New Goat!!

We picked up Sweet Pea this weekend yay! She's a registered first freshener that kidded with triplets back in March. She comes from a long line of milkers - her dam is a 9th generation milker (9*D) and one of the terms of purchase with her breeder is that we milk test her next year. We went to pick her up on Sunday, a 5 hour drive one way, and have been milking her twice a day - it's an amazing feeling knowing that our animal is putting the milk in the fridge! She's producing about a quart of milk a day right now, more in the evenings. For those afraid to try goat's milk, I can tell you that it tastes like normal cow's milk but is creamier due to the cream not separating. It smells pretty delicious too - like vanilla soft-serve ice cream according to my sister. I need to do some research in order to figure out what the normal production for a Nigerian Dwarf FF. I am ecstatic to finally have a real dairy goat! My husband has not tried the milk yet but I knew he'd be a hard sell. My daughter calls it 'creamy milk'.

Success with Sweet Pea makes me want to try Daisy again, especially knowing that our goats are here to be dairy animals. An animal that doesn't pull it's weight will be sold. I'll try a few more times before I make a final decision. For now the plan will probably be to keep the doeling and sell Daisy if she's unwilling to settle down. She's quite the acrobat.

Milking

In short, it was quite the rodeo. Last night, Daisy wouldn't let down her milk so I trimmed her hooves and put her up. The kids spent the night in a wire dog crate in the goat house so they couldn't nurse. At 7:30 am, I went to get Daisy, cleaned her udder, showed her the chow and got to work but she definitely wasn't making it easy, yeesh. I also realized she has tiny orifices so even though I had good rhythm and relatively good technique, it took absolutely forever. I did get enough milk in the jar to realize her milk doesn't taste very good - it tastes like grass. She has been showing signs of copper deficiency so I finally dosed her today. For those that are nervous about dosing (like me!), peanut butter is the way to go. Easy-peasy, with no angry goat involved - hopefully that will take care of the off-taste. Daisy's got a week to settle into her life as a dairy animal. If not, I may have to figure something else out.

Fallen behind again

But this time I have a really good excuse. I put in for leave the last week of April (kid's spring break), and was planning to get my new fruit trees mulched and veggies in the garden. To make a long story short, my plans went out the window that Monday and my younger sister and her two kids are staying here for a while. Most of my seedlings have died from neglect (e-gads, I had to buy veggie plants from a store again!), but all my trees are in the ground, including a couple new citrus trees and an avocado. And, Daisy kidded!

Crazy girl decided to have her kids while I was at home scarfing a sandwich before heading out to pick the human kiddos from school. I decided, what the heck, I'll check on Daisy while I'm here. She was in the goat house and laid down to push as I peeked in the door. I ran inside to change into farm clothes, and got back as the first kid was coming out. It was a large buckling, perfect birth but I could tell there was another kid in there. When she laid down to push the second time, it was easy to see this kid was completely breech, butt first. The cord broke before she was completely out and the bag was really tough to break - pretty scary. As all this was happening I was trying to call somebody, anybody to pick up my kids, but no such luck. When I was sure she was done, I ran to the school, dropped the kids off at the babysitter and came back home to clean up before going back to work - it was a hectic afternoon. So, we have one buck, one doe, both very healthy and Daisy is being a great mom. These pictures were taken the day they were born.

Buck:

Doe:

I plan to milk Daisy out for the first time this evening, separate the kids, and start milking in earnest tomorrow morning.

Name-change coming...

As soon as I get word back from ADGA (American Dairy Goat Association) and AGS (American Goat Society), I will be changing the name of this blog. I have a few herdnames that I've picked out, so we'll see which one gets the thumbs-up.

I read through a couple of my old posts and remember writing that I didn't particularly want or need registered goats. I guess I'll explain why I ended up going with registered instead of grade or mixed-breed. The basic reason was milk production. The two breeds I was considering were LaMacha and Nigerian Dwarf. Reality is we have under an acre and a half, so the smaller option was the better one. The problem...lots of folks breed Nigerians just for pets. If you can't be sure how well a doe's dam milked, then you cannot begin to guess how well she will milk. Lots of grade and mixed-breed standard goats milk well, but I didn't want to take a chance with a grade Nigerian. I would really love to have a mini-Mancha one day though...

Pictures of Goaties

Finally, a few pictures. This is chunky-monkey Daisy back in January. She's is a bit larger now. In the past she has only had singles and twins, and I believe the same will be true this time around - I'm fine with that as long as there's a doeling in there! She is not as steep in the rump as this picture would lead you to believe.

And little Sierra with one of our pecan trees. This little girl has enough energy for 3 or 4 goats. She momentarily paused, so I was able to get a picture before she started zooming around again. She is the spitting-image of her daddy who is out of the top-milk-producing doe at one of the more well-known ND farms in the area. Daisy was bred to Sierra's sire's littermate brother. I have high hopes for my girls and what they will produce for our family!

And finally, a picture of Sierra being a pest. Daisy just stood there - poor thing!

Headway

We have progressed towards our goals more in the last three or four months than we have in the entire previous year. It feels great to finally be taking steps in the right direction.

Goats: Our two girls are doing great. Our older doe, Daisy, is showing her pregnancy now in both size and attitude. She's going to be a challenge to milk, I'm afraid. We've been working on touching her belly and udder while she's eating her grain at night and she gets quite acrobatic. I hope to have a milking stand built soon so we can start practicing on it. We have less than two months to go before her scheduled kidding time.

Little Sierra is growing like a weed and has become something of a pest. It can be difficult to do chores when she's nibbling (or biting!) your pants leg or using your back as a spring board. She's lucky she's cute :)

We have another doe to pick up in June after she's weaned her kids. It's going to be quite the drive to pick her up but she's worth it - her dam is an 8th generation star milker (8*D) which is quite a feat for Nigerian Dwarves. I am ecstatic to have her.

As soon as the weather breaks, I'll be fixing up our larger red barn in order to move them out there - as it is now, we have the goats in our backyard - not the best set up. My hubby has been very understanding but I can see that he doesn't appreciate their mischievous ways (when it comes to the various things they have access to in the backyard). The goal is to have them moved before Daisy kids.

Chickens: The girls we have left are doing very well. I hate to brag but our girls are obviously well-fed and healthy-looking, with bright eyes and silky feathers. Our neighbors were so enamoured with our girls that they bought a little laying flock of their own - with two roosters. The roosters have 'access' to our hens when they free-range so here's hoping we'll have some chicks later this year. As for plans - I am planning out a nesting box to attach to the outside of the coop. The girls don't like the current set-up, and they show it by not laying in the nestboxes. That will be another project for when the rains (finally!) go away.

Garden/Produce: I have gone slightly crazy with the seed and plant ordering lately. I also have tons (and tons) of plans and projects for this year's growing season. I hope to be semi-successful but I'm afraid this year is mostly going to be the beginning of a very large learning curve. It's taken me quite a while to get to this point - I generally procrastinate until there's no more time to do anything due to a huge fear of failure. This year, I just keep repeating - You can't succeed if you never try.

Other: I ordered some large, air-tight containers for food storage and ordered organic red wheat berries to fill them. I also bit the bullet and purchased a manual grain mill. I see a lot of baking and sore shoulders in my future.

And, finally, I'm planning a grey-water system, at least for the washing machine. It is such a waste to pump all of that water to the septic when we don't get rain all summer long. I haven't divulged this last plan to the hubby yet. He's not going to like it, but I'm sure he'll see the benefits after a while.

Until next time!

Happenings

A week ago Saturday, I picked up our new Nigerian doeling. She is so precious! And so tiny! I got her from a nice farm in Vacaville that tests their goats for CAE and CL. Sierra (doeling) has the potential to get a 5th generation milking star. Here's hoping! She's given me a bad case of kid-fever. My will-power is being severely tested right now. I just have to hold out until Daisy kids in May. We'll see if I make it that long.

After my last post, I got a small garden area set up. We still haven't bought bricks, so the raised bed consists of the few bricks I had lying around and some old fence posts. I'm using a modified sheet-mulching technique to make it garden-worthy. Still not sure at this point if it'll be ready for planting time, which should begin next month. I'll have to re-evaluate when the time comes. We're still looking for a great deal on bricks. When/if we find one, I'll replace the fence posts with bricks and raise the bed quite a bit too.

The neighbor's dog attacked two more of my hens, both Black Australorps. Neighbor caught the dog in the act, thank goodness. I was very worried about Betty (yes, my hens have names) for a day but then she perked back up. They have built a much sturdier and larger pen for their dogs, and so far there haven't been any more break-outs. I don't blame them for the attacks, after all I choose to free-range my hens. I cannot explain the gratitude I have towards them for taking it as seriously as they do and trying to ensure it doesn't happen again. They've even offered to replace the hens that we've lost. Great neighbors.

Soon, I will be changing the name of my blog. I'm waiting until I have my 'farm name' registered with AGS and ADGA. More changes to come.

Big plans

<--- My new canner!! (and accessories!)

It's been a while and I'm sure it seems like I was taking the summer off. While that's true to an extent, I have also been busy reading, learning, and making plans.

My garden was basically a bust this year. Partially my fault (not getting it tilled early enough, not keeping up with watering and weeding), partially due to our new puppy. Even though the garden is fenced off from the rest of the yard, she continued to break in and destroy the plants - first chewing down every single corn plant, digging up my beans, chewing off the vines on my squash. Recently she has begun to remove grapes, one bunch at a time. Thankfully, she is also getting too large to fit through her usual (and consistently blocked!) holes. She's also slowly learning that doing things like this only results in bad things later. She's extremely smart but also extremely stubborn. One of these days, she's going to be an amazing dog.

My grape vine is going gang-busters - I have many bunches of grapes that are finally starting to ripen. In preparation, I have picked up a brand-new All American pressure canner from Craigslist for an amazing deal! The plan is to make grape jelly when the time comes. I can't wait to use it, though I'm nervous at the same time. There seems to be a tough learning curve on a lot of things involving self-sufficiency. It's too bad I wasn't one of the lucky ones who learned these things growing up. I have also found an apple tree at an unoccupied house in my neighborhood. If there are enough usable apples, I'm going to make my Mom's apple butter!

Doves - too much work without enough in return is the conclusion I have come to. Especially since DH only wanted me to have one pair! I finally just requested that when he starts hunting (have to get the gun and license first) he hunt dove for me, as well as deer.

So, that's the basic update, on the to plans! The hubby and I are finally in the market for a house to call home. Musts include 1+ acre of usable land, a fireplace/wood stove, a kitchen that's easy to work in, and a large pantry or room enough to put one in ourselves. We've seen a few that fit the bill but we seem to find these properties 5 minutes too late. We're going to keep looking.

In the meantime I have started to use my dehydrator for fresh foods that we can't seem to use in time - one of our biggest problems is waste! I can't wait to have a few chickens to help with any leftovers. I plan to start with 3-4, maybe up to 6 hens the first year. Then I'd like to buy 5-10 straight run chicks the following year allowing a roo to two to mature a bit. If one of my hens go broody, let her raise some chicks, butcher the roo and do the same the following year. I don't want to keep a permanent roo for many reasons. These are my current thoughts on the subject anyway.

I have finally talked the hubby into letting me have a few rabbits as well. I would like to have a colony, and raise the fryers in grow-out cages as they get bigger. Big reason for the grow-out is I plan to have Californian, NZW, or a cross between the two and I don't know how I'd keep them all straight if I let the youngsters get too big before separating them all. Besides, I'll need the poo for the garden. What I've read suggests that rabbits in a colony breed pretty fast, so I'm thinking only 2 does and a buck should keep us in meat pretty well. When it's time, we'll keep a doe or two for replacements from my stock and buy a outstanding buck from other stock. I really like the idea of keeping the breeders in a more natural setting.

Now, for goats. I plan on getting two dairy does - breed has not yet been determined. All bucklings will go into the freezer, along with most of the doelings. After a few years, I plan to breed my best doe to the best buck I can find in the hopes of getting a doeling to keep as an eventual replacement. The other doe's kids will all be sold/butchered. I have no desire to show or keep registered animals - I'm already busy - so the buck may be of a different breed. I don't really care as long as he comes from a long line of exceptional dairy animals. All kids will be separated at night, I will milk first thing in the morning, and kids will be allowed in with the does for the remainder of the day. I realize this will cut down on the milk that I get for my family but it will also significantly cut down on extra chores as well as help keep me from getting too attached to the kids. From what I've read, it makes for some pretty tasty meat as well.

I also plan to have a hive or two of honey bees. I want to use the 'top bar hives' I've read about for several reasons. First, natural is always healthier, both for the animals and for my family. Second, the cost of bee equipment is rather inhibitive. Finally, we don't need that much honey - I don't plan to sell it, just want it for personal use.

Besides all this, we'll have a large garden every year, lots of fruit trees, a strawberry bed, and blueberry bushes. We may also plant butterfly bushes around the property for the bees and aesthetics.

I realize that things don't usually go according to plan, so this is a rough outline, subject to change.