes looked very similar to the one that I had been interested in.  And?  Was it a girl??  (If Mercedes had a girl we were planning to keep it anyway.)  I checked.  Nope.  It was a buckling.  Too bad. 

Mercedes had been really big, so I was surprised that she only had one kid.  I decided to check the barn and found...

Another one! 

And in another corner, there was another baby goat!

Our best goat gave us triplets!  Awesome.  Hopefully not all boys?  I checked.  Both of the brown kids are girls!  Way to go, Mercedes!

Our buck this year ("Tank") comes from champion lines of dairy goats, and Mercedes comes from pretty good lines too, so it's great that she had triplets--and it's even more great that two are girls--because they will almost certainly be very, very good dairy goats.  It will be exciting to see how they turn out.

Breeding to improve our herd is so much more exciting than just breeding goats to continue getting milk!

How We're Doing

We've been doing really well lately.

Jeff got a new job. This spring, after 7 out of 9 managers at his old job all quit within a few weeks time, Jeff decided he was ready to move on. He started taking calls from recruiters, and he went to several interviews. Finally, he came home from one of the interviews really excited about the company, and it seemed like a good match. After he got an offer from them he gave notice at the old job...and places he had interviewed with kept presenting him with job offers. On the day before he started his new job there was basically a bidding-war between two companies, which was pretty flattering. He took the job that he had been so excited about.

He's been at the new job for a couple weeks now. He really likes it a lot. He feels like he will be able to make a difference, and he really likes that the team works together so well. So, Jeff is very happy with his new job.

We got a lot of goats! First we got the mama and doeling (which were afraid of people). Then we got Sunday, Claire, and Star. Then, we saw another registered Nubian doe online, giving as much milk as Sunday, and we decided to buy her and sell Sunday. Except, then Jeff thought maybe we should keep Sunday after all, because she gives so much milk. But, we did sell Bucko. And then Caroline kidded! Finally! She had two bucklings. And we were Very Responsible, and we disbudded them (burned the horn buds so that no horns will ever grow). We played with the bucklings and enjoyed them for a couple weeks, and then we sold them. And then a couple days ago I finally sold the mama goat and the doeling.

So, now we're down to:
1. Feta - Our original goat. But she's doomed. I was trying to sell her but she isn't purebred and she has horns, and she hasn't had babies (so she hasn't given milk), so she isn't selling for enough. She is worth more to us as meat.
2. Caroline - we're finally getting milk from her!
3. Sunday - She is listed for sale.
4. Claire - She is SKINNY, still, just like she was when we bought her. We are going to try deworming her and giving her some immune support stuff, and we'll see if that helps her.
5. Star - We tattooed her, and now she is in the process of becoming an official registered goat.
6. Mercedes - My favorite goat, because she is so, so easy to milk.

We are getting a ton, ton, ton of milk. I separate cream about twice a week. Sometimes we make cheese and butter.

I also ordered chicks online, which I already blogged about. They're getting bigger. They're outside now. I've been selling some of those, too.

I think that's all of the farm news.

I also finally joined the Weston A. Price Foundation. Jeff and I have been big fans of it for a while, and I thought it was time to pay up so I will start receiving their quarterly journal, and so that I can participate with people locally who are interested in the same sorts of things. I met the local WAPF chapter leader, and it was a lot of fun to talk all about raw milk and butter, and goats, and good food.

This last Monday I started trying to follow the GAPS diet. I've been reading the book about it, and it just makes so much sense. On the GAPS diet you eat no refined sugar (only honey and fruit as sweeteners), no gluten or starchy foods (so, no white flour or potatoes, etc), and no lactose. I'm planning to stay on the GAPS diet for a year and a half, probably. We'll see how it goes. I am not perfect about it, but I think I'm doing pretty well.

In other news, I am still starting my business! I am working on building my property management business. I am developing a website, and putting together mailing lists of people who may be interested in property management (like, people who bought multi-family housing within the last year...because maybe they realized it is more hassle than they want). I hired a handyman to work for us part-time, so that we can offer clients discounted rates on repairs or service. If anyone knows of someone who could use a property manager in Salt Lake county, please let me know!

I think those are some of the main things that have been happening.

More Goats?? (Our revised plan.)

We were (already!) getting really tired of listening to goats. It was a little bit funny, because the goats got hoarse voices from complaining so much. But mostly it was just obnoxious. (Even J thought it was obnoxious, and usually I'm like "J, this noise is awful!" and he says, "I kind of like it. You know, it's just the sounds of a farm. It's kind of relaxing.")

And then there was this...the doeling has been sitting on one side of the fence, and her mama has been sitting on the other side of the fence. Occasionally she stands up to look over the fence. Sometimes they make distressed cries for each other.

[Mama by the fence...]

[Feta screaming at the door, by the Comcast internet cable which they have pulled down, and doeling by the fence, where her mama is on the other side. Feta made a rotten babysitter.]

The mama goat hates being milked, too. Goats normally like to be milked, because they don't think of it as being milked, they just think of it as being fed good stuff, and it's kind of nice that we relieve the pressure in their udder while we're sharing such good food. Each time we milk the mama goat we have to corner her, or trick her into coming for grain so that we can catch her. Then we drag her across the yard, pick her up and put her onto the milking stand, make her actually stand up, and we only get about 2 cups of milk each time we milk her, and she doesn't eat much grain, so it isn't fun for her. So for that it just really isn't worth all the trouble.

Plus, now that I've spent some quality time with the mama goat, I've gotten to know her a little better. I'm realizing the people we bought her from took awful care of her. Basically, I think they just didn't take care of her. When we got her up on the milk stand we realized her feet are a mess. You're supposed to clip goat hooves every couple weeks or so, but I would guess that she never had her hooves clipped at all. They are all torn and misshapen, and they've grown really messed up. Plus, she is missing some of her front teeth. Poor goat!

We have bad goats.

So, what to do? J and I have been talking about just spending the money to get good goats. Good goats mean more milk, a more pleasant milking experience, and then when we breed them, more good goats (which will sell for more money, too).

After listening to our goats complain so much, and rationing our precious milk that we've been able to get, we think it's time. So today my assignment was to find a good goat, and just buy it. And then, we can sell the mama goat and keep the baby, or whatever.

So, I looked online and found some good goats for sale. I talked to the owner for a little while; she was selling her whole herd because she is moving. So, these were not her rejects, which is a good thing. I ended up buying three Nubian goats! They are:

"Sunday" who is 3 years old, and she's had triplets the past two years. She gives 8 cups of milk each time you milk her and she has awesome teats, which makes her a really amazing dairy goat. Her head looks Nubian and her body has a lot of white (not normally a Nubian thing), so I don't really know what the deal is there, but she's supposedly full Nubian.

Sunday is very friendly, and after you milk her she won't get off the milk stand until you give her some kisses. Sunday was actually raised indoors, as a pet, kind of like a dog. The people kept her as long as they could, and then she got to be too big. One time they got a call from a neighbor, "Your goat is on my counter eating my bananas!" She just went through the neighbor's dog door. Oops. The only other thing is, the people who raised her taught their kids to pull her ears if she knocked them over. So she doesn't like her ears touched, and she isn't good around kids without supervision. (The lady said, "But, what I've found is that if one of your kids wants to go visit her, you can give them a spray bottle, and if she tries to stand up on them have them spray her and she will leave them alone.") Sunday is great.

"Claire" who had her first kids in December. If you let her hang out with her kid, the kid doesn't nurse much anymore, and she still gives 4 cups of milk each time you milk her. The funny thing about Claire is, she's a papered goat (fancy) and...she is from the same farm that Caroline came from! I thought that was funny. So there's this lady who lives up in northern Utah, and we've bought two of her goats...from other people! Supposedly she likes to keep track of her goats, though, so the lady I was buying from gave me the other lady's phone number, and I'm supposed to call her any time I have questions. She runs the 4H stuff up in her area, and she judges in goat shows, and so forth. Funny, eh? So, Claire is a really nice goat. She looks like Nubians are supposed to, but she is pretty skinny. She just never put weight back on after her pregnancy. A vet checked her out and she's okay, though. She just needs to keep eating good stuff and she will be fine to breed again later this year.

"Star" who was born in December. She is Claire's daughter. Claire was pregnant with Star when the people bought Claire, so we can register Star and she will be a papered goat too! Star is very friendly. She still follows her mom around a lot--when we put Claire into the crate in the back of the truck after I bought them all, Star followed Claire and wanted in too. When I go outside, Star forgets all about her mom and follows me instead. It's really cute. For a doeling, she has very good teats, so she looks like she will be a promising milker. She will be old enough to breed in December too.

[Star, Claire, and Sunday]

Anyway, it is exciting to finally have some good goats. Now we will have enough milk to drink, and enough milk for cheese and cream. Maybe even enough for butter. And milking will be pleasant, because these goats willingly come to the milk stand and they like to be milked.

Also, it turns out I like to milk them. I thought it would be fine, but it actually feels pretty fantastic. I get that same excitement that I felt when I picked up the meat from our cow. We're being self-sufficient! I am pretty good at milking, too. There's a little bit of a trick to it, but I got the hang of it right away.

So, I talked to the people today about our mama goat. I told her maybe we should just sell her; she isn't producing much, and she's not very good, etc. They suggested it could be because this is her first year. They said she will probably do better next year. They said maybe we should let the doeling be back with her mama, and milk the mama goat once a day (to make up for the buckling that we left behind), and then try again next year. J and I talked about it and we think she may be just really stressed, too, and that could be part of why she's having problems (with her attitude and her production).

SO, we reunited our herd. Now we have eight happy goats in one happy herd. Or, three happy herds, actually, since Feta and Caroline hang out together, the mama and doeling hang out together, and the three from today hang out together. (Bucko just goes around flirting with all the girls, and the cow likes everybody.) Now, we will sell Bucko (so that he doesn't get anybody pregnant next month when breeding season starts), and we may sell Feta (since who knows whether she will get pregnant or not, and we don't want goats with horns), and then later in the year we will probably get a good, papered buck, and produce a bunch of fancy, papered kids. In the meanwhile, I don't have to listen to goats complain, except when they complain because they want to be milked--NOW, please!

We are still waiting for Caroline to kid. She faked us out yesterday by moaning for hours, and rolling around, and scratching at the ground, and laying down and standing up and laying down and standing up, etc, but then in the evening she stopped the whole charade and started wondering why we were off in this area away from everyone else?? so this morning I released her from the special birthing area. Maybe she'll just stay pregnant. Hopefully not. (And, I don't think that happens.)

Goat drama.

Yesterday we drove all the way down to Payson to pick up a couple more goats.


Our goat Caroline is about to kid (she IS pregnant after all!) so J has been trying to find another doe in milk so that we will be able to milk two goats instead of just Caroline. There's a little bit of a process to milking (cleaning supplies, etc) so milking two goats doesn't take much longer than milking one. And you get twice as much milk.

J finally found this place that had three Nubian does in milk. One had two kids, another had one kid, and the third one had a kid that had died. The one with two kids looked the most Nubian, so we bought her.

Our original idea was to separate the mamas from their babies at night, and milk the does in the morning, and then let the kids be with their mamas during the day instead of us milking at night. So everyone would get milk and we would all be happy. Right?

No.

We were only going to need one kid for our plan to work, so we bought the mama with her doeling, and left her buckling with the original herd. (The babies are big enough that they can be separated from mama now; they were actually all listed for sale separately.) There was no reason for us to pay for a buck that we don't need or want. And, if we did buy him, pretty soon we would need to separate him from the herd anyway because he would start trying to breed his mother and his sister. We don't want to be inbreeding here.

So, we took everyone home and the mama goat hollered and hollered all day yesterday. She was missing her buckling. Oh, good grief. We separated Bucko from the herd, too, because we didn't want him to breed the mama goat, and he hollered and hollered all day too.

The other problem was, these people that we bought the goats from didn't actually milk their milk goats. They used to before, but they hadn't in a while because they're busy people. So their goats (except the older ones) were all afraid of people. Not the best.

Today we caught the mama goat and put her on the milk stand, not to milk her but just to let her realize that she can have GRAIN (!!!) on the milk stand. We didn't let her doeling follow her to the milkstand, and they both totally freaked out to be 15 feet apart. So, separating them every night is going to mean that they will holler and holler every night. It isn't going to work. We have neighbors.

Better that they just forget about each other and the mama goat becomes a milk goat instead of being with the doeling. (Like she is supposed to be.) And then, we can bottle feed the doeling until she is weaned the rest of the way, and then she will be friendly with people instead of terrified of them (like she and her mama are now). Milk goats are supposed to be friendly with people.

So, today we let Bucko back into the herd (breeding season doesn't start for a month anyway), and I caught the doeling (much harder than it sounds), I stole her away from her mama and the herd, and put her in Chalcy's backyard (which has a 6' fence). We put Feta in with her so that she isn't alone. Goats are herd animals, so they don't do well alone. Now everyone at our house is very concerned. Feta does NOT want to be over there with the doeling (and without her herd) so she keeps screaming. The doeling wants to be following her mama around so she keeps crying. The mama goat is very concerned about her lost babies so she keep calling to the doeling from the other side of the fence. Caroline should be kidding any time now, but she is not too worried about the new goat commotion because she was with Feta before, and now she is with Bucko, so, no big deal.

Hopefully everyone will calm down in a day or so. We will try to milk the mama goat tonight, and then we will try to bottle feed the doeling too. When Caroline kids we will put her kid(s) with the doeling, and then maybe Feta can go back to the rest of the herd and everyone will feel better.



Any suggestions for names? So far we've thought of Polly and Penny. Or, Betsey. Right now they are "the mama goat" and "the doeling". We need to come up with names.