The New Goat Herd

What a whirlwind the past two weeks have been!  It started with Nettle giving birth to two boys along with all of the problems of holding her feet down so the little ones could eat, latter her killing one of her kids, Zoe having two boys and a girl, Surely giving birth to three kids (two girls and one boy) and Alure having two girls.

Surely’s delivery was very difficult.  She was in labor for five hours, less than one is normal.  We called a friend and neighbor who has raised goats for years and she came over to help.  Reaching inside, Stacy tried to arrange the kids who were all tangled up but couldn’t do it.  At 2 am we called in the vet, expecting the kids to be dead but hoping to save the mother.  Surely is our prized goat, the leader of our herd, a wonderful mother and a great milker (five quarts a day when four is considered excellent for a Nubian).  When the vet pulled the first one out and she was alive we were stunned and thrilled.

Last fall we rented a buck and not having a separate buck area let him run with the herd.  What a mistake!  We now have a separate area and will keep our bucks separate from the herd.  This fall we would like to breed one goat per month, spacing them out will give us a longer milk flow and make it so much easier on me as to kidding.

Our future goat herd will consist on Surely, Alure and one each of their new girl kids.  We named Alure’s girl Chocolate – or Choc-ie for short.  Surely’s little girl is not named yet.  We will also keep Surely’s little boy as one of our future bucks  – Snow Shoe (he has white feet), aka Snowy.  We are trading Surely and Alure’s other two doelings for a Boer buckling.  With our future goat herd established we will be breeding for meat.

Nettle is doing better

Nettle kidded Monday evening, so it has now been three nights I have been getting up at 11 pm and 4 am to feed the kids. Nettle now allows the kids to nurse if I give her a bucket of grain, so other than getting up and going to the barn, it has become easy.

My daughter Eleni is a bank examiner for the State of Washington and travels a lot for her work. This week she was working with a team at a bank near the Clinton – Mukilteo ferry terminal so she and her daughter stayed with us Sunday through Tuesday. My granddaughter Olive is 20 months old and I took two days off from my real estate practice to care for her. She came to the barn with me several times to feed the goats – standing there and pointing at Nettle and saying “goat!” We had sunny weather with highs about 50 so we also spent some time with the chickens. We have 12 laying hens and one rooster (Rocky), 11 ducks and two geese in the yard. Rocky would crow and Olive’s eyes would get huge. Oh how fun it is!

New Kid Goats

Yesterday I checked on the goats about every three hours – after dinner I went to the barn and looked over the gate – three goats and the dog.  I found Nettle inside the barn with two newborn little boys.  Nettle is one that doesn’t like to be touched.  Once when trimming her hoofs she kicked me in the lip.  Most goats will let you do anything you want to them if you put them on the milking stand and give them some grain – grain whores.  Nettle is the exception.

I took the kids and Nettle into one of the birthing rooms and gave her some grain.  My next job is to put the kids up to the teat and get them nursing.  Some people bottle feed but who wants to go up to the barn every two hours?  Not I!  But Nettle would not let the kids nurse, kicking her hind legs and jumping all around.  I then put her in the milk stand and it took all of my strength to hold her lets down while Pam got some of her milk into a bottle. 

It was about 34 degrees outside; the kids were hungry and cold.  We wrapped them in towels and bottle fed them under a heat lamb.  I went back out about 11 pm and put Nettle on the milk stand again, held down her legs and let the babies nurse.  She still didn’t like it but that was better than using a bottle.  3 am I made another trip to the barn and went through the process once again.  By 3 am the new kids were dry and warm.

What to do now?  I have my 18 month old granddaughter, Olive, today, so it will be interesting.  I’m thinking of moving a lawn chair in the barn and bottle feed the kids.  Oh my, I’m tired and my head hurts!

Life in the Barn at the Hidden Egg Farm

We have four goats ready to give birth – who will be first? The ideal way to breed your goat is to have the buck on site behind a common fence. When the girl goes into heat they will be at the common fence and will know. You bring in the buck you want to breed the girl and log the date. Surely always gives birth exactly five months from breeding. Last year we didn’t have a buck area fenced off so our buck ran with the girls. I witnessed Surely’s breeding and her due date is Thursday, February 11th. This morning (Monday, February 8th) she was discharging mucus and her utter is huge, so I know she is close. I didn’t witness Zoe’s breeding, and her utter is also huge, but no discharge this morning. Nettle and Alure are both first timers so they have smaller utters, but both are “bagging up”.

Saturday I completed a new electrical fence cutting the pasture in half. We have an old structure in that area and it will become our buck house in the new buck yard. We want to keep two of our buck kids this year and will move them into the new yard at three months. The plan is to keep one of Surely’s and one from Alure. If they don’t throw any bucks this year we have been offered one from a friend's herd. In that case we will keep on of Nettle’s or Zoe’s buck kids but wether them.

We received four new barn cats two weeks ago from a rescue organization and they have been living in two large cages in our barn loft. We released them yesterday – organic rodent control. Three years ago we place five in our barn, one ran off as soon as we opened the cages, two disappeared within six months and two stayed in the barn until they died a couple of months ago. We think they were quite old. This morning all four we still in the loft. We’ll see how it goes this time.

Our ducks have begun to lay eggs – I found six Saturday under the goose house. Unlike chickens, ducks like to find hidden areas to lay eggs. If we find the spot before they get too many eggs laid (usually 10 to 15) they will keep laying, always looking for a new spot. If we don’t find the nest they will become broody and hatch them. Last year we hatched out about 70 ducklings. Sold most of them for $4 to $5 each. We kept four of the girls to replace some losses we had and have five of the males (drakes) that we will butcher in another week. Muscovy ducks are good layers and the boys grow huge and are good meat ducks.

Our Goat Herd

Our goat herd consists of four pure bred Nubian dairy goats. We started three years ago with Zoe and Lilly purchased from a farmer in Oak Harbor. We asked if they were CAE free, and she said yes. We failed to ask if she had them tested. Toward the end of that year we had some concerns about the quality of care this farmer was giving her animals and had the local vet test for CAE. Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis (CAE) is a virus that affects goats in multiple ways. Most often characterized by big knees, the virus also does irreparable damage to the lungs as well and affects the immune system leaving the goat defenseless against most common ailments. CAE is the bane of many goat producers and much emphasis is placed on raising "CAE free" goats.

The tests came back positive for Lilly and negative on Zoe. None of the local breeders will allow their bucks to visit CAE positive goats so we made the decision to put Lilly down. We then purchased Surely, a CAE free and CAE tested goat from a well known breeder. Surely is currently three years old just completing her second year of being milked. We purchased her from Kim Puzio of My-Enchanted-Acres Dairy Goats in Snohomish Washington in the spring of 2008.

Their goal in breading is to "create a combination that produces a style of strong, powerful, elegant animals who pulls it all together in the milk parlor and show arena."

We don't show our goats but understand how important it is to start with the highest quality stock. Surely produced 5 quarts of milk each day at her peak this last year - that being once we weaned her kid this last spring. She is long legged and the current leader of the herd. Very intelligent and affectionate, she is truly our favorite. Surely was bred to Monty My-Enchanted-Acres last fall and we expect her to kid on the 11th of February.

Zoe is still with us.  She is pure bred but not registered.  The first year we had her, her milk production was about ½ gallon per day.  We bred her that fall and kept her doe kid, Nettle.  Zoe is an ok milk producer, giving us 3 quarts per day.  Her teats are huge and she is so easy to milk, but Pam and I are planning on selling her and Nettle this fall if we get a girl kid from Surely and Alure.  Nettle was bred for the first time this last fall and will birth this spring.

Winter on Whidbey

January is set to go down on the books as the warmest on record. The average temperature last year for the month of January was about 38 degrees F., this year we are averaging about 48 F. Right now it's 34 F out at 5:30 am. Should have a little frost this morning.

This last December was real cold for us, with 10 days in the teens and snow on the ground the complete time. We harvested lettuce and other hardy greens right up to Christmas but even with row covers everything turned to mush, with the exception of lettuce growing in our heated "cold frames".

I built the cold frames out of scrap lumber and put them on some old saw horses I had left over from building our house. The idea was to get them up off the ground to make it easier on my back and also keep slugs out of our new plants. I used a ridged plastic for the light and made the box large enough to hold 8 flats of 4" pots. We have two setups located near the barn but away from our animals. In one of the cold frames we have heating pads, which keep the roots warm in the spring. The mats use very little electricity (I have not noticed a difference in our electric bill with or without the mats connected) but have kept things alive even when we drop into the teens. We currently have one heated cold frame (hot frame) planted in lettuce and spinach growing in 1 gallon pots.

In the picture here you will see some sweet and hot peppers growing in one gallon pots. They are plants I never got around to planting and they did very well growing in this warm area.

We use the cold frames throughout the growing season. The first advantage of starting vegetables in flats is a substantial savings of water used. A flat of seedlings raised until transplanting size need only ½ gallon per day – usually enough to plant 100 sq feet of garden vs. about 10 to 20 gallons per day for direct seeded plants. The water savings in one month (compared with direct sowing of seeds in the growing area) is about 285 to 585 gallons per 100 sq feet of growing space. Secondly, full sized transplants are available to be planted as soon as the space is available, keeping the growing beds more productive. Thirdly, direct seeded areas are often subject to bird and rodent damage. The only direct seeding we do is a spring and fall crop of micro greens and carrots. All other vegetables and fruits are started in flats, including corn, sweet peas and pole beans.

We received our shipment of seeds last week and I started a flat of onions. For the past two years we have used High Mowing Organic Seeds out of Vermont. I'm not crazy about using a non-local seed company but they are 100% organic (very important to us) and we loved the quality of their seeds. Their prices are high but if you pre-pay before the end of the year you receive a 10% discount.

We use two or three onions a week so I try to grow enough for a year supply. In the past years we have used Copra for our yellow storage onions. This year we are using Cortland, which is considered an improvement over the Copra (and developed by the same folks as Copra). The Copra grew to a medium size onion, very dense and stored very well.

For a red onion we used Red Baron last year. I think we might have planted them a little too close as we had mixed results as to their size. They have kept very well so far. I also started a package of evergreen hardy non-bulbing scallion-like bunching onion. It's fun to experiment. I planted the onion seeds in 4 inch pots - many seeds to a pot - and when they get about 5 inches tall I'll cut them back to 1 inch, which will increase the girth.

This year we will again grow Walla Walla Sweets. I start them in July and put them in the ground in the fall. They are very cold hardy and this will give them a fast start come spring. We'll harvest them early summer. The Walla Walla is a large sweet onion with a very white flesh, great fresh but not a keeper.