Two for One

Two blogs in one day, can you beat that? Who knows I might make it three. I am sitting here feeling terrible. I have a sore throat, headache and cough. Whoever heard of a sore throat and cough in the middle of the hottest days of Summer.

If this happened during the winter months it wouldn't bother me so much but when it is 94 degrees in the shade, it isn't too fun. All I want is Banana Popsicles and I have totally run out.

Oh well, I guess I had better stop complaining, cowgirl up, get outside to clean up the milk stand, spray down the area for flies, milk the goat, prepare and give bottles to the bucklings, put Cooter up, feed and water.

Then I need to check and water my tomatoes, strawberries, cilantro, one little volunteer watermelon plant and three little flowers that are being taken over by weeds. We did have several sunflowers coming up that the Granddaughters planted but Angus took care of those, he ate them all.

Too Much Milk

I was not expecting to have to be milking right now. But here I am having to milk two to three times a day. I am putting Collette's doelings in a separate pen at night then milking her in the morning before turning them back in with her during the day. Calico is producing way too much milk for her twin bucklings and I am having to relieve some of the pressure, they are also only nursing on one side.

Collette did really well with her first milking. I put the hobbles on her with no problem. When I put the syringe barrel on the first teat and she tried to kick, it lifted her whole back side up off of the milking stand and dropped her off of the table.

This was something that has always scared me because I was afraid that it might break a goat's neck if they were latched into the neck stantion or stanchion (however you spell it).

She fell off the milk stand on the opposite side of the table from where I was sitting. I jumped up and ran around the milking stand to find that she had already recovered herself and was eating her grain. She had her hobbled hind feet on the ground, her front feet up on the stand, her neck fastened in the stantion with her nose buried in the grain, typical goat.

I had to unhobble her, release her from the stantion, tug and pull until I got her nose out of the grain and then reload her onto the stand. From there the milking went very smoothly, she decided that kicking with a set of hobbles on was not a good idea. She learns very quickly.

Right now while I am typing this I am tasting Collette's milk for the first time. Her milk does not have nearly as much cream in it, as Calico's does. It is more homogenized and it tastes totally different. It is very good just tastes different. All goat's milk tastes different from goat to goat. You should always taste the milk of a freshened milk goat that you are thinking about buying.

I have been letting Calico run loose in the yard with her babies. She comes to the door and cries until I come out. She then runs and loads herself onto the milking stand and makes me milk her when her udder gets tight and heavy. She is producing enough milk for us, the dogs, the cat and her babies. I have been having to milk her twice a day but as the bucklings are getting bigger they are taking more and I am only having to milk her once per day, whether she likes it on not.

General Update

Spring is a busy time for us even when we aren't having any foals. It seems like I don't have much time to blog anymore. I have taken on the new responsibility of Collette and her three doelings. I separated them for the first time last night. My plan was to try to milk her this morning but since the milk stand wasn't ready, I decided to work on that today and try to milk her in the morning.

I fed and watered the doelings and then took some pictures of Collette's strutted udder in case anyone who might be interested in her wants to see it. It is a little lob-sided with the left side being larger than the right but she has a lot of milk. With the three kids nursing her I had no idea what her udder looked like when it was full.

I put her back in with her babies after I took the pictures and they were happy to see her. This is the first step in the weaning process, spending the night apart. Hopefully she won't give me too much trouble in the morning when I try to milk her. I will post the results tomorrow.

Angus is doing great and eating us out of house and home. He is dying for a playmate and tries to play with the doelings, that doesn't work very well, when Collette tries to fend him off they get into a head pushing competition that he always wins. We have to keep a close eye on them.

I still do not have any broody hens and I don't understand it. Last year they all wanted to go broody and this year no one does.

Calico is due on Sunday, Mother's Day. I have her and Paris in the foaling stall right outside our door, I put them in there for the first time last night. She is getting very close by the looks of her. Her udder isn't strutted tight yet but is getting very full, she is very indignant when I touch it. She thinks that I am going to milk her and she knows that just wouldn't be right. I have to touch it quickly to check it because she anticipates my move and out maneuvers me.

Paris is definitely bred also. I don't think that I have posted that my doubts about her have been erased. She isn't as big as Calico but she is big and is in the process of making an udder. She is due on the May 31st.

I have a ton of work that is going to have to be done. Cooter destroyed my dog kennel, that is where I usually separate the kids at weaning time. I have repaired it before and it is a big job. We need to get a bottom strand of wire put up around the goat lot so that the babies don't just walk under it like Angel does.

Sky, our new filly is growing more beautiful everyday. It has been raining so much that I haven't been able to get out there and play with her and take pictures.

I am not complaining about the rain because rain brings grass and our pastures need grass right now for the amount of horses that we have. Of course, the yard looks awful and since our miniature horse, Mr. Shorty has already foundered once this Spring, he has lost his job as our official lawn mower.

Trouble, our Cushings Disease mare, hasn't shown any signs of improvement. I started her on the Chaste Tree Berry Powder on April 24th, so it has been two weeks today. Maybe I am being too impatient. The article said that we should start seeing results in three weeks, so I'll try not to be discouraged yet. The first result is that you will notice they are drinking less water, but she is sharing a big water tank with our large herd, so there is no way for us to notice a difference. Her long curly hair is still hanging on for dear life. We plan to shave her as soon as we get a decent day.

Goat Milking Tips

This blog is mainly for Chris at Johnson Family Farm, he wanted pictures of my milk stand, but you all can read it too. I found that I didn't have any good pictures of just the stand but came across some photos that I thought might help Chris out with his new milking dilemma, some helpful hints.

The picture below was the best that I had available of my milk stand, which inspired the following tips:

1. You should teach everyone in the family plus all of your friends to milk your goats because you never know when you may become sick, injured, imprisoned or otherwise discouraged. The point being that just because you aren't available to milk the goat, the goat still must be milked, not milking the goat is not an option!

2. Hobbles are sometimes necessary, they may look cruel but they can actually be the kindest gift that you can give your goat, they protect your goat from things that might happen to her if she sticks her manure covered foot in a full bucket of milk right before you are finished milking her. They also protect her from things that could happen to her if she spills a full bucket of milk all over you right before you are finished milking her.

3. Do not be afraid, they will not explode when squeezed

4. Your aim will improve with time but while still in the learning stages, it is best not to wear your best Sunday clothes.

5. Do not become discouraged if someone only a year older than you gets the hang of it before you do. It is normal behavior for a person who masters milking to show off by squirting everyone else.

6. With time and patience, you too will learn a skill that will stay with you for the rest of your life. Remember practice makes perfect and before long you will perfect your aim and be able to hit any target.

So easy a four year old can do it!!

**NOTE: No Goats were injured in the construction of this Blog

Cold Hands

My poor milk goat is being milked for the first time in cold weather. As you can imagine she is quite shocked by my cold hands. I have had to rethink things a little bit.

During the summer months the most important thing about milking is getting the milk into the refrigerator as quickly as possible, this greatly affects the taste of the milk. With the cooler weather, that is no longer my top priority. My main concern now is keeping my hands warm and keeping my doe from going through the roof of the barn.

Gloves are helpful to a point, but not the entire solution. I can't milk with gloves on. They do keep my hands warm while I am preparing to milk. I am still using my spray nozzle hand milker that I blogged about before, but I still have to strip the teats out by hand. The problem is that I have to take my gloves off to use the milker and by the time I am done and ready to do the stripping my hands are cold.

I also have to use a wet cloth to wash the udder and teats before I start and that cloth can get cold pretty quickly too. So, what I have been doing with gloved hands is getting everything ready, including putting all of my milking equipment beside the milk stand and getting Calico on the stand and already eating, then I run back into the house, take off the gloves and get the warm wet cloth.

This has been working out fairly well but my hands still get cold by the time I am ready to strip her out. Another thing that I have had to change is bringing the Bag Balm into the house. I have been applying it to her teats after each milking, so I always leave the can outside on the milk stand. That first cold evening that we had, I couldn't understand why she didn't want me putting it on her anymore, she kicked and squirmed. I am a little slow at understanding things sometimes.

Goat Bustin'

Goats instinctively know when you are running behind or are in a hurry. They will choose these times to make life more difficult for you than they normally do. Don't get me wrong, goats are never well mannered but they can be a little less annoying at times.

Until you have owned goats, you cannot fully appreciate the Biblical references to people being either sheep or goats. I don't think that goats stay up late at night and plan strategies for how they are going to drive you nuts the next day, I believe that they just act on impulse. As soon as they recognize what you are trying to do with them, they react in a way that you least expect. I think that their ultimate goal is to keep you off balance and annoyed.

I was running behind last night and it had gotten dark on me, it keeps getting dark earlier every night in case you haven't noticed. Since three of my goats like to run through the three strands of hot wire that make up their gate, well, one of them is kind enough to jump over it, I have to tie Paris (the jumper) and Collette up before I take Calico and Cinder to the barn/house to be milked.

Collette always goes under the bottom strand that is 4 inches from the ground. But my biggest problem is Calico, she has started running through the gate every time that I get close to it, she will not wait for me to open it. She just bulldozes through the middle of it. This tends to be hard on gates and it also tends to make me irritable.

I started my milking off with Calico running through the gate last night. I did manage to get the other two tied up without a problem and opened the sagging gates for Cinder. Cinder and Calico both fought for position on the milk stand, Calico finally won.

Cinder joined me at the feed bin and buried her face in the sack of feed that I was trying to dip out of. It is physically impossible to remove a goat's head from a sack of feed unless the goat wishes to remove it's head, so you must give the goat a reason to remove it's head. Slapping, yelling and pulling does not work. Cinder does have tender ears, I take advantage of that quite often.

Both girls acted like they had never been milked before, they both kicked, snorted and stomped. Somehow I managed to get them both milked without spilling a drop.

All went smoothly until I put them back in the goat lot and tried to fasten the gates, they were all tangled and untangling three hot wires in the dark with nothing but a penlight isn't the easiest thing that I have ever done. My DH finally came to the rescue, he took the light and I went to untie Collette and Paris. Paris was no problem to untie but then came Collette.

We were all alone, just Collette and I, she is the biggest, strongest and most uncooperative goat that we have. Well she had pulled on the rope and halter so hard that the knots were just impossible to untie because they were so tight. She wanted to just pull out of the halter and be gone but I was not about to do that, although it would have been easier. I always like to make each experience a time of learning. So I was bound and determined that she was going to stand still and be patient while I untied the knot on her rope halter.

It wasn't that the knot was that hard to get loosened as much as it was that she kept trying to get away from me. I have never met a knot that I couldn't work loose but sometimes they take extra effort and time.

Collette and I struggled to understand each other but neither of us had much patience left after so much time had passed. It was still very hot and muggy, I was tired and sore and had no light. She just knew that the other goats were doing something that she needed to be in on or were eating something that she was missing out on.

It finally came to an end when she managed to wrap the rope around me and push all of her body weight against me and step on the top of my foot with her cloven hooves all at the same time. I screamed and tried to back away from the pain in my foot and backed right into the rope that was wrapped around my lower legs which managed to send me to the ground and pull Collette right on top of me.

She had me pinned down and I had her pinned on top of me by my weight on her rope. She flailed and flailed until I thought that she would beat me to death. My Husband finally came running after hearing the commotion.

He got her loose and I just sat there on the ground crying. He held her and looked at me for instructions. I told him to bring her to me, he did and I took her by the ears and pulled her to my face and we communed together for a little while. I think that she understood what I was saying to her without me even saying a word. Then I had him hold her while I felt of her udder to see if she might be kidding any time in the future. Her udder does seem to be filling up, so I decided not to kill her.

First Milking

Calico did very well for her first milking. The kids also did well, they didn't complain at all. Calico was talking to them this morning but they didn't really act like they were missing her.

I milked Cinder first, then fed grain to the babies in the dog kennel and put a halter and lead rope on Calico. I led her to the barn and it only took a hand full of grain to get her to jump up on the milk stand. She buried her face in the grain and didn't care what I did to her.

I first tried hand milking her, she has perfect teats that are very easy to milk. She didn't stomp or kick even one time. She is nothing like her mother, Cinder. who still has to have hobbles after years of milking.

I did put the hobbles on Calico before I put the milker on her. She didn't even notice until all of her grain was gone, then she realized that her hind feet where tied together and she didn't like that at all. I will only be milking her once per day until the kids are completely weaned. Tomorrow morning I will try milking her without the hobbles.

After I finished milking her, I let her eat grass in the yard for awhile before turning the boys back in with her. They surprised me, they didn't even act that anxious to nurse after being away from her overnight. I guess they are getting old enough to handle adulthood and separation from their mother.

Stupid

I couldn't think of a title for this blog because I have so many different thoughts going through my head. I am hoping a title will emerge from the blog all on it's own.

All was peaceful and quiet yesterday evening, my DH had a rare day off and was busy mowing the top pasture. I thought that I would go ahead and get the evening feeding and milking done before it got dark. I was going to take my time and enjoy the process. I started out by trying to get all of the new chicks in cages with their mothers. I soon realized that herding baby chicks is not an easy task and that I was wasting my time.

I went to the goat lot with halter and lead rope in hand, caught Cinder and led her to the barn/house to be milked. She was not as cooperative as she usually is and that task turned out not to be pleasant in the least. She didn't want to get on the milk stand that is still standing in muddy water from the recent rain.

I finally got her in place and sat down to milk and dropped my clean cloth that I had to wash her udder with into the muddy water under the stand. So I had to go back into the house for a new one. On the way back to the milking stand was when I first noticed that the wind had picked up and the sky had grown dark and there was a not too distant sound of thunder. I had a lot to get done before it started to rain, so I picked up my pace.

Cinder had more milk than usual and so it took me longer to milk as the storm crept nearer. When I finally got the milking done and everything cleaned up and turned her loose, she lost all common sense and couldn't remember any of the routine things that she does twice per day everyday. She tried to go out the wrong door, she had to stop and taste everything along the way, whether it was eatable or not. I finally got her put back in the lot by the time it started to rain.

I was moving as quickly as possible because I needed to get into the house to turn off the computer before lightening struck again.

I went to collect Cooter who was tied to a concrete block in a nice patch of weeds. He had wrapped the rope around the block several times and while I tried to untangle him, he was giving me kisses and chewing on my hair. You can't slap him or push him away because then he thinks that you want to play and he plays too rough. I finally got him loose and by this time it had stopped raining but the storm was getting closer. I put Cooter in the horse trailer for the night instead of in his pen which is up the hill and farther away, so I had to get him a bucket of water.

Next I mixed the goat and chicken feed and managed to get them all fed without too many problems. Now it was back to chick herding, that is a skill that it takes years to perfect. You would think that they would go into the cage when their mommy went into the cage but not so. There is always one more thing that they need to do outside the cage before they call it a night.

Some of the chicks who were already safely nesting under their Mommy, would also think of something else that they needed to do and run out of the cage just as I got the last straggler in. I think that I used the word "stupid" a lot last night in dealing with both chickens and goats.

I finally got everything put up, watered and fed. I closed both big sliding doors and the side door, then went into the house to shut off the computer. The storm went east and never got to us. It did rain later in the night but all of my rushing around was wasted.

I think that I have a title now!

Easy Goat Milker

I milk using my own hand milker made with a good quality spray nozzle with a stream setting, standard aquarium 7.62M tubing and a 20 ml syringe barrel, this size syringe fits my doe perfectly but my neighbor is using the same size on a doe with very small teats and she says it works great.

I wash the teats and get them good and wet before applying the syringe, this not only cleans them but the wetness helps speed up suction.

I have a stainless steel pan and a lid with a small hole in it, when I am done milking I don't even have to strain the milk, it goes right in the refrigerator. The pan never gets close to the doe, so we don't get any contamination.

I do one side at a time but from the same side. This milker only breaks suction when the teat is empty. My doe gives a gallon of milk per day and this is quicker than hand milking. I do hand milk to strip the bag out occasionally after I am done but I always get less than a cup which goes to the dog, cat or chickens. Chickens love goat's milk by the way.

We run cold water through the milker as soon as possible, then hot water with a little detergent added, then rinse. It isn't hard to clean, all you have to do is hold the syringe barrel under the tap and start squeezing the nozzle.

The best part is that my doe hates being milked and is a kicker but she stands still for this method. Today for the very first time, I opened the gate and she went to the barn and jumped up on the milk stand all by herself. This is real progress!

This picture was taken before I got my stainless steel pan.

My husband has always enjoyed milking by hand but he really likes this, we kinda fight over who gets to milk now. This has taken all of the worry out of getting the milk dirty and I can sit down beside the milk stand and relax for a few minutes. I switch hands back and forth, so it isn't as tiring as hand milking. Even my young grandchildren can milk with this.

If you want to make one for yourself, make sure there are no holes in it anywhere to break the suction and having a good nozzle is important, you have to have a nozzle with a stream setting.