Milking stand is done!

Good weekend for a project.  We picked up the supplies on Saturday and built it today.  We downloaded the plan from Dairy Goat Journal, and for about $25.00 in lumber, voila!

Building the base

Excellent work!

Isn't that pretty?

So I had to go buy KY Jelly...

Marie asked me if I had any KY Jelly.  How do you answer a question like that?  Well, I didn't, so I figured I'd pick some up when I stopped at the supermarket.  So I cruise around the store and there it is, right under the wall of condoms.  Right behind the two guys standing there talking about whatever.  I take another spin down a couple of aisles and what do you know?  'Whatever' is pretty interesting, because they haven't budged.  I finally sucked it up and went in around them.  There are a lot of different KY Jellies.  I am looking for the giant size bottle, the regular stuff, nothing fancy, nothing tingling, nothing 'his & hers'.  Just lube.  Thank God I found the giant size generic brand, so at least I could have some dignity out of the area of the 'whatever guys'.  :-)

Baby watch!

We're on our first official baby watch tonight.  I was out feeding when Vic got home.  He came into the shed and immediately spotted Pim's udder.  VERY disconcerting.  I called Marie for some advice.  Once the udder starts to fill, we could have babies anytime.  Could be tonight, could be in a couple of days, we'll have to watch and see.  No power out there, so we ran three extension cords out.  Had to shave Pim's udder, lol!

The vet is scheduled to be here tomorrow around noon.  As much as I hope to have babies tonight, it would be nice to have her give them a once over and get their shots on board.  More later!

Colostrum Express

I took a ride over to Buxton on Sunday to pick up some frozen colostrum ice cubes from Cheryle.  You didn't know there was such a thing, did you?  Apparently, we are going to have babies sooner than we anticipated.  We were thinking February, but I guess I didn't read the notes.  Pim was pastured with Jethro for a week in July.  Count out 150 days and -assuming it took- we are going to be in business pretty darn soon.  Basically, from here on out through January, we could have babies dropping out all over the place.  Hence the colostrum.  We need to bottle feed it to all the kids to make sure they each get some.  Then we freeze any extra from mom to have on hand for the next batch.  So...off I went, and got more clipping and milking lessons to boot.

Check these out:

I love this picture.  Look at her face, you just know she's saying 'What are you Doing???'

Dis-Budding 101

This morning I drove over to Creeping Thyme Farm in Buxton for a lesson in dis-budding.  With very few exceptions, all goats, including does, grow horns.  Not a very good idea with dairy goats.  They can get caught in fencing, and are pretty formidable weapons as well.  So as a matter of course, all babies have their horn buds cauterized in their first week or so.

Marie and Tim were still finishing up their morning chores, which gave Missy and me time to play with the babies.  It was a warm, sunny morning and I could have stood there all day just watching them bebop and bounce around like little jumping beans.  When they were ready, we brought two twins, a doeling and buckling into the milkroom.  These guys were just over a week old.  Marie pointed out that it's very important to take ALL the babies away at the same time, even if you're only doing something to one of them.  This way their mother won't reject them when they return.  We sat them on our laps and Marie gave them both a buzz cut to clear the spot where the horns were just starting to press against the skin.  A butane dis-budder is used, which heats up super hot.  The end is placed over the horn buds and burns/cauterizes the spot.  A disk of skin is removed and you actually see the bone.  Any protrusions are carefully scraped away, then the area treated with Blu-kote.  They also had a silver colored spray that they used on the lighter colored babies to try to camouflage the area.  This is another way to trick mom into accepting her babies back.  Who knew goat could be so fickle?

Keeping the babies still is a challenge for sure.  We swaddled them in a towel and held them in our laps while Tim did the dirty work.  The smell is...nauseating.  The babies scream during the procedure.  It is not for the faint hearted.  I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't witnessed it myself, but honest to God, as SOON as it is done, they are up and about like nothing happened.  We also did two doelings that were born just a couple of days ago.  That seems like the way to go.  They didn't have nearly the time that the older kids had.  What a difference a week makes!

I was also given a hands on lesson in hoof trimming.  I finally feel confident in what I need to do and how to do it.  It's similar to cleaning a horses foot or trimming a dogs nails, just a lot more squirming involved.  I cannot imagine doing it on a bigger goat, I helped with two today and it's a very physical process.

Lots of good lessons under my belt now.  Of course, I haven't used the castrater yet...I think that will be my job...  :-)

Santa baby, put a dwarf goat milk stand under the tree...for me...I've been a very good girl...

Dwarf Goat Milk Stand Plans by Melissa Thomas from the May/June, 2007 issue of Dairy Goat Journal. Presenting information, ideas, and insights for everyone who raises, manages, or just loves goats.

My First Milking Lesson

This morning I drove down to Cape Neddick to get my first milking lesson from Cheryle.  What fun!  It was a beautiful morning and she is a fabulous teacher.  She very patiently took me through the process of shaving the udder, then cleaning and drying it.  The girls stood like angels on the stand while she showed me her milking technique.  After watching for awhile, I took the seat and gave it a whirl.  IT IS NOT AS EASY AS IT LOOKS.  After milking three or four does, I started to get the hang of it, but not before I covered my coat, my pants, the milking stand and the floor with streams of milk.  Mind you, I didn't actually completely milk three or four does, I squished and squirted along until Cheryle suggested I let her finish for me.  :-)

There was a doe there that had given birth to two little bucklings last Friday.  These little guys, two days old, were about the size of a 20 ounce bottle of soda with legs and a head.  It just doesn't get any sweeter than that.  I could have stood there and watched them for days.

Next Sunday the adventure continues as I head over to Maries to learn about disbudding.  Should be interesting!

SMDGA First Aid Seminar

This weekend has been all about goats.  A trend that I see continuing ad infinitum of course.  On Saturday I took a trip up to Augusta with Marie and Missy to a goat first aid seminar.  There was a group of about twenty five people, with all kinds of goats, and the speaker was a local vet.  I am now officially freaked out.  I must remember that the purpose of the seminar was to cover things that can go wrong, but it was a little overwhelming to take all that information in.  Bottom line of course, we have happy healthy goats and with a little preparation and common sense, problems will be, God willing, minimal.  We all introduced ourselves and the whole room got a chuckle (read 'belly laugh') at the fact that we were new goat people and had six pregnant does.  I had a couple of people come up and ask me 'Are you the one with the six pregnant does?'  When I said I was, they would laugh and comment that we were in for a lot of fun.  Oh my God, we are screwed.

The Goat House

Talk about starting from scratch...

Ah, my darling husband did such a nice job on the goat house.

After much trial and error, we are finally starting to get into a routine.  We are letting the goats out when we leave for work at 6:00 and tossing them a pile of hay when we get home (also around 6:00).  Inside to take the dogs out for a run around, back in to feed them and us, then back out to grain the goats.  I've been doing a night check around 9:00 and closing them in for the night.  Should be interesting once we toss in kidding season and O My God, milking chores.  Little personalities are starting to emerge.  Hurdy Gurdy, the most shy, is officially in love with Victor.  She gives him big moony eyes and comes over for a scratch when he's around.  Exclaim in the momma bear and likes to put her head in your lap.  Cocoa is my little baby.  Chocolate brown with a splash of white on her head, she leans against me with her eyes closed.  Trysta reminds me of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer with her curious little face.  ("She thinks I'm cuuuuute!")  Teeny came in like the enforcer, but she is my big goomba.  Pim?  Well, I'm confident that Pim will come around.  I called her a shrew, Victor has another word for her.  :-)

Pim, Hurdy Gurdy and Exclaim

A Word about Water

It's not like I haven't been in a barn before.  It's not like I haven't had barn critters at HOME before.  When we were looking at spots to build the goat house, the location of the water faucets crossed my mind a few times, but did I pay attention?  Noooooo.  I guess I forgot how much lugging water buckets sucks.  :-)

We are slowly figuring out a routine.  The stall cleaning is in no way like cleaning horse stalls.  Those little beaners slip right through the tines of my wonder fork, lol!  Right now we're just putting hay in the corners of the stall.  Hay is apparently the best stuff ever to pee on.  Once it's pee'd on, it of course can't be eaten, so needless to say we are going through a bit of hay.  I ordered a couple of feeders online, they should be here on Monday so that will (hopefully) alleviate that problem.

I love, love, love the sound of critters munching. 

Sunday, October 3rd

So Saturday morning we are racing to get everything ready enough to house the goats.  No fence yet, but we figure we can keep them in their stall for a few days while we get that done.  Cheryle and Wyl showed up while I was downstairs looking for some drill bits.  We cleaned up the area real quick and while I was throwing shavings around, Vic went out to help unload our new little charges.  And little they are!  I had forgotten how small they were and when Vic walked into the shed with the first one I was stunned.  They really are tiny.  They maybe come half way up to the door handle.  Our neighbor Dave and his son Gavin pulled in as we were getting our instructions and Gavin got a lesson on goat handling.  We spent the next four hours fussing with Exclaim, Hurdy Gurdy, Trista, Hot Cocoa, Martini and Pim.  I had forgotten how much I love the sound of contented critters munching!  Cocoa took a running leap at the partition wall, much to our surprise, four feet may not cut it.  She almost made it!

Sunday has been all about fence posts.  I am not twenty years old anymore and digging post holes is a young man's job for sure.  Our pen is set into the pines along the driveway and the ground is rooty, rocky and loaded with clay.  The more we dig, the smaller the dimensions of the pen are getting!  We've finished today with four posts set and four more to dig.  I hope by Thursday or Friday we'll be able to let the girls out in their new yard.  In the meantime, they're living a life of leisure in their new house, with fresh shavings and all the hay they want.  I'm a little concerned about Hurdy Gurdy, she has a case of diarrhea which I'm sure is due to nerves, but I'm keeping an eye on her.  (Gross!)  :-)

October 1st, 2010

So here we are, the night before the goats arrive.  Weather and circumstance (Dad had a stroke) have pushed the original date out a couple of weeks.  The goat house is just about done, we just need to finish the door that separates the hay area from the goat area.  Vic has been working like crazy and it's a thing of beauty.  I laugh and tell him that if the goat thing doesn't work out, we can always turn it into Man-town.

Cheryle and Wyl from Old Mountain Farm in Cape Neddick are driving up tomorrow morning with six (yes, six) pregnant does and a little baby buck on loan, just in case her buck Hakama didn't get the job done.  I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve, waiting for Santa.

August 30, 2010

So, here we are, nineteen days before six pregnant, Nigerian dwarf goats are delivered.  Have we ever had goats?  Absolutely not.  Our venture started when I decided I really wanted to get another horse.  Horses need company, so why not 'a couple' of goats?