Later in March

My grandmother use to say about March weather "In like a lamb, out like a lion" or vise versa.  March began with heavy rains and it looks like we'll end with heavy rains.  In between, we had just showers mixed with sun.  As of this morning we have had 5.1 inches of rain for the month.  I have an Oregon Scientific weather station that my kids got me for Christmas in December 2009.  Until this month, the most rain I've recorded in a month was December 2010 - 3.8 inches.  Last March I recorded 2.1 inches.  YTD we are 172% of last year.

Stonebrier Farm in Oak Harbor

This last Sunday afternoon I took our little doeling, Windy, up to Oak Harbor to have her disbudded.  As I have written before, we do not want our dairy goats to have horns.  It hurts them but they recover in minutes after it is completed.

Ron and Arline Stone, owners of Stonebrier Farm in Oak Harbor are long time goat breeders.  They raise both Nubian and Boer goats.  They sell the Boer goats for meat and also show them at the County Fair.  Last year they won Grand Champion for the Boer goat they entered.  I put the link to their farm website on the link section at the top of my blog page.  Really great people and I love to talk with them about goats.

Little Windy disbudded

Pam has next week off for Spring Break so I'm going to try and take most of the week off.  My business partner is taking her children to Disneyland in LA, so I will need to cover for her, but most of my time is going to be spent building our new chicken coop.  I can't wait to have it completed.  It's going to be 24 feet long and eight feet deep, with four sections.  The largest will be for our layers, we'll have two brooding sections, one for chicks and one for turkey chicks, and a section for the adult turkeys.  Our goal is to build a new fenced pasture on north end of the coop for the turkeys.  We hope to have that pasture completed for the 2012 year and raise four or five turkeys for meat.  Probably sell one or two and keep the others for our freezer.  Our new batch of chicks are scheduled to arrive April 15th, so I have no time to waste.

Windy in the truck ready to go back home to her brothers

Pam will help me get our spring garden planted.  The snow peas are ready to put out and it's time to plant potatoes so I have to get those beds ready.  I have the bed for our greens ready to plant so we'll get our spring greens in.  All of the fruit trees are pruned as are the berry plants.

Monday evening I taught a class on organic pest control for South Whidbey Tilth.  It was fun, I love talking in front of groups about farming!  We'll probably have our farm on the summer SW Tilth Farm tour this year.  We did it a few years ago and it was fun.  Each year we tour three of our members farms and then end the tour with a potluck dinner at John and Molly Peterson's CSA farm in Langley.  They have a huge walnut tree that we all eat under.  It's always well attended and fun talking to other farmers.

Late March on the Farm

Windy with her two brothers checking out all the new things

The new goat kids turned two weeks old yesterday afternoon and they are thriving well.  We have moved them into the general goat population a few days ago.  When we first introduced them to the other goats it was with my oversight.  Goats have a ranking system and the lower ones are quick to let the newly arrived know who is boss, and sometimes this can be rough.  The mother often will get between her kids and the older goats to run interference, if that doesn't work, I'm there.  By the third day I'm not needed as the little ones know how to behave.  Surely, who is the leader, doesn't even give notice to the little ones until it is time to teach one of them something.  Goats love to rise on their hind feet and come down head-to-head (butting heads they say) - it's a game for them - and I watched Surely teach Alder Rose last year this game.  Surely would rise on her back feet while Alder Rose just stood still looking at her, then Surely would drop down just short and tap her head against Alder Rose.  She did this over and over until Alder Rose caught on.  We have a special small door to the birthing room that is large enough for the kids to get through but too small for the adult goats - this give the kids a place to go away from the adults.

Pooh Bear living with the boys

We moved Pooh Bear into the pasture with the bucks.  He is just too rough on the new kids.  Last year he chewed on one of the kid's ear, and scratched one bad trying to pull the kid out of a hole.  I just don't have the time to spend training him kid care.

The new bee hive, assembled and painted, ready to move into the orchard

I finally got the new bee hive assembled and painted.  We have two new packages of bees (four pounds each) arriving this next weekend just in time for the nectar flow from our late blooming plum trees; the salmon berries are just starting to bloom - everything is about four weeks late this year, the pears are almost ready and apples are probably two to three weeks away.  With two hives we should have honey next fall for our use and great pollinators. 

Nettle is due to kid May 1st

This afternoon I'll take Windy, our little doeling to Oak Harbor to have her disbudded.

Alure with her two boys

Caring for the Kids

Pam holding one week old Rain

We are into week two of Alure's newborns and things are going well.  This is Alure's second year of kids, last year she had two girls, this year two boys and one girl.  As a milker last year she was difficult.  She started off being a great mother, letting her kids nurse and when we would bring them all out to the general goat population, she would hover near them, never taking an eye off their whereabouts.  We usually let the new kids have all the milk they want for the first two weeks then separate the kids at night and milk the mother in the morning, leaving some milk for the kids morning feeding.  Alure in the milkstand was a nightmare!  She would scream and lay down, trying to stop me from milking.  Finally I figured out how to milk her - I would tie her back feet to a rope connected to the back of the milk stand and then get up on the stand and hold her body up with my shoulder.  In time she relaxed and I could milk her without the rope.  We were not weighing her milk early in the season, but later when we purchased a scale (in September) she was producing about 3 lbs per day - there is about 8 lbs in a gallon.  Nettle, also a first time milker, was producing double that.

My six year old "little brother" holding his first goat - Windy

This year Alure has decided that she would only nurse two of her kids, rejecting the little girl Windy.  We talked to a goat breeder friend of ours and she said sometimes there is a birth defect of some type and the doe senses it.  Unlike humans, the animal world rejects young that are not normal, and sometimes the doe will pick one that they don't like and reject that one.  "Who knows what goes on in a goat brain!"  I'm hoping there was not a birth defect (we'll see, but I don't see anything yet) - my guess is that she knows she will not have enough milk to raise three kids so she picked one to reject.

Storm and Rain at one week

The first five days I milked Alure and fed Windy a bottle of her mother's milk.  The last two times I milked her I could just get enough milk to fill the bottle - so maybe my theory is correct.  We bought some goat milk replacer from a suppler and this past weekend I started to use that to feed Windy.

Pooh Bear in his favorite spot

We disbud our goats - the removal of the goat horns just as they start to emerge, and yesterday was the day for the two little boys.  We do not want horns on our goats, especially with dairy goats.  Horns can be very beautiful, but they are also very dangerous, to you, your family and other goats. Even if the goat is a pet, and friendly, he/she can accidentally, or on purpose, seriously injure other goats, animals and humans.  We have a friend that decided not to disbud one of her kids and the goat knew she had an advantage over the others, keeping the others away from the feed.  Once the horns grow out there is nothing you can do - if they are to be removed it must be done just as the buds appear.  With Nubian boys it is about day 7, girls about a week later.



The disbudding process is not fun.  I take our kids up to Oak Harbor to a goat farmer and pay him six dollars per goat to do it.  He uses a disbudding iron, red hot, and the kid screams, but recovers quickly.  When I return the kids to the mother, I always re-introduce the kid butt first, the area with the strongest kid smell, so Mother will recognize her kid.  The head of the kid smells like burnt hair. 

March Madness

The rain continues to fall but spring is in the air.  Days are longer and the frogs are making their spring chirping/mating calls.  The chicken egg production has increased but we have not be able to locate the duck egg nests.  They hide them so well and cover the eggs with dirt.  Soon we will have broody mother ducks and ducklings.

Rain learning to drink from his Mama

The baby goats are all doing well.  The two boys are nursing well on their own and Alure is an excellent mother.  The girl, Windy, is not interested in nursing so I am bottle feeding her.  In the five years we have been raising goats I have never had to bottle feed one until this year.  I take a clean bottle to the barn and milk directly into it from Alure, about six ounces.  Windy recognizes me and when I sit on the goat platform she comes to me to be fed.  I'm doing a feeding about every four hours, the hardest one is at 1 am.  I've been sleeping on the couch in the living room so I don't disturb Pam's sleep.  Once I get to the barn it is pure bliss.  How I love the little ones and could stay up there forever.

Alure and her three kids, all doing well on day 2

Nubians are an interesting goat.  We love the way they look and they are so interesting.  Of course, their milk is the best of all goat milk, rich and sweet with no "goat" flavor.  Nettle, who is due to give birth May 1st, is now doing the Nubian groan when she rests.  Some have said it is the mother talking to their unborn babies.

The photo was taken February 27, 2010.  Today is March 15, 2011 and these trees have not bloomed yet

I did the South Whidbey Tilth pruning workshop at our farm last Saturday in the pouring rain.  About 20 people contacted me about attending but only seven showed up due to the weather.  The plan was to demonstrate how to prune the different fruit trees in the morning and then have a hands on pruning afternoon where I prune all of my trees.  By noon we were all cold and wet and nobody wanted to stay for the afternoon session, which was fine with me.  The sun came out about 2 pm and I spent the afternoon putting the metal roof on the buck house expansion project.  Still have to prune the orchard.  We are about three weeks behind last year so I'm doing ok.

Baby Goats Have Arrived

Finally!  The first of our 2011 new kids were born yesterday afternoon to Alure, one of our purebred Nubian goats.  She had two boys and a girl.  We thought she would have three this year as she was so big.  Our vet checked her out about a month ago and just looking at her said "triplets".

Rain is the kid nearest the wall - the first born with his brother Storm

Our weather has been extremely wet for our standards here in the Rain Shadow of the Olympic Mountains.  We normally receive between 17 and 20 inches of rain each year, a "rain year" running November through October.  Since November we have already had 17 inches of rain at our farm.  Since last Thursday we have had 2.5 inches.  Large puddles and streams have appeared on our farm where I have never seen them before.  It's raining right now and showers are in the forecast for the week.

Alure licking off her little girl, Windy

I have always been the one in our family delivering the baby goats but yesterday afternoon I had real estate showings to do so Pam was the one home.  We knew Alure was due (actually two days past the normal 150 days expected) so we had Alure in a separate "birthing room."  When Pam was finished with her barn chores this afternoon she did a final check on Alure before going into the house and saw the big bubble.  This is a long, clear string of "goob" (mucous) hanging from the doe's vagina.  If the goop is amber, it is amniotic fluid, and a sure sign that kidding should happen very soon.  The first one out was a boy, soon named Rain.  After birthing is the time to assist the kids in finding the teats. This can sometimes be extremely frustrating. The kids just don't seem to "get it". We always need to hold the teats for them at first as we want to make sure they get their colostrum (first milk) as soon as possible. The kids really must get their colostrum within 1 hour of birth.  To be sure they get this colostrum I put some in a bottle and feed the kid.

Pharaoh the barn cat had to come down from the loft to check out all the activity 

 Colostrum is the thick, yellow fluid which is produced before the mother's milk comes in.  It is nature's way of transferring immune factors from mother to baby and generally occurs in the first two days after birthing.  Last year one of our does had way more colostrum than her kids could use so I made yogurt with a gallon of it.  Unbelievably good!

Storm, the second boy born, is still wet and about an hour old

I talked to Pam on the phone when I was completed with my showings and she told me of her first assisted birth.  When I got home about an hour later we had another boy and a little girl.  The boy was named Storm and the girl Windy.

Mothers can be such a pest, with their constant licking of the new born.  This boy looks just like his father, Snowshoe.

I made sure everyone got several ounces of colostrum, were dried off and warm (we have two heat lamps in the birthing room) and came to the house for dinner.  After dinner and our evening walk with the dogs, I again fed the kids and gave them each a shot of Bovi Sera, an antibody concentrate for newborns.  I got up at 1 am to feed everyone again (and haven't been back to sleep yet).  Once I observe them feeding on their mother most of my work will be done, but with triplets we will continue to supplement their feeds with bottle milk.

Surely was due last month but it seems her breeding never took.  That is a real disappointment for us as Surely has always been our best milker.  Nettle is due May 1 and she is also a great milker - we are crossing our fingers that she is pregnant.  Next year we are going to build a breeding pen with a shelter where we will lock the girl in with the buck we want to breed for a month to be sure it takes.  Oh well, it might be a lean year for us with goat milk as Alure, though a great mother, is not very good as a milker.