Category Archives: dairy goats

My baby with the one and only bottle baby on the farm, March 2010

Many, many people find my blog because we all share an interest in gardening.  And gardening, particularly of foodstuffs, is wonderful, is fodder here for almost six years of blogging, and is of its very nature sustainable:  if I can continue to put seeds in the ground, those seeds will continue to become sustenance and seeds for next year, so repeat, repeat, repeat.

But:  gardening can be kind of boring.  (Can I admit that and still remain a member of the faith?  I often wonder.)

February has come and gone and it occurred to me that I have been a milkmatron (someone closer to 50 than 40 can hardly be called a milkmaid) for three years now.  Interestingly, I have been matron to one particular animal, one crabby doe whose parturition on 2/27/2010 elevated my status from casual animal owner to active teat-squeezer.  Yes, every day for three years, I have been milking one goat.

Actually that is skirting the issue.  In those three years, I have milked four goats, sometimes all four on the same day, sometimes even twice a day.  Today I am milking “just” two, once a day.  One goat though has been the constant.

It is a bit of luck that has caused me to milk this one animal.  The other three goats could never have been milked this long for various reasons (youth, health, and temperament factor in that calculation) and luckily those other three were not my first goat.  Not being a statistician I cannot begin to tally the hours spent or the gallons produced; all I know is milk is one of the great constants in my own life and that both tallies are “lots.”  Sure, I only go on daytrips now away from the farm.  It is a choice.  It would be an easy choice to have a different life if I had a goat-sitter.  Parents of youngsters often feel the same way, and pay someone for the honor of an evening away.  Me, well, there is nowhere I would rather be than here…though I suppose I wouldn’t turn the services of a goat-sitter away should one appear….

So yes, lots of milk becomes lots of milk products.  At this point I believe I have made 45 or so different cheeses.  I have made kefir, buttermilk, yogurt, cajeta, puddings, fudges.  Milk has found its way into any and all dishes; my very first use of it was crepes with home-grown eggs and home-grown, ground buckwheat.  I have flubbed more than a few gallons of product and somehow I do not feel bad about the time spent because the chickens, turkeys, and dog appreciate errors of this kind.

It is, boringly, a lifestyle.

But it is a good life.  I have given this one animal a good life.  We have established a solid routine, have a solid affection for each other and we do respect each other’s needs.  The other two goats here are also lucky, I think.  I have not established as strong a tie to either of them, so in the shifting sands of farm dynamics, their tenures here are not guaranteed (though I do like them both).  If this were a university, those two others better publish or perish.  Even Michigan’s rejection of collective bargaining is felt here too:  you all stand alone and are to be judged on your production.  It is a hard thing to swallow if you love your animals.  But I am neither wealthy enough nor emotionally crippled enough to become a goat-hoarder:  you must be productive to live here in my barn.

Of course I am gaming the system against the other two because 2013 is the year of No Babies!  Yes, one must need be pregnant and give birth to actually produce milk (something that surprisingly few people fully realize…where to place the blame for that?  our educational system?  or our squeamishness of mammalian processes?) so if I do not load a goat or three into the back of my now-decrepit 20-year-old hatchback, those goats will not become pregnant on their own, so…if I was not milking you constantly you will not magically lactate on your own either.  But I have calculated my needs, and my needs did not include goat kids this year.

I wonder where I will be and what I will be doing in ten years:  will my life include goats?  I read with interest a study that states that we are closer to being the same person within a range of ten years than twenty, and that, indeed, the folly of one’s youth is cringe-inducing.  So sure, twenty years hence I might laugh at the foolishness of my late forties self the way I laugh at the antics of my teen- or twenty-something self:  that person is miles away.  And she owned goats, and foolishly milked them every day.

I do not know.  But:  I know that a goat’s poo and bedding is FABULOUS for my garden.

Rinse and repeat.

Baby Ivy

Cricket delivered a gigantic doeling yesterday!  Not bad work for a first-timer.

She looks a lot like her mama, but even more like her daddy Moses.  Everyone’s happy, well, except for our old goat Bell, who has to sleep alone now.

The subtitle of this post could be My Dairy Year.  (Say that fast and laugh to yourself.)

Today marks my first year as a milkmaid.

Indeed:  a year ago today, T-bell gave birth to three adorable kids, little bucklings all.

Mama T-Bell, lucky thing, gets a year off of breeding this year.  I believe she’s had three sets of kids (twins, twins then triplets with us); she will be six years old in April.  I will continue to milk her as long as I want to:  I should be able to “milk through” as she’s an awesome milk goat.  I feel so fortunate to have had her as a first goat, first milker.  Why?  Because she’s a bitch, that’s why!

Yes, in my first doe, I seem to have selected a definite herd queen.  She’s not really a bitch, you see.  She’s more, well, strong-willed, more particular.  She’s very friendly (a great thing) especially to little people.  The dog is her mortal enemy, although they do love to play.  But other goats?  She lets them know where they stand.  And they stand below her, way below, so…watch out.  And:  she HATES being outside.

But it’s nicer in here!  Bell, eating her bon-bons and watching the world go by

Learning to milk a goat and then learning to milk THIS goat was a bit of a challenge.  She’s smart, see.  If she’s not in the mood, you better guard that bucket.  If her feed bowl (the bribe which ensures her getting onto, and staying on, the milk stand) is less than filled, you’ll hear about it.  Milking is an intimate relationship forged between she with the milk and you with the desire for it:  really, it must be so, or the let-down (milk release) won’t happen.  And indeed learning to milk with those three rambunctious kids just inches away was terribly stressful at first, especially since one of the babies was expecting the milk himself (he was a bottle baby).  But we forded that whirling river.  She’s quite happy now, our routine is well set.  And starting the thirteenth month of her lactation, I am still getting nearly three quarts of milk from her a day.

On the Sunday after Christmas Tom and I coaxed our little Alpine doeling into the back of my small hatchback.  She was off, you see, to visit her new boyfriend, a handsome, smelly fellow named Moses.

The aptly-named Cricket:  Gotta love a youngster’s airborne enthusiasm.

Cricket is an adorable creature.   Curious, hippity-skippity, not super friendly but not skittish, the one thing she is is LOUD.  I made sure I brought earplugs (seriously) for the 60-mile round trip to the goat farm east of us where she was be bred.  It does seem strange, and kind of bad-mother-ish*, but yes, you can breed goats when they’re less than a year old.  She’ll continue to grow, and I only need to watch her feed to ensure she’s eating enough for two or three or (eeps!) four.  And let’s state the obvious here:  you want milk, you need babies.

So, yes.  Cricket will have her kids at the end of May, with luck.  It’s a different kind of calendar, the dairy one.  Bell will still be milking when Cricket throws her babies.  There will be two goats using the milk stand in the morning:  whee!  Say cheese!

*Indeed, though, it’s like I am condoning teenage motherhood; I guess I should state that she’ll technically be a yearling when she delivers.  Not a teenager, then, but definitely a young mom…!

T-bell says “Happy December solstice:  make sure you see the lunar eclipse on the night of the 2oth/21st.”

Actually, she says, what’s with the camera?  Get me my breakfast already.

A long discussion with some girlfriends recently:

One friend had recently resigned from a board position at a worthy organization and it was really gnawing at her, guilt-wise.  “I know,” she thought, “I will invest the 6 hours a week that I had been spending on the board by doing something to help me instead:  yoga.”  So now she was in hot pursuit of finding a yoga class six days a week, no easy challenge out here in the boonies.  “I swear I am getting more stressed out in finding the classes than I was on the board,” she opined to us.  “I am thinking about wearing my F*ck Yoga t-shirt, but out here in the pre-ironic world we live in, I doubt people would see it the way it was intended,” she said.

So on and on went the oft-repeated type of conversation between first world, upwardly-mobile women.  How to alleviate stress, juggle responsibilities, yadda yadda.  And then the conversation came around to me.

“Buck rags,” I said. “I worry about buck rags, and the state of estrus in my goats.  THAT is what makes me both stressed out and sanguine.”

Being so intimately involved with the reproduction cycles of one’s animals is, if nothing else, very grounding.  And humbling.

You want milk, you need your milking animal to get pregnant and give birth.  No way around it, really; and somehow, this one factoid certainly escapes most (bipedal, big-brained) milk-drinkers.  So, yes, estrus, parturition, colostrum and lactation…this is my world.   All for a refrigerator full of quart jars labeled B, K, and Y (buttermilk, kefir and yogurt, respectively) and a big water-filled tub housing refreeze-able ice packs and bobbing half-gallon jars of milk.  A basement cheese cave filled with wheels of cheddar, colby, gouda, parmesan and swiss…and another root-cellar cave filled with molding camembert and brie-type cheeses.  And another closed tub hiding elsewhere with molding blues.   And me, doing the milking dance early every morning, rain, show or shine.  Is it worth my time and effort?

Well, I am the least stressed-out person that I know.  Am I advocating a home dairy as a method of stress relief?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  But I do know something:  it beats yoga.

It’s all about what goes in the pail

It’s a somewhat sad day around here because the goat kids are going to their new home.  The family who is taking all three are also taking all the turkey poults that we’re not keeping.  Lots, lots of babies going away, flying the nest…it’s freeing but still slightly heartbreaking, especially regarding the kids.

I/we fed Chip, the bottle baby, four bottles a day then three bottles a day then two bottles a day then one bottle a day until just this morning.  Mama goat has mostly weaned the other two but sometimes they ambush her at night.  Considering they’re all the size of your average Dalmatian, it’s hard for her to constantly fight them off.  They’re all old enough and big enough to be completely weaned, so this move will only be a physical shift for them to make.

Of course for me this means my chore list has shortened and all that creamy white milk is mineminemine.  And I have been a cheesemaking fool, going a bit nutty with my (no kidding) 6 gallons of milk a week.  What’s another gallon or two now that I don’t have to feed Chip, or that T-bell’s not feeding the other kids?  I’ll tell you what:  two more gallons means 1.5 more pounds of cheese, added to the other 4 or so pounds.  Yum cheese yum.

I will miss my bottle baby though.  He was ONE creature in the extended farm family who was always glad to eat what I brought him.

Number 3, 1, and 2, or, Chip, Skip and Kip

Our goat kids are two months old today!  And they’re growing like weeds.

Two up,  one down, and Mama looking for an exit

Do you know how hard it is to take photos of them?  It’s nearly impossible.  Please make do with these; they’re rather fast moving targets.

Wow: they’re standing still

They’re rambunctious for sure, and ready to go to their new home.  The family who is taking them will also take some of our turkey poults when they hatch (Ruby is sitting on 19 eggs at last count…hopefully I will have a few to spare), so the babies will be with us for another week or two.

And:  we met their replacement this weekend!  Yes, we’re actually trading three boys for a girl, such is the value of dairy doelings in the world.  I am sorry I didn’t take photos, she’s adorable, having just been born on the 21st.  You’ll see plenty of pictures of her soon enough, though.

Our first quart JUST FOR US

So, T-bell birthed three babies on 27 February.  I have consumed exactly two cups of the milk since then.

This is not unusual.  There are two big reasons for this:  one, triplets, and two, one rejected baby.  So I have been milking her since the 27th, two times a day…and saving all the milk to give to the little mostly white baby, Number Three.  The other two have all the milk they want from Mama.  Even though Alpines are the Holsteins of the goat world (super milkers in other words) she’s only recently been able to exceed demand.

Any mammal has what’s called a “lactation curve.”  If you plot the actual production on a chart, the top of the curve happens when the nursing babies are the biggest.  This top of the bell in goats should happen when the kids are about two months old.  Kids left with their mamas all the time will milk for many more months, beyond their “need” for the milk.  Their true “need” kind of ends when they’re able to tolerate eating what mama does (and thus get their caloric needs met):  browse (weeds, branches) and pasture-grazing, dried mixed hay, garden stuff, and grains in the form of goat chow.  As of the first week of life, they’re already experimenting with hay.  By week two, they were eating greenhouse goodies with T-bell.  Now, at nearly five weeks, they’re out on the pastures for most of the day with her, eating, playing, pooping and sleeping in the sun.

And Number Three rejected part of the bottle last night.  (Hooray!)

One should wean the babies by weight, not the calendar…especially with triplets.  However, these guys are getting quite big.  They should be able to move to their new home when they’re a little over two months old.  Then, ALL the milk is mine! (rubs hands together greedily).  There’s no telling how much it will be, but it should be somewhere around a gallon a day.  At this two month mark, I will be tricking her lactation hormones that there are two month old babies that still need to be fed, so…she should stay at that top of the bell for a while. Eventually, her production will wane, but by next 27 February, she’ll still be producing.

Entirely too busy to post, so…thought I would show you the kids:  all four of them!

The girl giving half-hour old #2 a bit of a hug.  That’s #3 to the left and #1 behind her.

Our goat girl’s due date was 26 Feb., but they can be born five days either side of that date.  I wouldn’t say I was a terribly nervous goat midwife*:  there are signs, I kept telling myself, and she’s done this before. So I knew we’d just have to watch and wait.

And wait.  After a while, I felt like a goat stalker!  Every two hours I would come through the door.  Every two hours she would just be as she always is, standing there looking out her window at the garden, chewing her cud, and looking quizzically at me:  “You, again?  What, is it snack time already?”

Her udder CAN’T get bigger, I said, when it hit bowling-ball size.  Then it got to be basketball-sized.  Then bigger.

Labor took about six hours.  Of course the first one was born when I had dashed into the house for yet another towel.  Our daughter was on duty, though: “Hi baby!  What a cute little thing!  Mama, I saw it come out!” and she had.

Birth is a messy business, but this was not nearly as messy as I had been led to believe.  And quick.  Exciting, and fun.   Miraculous, and so very mundane.

“Mama, I want to be a vet,” she said, as she gave #1 a bit of a bottle last night

*My duties were simply to wipe the babies off when they arrived, and get them pointed in the direction of dinner.  And call the vet if something went awry.

Our goat girl had three healthy babies today, Sat., 27 Feb., at 8:30 p.m.

And they’re all break-your-heart cute!

Farmyard fashion.  Caprine couture.  Goat glam.  Dairy duds.  Ruminators’ raiment.  You get it.

Forever, it seems, I have wanted to own a couple of goats.  I have always considered them singular creatures, intelligent and goofy at the same time, regal and clown-ish.  Dairy goats figure in quite well with small farms like ours, too.  Their needs are few yet their byproducts are many (bedding for the compost, milk for us, and kids to sell or to add to the herd).  Unlike sheep, goats don’t think you’re always going to kill them; unlike cows, you don’t need acres of pasture for their sustenance; unlike non-draft horses, goats are actively contributing members of the small farmstead.  T-bell is a friendly, happy soul, and I feel terribly lucky to have her.

I found her on Craigslist, if you can believe it.

Our goat girl is a sundgau-colored French Alpine.  She’s kidded before, twice; both times unassisted…in point of fact, she kidded before the family could get there in time to assist her: her kids were there in the straw!  She is in every way very much what they call “an easy keeper.”  I found a housecall-making vet who specializes in goats and sheep and she has confirmed that T-bell is in great shape, AND pregnant (yay!).  And, the vet confirmed she’s free of a certain disease that is fairly common in dairy goats…this was a big concern of mine, as it would require that I sterilize the kids’ milk (it seems convoluted, but I will milk her to bottle-feed her kids).  Heating colostrum (first milk) is tricky because it wants to turn into caramel!  (No disease = no need to pasteurize the milk.)

At her previous home, she spent much of her time indoors, so her coat is not as thick as those hardy Michigan goats kept outdoors.  Like people, they’ll avoid going out into the snow if they can help it…wouldn’t you?  Anyway, my vet and I were concerned.  Her new home is draft-free, but it’s an unheated, concrete-floored shed.  She’s in deep bedding in her pen but we figured a little goat coat wouldn’t hurt.  And my mother-in-law loves to sew.  (Oh:  and the kids will need coats for their first week or so…depending upon the weather.)

Look at the header to see how much plumper she’s getting

She’s due Feb. 26th.

All my dabbling in cheesemaking will soon find some purpose.  And the gardens can’t wait, frankly, for the additions of this great bedding…just think how I’ve doubled my compost quantity by adding one animal.  And I keep having dreams, too, about the birth.  My daughter thinks she’ll have four kids.  Two is more like it, but, well…let’s hope for at least one little doeling!

It’s all about the poop you know

Had we moved to a “regular” farm (you know, the one in your imagination:  turn-of-the-last-century farmhouse with big red barn, tall silo, chicken shack, smokehouse, big fenced pastures, etc.), owning many kinds of farm animals would have been a natural thing.  But we moved to a fruit farm.  Fruit farms aren’t all that heavy on outbuildings.  In fact, all that remains in your mind’s eye about our place is the big old farmhouse.  What few outbuildings there are here were specifically used for fruit processing and storing tools…and now house cars and the lawn tractor just fine, thank you.  Housing chickens, pigs, the family milk cow were secondary concerns to the original owners.

Luckily, our chosen animals aren’t terribly picky.  Goats, in particular, just want a dry place to flop down.

Wait:  Did she just say “goats?”

Doesn’t everyone have a goat in the back seat of their old hatchback?  Yes, we were humming the themes of Green Acres and Beverly Hillbillies as we drove down the highway.

Meet our newest critter, an Alpine doe.  She’s a 4 year old family milker.  And:  she’s due to have kids on Feb. 21^st.  And:  she’s living, with the rabbits, in my potting shed!  Whee!

Or not.

We’ve decided to put off becoming dairy goat owners for a year.  The reason?  The economy.

Yea, verily:  Who’d have thought that goat-owning would be a casualty of the economic downturn, but frankly we cannot make the numbers work for this year.  Like many other people, we’re in the unenviable position of [freaking out] about what 2009 holds for us.  We’ve decided to invest, instead, in some needed and unavoidable farm repairs.  Yes, for this year, things like Roof For Garage trump Cute Nubian Goats.  Totally unfun, but then again, we already own the garage, etc., so it makes sense to take care of one’s current investments.

Where’s The Child?  Here she is, playing with 18 pregnant Nubian does

In a sense, it’s a bit of a relief that we’ve made this decision.  There is a lot of work to be done before we get one (shed, fencing), and now we’ve got the time to check these things off our list.

I’m a bit disappointed, I will admit.  We are, however, doing all we’re doing with the long view in mind:  I will instead be very excited this time next year.  Hopefully.

Aren’t they the cutest things?