Milking my goats

With the babies born the goats are now giving milk. If I have helpwith the milking I'm able to get about a quart fro each goat per milking. Of course art of this goes to my morning pajarete (mexican hot chocolate - scrape mexican hot chocolate into a cup with tequilla or rum and then milk into the cup to get a hot frothy chocolate) although i use plain unsweetened chocolate instead and hold the alcohol. In any case we are still able to have enough left over to make cheese and other dairy products. We'll see how we do once we wean the goats and start harvesting all the milk the produce.

I won - Unigoat kidded first

The goats are still bastards

Jed expanded the pasture yesterday and the goats promptly ate the crown of the walnut and many of the lower branches of the mulberry. We're still trying to figure out a way to keep the goats from eating all our trees. I'm thinking barbed wire fence with machine guns.
In other goat news we still don't have goat babies. They are showing all signs that they will kid soon but we're not sure how soon that will be. Luckily my mom arrives tonight so I'll have help when they do show up.

Still waiting on the baby goats

I was able to see the baby goats move on both Lucy and Bugger. To tell the truth it looked a bit creepy. You see little hooves move around on their sides and it just looks... creepy. We're all anxiously awaiting the arrival of the new little goats. I feel a little bad because I see them walk around slowly and I know exactly how they feel.

In other news, we're still working on the goat hall. My mom is back in MX, which makes working on the farm that much more difficult with the little Ivan man. Luckily, we just discovered today that he travels well in the hiking back baby carrier so I'll be using that a lot more. I was able to climb over the fence to feed the goats with the little guy on my back.

Oh, and Mr. Pee-pee face next door keeps going and hanging out with my girls (on his side of the fence) and it's really annoying me. I know I should be glad I have access to a buck for free but he just freakin stinks and I'm afraid that my milk will taste like that too. Bastard goat!!! You better not taint the taste of my milk.

On the possibility of baby goats

We bred Bugger to Mr. Pee-pee face in late spring/early summer. At first she seemed to be carrying, but then it looked as if she wasn't so we just assumed that she wasn't pregnant. But as Jed and I noticed yesterday, her utters seemed to have elongated and her milk ducts seem to be filling in. Sooo, our little girl might be pregnant and she might be getting to deliver some time soon. If so, that means milk (Yaaay! even though I would be unable to drink any due to Ivan.) and more baby goats. We haven't noticed any difference in Uni-goat so we'll see if we might just have to get her bred again. And as an update for those who don't get to visit often. Here is the update on our goats: Big goat - eaten, Ramses - eaten, Rosie - donated to neighbors for letting us breed our goats to their Mr. Pee-pee face, Bugger - still on the homestead and possibly pregnant, and Uni-goat (previously Lucy) who is probably not pregnant but who we hope to breed soon. We've also decided that we wish to keep our number of goats on the property pretty low as they have a tendency to be the most destructive to our plant life. So we'll be keeping our number down to 2 does, depending on how much milk they give us.

A-hole goat = birria

When we brought the goats back home after their run from the law Melody and Lucy mentioned that Ramses as trying to butt people. That put us on alert and we watched his actions.

Well, he's being a complete a-hole that's what he's doing. I've found him trampling, butting, kicking, and trying to gouge the smaller goats and frankly a pregnant woman running across the field to kick him is not really a nice sight. I've had to run over because he waits until they have their head through the fence to eat grass and then he keeps attacking them. I've had to clean up Lucy (Unigoat) and Bugger a couple of times because they were bleeding because of his actions. Melody also mentioned that that he tried attacking different people when he was at their house. Well, as many of you know, that is not acceptable. Good personality counts for a lot in this homestead.

We moved Rosie, Lucy, and Bugger over to a friend's house to eat the weeds over there and have Ramses at the house. We're planning on slaughtering him this Friday before Ginger gets home so that we won't have to deal with any more comments. If you're available, feel free to stop on by to help. We'll see if we can make some birria for this weekend.

As my co-worker mentioned... it will be interesting for our child to grow up in a house where if you're mean or don't keep up with the contract you are eaten. =) I hope our little one gets a clue.

Outlaw Goats

Tuesday is our normal practice night in San Luis Obispo and so Jed and I were out there having a blast with Gar and the guys. Well, Jed and I have a tendency to talk about home stuff when we're on drives to see what we can do better, what we can organize, or to make to-do lists. This Tuesday we were talking about how much we enjoy the things we do, but to continue on a conversation we had before, we have a tendency not to have that much time since we currently have something like 3.5 full time jobs. Taking care of the animals and plants takes a lot of time and energy. The rewards are breathtaking, but still it is the reward of many hours of labor and much work.

The ironic part of this conversation is that when we got home at 9pm we walked in to hear the phone ringing. Jed picks up says a few words and then says, "We'll be there in 15 minutes." Automatically I think: goats. Our goats were at a friend's house in Atascadero trying to eat down their weeds.

We get back in the car and Jed lets me know that the goats busted the fence, were running around the neighbors property and/or possibly the neighborhood and that the cops were there. We couldn't help but start laughing at the fact that we were driving to go pick up goats at 9pm because they had become outlaws. I was hoping that we'd get cute mugshots that I could bring home and add to the blog, but no such luck.

When we arrived the goats were already corraled into the front so we went and looked at the gate - something we'll have to go back and help fix- (We still need to find out if the goats caused any damage to the neighbors property so that we can fix that too) and made up our minds to bring them home that night as we could not easily fix the gate in the dark. We loaded the now fat goats into the van and brought them back home. They are now trying to beat up the sheep and are complaining about their loss of new bushes and trees that they were eating at Melody and Lucy's.

If

The word "if" has a lot of weight around here... frankly I think it has a lot of weight with many farm/ranches...

We were able to plant all our trees and our currants and they looked fabulous... but there's this goat that just figured out how to escape the fenced in area and decided that they are the most delicious things in this world.. what does this mean to my medieval orchard? It means that it is very heavily pruned and that I'm having to coerce them to grow in a very distinctly different form. What does this mean for the goat? Well, since it's Ramses and he's not really doing anything.. I think it might be time for another goat slaughter. Jed likes him, but he is more mad at him for eating my "special" trees.

We'll keep you posted.. we're about ready to just have a mass slaughtering party as the weather is still cold and we're getting fed up with having to make to many accommodations.

Lil'Rosie on the mend

Lil'Rosie was doing well this morning. She's not back to her normal bossy self, but she's able to function on her own. Yesteday when I went to go see her at lunch she had not eaten so I had to hand feed her until she got a little bit of food in her. After work I went back home and separated her from the herd and took her over to the alfalfa and hay. She ate until she filled in again, which is good, but she was still acting frightened of everything and would get scared if I wasn't around. After eating her fill I took her back with the other goats and she spent the night with them. I think I only heard one cry at all last night, so it's a big improvement. This morning she started eating on her own and was drinking water. She was also moving around and it looks like if Lil'Rosie and Bugger are starting to become close friends. I think they both have that association of humans as bringers of safety and happy thoughts. We'll see how things progress. The herd is keeping its distance and taking care of her. Ramses is not being harsh on her and none of the other goats will take her food. I think they know she's still sick. This has been a learning experience, but one that was most likely needed. I'm very glad we did not give up on her, but I hope that she's able to fully recover, as we cannot keep goats that require special needs.

Day 5: Lil'Rosie

For the last 5 days I've been spending a lot of time with Lil'Rosie as she's not full up to speed on taking care of herself. We gave her the last shot of thiamine today and I put her with the other goats. I think the thiamine really throws her off. To recap, Sat and Sun my brother Steven came out to help pour some more concrete around the house. This was hampered by an altered Lil'Rosie that wanted to follow myself or Jed around everywhere we went. In the end, I just stayed with Lil'Rosie and let everyone else do the work since we couldn't do much with Lil'Rosie following us around and got in the way. She was also trying to eat dirt, which wasn't good, and was trying to step on the wet cement. On Sunday she seemed to get her appetite back and ate to her hearts content. She filled in and was drinking tons of water. She looked almost completely healthy and we decided to put her with the rest of the goats this morning.

I just went to go check on her during my lunch, which I've been doing since last Thurs, and she was staring off in a different direction not moving and not eating. She didn't seem to have eaten anything since that morning so I fed her some alfalfa by hand until she zoned out. She then sat down with some food hanging out of her mouth and stared off into space. Ramses led her over to the water where she drank. As I was leaving she realized I wasn't around and ended up trying to run to see where she could see me and to call out. I think this whole process is going to make Lil'Rosie that much more clingly and weary of when she's not feeling well. Although goats aren't swamp dragons, taking care of a sick goat can get tiring especially when you have to go and sleep with them out in the porch if they start freaking out. It has been an educational process and I look forward to learning more about goats, but at a calmer pace rather than a steep learning curve.

Big goat is delicious

Did you guys ever watch the movie Up? Do you remember the joke the dog makes? (It's funny because the squirrel was dead) Yeah, that's what this reminds me of. =) Not that I'm mean or any... ok yeah, yes I am... she had it coming, but for breeding reasons more than anything else: She had a double nipple, which we do not want to pass on to any possible future offspring. She was under developed due to many internal parasites that had lived in her for way too long. So we did the best we could. We took away the parasites, fed her as much as she wanted, and then we're finishing the loop by eating her.

It was a clean kill and she went quickly. We then hung her up, skinned, disemboweled, halved, and put her in the freezer. Thank you, Big Goat, you completed the contract.

And of course we had to enjoy home brew while we slaughtered.... we could not have it any other way.

Images of the goats =)

Since some of you haven't seen Bugger in a while, here are some images to tide you over... and some images of Ramses posing or prancing and of Lucy, our newest member (A Toggenburg!!!)... and Little Rosie... and our future dinner Big Goat.

Big goat - freezer time

She's finally dried off. I milked her yesterday and got less than a quarter cup of milk. What that means is that she's now going to be allowed to dry off and to eat as much as she wants to that she can be as heavy as possible for when we slaughter her later on this year. Who knows, if we get another cold spell in July like we did last year we might even do it then. I look forward to having goat in the freezer.

Which reminds me, Jed and I decided to make up our own anniversary day presents. We've been following a set of present guidelines but as we have been unable to find it since the move we decided to just make them up. We're thinking of a freezer put our livestock in once we're ready to slaughter. =) I think that sounds like a fabulous present we can give to each other.

What this also means is that we are lacking any milk producing animal right now. We might look into a Toggenberg doe or maybe a Dexter heifer. We'll see what we end up with. .. =) Maybe both.

Bugger

Bugger is being weaned off of milk right now... things are not going according to her plan.

We're supposed to get up, feed her milk then put her out. We just put her out this morning and she ran back into the house screaming that we had forgotten the milk.... she's going to be one sad little goat when she realizes that she is a goat and not a cat or a human.

BTW, she was almost a goth goat. I was this close to buying her a skull and crossbone collar... but I didn't because it was made of fabric and she would have just chewed her way through her collar. I might end up just making little skulls on her leather collar anyways. =)

Goats + Trees = Unhappy Rosie

Sooo, it's been raining and Jed didn't want to put the goats on the leashes because then they would not be able to get out of the rain. Solution: Keep the goats indoors with food until it stops raining. They were out yesterday because it was raining and the little snots snapped my plum tree(not clean off so I'll try to repair it) and cleared off my peach tree.

Putting wire and posts around my trees is next on my list of things to do so that I can at least have some fruit this summer.. Bummer too because the plum was coming along so well and it was just jam-packed (no pun intended) with fruit.

I put them out on the leash today, I doubt that they'll drown if it does.

I mended the trees tonight when I get home.... bums.

Goats on a leash

We put the goats on their chains and left for work. Jed made me take extra precautions so that I wouldn't come home to dead goats. Well, I got home and they hadn't died so that worked. They were not too happy though. They were confined to an eating area with a 25' radius. As I have always just let them run around, this is new to them and they did not like it. I put them back out there again, but I rotated the locations so that they could each have a different location than yesterday. On the plus side, I have trees that are not being munched, and I get extra time to reinforce the protection around the trees.

Oh, and I was greeted yesterday by a happy goat that escaped her kiddie box. Apparently, McGee and Little Bugger spent the day playing.

Animal Count - As of Today

Sooo, as of today we are at:

Chickens:
1 Silkie
1 Rhode Island Red
1 Rhode Island White
9 Ameraucanas

Chicks:
8 Dorking pullets
2 Dorking cocks
4 White Faced Black Spanish pullets
1 WFBS cock
3 Blue Andalusian pullets
1 Blue Andalusian cock
3 Old English Game (something or other)

Ducks:
7 Runner Ducks

Goats:
3 Boer/Nubian Crosses
1 Nubian

Cats:
Calvin and McGee

Guinea Fowl:
2 Guinea Hens
4 Guinea cock

Our averages:
9 chicken eggs
6 duck eggs
3.5 cups (2.25 lbs) of goat milk

All but the guineas free range which has caused issues with my veggie garden and fruit trees. If the ducks don't trash it all and the goats don't eat it all, we should have enough wheat to hold us over for part of the year.