Certified Goat Ranchers

I'm not sure what is happening, but my last post was about selling off some of our goats and shrinking the size of our herd.  I go back to milk today and I find that we have doubled in size!  We have added 16 goats to our herd.  I'm wondering if goats and rabbits have similar breeding patterns.   One of us found a great deal 2 Bucks and 4 Nannys, with the 4 Nannys being pregnant.  That was a few days ago and they have all given birth.  These are LaMancha goats and are Ugly with a capital U.  If you look closely, you can see the evilness shining out of the eyes of them.  I can understand why we got such a great deal for the whole bunch of them.  There is something about those human looking ears that is disturbing.  Goats should have big floppy ears, not little nubs like these ones do.

The kids are not so repulsive, in fact the kid in this picture is downright adorable...so is the goat.  We have 10 baby LaManchas running around, they are quite a bit smaller than the others that we still have and it is amusing to see them frolicking together


We have sold all the females from our first batch and are trying to sell the males.  With this new bunch, we have way more than we bargained for.  We are going to try and sell them all together, and are giving a really great deal on them so if you are interested, or know someone who is, then check this out.

The good news is that the little blind goat, seems to be getting better.  It's eye's are clearing up and it is reacting to movement in front of it's face.  I think this is fantastic, being blind would be lousy.  The weather is warming up and hopefully last weeks snow was the last we'll see till November.  I'm fine with it raining more, but I've had enough of the snow and cold.

The bad news is that one of the white saanens that we have is in bad shape.  She is a first time mother and only gave birth to 1 goat.  She has been skittish about getting milked and as such I think we neglected her a bit.  Now one side of her udder is hard as a rock.  Her kid seems to be still eating of the other side, but she is in constant pain.  I've been able to milk some out of her bad side, but it is so painful she stands there and maa's the whole time.  When I try to massage her udder she is jumping all around to get me to stop.  We have put the machine on her a few times and she does give some milk, but then it starts to get blood in it.  I'm not sure what is wrong with her, but all the women in the group are especially sympathetic to her plight.  I think we are going to have to get rid of her.

I think the problem is that we didn't regulate their milk enough to begin with.  Next time we'll need to do a better job of it.