Alure

Alure is a very interesting goat, and not an easy one to manage.  She gave birth to three kids March 13th and rejected her little girl, Windy.  I milked her every two hours to feed the little girl but after a week she didn't have enough milk for all three, so we put Windy on goat formula.  Windy thrived on the bottle and follows me around like a lost puppy.  Four weeks later we started locking the kids in their special room at night so they can't feed during the evening and early morning - I began milking Alure in the morning before letting the kids out.

Alure with her two new boys and her daughter from last year

Windy being fed this morning

For the first three days I would leave 2/3rds of the milk in Alure and within a week reached her peak milking of about 3.5 lbs (about 8.2 lbs in a gallon) - which is good for Alure.  I'm not milking her dry in the morning as she "holds back" some of the milk and won't release it, saved for her boys morning nursing.  Four days of this and then one morning she had no milk.  The next day I only got 1 lb, and then back to normal.  I don't know what happened, but I do know she does not eat much grain anymore.  I've checked for lice and found none, so we wormed her and the next morning she ate a little better.  Today I'm going to set up an appointment for her to visit her vet and have him check her teeth.  Maybe it hurts her to chew.  At this point I don't know.

Little Windy, our bottle fed doeling

At our South Whidbey Tilth board meeting last night one of the members asked if we would loan her a buckling for the summer/fall - they would feed him all year and after breeding return him to us.  A good deal for us as we won't be butchering him until he is at least one year old.

The new chicken coop is coming along

The chicken coop is coming along with the baby chicks due next Wednesday.  I'm taking the day off real estate to work on it.  The goal today is to get the roof completed and the new brooding room weather tight.  I'll spend most of the weekend working on it.

Emery Adair Ingram - born 4-8-11

By the way, we have a new granddaughter, born last Friday, April 8th - 8 1/2 lbs, Emery Adair.  How cool is that!  We now have five granddaughters all less than 3 years old.