Expanding our Interests

In addition to these goats, most everyone in our group is coming together to try out hog raising. We're not too sure how well it is going to work out but we have the highest hope for a harvest of ham and bacon in the fall. Some of us spent some time earlier this week getting a shelter and fence put up, and then last night we met and did more to complete it and also moved the pigs to their new home(they had been staying in the small shelter where we first had the goats). There is some final work to be done before it is as we have envisioned, but it is mostly complete.

We are running some electrical fence around both the inside(to keep the pigs in) and outside(to keep predators out) and that is the piece that is taking some tweaking to get complete.

As a kid we had pigs and they stank to high heavens, so luckily the location we have is up on top of a mountain outside of town. I'm hoping this works out well, ham and bacon win out over goat milk every time.

Frolicing Friends

Now that all the goat kids are up and active it is easy to see why people buy baby goats. They are pretty fun to watch running around on their spindly little legs, exploring their new homes. It seems like most of them got the shape of their heads from the Billy Goat we had we had earlier, which is to be expected.


















They do seem to get tired pretty quickly but when they start growing a little more I'm sure that they will get past that. They are all nursing off their mothers. Some were worried about that for a bit, but nature knows what it is doing and all is well.

Baby Goats!

There hasn't been much activity for the past few months as the goats were no longer milking. But now that winter is coming to a close and all the goats are having their kids, things are starting to pick up. Our first nanny goat to give birth lost all 3 babies. We're not sure what happened as they were found after the fact, but since then there has been much more concern and attentiveness by the group. Over the last 3 weeks, all the pregnant goats have delivered. So we now have 13 baby goats running around.

Here are a couple pictures of the second goat to give birth. It was a regular festival-like atmosphere. She had 3 babies in about 30 minutes. Most of the kids seemed pretty fascinated by the whole process.

Here is the actual birth of the first goat.

The group has been spending a good amount of time with the animals, making sure that they are all ok, feeding well, and just generally having fun with the baby goats. We are hand milking the goat that lost her kids and plan to start weaning all the others in another week or two. We hear that it takes about 2 weeks and then we should be able to move them to a bottle. At approximately 4 weeks they start eating real food, at least that is about how long it took last time. We are still new to this goat ranching stuff, but with 1 year under out belts we are learning.

I'm not looking forward to starting to fully milk them again, but some have been really missing having the fresh, cold, goat milk to drink.

Getting ready for the kids

We need to start feeding about a pound of grain per goat per day starting about the middle of February. If you have any ideas how to do this the most efficiently I would like you to share them. Right now what I have thought of is just put each one on the milk stand and feed them, this way we can make sure each one gets their proper amount. Let us know your ideas and we wish Janina the best with her marathon run, don't know if anyone else is also running but best to all of you crazies.

Great job All

I just wanted to tell everyone what a great job you have done this whole year, I know sometimes groups can have little quirks and tiffs but everyone has done a great job with spreading the work and accommodating everyone's differences in opinion at times.

I for one really miss the milk, I know some of you don't feel the same way but if you watch Food Inc. or Fresh the Movie or read the Omnivore's Dilema I think you might change your mind, not only is the milk better for what it does not have in it, it is great for what it does have in it, if you do the research you will find that about the only thing "milk" in the store and our milk have in common is that they are both kind of the same color. I know the billy goat kind of messed with the taste but with a little tweaking next year I believe we can totally eliminate that and keep the sweeter taste all year. Thanks for the great work and help all year and now we can look forward to the kids coming, they are always fun to have around.

It's a Dry Country!

We have finally dried up the goats so no more milking for the next few months. I must say that it is quite a relief to me. Now we just need to feed them, but that seems like nothing...load a little hay up in their feeding bin, fill the water, and bam! it's Miller time.

We are planning on the goats delivering in the Spring and we may have 1 or 2 more people join our group. That would be about perfect(or as perfect as it can get) for this setup. We also don't expect any capital costs this year so that will be some additional saving, which is what this is all about anyway.

The Lame Goat is moving around just fine now. I don't notice any limp in her anymore. In fact except for the giant joint (looks like someone who pops their knuckles a lot) you would never know she was in mortal combat and nearly slaughtered by a fierce predator. She still hasn't regained her place in the pecking order yet though. Might take some more time for that to happen.

I did take the pump and bring it home to keep it out of the weather, we don't really want to have to buy another one of those if a little shelter will help keep it in tip top shape. I might be underestimating it's hardiness, but taking up a little shelf space is worth the peace of mind to me.

Cold Snap

The weather here has taken a turn for the colder. Our last milking was pretty cold. We use Bag Balm on the goats teats to stop them from getting chapped. During out morning milking, the Bag Balm was almost frozen solid, it took some scrapping to get enough to use. So, we took it home with us so it would be warm for the evening and that worked out pretty well. I'm sure the goats appreciated it being warm and easily spreadable instead of the frozen mass we were using in the morning.

Is everyone else doing something similar or just making do with it nearly frozen?

We are still keeping the Billy Goat separated during the evening time and I'm hoping that it doesn't die of the cold. The others all huddle together but he doesn't have anyone to huddle up to. I'd hate to have yet another goat, that isn't ours, die while in our keeping.

I do think the Billy Goat has done his job. All the goats seem to be getting fatter and fatter, and that isn't from the amount of hay we are giving them. The only questionable one is the injured one. She is moving around pretty well but we're not sure if she was stable enough during the time the Billy Goat was interested in her or not. He has lost all interest in them now.

We are planning on tapering off the milking and letting them dry up beginning at Christmas. Hopefully that will take about 2 weeks so when Winters Burden is fully upon us we won't have to deal with the milkings anymore. We'll just have to keep them fed which seems like much less of a hassle than milking them.