From bottle to teat and back again

  Normally it takes about 3-4 days for a mother goat to stop producing colostrum laced milk so when Francesca and Lucia, the baby goat girls, reached 4 days old, it was time to switch them from their mother's very carefully heat treated colostrum to regular goat milk. Luckily, we recently added Elanore to the goat herd. She's a big LaMancha doe who we tested for CAE just about the moment she stepped hoof on the farm. Thankfully she tested negative, and we have actually been freezing her milk since she got here just in case we needed to bottle raise any of the positive does' kids.

 Early on we decided to see if we could have the kids feed directly from Elanore instead of using bottles. We used this method very successfully with Thea and Gwenny.

 
   Both girls actually latched on quite quickly and drank until they were drunk with milk.

 Elanore didn't seem to mind having these two little monster feeding on her one bit as long as there was feed in her bucket.

  Unfortunately, Josie, the girls bio-mom, was onto us and started giving us the stink eye from the next room.

So full. 

  We tried having the girls nurse directly a couple more times and unless Elanore was secured on the milk stand, she was less than pleased with the two little ones attaching themselves to her udder. Ultimately, we decided that it was more work to try and tote the two girls out to the milk room several times a day and risk the wrath of Josie than it would be to just milk Elanore ourselves and make bottles for the girls so we have gone back to bottle feeding the beasts. 

  In a related note, we have just discovered these bottles from Premier 1 Supplies, and I cannot recommend them enough! The Pritchard teats screw securely onto the bottles so no wrestling on the leaky rubber ones. They also have an air flow valve that lets air back into the bottle as the little ones nurse so no more collapsing nipples and stopping to let air back in the bottle. Plus the bottles themselves are marked with ounces for easy measuring at feeding time. These bottles have seriously made life with bottle babies SO much easier!

Ram Lamb, Ding Dong

 There's a new man out in the pastures this week. See that dark faced sheep with the orange collar? That's our new ram lamb! He's a Katahdin/Dorper cross, and would you believe he's only five months old?!

  All of our sheep have names. It makes record keeping easier and helps Big Onion and I communicate about things like which sheep we saw limping yesterday or who looks like they might be pregnant.

 Soon after he got here, we started talking about what we would call this boy. Since he's a ram lamb, we joked about calling him Ding Dong (as in the Edsels Rama Lama Ding Dong), but he's such a big majestic beast of a sheep that Ding Dong just didn't seem to fit his manliness. I told Big Onion we should call him something masculine like Steve. He said, "You want to call him Steve? We should call him Phteven!"

  Which resulted in an uncontrollable bout of giggles from both of us. Seriously, just google "Phteven" and try not to laugh. That picture and the ones like it get me every time!

  Anyway, I think we have settled on calling this new sheep "Steve Ding Dong." It is totally befitting of his dignity don't you think? If nothing else, it amuses us.

 Meanwhile, as I was taking the pictures of Mr. Ding Dong, Rialey was busy doing her best border collie impression to make him feel at home. Steve came from a farm with lots of them!

  We are very excited to have this new lamb as part of our flock. We are just about desperate for some new blood. Our entire flock came from one source, so we cannot be sure how related everyone is to each other. Plus, that combination of breeds in know to produce very high quality meat sheep. We'll be getting rid of our current adult ram, McLovin, very soon. Then we need to make some hard decisions about Angus and Buzz. We may decide to keep all three boys since all seem to get along just fine, and we'd like to option of producing more pure Katahdins. 

  Our shepherd is very pleased with the addition to her flock! 

Baby goat, baby goat, goat, baby goats!

 Baby goats are here and life is all bottles and pee pads and adventures outside! The house is full of the sounds of little goat noises.

 These pictures were from the girl's first day in this world. They are by far the most active, healthy, and outgoing kids we have ever had here on the farm. This is very reassuring since their mother decided to mate with her own son to produce these little monsters.

  We have decided to name the smaller, more colorful girl Lucia after her father, Luciano, our sweet and dearly missed boy who passed away this April. We are calling the larger girl Francesca in keeping with the Italian opera signer theme, but she is so much larger than her sister that I often find myself calling her Brunhilda! 

Rialey is very protective of "her" new babies.

  Big Onion, who was home with them the first day, kept having to explain to her that knocking the babies down and cleaning them every five minutes was guardian/nanny dog overkill. Nobody likes a helicopter dog mom.

  We are totally enamored with these sweet little girls and have not yet decided whether they will be staying here on the farm long term. It's very hard not to get attached to something so cute and sweet, but  right now we really don't need any more goats! As it is, the fridge is full to the seams with wonderful, sweet goat milk from Josie. For now, we are just enjoying the pitter-patter of little hooves in the house once again!

Gwen's hard life

  Our next door neighbor finally hayed his field that's right across the fence from our pastures. This means we have lots of square bales of hay squirreled away in various places. I accidentally left the door open to one of the pens full of hay one night after chores.

  I came out the next morning to find Gwenny laying on her own personal edible lounge chair. She was actually scrawled out there nibbling on the hay right under her chin. The kid has such a hard life.

Little Turkeys

  It occurred to me that I never shared these pictures of the newest batch of turkeys. We ordered 40 broad breasted white turkeys from Ideal Poultry through our local feed store.

  Having the feed store handle the ordering saved me the stress of waiting for them to be delivered and meeting them at the post office. Our feed store actually housed, fed, and watered them for a couple days before I picked them up. The owner also didn't charge me for the ones who died in those first days.

  We set them up in a brooder in one of the extra bedrooms for the first week.

  We like to use puppy pee pads to line the brooder these days. They proved enough traction to keep the little one from having leg problems, keep the area around the waterer dry, and are easy to change out when necessary.

  These pictures are a couple weeks old, and these little guys are actually living in a pen in the poultry house. Pretty soon they will be big enough to go on the ground in one of the big outdoor pens.

I Didn't Know I was Pregnant: Barnyard Edition

 For the last couple months we had been watching Josie get bigger and bigger. Big Onion kept telling me he thought she was pregnant, but since we had neutered Luciano and the likelihood of a geep/shoat (that's a sheep/goat hybrid) is slim to none, I was sure she was just getting fat.

  Well, last Monday evening I happened to see her walking by with a sharp lump sticking out of her right side. I'd seen that before. It was the shape of a tiny goat hoof pressing out from the inside. I grabbed her by the collar and started feeling around. Sure enough. There was at least one little creature inside our lady goat. Crap.

  We got Josie on the milk stand and gave her a better look. Her udder (which always looks kind of full) was filling up more than normal and the ligaments above her tail were just starting to soften up. Not only was Josie pregnant, but she was due very, very soon!

  Since Josie is CAE+, we had planned on not breeding her again. In order for her not to pass the potentially deadly virus on to her offspring, we would have to be there when the kids were born to keep them from nursing directly from her. Big Onion left work early Tuesday and planned on taking off Wednesday to keep an eye on Josie. He has never attended the birth of any of our goats, but we were both pretty confident in his abilities to handle the situation

  Tuesday nothing really happened. Josie's udder got bigger and her ligaments got softer. She was laying down a little more than normal. Big Onion checked on her every few hours through the day and night. Wednesday I had to work so I had packed up my things and was headed out the door keys in hand when I got a message on my phone from Big Onion who was already out and checking on momma once again. It said, "She's laying down...now up...down again and pushing! Go time!"

  I sighed, texted my coworker that I would be late, and headed out to the goat yard. When I walked in the room, Big Onion said, "Oh thank god!" I think he was little nervous about handling things on his own.

  We watched Josie get up, lay down, push, mumble to herself, push some more. It seemed to take forever. About 40 minutes after her first push, we started started to see the bubble of the amniotic sac starting to emerge. Big Onion helped to break the sac, and it wasn't long before we caught a glimpse of a tiny white foot emerging then going back in with Josie's every push. After a few times of this, I told Big Onion to grab hold of the foot and don't let go!

  Little did he know just how slippery unborn baby goats can be! It took a few tries, but he finally got a grip on the one foot and gently pulled while Josie pushed. Within a few seconds we realized what what wrong. Josie was giving birth to a kid with a head the size of a softball! It took some pulling on our part and some serious protesting on hers, but eventually the slimy little linebacker of a goat popped  out of her mother's backside.

  I hardly had time to blink and Big Onion had that kid wrapped up in a towel and spirited out of the room. We've found that if you have to take a kid from a momma goat, it's best not to let her even lay eyes on it. The less time she has to bond, the less she will mourn for the lost babies. This is one of the many heartbreaking aspects of CAE. There is nothing we would love more than to let mother and baby stay together, but letting that baby nurse from its mother puts it at seriously risk of developing and dying from encephalitis at 2-4 months of age. That is not a risk we are willing to take.

   While Big Onion was off drying off the baby, I stayed with Josie and started cleaning up. After seeing the size of that kid, I was pretty certain that Josie was only going to have the one. I was just starting to help Josie clean up her back end when she started pushing again. It is normal for the mother to have contractions to help her pass the afterbirth so I didn't think much of it...until I saw another intact bubble starting to emerge. I guess the way was cleared by that first behemoth of a kid because this second one all but flew out! Luckily I was there to catch it with another towel and had it out of the room lickity split!

  I found Big Onion and Rialey in the poultry house still cleaning and drying the first baby. He told me his was a girl! I plopped my slimy, wet bundle in front of Rialey for cleaning, took a quick peek to find out she was a girl too! Then I headed back to spend time with Josie. I think it's important that the doe not be left alone that this time. I sat close to her and quietly let her lick my hands and arms clean.

  Once the babies were relatively clean, Big Onion headed to the house to prepare a bottle of powered colostrum and get the new little girls fed. I waitws for Josie to recover enough to get back up on her feet. With a little encouragement I got her up on the milk stand and milked out that all important first milk for the newborns.

  In order for it to be safe for the babies, CAE positive colostrum has to be heat treated. It needs to be carefully raised to 135 degrees and held there for one hour. We keep powdered colostrum on hand so that the babies don't have to wait for over an hour for their first meal. We learned last year that hungry newborns can stir up quite a ruckus. When I got back up to the house, both babies were clean, dry and snoozing with full bellies.

  I handed off Josie's colostrum and gave my work clothes a once over. Miraculously, I had managed to keep my clothes clean through the whole messy process. I once again grabbed my bags and my keys and headed out the door leaving the twin doelings in Big Onion's more than capable hands.

Blue Eyed Boy

Look we what got yesterday! 

  We finally found a suitable boyfriend for our lady goats. We have been looking for just the right buck to bring on the farm for quite a while now and yesterday we think we found him!

 We needed a male that was small enough to safely breed with our mini goats like Gwen and Eve but big enough to physically breed the larger, taller ladies like Thea and Elanore. This handsome dude is a 3 year old Nigerian Dwarf. His previous owner was calling him Willie after a character on Duck Dynasty. He's a sweet boy with beautiful color and a great build. He's a little on the large side for the breed and he has experience breeding full sized goats in one of his previous homes, so we think he is just the boy we were looking for!

  When we went to meet him, he happily took corn from my hand and stood still for us to attach the least. He was a little reluctant to walk with us to the car but hopped right up into the crate when he saw it was filled with hay. He happily munched on hay and alfalfa cubes on the hour drive home.
  In his last home, the poor little guy really didn't have access to any greenery so the minute we got him out of the car he started chomping down on grass.

  Big Onion brought him over to the "garden" in front of the house. Really it's just a flower bed that we don't maintain very well at all. Why waste time, money, and energy growing flowers when you can be growing goat food? He took no time at all to start chowing down on huge mouthfuls of everything in front of him.

  We have decided to call the little guy Gimli after the dwarf in Lord of the Rings. I think the name really suits him. I mean, would you look at that beard?!

  He also has blue eyes which is not something we were specifically looking for, but if we want to sell his kids (and we do) the blue eyed babies can often fetch a higher price.

  For an adult buck, Gimli has been incredibly sweet so far. He walks well on leash and likes being around people. For these reasons, we suspect he was a bottle-raised baby. I may be a bit odd but I don't think he even smells bad. Of course all of this could change once he meets the girls and goes into rut.

  His first meeting with the dogs did not go so smoothly. Barley was being a bit pushy so Gimli dropped his head and gave him a little push back. I guess Rialey did not appreciate some new upstart of a goat threatening her friend so she ran in to defend Barley, circling with big barks and nipping at the goat's sides. Luckily we were able to diffuse the situation quickly, and no one was harmed in the scuffle. I'm sure it will take some time before Gimli will feel comfortable around the dogs, but at least he learned to have a healthy respect for them from the get go.

  He will stay quarantined in the backyard pen for the next week so that we can get him cleared of parasites and make sure he isn't carrying any obvious illnesses. He is already causing a bit of a stir amongst the lady goats. Gwen was the first to catch a whiff of him. She spent the next several hours pressed against the backyard fence and making little goat love calls. I even caught her backed up to and peeing through the fence! The hussy!