just kidding

Baby goats! Its baby season, and we're kicking it off with some goat kids. First up, Mama had 2 little beauties, #900 (male) and #901 (female). They're actually a couple of weeks old now, we're milking Mama, and the whole family is doing great. A few days later, Gretel, Mama's daughter from last year had her first kid, #903 (male). She is also a milk goat, but she's never done the whole "routine" before. So far she's doing better than I could have hoped.
It's taken a few years to work out the kinks of the milking process, but I think I've finally found a routine that works well for the people and the goats. It starts a few days before the babies are born when I start feeding the expectant milking does a handful of grain everyday to help develop the rumen microbes they will need to help process significantly more feed in the days to come. In years past I had waited until the kids were born to start feed but that might actually be too late, the does seemed to get mastitis easily and had trouble keeping a healthy weight. Now they get a little extra nutrition pre-lactation and I can bump them up to full feed as soon as the babies come.
After kidding, I give the mamas and babies 2-3 days to get a good start before I start milking. This is the colostrum interval anyway, which I believe is really just meant for newborn babies, no matter what some hippies might tell you. During this time we switch from feeding in the field to only feeding in the milking barn. It can be a little bit of a rodeo herding the new families up to the barn every evening, sometimes from the farthest corners of the land, but its worth it to get the mamas into the routine of coming up to the barn on their own, and to start teaching the kids to herd.

After the colostrum has passed, its milking time! This starts on the evening of day 3 post-partum, when I put the kids into a pen off the side of the milking area while the mamas eat their dinner. Pictured above, this pen has good quality bedding and something for the kids to climb on. After supper, the does go back out into the field and the kids stay by the barn, seperated by a fence from their moms. I've found this is a whole lot less stressful if they can see and smell eachother. The idea is just to keep the babies from nursing overnight, especially first thing in the morning before I can get down to the field, not to torture the young family.
The next morning, the mamas are usually engorged and waiting right by their babies when I get there around sunrise. I fill their dishes with feed, put one of the goats on the milking stanchion, butter her udder up with udder butter (this is a real product by the way), and milk most of her milk out. This first day I try not to take every last drop, especially if its been a very cold night, so the babies can have just a little breakfast. After that goat is finished, she gets down from the stanchion where she just has to wait for all the milking to be done. I've learned the hard way that you can't just let a few hungry kids out at a time. They either all come, or if you do manage to only get the ones you want, they suck a little and then run all over the place, creating chaos. I'm just not patient enough first thing in the morning to handle that very well.
After everyone is done milking, I reunite the kids with their mamas, everyone is happy, and they all go back out to the field together for the day. We play this routine over and over everyday until around Thanksgiving when it gets too darn cold and I refuse to milk, no matter how much Travis reminds me he can't stand store-bought milk.

In other news, we have ground meat again!! I'm so excited for this. You'd think that since we're in the meat business, we'd always have all we want, but I guess I didn't plan very well last year and our freezers were looking a little barren. That is, they were looking a little barren until last night!

We had a deer that needed cutting up, but didn't have a grinder, so had left it in the freezer. I ordered a grinder off the internets and then, when Trav and I worked the sheep on Monday, he "harvested" one. The stage was set. Ryan came over to play with Honey, and we got to work. Travis does the cutting up and I do the grinding, packaging, and labeling. After just over 2 hours, we had close to 100lbs of meat!! There are a few roasts, but we mostly use ground around the house, so we ground the whole lamb, and all but the loin of the deer. Hazah! Tacos, spagetti, lasagna, here we come!

PS I just realized in rereading this post, that the picture of me milking a goat might lead some to believe I look like THAT now. No, no, I only have one baby and she is outside of me. Happily, I am the only resident of my body right now. Also, my hair is much shorter today than it was last June.