Our Goat Milk-Flow is Back!

Fresh goat milk is back and oh how I missed it.  Normally we leave all of the mother's milk for her kids for the first three weeks, then separate the kids at night and milk the mother in the morning, leaving some for the kids.  With Alure, we are getting about 3.5 lbs each morning (about 8 lbs per gallon).  Nettle gave birth less than two weeks ago and I have been milking her in the morning for the past nine days, and averaging over 4 lbs. per day.  I was concerned that maybe her kids are not eating well (I seldom see them nursing but then I'm away most of the time).  Yesterday I took all of the kids up to Oak Harbor to Ron & Arline's farm (Stonebrier Farm) to have them disbudded and neutered; Arline commented that Nettle's kids looked great and that they were feeding well.  Toots, the first born, weighed in at 18.5 lbs, Puddle (who we thought was the good eater) weighed 16.5 lbs.

Puddle and Toots bouncing around in the goat barn

Rain and Storm watching the new kids

So we once again are making Kefir, our beloved milk drink.  I made some this past winter with frozen milk, it kept the grains alive but they did not thrive.  Oh how they love the fresh milk.  We still have 10 lbs of Pannier cheese in the freezer from last year, many pounds of other cheese, but with two gallons in the refrigerator I need to do something this morning.  It builds up fast.  Last year I was milking four goats and it was a major chore to use all of the milk.  

Nettle has become an excellent mother this year

We named Nettle's two kids Toots and Puddle.  We will be keeping them for meat, butchering them next May.  It'll be interesting to see what our meat total will be with them being half Boer.  We received 90 lbs from the two Nubian bucks we had butchered last month.  Nubians are considered "duel purpose" - very good milkers and also good for meat.  The Boer is a meat goat.

Our apple orchard in full bloom

Our new chicks are doing well.  One of the problems with chicks is called "pasty butt" - their poop clumps up on their butt and can be fatal, blocking more from coming out.  The book says to use a warm wash cloth to remove the clumps.  This is a major chore when you have 70 chicks as we do.  I have found an easy solution: feed them milk every few days.  The milk give them loose bowels and we don't get the pasty poop.  Last Saturday I went in the chick brooder to give them some milk when problems developed.  I have a bungee cord inside to hold the door closed when I'm inside - the hook on the door stripped out at the same time I dumped the milk upside down, scattering the chicks like a bomb when off.  One of our layer chicks fell out the door and ran off into the brambles.  I was running late for a real estate appointment so had no time more time to spend looking for her.  It was 45 degrees out and raining hard, so I logged her as gone.  Sunday afternoon when we returned from Seattle after our Mother's Day gathering, the little check was still alive, scratching around the door.  I put a little dish of food out and when she returned to snack I trapped her with a leaf rake.  She'll be happier with the warm place and plenty of food and water.  I'm also happier with her being back.  I once read the only thing better than happiness is freedom, but this is a farm.

 This Saturday Pam and I are off to Eastern Washington for our annual anniversary and birthday trip.  Our wedding anniversary is May 16, Pam's birthday was May 3, mine is May 17, so each year we do a short trip with Pam taking two personal days off along with the weekend.  This year we rented a place in Winthrop, a small resort town on the eastern sloop of the Cascade Mountain range.  Our friends and neighbors Michael and Prescott will run the farm while we are gone.  It's hard to leave the place when everything is peaking, but once we are away it's fun.

One of our bees working the apple trees

The bees are doing well.  Our apple, pear and cherry trees are in full bloom, along with salmon berries and elder shrubs, so the bees have a lot to draw from.  I love to set in front of the hives and watch the bees come and go.

May Day

Nettle licking off one of her new born Boer mix boys

 The last day of April brought two new goat kids onto our farm.  Nettle gave birth to two Boer/Nubian bucklings at 2 pm.  We bred Nettle to EV, our Boer buck, 148 days earlier.  Our goal was to refresh Nettle, one of our best milkers, and hopefully have additional bucks to butcher for meat next spring.  Success!  Just what we wanted.  They both seem healthy, bouncing around and Nettle is being a good mother, not like last year.  Last year, her first, she didn't get it.  I had to hold her feet down to let her kids nurse, and later she killed one, slamming the kid into a wall that was trying to nurse.  I planned on turning her into sausage until I discovered how good of a milker she was.

Windy died Sunday morning about 9 am

After returning from a Beltane potluck dinner at a friend's farm, we bottle fed our little Nubian girl Wendy.  She was normal, sucking down the bottle of goat milk in two minutes.  Sunday morning when I went up to the barn to feed her I noticed something wrong - she wouldn't eat.  She has always been extremely hungry so this alarmed me.  I noticed blood and poop flowing out of her behind so we went into emergency treatment, talked to our vet, and tried to comfort her.  She died about 9 am that morning, just three hours after we noticed her problem.  So quick and sad.  Pam held her as she took her last breath, singing to her a song about passing on to the next phase of her existence.  I buried her in the raspberry patch that afternoon.

Our Cherry trees are finally blooming!

 A goat breeder friend of our told us when Windy's mother first rejected her and wouldn't let her nurse, that often goat mothers will know there is some genetic problem with a kid and reject them soon after birth.  Why waste energy and resources on a kid that won't make it?  Natures way she said.  Of course we didn't want to believe our dear little Windy had a problem.  I guess we were wrong.   Oh well, we have more milk now for the kitchen.  We have four buckling kids for our meat crop this year, and not needing any more does, we are pleased.

I took a beekeeping class on Sunday afternoon and found it interesting.  That afternoon with the outside temperature in the upper 60's I opened the hives and checked things out.  The queen is starting to lay eggs - she will lay up to 1500 per day, and I put in the first mite treatment - formic acid in the form of strips.  I'm told it's the closest thing to organic treatment but can be dangerous to humans and have to be handled very carefully.

Our apple, pear and cherry trees are now in full bloom - much later than past years.  With our new bees I'm hopeful we'll get good pollination.