Josie being Josie

  Every morning and evening when we milk the goat ladies, we give them a mixture of grains and alfalfa hay. Aside from being very good for milk production, the hay helps slow them down so they don't finish eating before we finish milking and get all impatient and stompy. Well, I guess this morning Josie was just not in the mood for alfalfa. I was in the middle of milking her when I heard a noise and saw something fly over my left shoulder! 

 Yep. That's the feed bucket. Josie, being the delightful ray of sunshine that she always is, decided I had too dang much alfalfa in her bucket. She picked it up and tossed it across the milk room showering the milk stand, me, and Luna (who had to duck to narrowly avoid getting beaned by the bucket!) in little green bits of hay and feed.

  For her efforts, Josie got to stand there with no feed for the rest of the milking. I may be an unrepentant goat snuggler most of the time, but I'm not going to put up with lady goat hissy fits that early in the morning! 

Weaning Gwen

 For a long time now, we have been cutting back the frequency of Gwen's nursing on Thea. From twice a day to once to every other then every third day. Well, she just recently turned four months old, so we figured it was high time the girl was weaned completely.

 As you can see, she barely fits under Thea already. She actually half fell off the stand after this picture was taken.

 She will still get a bowl full of goat chow twice a day when the other goats get milked, and she has access to enough scrubby, bushy pasture to keep any goat happy.

The next big step in her little goaty life will be when she gets to be an adult, and we breed her. Goats don't come into milk until they are bred and give birth. Today Big Onion and I talked about the fact that we will probably have to find a different goaty boyfriend for our little Gwen than for the other girls.

We plan on trying to find a nice Nubian to bred to Thea and Josie so that we can increase the milkfat in the next generation. Unfortunately, it looks like little Gwen is going to stay very little (about the same size as Jenni pictured below). I guess next year we'll be in the market for a handsome Nigerian dwarf buck as well.

Jenni just wishes we'd stop making such of a fuss over the little whipper snapper and give her her breakfast!

Tia Thea Nanny Goat

 "Where is my dinner?!"

Since Thea got here we have not had to make a single bottle for Gwen. Twice a day, Thea jumps right up on the milk stand and chows down while Gwen gets to nurse her fill. Once Gwen's belly is full, she hops down and staggers around in a state we like to call 'milk drunk.' Lately, Gwen has taken up the oh so endearing habit of wiping her slimy milk mustache face on my rear end while I finish milking out Thea.

Sheep Milking:Take 2

Thanks to some great advice from our favorite dog trainer/sheltie breeder/sheep farmer, we were finally able to get some milk from our sheep mommas! Her advice was to separate moms and babies for a day before trying to milk and that really did the trick.

Though, I have to say even though both our lambs who still have mothers around are more than old enough to fend for themselves, they were none too pleased with being separated from their constant milk supply. It was a very noisy day for us with mommas calling and babies crying. The lambs ended up joining up with the newest adolescent group and forming a band of wild lamblings led by none other than our bottle lamb, Ruby. They then took over one of the turkey pens Lord of the Flies style.

I waited for the Big Onion to get home before attempting another milking. We got Patch up on the stand, and he did the dirty work while I tossed sweet feed into the bucket and kept the rest of the flock at bay with my stock stick. Well, the forced separation worked! We got sheep milk! Not much, but enough for Ms. Ruby to make a meal. The amount we got was not really worth all the stress to the flock though. I think Ruby's going to have to settle for pasteurized goat milk and formula in the future. Luckily, she is old enough that she shouldn't need a bottle for much longer anyway.

How (not) to milk a sheep

Little Rhubard a.k.a. Ruby has been with us for about a week. It quickly became clear that this youngster was not old enough to live on grass alone as her gut became more swollen every day with undigested food and her back felt more and more bony. At first we tried powered lamb milk replacer, but she was having none of it. We do have a freezer full of goat milk, but there is such a close connection between CAE (which our girls have) and OPP, the sheep version of the virus, that we were reluctant to feed this to the girl. Everything we read assured us that pasteurizing the milk would kill the virus though, so yesterday I cooked up a batch of milk for Ms. Ruby. 

 Worked like a charm. 

We also added a bit of olive oil to the milk just in case her swollen gut was the beginnings of bloat. 

 Ms. Ruby loves her goat milk, but feeding pasteurized goat milk to a baby sheep is less than ideal in my book, so today I set out to try and get some actual sheep's milk from Patch, one of our nursing mommas.

 Step 1: Get the sheep into the goat pen.

I'd love to say that I called in my trusty herding dogs to move the sheep into the pen, but none of us are to that point in training (myself and the sheep included). Thank heavens those sheep will do just about anything for a mouthful of sweet feed...including following me into hostile territory. I swear Jenni in the foreground above is just itching for me to turn my back to she can give those ovine intruders a taste of her horns.  

 Step 2: Catch the sheep and get her into the milking stanchion.

Suffice to say this was easier said than done. At this point, the smart thing for me to do would have been to exhaust the remaining sheep, who kept trying to climb into the feed bucket on the stanchion, Ruby, who kept trying to climb into my lap and suck on my elbow, and the various ducks, geese, turkeys, and guineas who were were just generally making a nuisance of themselves. 

 I was smart enough to exclude Josie from the party. She was less than pleased at this. Not only were the sheep in her space, but there was a sheep on HER stand, eating HER food. Completely unacceptable. After about 10 minutes of staring goat-daggers at my back, she took to banging her head against the gate then rubbing her horns back and forth on it in what I guess was supposed to be a threatening manner.

Meanwhile, I was trying my best to milk poor Patch who was being just as quiet and patient as could be amid the chaos of barnyard mayhem and my fumbling at her nether regions. After cleaning her utter of god know what she's been laying the past month (Yick!!), I did my darndest to get a grip on them tiny teats with zero success. I'm tell you, her nipples were so small, I couldn't even get two fingers around them. I even tried my homemade vacuum sealer milking contraption that works like a charm on the goats. Still no luck. Not a drop. The expression 'blood from a stone' comes to mind.

I finally went back to hand milking which was more like nipple pinching and was able to get one drop of milk at a time. I'm not kidding here. ONE DROP of milk per squeeze. At that rate, it'd take me about 3 years to get enough milk for one meal for Ruby.

 At that point, I decided to forget it and made myself feel useful by de-wooling the rest of Patch's leftover winter fuzz and giving her crusty rear a good cleaning.

 Safely back on the ground and reunited with her daughter, Miss FancyPants, none the worse for my failed efforts. I guess at this point I should give up on dreams of sheep milking and stick to the goats. The only thing I can think that might make it easier is if I pull Patch from Fancy for a day and let her build up some steam in that utter before trying again. Honestly though, I just can't see it working much better. There is just nothing to get a grip on down there.

Plus, how could I possibly hope to succeed with THIS looking over my shoulder. Jeez.