Due Dates and Baby Bumps

It is almost time! Ever since we bred the goats this past October, I've been counting down to their due dates. The anticipation has increased many fold since drying them off early in January. For the past few months our schedule has been wildly different than our previous days on the farm. My twice a day treks out into the pasture to collect the herd and intimate one-on-one milking time with each goat has been reduced to our once daily visit when we check on the herd, give fresh water, and feed hay, sprouted grains and minerals. The luxury of drinking the milk from our own herd and eating the cheese we make from it has been suspended until our goats are back in milk this Spring. The return of these enjoyable pieces of our farm life will be accompanied by something I'm looking forward to just as much as the milk (maybe more) - baby goats!

By mid April we should have anywhere from 5 to 16 kids bounding around the farm. You may be thinking "5 to 16? Huh?". Well...

Read More

Only Love Can Break Your Heart

You may have noticed that after a deluge of baby goat photos and updates we've been relatively silent for the past 48 hours... We've been a little down, you see, some bad news arrived this past Friday night. It was about the baby goat.

After 2 whole days of milk and care, she had transformed from a lifeless rag doll to a sweet and perky little companion that had easily stolen our hearts. She raised her head and let out a soft baaa whenever we approached, nibbled preciously at grass during the daytime when it wasn't raining, and somehow made waking up at 3 in the morning to warm a bottle, a joy. Despite her great improvements, there were two things that were nagging at me by Friday afternoon. She still wasn't walking and something seemed to be wrong with one of her eyes.

Read More

Adopt-A-Goat

Our little baby kiko goat
Scrapple was wrapping up the typical chores on Tuesday night. Just finished moving the cows to a new paddock. Brought water out to everyone. Gave the pigs some whey that was left over from the day’s cheesemaking. Just as he was stepping into the truck to head back for dinner, the phone started buzzing. It was our neighbor and it was almost 8pm, kind of strange. When he picked up the phone all he could hear was goat baaa’ing in the background. “uh oh”,he thought, “wonder what’s going on over there”?
 
Turns out he had a doe (or ‘nanny’ as everyone but us calls them) that had a buckling and a doeling on Sunday but didn’t seem to be letting the little doeling nurse anymore. He found her curled up in the field, no longer following along with momma, as it had been in the days prior. Since he raises meat goats (not dairy) and he has a very hands-off approach we get the sense that he didn’t have many options for raising this little girl. But since we have dairy goats and a plentiful supply of milk he called us. We decided to give her a shot.
 
About 10 minutes after getting off the phone we had a new baby goat. A three day old baby goat. A three day old baby goat that was clinging to life, couldn't stand up, and had an eye infection.
Read More