You've Got To Be Kidding....

The baby goats are two months old now - time to be weaned!  On Saturday we spent hours rounding them up.  We are putting them in the orchard, as it hasn't been grazed in ages, and could use a trim.  Besides, they can all slip through the weaning paddock gate this year.  When we repaired the gate post last fall, I think it got moved over just an inch, and they are easily slipping through.

Luckily, three of them were already over by the orchard, and were easily shooed in.  That left six to catch - Titania, Mustardseed (who is now called Moose because she's so big and fat), Oberon, George, Cobweb, and Mab, who looks part antelope.  All the difficult ones.

Mirin, Rose and I managed to corner and catch Oberon fairly quickly.  Cobweb, who is painfully shy and flighty, took some time to round up.  They were upset to be carried down to the orchard, but once they were in they started devouring the partridge pea, and were very happy.

Next I caught George.  George, Tamlin's twin, is about twice as big as Tam.  He's a brick.  I thought my arms would give out carrying him down.  He weighs more than Clothilde, and wiggles.

Ethan pitched in to help catch Titania.  While Ethan was struggling to get a good grip on her, she flipped around and kicked him in the face, knocking his hat off.  She weighs as much as George, and her nickname is now Titanic.

 Moose was easy to catch - not so easy to carry down.  She has always been a large kid.

Mab was last.  I knew Mab would be a real pain.  Ethan, Mirin, Rose and I all had to help catch her.  We cornered her several times, but she kept slipping past and pronking away after April.  It was like catching a baby gazelle with your bare hands, but finally, after a lot of chasing, cornering, and sweating, she was weaned.

The next day we went out early, anticipating lots of milking and bottle-feeding kids (less for their nutrition, more to make them friendly).  The mama goats were hanging out in the milking paddock that had been left open, with a bunch of smug-looking kids at their sides.

We had to round up Titania, Moose, Mab and George again.  George was right by the orchard gate, and showed us how all the kids had gotten out - just at the point of being captured, he leaped and slipped through the third rung of the gate (there is chicken wire all over the bottom of the gate).  So Ethan wired a cattle panel to the top.  We rounded up and carried down Titanic and Moose.  We had Mab cornered in the old weaning paddock, and with all four of us it didn't take (quite) so long the second time.  When we put Titania in the orchard, she gave the most pitiful hoarse little bleat.  It would have been heart-wrenching had my arms not been about to fall off from carrying her (again).

After the chores, we all went in the cold plunge (what we call a large metal water trough we fill with water - it is large enough to be like a small swimming pool).  We were all cooled off and clean, and just getting dressed for the trip home again, when we saw a bunch of little goats out at the top of the garden, smugly following their mothers.  They had gotten out of the other gate (blocked off with electric netting - but not well enough).

So we will be chasing them again this afternoon.  Ethan wants to put George and Titania in the dog kennel and move them with a dolly this time.

Meet The Goats

We were reading a book that was a childhood favorite of mine - Our Animal Friends At Maple Hill Farm, and it occurred to me that I am always writing about our many animals that to us are familiar and almost like extended family, but that it must seem confusing to anyone who hasn't followed along with us from the beginning, when we only had a few animals.

I thought it would be a good idea to introduce everyone...

This is David.  He's our buck we got last winter.  We were thrilled to find a buck who has also been organically raised, just like our goats.  He was very friendly when we got him, because the guy he grew up with was always petting him and scratching between his horns.  I don't know how he could stand to.  David is always peeing on himself, and he smells so awful.  It's so disgusting watching him pee on his face (he always laps some up), and then he stands up, his beard and face dripping with goat pee.  The last thing I want to do is pet him.

BUT  he's made some great babies, and we really appreciate him for that. 

This is May, and her little kid (well, big kid now) Titania.  They are so cute together, because Titania is just a smaller version of May.  They are always napping together, and Titania always rests her head on May's shoulder.  I was trying to get a picture of it, but she jumped up and ran away when I approached.  Ethan has picked her up and cuddled her too much.

Ellie, our very first goat, was May's mother.  May also had a twin who was born very weak, and that Ellie rejected.  We helped her along until one day she just suddenly died.

May has always been very healthy.  When she was little, she was always getting out and eating where she wasn't supposed to, and she was always the fattest little goat.  She is one of the friendliest goats, too, and it's easy to get close to her, since she's always thinking about her stomach.

This is Cricket, in mid-bleat.  She has twins this year, Tamlin and George, two bucklings.  Cricket is pretty because she has a reddish brown coat.  She is the boss of the herd right now.  We tried dehorning her, but she still has one horn, so she is a unicorn goat.

Here is Tamlin, one of Cricket's kids, resting on top of the broken water trough.  He is named after a romantic  old English ballad about a knight who was caught by the fairies.  His sweetheart, Burd Janet, has to wait by the crossroads on Halloween, the night he is going to be given as a tithe to Hell by the fairy queen, and rescue him.

He is a nice little goat.  His twin, George, is plain-looking but very husky and playful.  I thought I had a picture of him, too, but he was probably too quick.

This is April.  April is May's granddaughter, but they don't get along very well.  We called her April because she was born on April 1st - her mama, June Bug, was born on June 1st.  May, June Bug's mama, was born on May 1st.  It's complicated, but we had this funny pattern going for awhile.  She was from the crop of kids where we desperately borrowed a buck from our friend who was three different breeds:  African Pygmy, La Mancha, and Nubian.  His dad was a kinder (Nubian/pygmy blend) who accidentally got in with the La Mancha goats.  He was very funny-looking with waddles and Shrek ears, but he did a great job breeding the girls.

April inherited the Shrek ears, and the bossy African Pygmy personality, even though she is very short.  She is an interesting little goat.  She is very smart and not very friendly.  She hates being petted, but is happy enough to get in the milking stand for some food.

This is Mab, April's kid.  We were so relieved to see she has normal Nubian ears.   She has such pretty black markings on her forelegs and face now, but she and Titania looked exactly alike at birth.  April and May couldn't tell their babies apart, and it made them anxious.  Occasionally they started letting the wrong kid nurse, so they started cautiously sniffing them first.  Mab is a climber.  She is always trying to climb things.  A few times she's managed to climb up into an oak tree.  We are hoping she will grow out of it, but it does not bode well.

This is half of June Bug, running away from me with her kids.  June Bug was May's baby, but unlike May, she is not very friendly.  Even though May was heavily pregnant, she jumped out of the fence and gave birth in the middle of the paddock where the cows were going to be moved next.  We had to move them back with the rest of the goats, but this was very, very traumatic for baby June Bug.  I carried her carefully while Ethan led May.  She has never liked us ever since.

She is running away because I have been drenching her with worming medicine.  She hates being caught and drenched.  I've been worrying about her, because she is looking pale and thin.  I am planning to give her a B12 injection, too, if I can catch her.  She is a real pain to take care of, because I can't handle her very well.

The kid running behind her is Oberon.

This is Oberon's twin, Cobweb.  She is also not very friendly.  We are going to wean the babies this week, and I am hoping she will get more friendly after that.

This is Twilight Sparkle (my children named her after spending time with my brother, who showed them tons of My Little Pony cartoons).  We usually call her Sparky.  She does have huge, beautiful amber-colored magic unicorn eyes.

She is April's sister, from the same buck, but her mother was Nougat, May's sister (we gave Nougat away to a new home because she was not being very nice around Clo).  She also has little Shrek ears, but otherwise she is a very pretty goat.

She was the one I worried about with kidding this year.  She was so large, I thought she would have twins.  She is a small goat, like April, and David, the buck, is huge.  It was her first kidding.  She actually didn't have twins - just one kid, who was huge.  We named her Mustardseed (after the fairy in Midsummer Night's Dream), but we call her Moose.  She looks part Percheron.

Public Nuisance

David, our buck, has been such a nuisance lately.  He's waited for months until his girls were no longer pregnant, and now he is in rut again, although no one will be in heat until the fall, and they run away from him (you can't blame them). 

He's started to pee on himself and stink again, and has just been obnoxious - harassing the girls non-stop, sticking his tongue out, and making the "whro-whro-whro" courting noise that sounds so idiotic.

The baby goats are huge, and more playful than ever in their little gang.  I've been having everyone out grazing since the babies are so big now.  They have been jumping fences and going where they please, and only show up to be milked.  Twilight showed up with four babies skipping around her yesterday, and there was nary a sign of the other goats.  She was pleased to be milked first, and tried to nurse Mustardseed afterwards.  Oberon tried to get just a sip, and she showed him what-for.

One of Allan Nation's book reviews in The Stockman Grass Farmer caught my eye this week.  It was about a book called The Serengeti Rules, by professor Sean B. Carroll from the University of Wisconsin.

Carroll studied the ecosystem of the Serengeti to try to find out how it worked. He identified three distinct habitat zones that were constantly changing based on how the animals were using the land.  Populations that used the land differently (such as grazers like the buffalo versus the browsers like elephants and giraffes) altered the land as their populations pulsed.  Periodic droughts pulse the population to low numbers that allow the plant growth to recuperate.

One of the observations was that healthy ecosystems all start with large ruminants.  They were the ones (along with their predators and population controls) that were the basis of the ecosystem, and it was their impacts that created the habitats.  I found this so interesting, as there is so much in the environmental movement against domestic ruminants.  If mismanaged by human beings, they can destroy, but it is only our misunderstandings and lack of insight into the workings of nature that cause them to be destructive.

Three Sets Of Twins

June Bug's twins - Oberon and Cobweb

 

Mustardseed curled up under my hat!

 

Firefly's twins - Puck and Peaseblossom

On Sunday we came out and found that Cricket also had kidded.  We weren't sure exactly when she was due, because we saw her bred twice, so it was a surprise....and also another surprise because she had twins!  That makes nine baby goats in all this year - three sets of twins and three single babies.

The oldest kids - Mab and Titania - are old enough to be very frisky and tear around.  The other newer babies will join in for awhile, and then curl up for a nap.  Mab was in a tree yesterday.  It's a live oak with rough bark that she can find footholds in.  We tried to get a picture, but when she saw us she jumped down and raced away, pronking.  They are so spastic at her age.  They bounce around and then stop, as if they were surprised at what they have just done.

This week is full to the brim of milking twice a day, so I will probably not be writing here much.  I will try to post another French recipe later this week.

Puddles Of Goats

There are now five baby goats!  That means baby goats sleeping together and playing together in puddles all over the place.  Twilight Sparkle and June Bug had their babies, and June Bug had twins again.  Sparky's baby is huge....I had thought she might have twins, but it was just one large kid.  She's a smaller goat, and I was worried about her.

May and April's kids are old enough to be rambunctious and playful.  It's interesting to see how the different mothers are with their kids.  Just like people, they have different styles of mothering - sometimes very loving, and sometimes kind of heartbreaking.

May is a really good mama - after her baby was born she stood away from the herd, not going out to graze, but guarding her baby and making sure it was clean and letting it nurse.  April is the sort of mother who cares more about her stomach.  She abandons the baby to go graze, and doesn't care if it is crying and trying to find her.  It's big enough to follow her around now, but it gets tired after awhile and curls up to sleep.  April just leaves it, and keeps eating.

Two evenings in a row she left the baby somewhere in the back field and then freaked out later when she couldn't remember where it was.  She was bleating hysterically (while she was still eating) and we all had to go out and find it - it was quite difficult to find...it's amazing how old dried-out cow pies look like a sleeping baby goat from a distance.

Another funny thing - April and May's babies are almost identical.  They are all being born around the summer solstice, so this year we are choosing names from Shakespearean fairies, specifically A Midsummer Night's Dream. Mab (April's baby) and Titania (May's baby) have only a few very slight differences in appearance.  Titania has slightly more white hairs on her forehead, and a tiny white splotch on her belly.  She is slightly larger than Mab, but otherwise they look the same.  Even the mamas were getting confused!

It's so fun to have so many babies at once.  More to come - Cricket and Firefly have not kidded yet.

Born Before A Storm

Last Friday I noticed April bleating now and then while I was milking Matilda.  This isn't unusual - often the goats will stand around and bleat piteously at me in hopes that I will realize how sad and deprived they are and move the entire container of milking ration over for them to gobble up.  But April is quiet and shy.  She didn't sound upset or urgent.  I studied her for awhile, noticing the spacing between bleats.

"I think April is in labor," I told Ethan, when Matilda was milked out and had been hauled out of the milking area.  When I let them out to their hay, they all ran over, even April.  Dusk was falling, and my hopes of being there for the birth were falling as well.  If she was kidding, it was certainly going to be awhile yet.

The next day we went out early.  We had wanted to arrive even earlier than we did, but it had been pouring all day and we kept hoping for a break in the clouds.  It was a true summer storm, with buckets of water coming down, and lightening and thunder cracking around the sky.  And sure enough, there was a baby goat huddled under a pine tree in the pasture.

I ran up to check on them, but our presence disturbed April.  She is not very friendly, and Ethan scares her.  She began bleating in distress and trying to get the kid to follow, but it was so little and new, and quite comfortable under the tree, so we left them.  Ethan and I got the little tarp shelter in the weaning paddock close by more comfortable with fresh dry hay and a new tarp. I kicked the rest of the goats out to graze the back pasture, and I lured April and the baby over with a treat.

The kid (which is a girl - a little doeling!) snuggled happily down into the fresh, dry hay, but April was restless.  She didn't like being separated from the rest of the herd.  Her constant walking along the fence and bleating was making the baby worried.  So in the driving rain I called them all back and watched nervously as they crowded in, and the new kid wobbled between pairs of legs, nibbled at David's belly, and got kicked trying to nurse on Twilight Sparkle.

Soon they all settled down under the shelter, the baby in the middle of everything.

Marking

I knew, as soon as the first three boys were born, that it was going to be really hard to mark (castrate) the kids.  We've only ever had girls born, and I do wonder if the reason we had so many boys this time was because we didn't give them apple cider vinegar in the fall due to the cost.  They say it makes more girls.

There are about three ways, according to Natural Goat Care, to mark kids (lambs, too, I think).  Just reading about them gives me the shivers.  There are the bands and the crushers, first of all.  The bands, while easy and seemingly humane, are supposed to be the worst way.  Pat Colby cites research that showed significant abdominal bleeding from the banding.  The crushers, which sever the sperm tubes kind of like a vasectomy, also leave the buck "bucky" with his usual libido.  We didn't really want four bucks running around for another year.  The goats are hard enough to deal with without that.  So we did the third way, which is supposed to be the most humane - with an old fashioned knife.

Our friend Ed Sherwood had come out and steered Meathead with Ethan so he had some training.  I held the babies.  Although I'm sure it was pretty bad, I think it was probably more traumatic for us than the boys.  After we marked Huckleberry, I was crying and sure we had killed him.  He wasn't happy about it, of course, but the next day was bouncing around almost as if nothing had happened.  They don't bleat nearly as much as when they are dehorned, and I think mostly it is about being held down rather than the marking.

It was hard, but thank goodness it's all done for this year, and they have all healed perfectly.  It was definitely one of the hardest parts of farming (for me at least).

Twilight Sparkle

I didn't have a chance yet to mention that Nougat had her baby on Tuesday, and it was a girl!
Mirin and Rose are thrilled to have a Twilight Sparkle at last, but Ethan is shockingly opposed to it.  He's put up the biggest stink about the name.  He wants to call her Becky Thatcher--B.T. for short, like the bacterial toxin they genetically engineer into plants to kill things that eat them.  Mirin and Rose had a poll going around the family with signatures in favor of Twilight Sparkle, but Ethan has been unmoved.  I am surprised he cares so much about what names the goats have!  He and the goats have a subtle war of wills going on at all times.  He tries to have as little to do with the goats as possible, and the goats misbehave for him whenever they get the chance.  When I pointed out they could have wanted to name her Pinky Pie, it didn't cheer him up any.  Actually, he almost gagged a little.

So among ourselves she is Twilight Sparkle, but around Ethan she is Nougat's baby, and if you ask him she is Anything-Other-Than-Twilight-Sparkle.

I think she kind of looks like a Twilight Sparkle.

Wait, there's another one!

June Bug was due yesterday.  Her mama is May, who was Ellie's baby, born on May 1st.  June Bug was born on June 1st.  And it so happened that she was due on April 1st.  Ethan had his hopes up for an April, to add to the collection--if her baby was a girl.

Well, when we got out yesterday June Bug was still huge and pregnant, and didn't appear to be in labor.  We laughed, and said, "Of course it wouldn't be today.  There's no way she would also kid on the first of a month."

I milked everyone, which included wrestling with Nougat on the milking stand.  She was not used to being milked anymore, and was extremely badly behaved.  I have the hoof-marks to prove it.  Then I let them all out into the lush rye grass.  They were so delighted.  It was like the people walking into Willie Wonka's beautiful candy wonderland.

After I was finished milking Matilda, I noticed June Bug stop eating and find a good spot to lie down.  I thought, well maybe she's having her baby today after all.  I kept my eye on her, and she seemed to be watching me, and I thought perhaps she might want me to come over.  When I went to check on her, she looked like she was stretching her back legs a bit.  I sat down with her and said encouraging things.  Ethan was close by, so I alerted him with funny hand signals (I didn't want to shout and disturb her).  It wasn't long at all before the baby was born!  He made a little squawk and she immediately stood up and started cleaning him off.  I could tell it was a boy right away.  Ethan was disappointed he wasn't going to get to name one April this year, but I told him we could name the boy April--why not?  Or Neroneus, maybe. (Nero tried to re-name April Neroneus, but it never caught on).

June Bug had him almost all clean when she laid down again suddenly and pushed.  I thought it was the afterbirth, perhaps, and she stood up immediately and seemed to be eating it (as is the habit with most animals).  I went to get her some water and cider vinegar and something to eat while Ethan came over to bring her some nice hay.  Then he said suddenly, "Wait, there's another one!  It's twins!"

Sure enough, and the next one was a girl.  So there was an April after all.  June Bug was such a good mother.  She had them all clean and was nursing them in half an hour.

I think we are going to name the boy March.  He did come before April.
It was so amazing to be there for a birth.  It's only the second goat birth I've attended.  I think June Bug wanted company and she seemed glad I was there.  I think the rye grass inspired her.  I would have wanted to give birth in the rye, too.

Missing

Over the weekend we went out to do the milking, and saw two of the baby goats (Huck and Sid) playing rambunctiously together.
"Where's Tom?" I asked Ethan, who was in the paddock with me.
We walked all around the paddock, which is fairly small, but there was no sign of him.  May suddenly realized she couldn't find her baby and began to bleat (before that she was lounging around chewing her cud and didn't care).
"Could he have gotten out and been eaten?" I wondered.  Ethan didn't think so, but he was not in the paddock that we could see.  The goats began following us around.  May started to kind of freak out a little and was calling loudly now.
Then we heard a tiny little goat bleat from somewhere.  We followed it, but couldn't tell just where it was coming from.  It seemed to be in the direction of a rusty old green barrel we need to throw away (Ethan: "It's not trash, it's a 'cow toy'").
Then Tom pokes his little head  out.

Much to our relief and May's.  Now it's not trash, it's a "baby goat shelter."

Two New Kids

May's baby was born last week.  He looks just like May!  And he got the long Nubian ears that are so adorable.  May has tons of milk this time.  Mirin and Rose are bitterly disappointed that all the babies so far are boys.  They were both hoping to name them after My Little Ponies.  (I am sort of embarrassed to say.  We don't even own a TV, but they've watched the cartoon on Netflix at their grandparents' house.)

We've been reading Tom Sawyer aloud on our drives to the farm and back, so we are calling them after the characters in the story.  This one's Tom.  He seems unusually photogenic for a baby goat.  Or maybe he was too freshly born to jump around crazily.

Firefly also kidded last week.  It was another boy!!  So much for the dreams of calling him Twilight Sparkle!  Nope, he's Sid.  He wasn't even born with the weird African Pygmy goat waddles like the other two.  It's so entertaining to watch them playing.  Two more mamas are due this week!

Sheep and Goats

We currently have four goats and two sheep. We have two milking goats, Ellie and Nougat, but only Ellie is milking now. They will be bred this fall and spring for next year. Our hair sheep are both young females that we bought this spring. We will breed them next spring to start our herd. They were very wild when we first got them but have become very docile and will do pretty much anything for a handful of oats.

Our goats get oats soaked with raw apple cider vinegar, flax seeds, diatomaceous earth, kelp and Sea-90 free choice. They are taken out to graze every day in a moveable electric fence. They are seldom in one spot for more than 2 days. The first day they eat the grass and the second day they browse the trees.