stuff’s growing…

A few months ago someone posted a blog article about a goat dairy in Colorado who changed two big things about they way they ran their dairy. The first was transitioning from their full sized breeds (mostly Saanens with a few Toggenburgs) to the mini diary breeds (any full sized diary doe crossed with a Nigerian Dwarf buck). Theoretically, all the butterfat and protein and most of the quantity for a bit less feed. Secondly, they started giving their goats sprouted grain when they were being milked instead of a standard dry grain mix. The owners of the diary could not say enough about how the sprouted grain improved the health of their herd and the quality of the milk. So my thought was…Pssh, I can do that!

As you can see on my crazy cluttered counter…I have three bucket sets going all the time. At night I have 4 because there is a new batch soaking, but I’ll explain that in a minute. The inner bucket has holes drilled into the sides and the bottom so that I can fill the bucket with cold water and then drain it in the sink. On good days I rinse them three times a day and keep a wet paper towel on top to prevent them from drying out. Busy days I do it in the morning and at night. So every morning the Farmer man takes the oldest bucket and feeds it to goats while they get milked, and if there is extra it goes to chickens. I really need to start a dedicated bunch that would be just for the chickens, especially with the new chicks, but more on them later. In the evening I fill up a new bucket with the grains and then cold water and just let it soak over night. Then it goes into the rotation. We do three days because the article mentioned that longer than 3 days and the corn starts to get really funky.  They were so right. It’s like…dude…fuuunkeeeey.

 

I’m using a mix of corn, barley, black oil sunflower seeds, and two different kinds of wheat (red hard and white). Here is the morning after it has been soaking, and the day it goes out to goats. Some of them didn’t care for it at first, but this was really interesting. We have one doe with very poor body condition and her coat has always been terrible. When we went on vacation she got sick and we thought she was going to die. She gobbled this stuff up from day one, even when she wouldn’t touch hay. I wish I had a before and after picture set because it has been an amazing transformation for her.  Our other ladies have come around and now they all love it. Quality and quantity of the milk are both up and our girls are happy.

Other things that are growing besides sprouts on my counter:

More babies born on Sunday. The black one (Blaze) is a buckling and was the bigger of the two. The tan one (Princess Snowflake Light) is a doeling, of course. Two guesses as to which of my human kids named which goat, ha! The heat has been trying to do them in which is why I’ve been bringing them in the house during the day. At night they go back with mom. Bathtubs are great goat pens and it doesn’t matter at all when they drool all the milk and Pedialite all over the place.  That is…when Layna hasn’t walked in and stolen the Pedialite bottle and drunk it all gone because I had both hands busy feeding Snowflake milk! Goat spit is clean, right?

18 new baby chicks to replenish the flock. Ten Welsummer hens and two Welsummer roosters. The other six are Silver Spangled Hamburgs. Both breeds are supposed to be very friendly, good layers, and very heat tolerant. I’m just excited to have eggs again and baby chicks to chirp at me all day in the mean time.

And last…but definitely my favorite of the baby growing things around here. My Corra is going to be 10 months old tomorrow! That’s not allowed! Actually, I don’t mind it so much. I mean I do because it is going fast, but I’m trying hard to enjoy every second of every stage she is in, so I truly don’t have any regrets as she grows older. She is delightful and I’m so glad Someone knew much better than I did that I needed her desperately, even if I thought I wanted a boy.

Comfrey!

I first heard about Comfrey from this blogger. I thought, “huh, that’s kind of cool” but I filed it away somewhere in my brain under “Cool stuff that probably will never apply to me.” Raising live stock, especially rabbits and goats was in that file at one point. Then it popped up again from checking out this guys site  when I was on my mad bunny researching kick. I emailed him back in February about buying some since our desert growing season was just kicking off. He very politely reminded me that as he lives in  Maine, his Comfrey beds were under 2-3 feet of snow. Right! I forget how the majority of the country does winter. I kept in touch and did some more research on this crazy cool plant, and I’m happy to report that I now am the proud owner of four Comfrey plants, that are happily planted and doing their thing. Which is what, you ask? Why get so excited about a plant? So glad you let me assume that you care enough to listen to me babble! [Babble commencing in 5…4…3…2…1…]

So there was a guy named Lawrence Hills who became enamored of this ancient healing plant and became the foremost expert on it. He developed 21 different strains. From what I can glean from the internets, Bocking #4 and Bocking #14 are some of the more common ones cultivated today. #4 is preferred for use as animal fodder because it is less bitter (ergo the animals will actually eat it) and #14 is preferred by gardeners because it is naturally sterile (but not to worry…you can propagate by root cuttings) so won’t invade and conquer your garden in a few weeks. We have #14. There are texts outlining its use farther back than the Middle Ages, and its name “Knitbone” is very appropriate as it is remarkable at healing broken bones, burns, cuts, etc. Basically anything in which the body needs to regenerate new cells quickly. I will save you my geeky enthusiasm for the science behind that, so on we go to why my inner gardener is squealing with joy right now. Comfrey has a unique ability to leech all sorts of good stuff from the soil. Nitrogen especially. So it grows crazy fast, straight up with huge leaves that it has pumped full of all the good stuff it took from the soil. Here’s the magical part. Those leaves are not very fibrous, meaning they break down quickly. You can take the leaves and lay them in your garden around your plants and as the leaves break down they give all the lovely nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to the surrounding plants in an easily accessible form. Liquid fertilizer is also really easy to make with Comfrey if that’s what floats your gardening boat. Pile a tons of leaves into a bucket and smoosh down with a brick. They will decompose into a black sludge that you then dilute 15-20:1 water to sludge (it’s potent stuff) and then water your plants. No more Miracle Grow for me! I’m stoked to have found a more efficient conversion vehicle for all the poop unprocessed nitrogen laying around my yard. Hopefully the bunnies will love it, as others have had excellent success using this for animal fodder. I’m pretty sure the chickens will love it and if the goats do too…well that’s just gravy.

  

  

You can’t see them, but they are there…I’m excited to post more pictures in a few weeks of the towering tree creatures that they should be.

  

Growing things that also make me smile. First sunflower and barley seeds that are sprouting to be green manure.

 

 

When it rains…

It does indeed pour. After much anticipation we had our first Kinder kids born. Kinders are a fantastic dual purpose goat breed that are gaining in popularity because they are great milkers (higher quantity but still retain the quality of the Nigerian Dwarf milk) and have a much better dress out ratio than a strictly diary goat. This is the breed we wanted when we got started in goats but the nearest breeders are a 14 hour drive, round trip (although I have a promising lead to one closer). When we started we were less crazy than we are now, so we went with closer breeders. But back in September we brought home two sweet registered Kinder girls who had been bred to registered bucks, which meant if all went accordingly to plan we would have purebred kinder babies. At first we thought the breedings didn’t take, because we tried pregnancy tests which came out negative. Happily (never so glad to be wrong) the breeding did take and our girls did great.

Before I show you pictures that are melt-you-to-a-puddle-cute, a word on gender. Baby girl goats (doelings) are considered more valuable because they can do more (milk, make more goaties, not so stinky/aggressive/large). Baby boy goats (bucklings/wethers) are good for making more goats (bucklings), an important job they do once or twice a year, or companions/pets (wethers). We have had 12 kids born since we started this adventure an 10 have been boys, including all four Kinder kids. This probably doesn’t mean much to any non-goat folk reading this, but it’s enough to make me change our water because seriously there must be something in it. So now we are in a conundrum about which of the boys to keep (if any) and which to sell.

ChaCha kidded first and is a first time mama. She did so well I didn’t even realize she had had her boys until, once again, I look out the window and there are babies goaties.

  

Their names are Dori (silver and white one) and Nori (brown). Our naming convention is the dwarves from the Hobbit and Yes, we are anxiously awaiting an extra fat boy that we can name Bombur. Nori has wattles, which I think are adorable and he seems to have the best conformation. We will know better in a few weeks, but Dori’s coloring is beautiful. They are both doing well and are out with the rest of the big goats.

When Josie kidded, it was a whole different story. We were all out in the yard working on stuff (Well, I was in the house planting seeds) and suddenly Garyn starts yelling that she was having her babies! So I rush out and sure enough there was a baby goat head sticking right on out. Ideally, a kid comes out front hooves first, like they are diving. Head first is ok, but has a greater chance of complication. I got cleaned up in case I had to go looking for some hooves. Honestly I wasn’t sure what to do, because the baby wasn’t going anywhere. I figured I should start by pulling and if that didn’t work I’d go looking for a hoof. Luckily he came out easily and his brother did the same thing…head first but smooth sailing with a little bit of traction.

My human kids got to watch the whole thing and now Naomi’s game of choice is having her My Little Pony figures “born babies.” Weird and totally awesome all at the same time.

 

  

Josie is a great mother and Fili and Kili are growing nicely. They get to go out with everyone on Saturday. All the kids have been disbudded (I’d love to know what our neighbors thought of that noise) and we are excited to start milking the does. Cheese and yogurt here I come!

P.S. http://comfyposy.com/2014/03/08/new-favorite/ a post on how spring is treating us here on the farm!

So much happening!

Here is what happened today on the second type of garden we are experimenting with:

http://comfyposy.com/2014/01/20/they-have-returned/

Planting will happen the middle of February and we have to plant that early to beat the stupid heat that attacks us. So don’t worry Montana people…we get our comeuppance in July.

This is what is going on with the first dirt garden:

  

A whole lot of nothing. Turns out plants need sun to grow! Shocker, right? well when I positioned the garden I didn’t account for the sun moving in the winter and so this garden will be brilliant in about 2 months. As a winter garden, yeah, not so much. But it’s ok we have the little onion that could, making a valiant attempt at life and that makes me happy.

Soon we will be building another aquaponics system, using the FriendlyAquaponics 128 square foot layout. It will be a raft system to bypass our growing media problem of the first system. Our goal is to have it built and stocked (with fish and plants by the middle of March).

In other news: we are processing our first litter of rabbit kits on Saturday so a post chronicling that…um…adventure? will be coming soon. Also, I’m making soap (yay!) and possibly a shampoo replacement bar is in my future. Goat girls are due to kid the end of February-early March (well one is due in April), so when we go from our current 3 cups of milk per day to 1 gallon per day we are really going to buckle down and learn cheeses. I will make a hard cheese that my kids will eat if it kills me! Chickens continue to lay eggs and make me laugh so they are awesome and my husband reminded me that I really don’t want to raise turkeys in the spring…well at least not this year.

goat pregnancy test

I’d like to give you your Saturday night laugh at my expense. You’re welcome. The original plan was to keep Wishes. So we put her in with our buck, Buffalo, so she could be bred and have babies in the early spring. Then the plan changed to include two new goats of a different breed, so Wishes will be finding a new home. Unfortunately we were not 100% sure if she was pregnant, and that kind of matters to people looking to buy a goat. Since the internet knows everything, I thought I’d check for ways to tell if a goat is pregnant without having to do a blood draw or see a vet. Success! Score one for resourceful cattle ranchers! Ranchers realized that if you mix cow pee with bleach it will foam up if they are pregnant because the progesterone (or something) reacts with the bleach. Goats and cows and sheep are all very similar when it comes to all things baby-ing, so people reported good results with this method. I had bleach, I just needed some goat pee. Turns out Wishes is shy and goats must only need to pee once every 24 hours or so. I rigged up a washed-out bean can on the end of a stick (I’m serious) and hung out in the goat pen for probably 5 hours all together. One night I was calling it a failure and as I opened the gate to come in, she peed. On the ground. But it didn’t seep in so I scooped up the pee and now mud into the can and we got enough that it made the bleach foam. I then bleached my hand and happily moved on with my life vowing to buy tests and learn to draw blood because what I just described is ridiculous…even for me.

  

A company in Canada makes easy to use tests for cows that also work for goats and sheep. When they arrived we got to it. Milk or blood serum can be used (not pee…hallelujah) so all we needed was to draw some blood. Again, for the 8 millionth time in our farm career, it was to the internets!

First you shave a big patch on the neck on either side. I think I might buy my husband new clippers for Christmas, so these can be for the goats and he can have his very own set that isn’t shared.

Then you (or a helper…me in this case because I wanted to watch him a few times before I try it) hold the goat, feel for the jugular vein, insert the needle and draw the blood. Easy, right? Actually once he found where to go it was super easy. Our new Kinder girls were very easy to work with.

  

Some places say the blood will clot and the serum will separate on it’s own. Other places say you need to spin it in a centerfuge. Yeah, we don’t have one of those…but we do have my sons bike! Perfect! Oh and these are my new “farm” jeans thanks to a stupid fence and greedy goats poaching for animal cookies.

 

Lots of spinning later these are our conclusions:

– Totally got mixed messages on wether or not Wishes is pregnant. I think she is.

– We have a lot to learn about working with the blood once it is drawn, but we know we can get blood easily on our own for when we start testing. Yay!

– Spinning it on the bike did nothing to make the serum separate.

– Josie’s blood clotted and separated beautifully, while the other two girls’ didn’t at all…we barely got enough for the test. And no idea what we did differently or if goats are like people in that some cooperate and some don’t.

– According to the test (which might be off because our breeding dates were a bit off) none of the three is pregnant. That is sad because we were hoping that the Kinder girls were bred when we bought them. It may be a good thing though because one of them is really too young to be bred. So in November, Josie will be hanging out in Buffalo’s pen so they can shamelessly get it on when she goes into heat. ChaCha will go in there in December.

–   The mating habits of goats are almost as funny as those of rabbits. Almost.

Disbudding

**** WARNING: Not sure what to say here, but you’ve been warned! ****

It is common knowledge that goats naturally have horns. However, in the modern farm setting, horns tend to cause more problems than they solve and so it is now the norm to remove them. Removing full grown horns from an adult goat would be a horrific experience for everyone involved, thus the practice of disbudding.

Disbudding is the removal of the horn bud from the skull of a baby goat. We thought it was supposed to be done at a few weeks old back when we were total noobs with regards to all things carpine. Nope, that’s why you get scurs (partial horns that grow and can curl back into the goats skull, killing them). Our wether, Dwalin, has scurs because we had him disbudded way to  late. He has knocked them off once, but as he is destined for the freezer, we aren’t too worried about removing them again. Well, we know better now and since we are going to be having a lot of kids in our future farming experience we figured it was time to learn to do it our selves.

A brief run down of the process: you shave the kids forehead, hold a burning iron (think circular branding iron) around the bud, let it burn down to the skull, release baby. We are not the first people to do this so we turned to the internet to learn how to best do it from the experts.

 

If bow ties are cool, then power tools are sexy.

 

The best way to hold the baby goat still so that no one gets hurt when you are using the disbudding iron, which has a tip with a temperature of 3 bazillion degrees, is to build a box. There are lots of different plans online, but Farmer Guy liked this one the best and it will work with both our Nigerian kids and our Kinder kids, when ever they come.

  

We decided to start with the boys, because their horns grow in faster. Thus the need to disbud much earlier. We took them through the process one at a time but I thought I’d just show the pictures for each step together. First up was haircuts!

   

Now there is the actual disbudding with the iron. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to hold their heads (wearing thick leather gloves while Neil did actual burning), and take pictures. I was kicking around the idea of having Garyn take pictures, but quickly decided I didn’t want any human kids near anything that is 3 bazillion degrees. Maybe I’ll figure it out today when we do the girls. The white on the inside of the circles of left boy’s head is bone.

Now to explain some things. This is the most humane thing you can to with regards to horns, unless you have a good reason to let them keep the horns, which we don’t. The kids cried and freaked out way more when they were getting their hair shaved, than when the burning happed. The iron is so hot it cauterized any nerves almost instantly, so really the goats are more angry and scared about being held still in a box than what is happening to their heads. As soon as they were out of the box they were happy as could be. I’m proud of my husband guy, because he was big and brave and did an awesome job on his first go. He was always meant to be a farmer, apparently.

Farm Updates!

I have been lax about keeping this site updated as I blog about our farm on my personal blog. But a massive overhaul is in the works. In the mean time here are some links and info on what we have been up to:

http://comfyposy.com/2013/04/24/circle-of-life-first-part/ We are building a rabbitry. Harlequin and Silver Fox are the breeds we will be starting out with and we should have all our rabbits home and ready to be bred by the end of July at the latest. Once we get up and running, we will usually have bunnies for sale as pets, or dressed rabbits for dinner. More to come as we get them here!

http://comfyposy.com/2013/03/25/big-plans/ As far as chickens go…all 17 of our babies have been moved outside like big girl chickens and are doing great. Being as they are mostly Leghorns with a few Rhode Island Reds thrown in, we will have a huge surge in eggs come September / October. When we add the babies to our “Vets” (they survived two full out dog attacks) and our mutts, we should be sitting at about 17 dozen per week. Holy lot of eggs Batman! If you want to have a weekly dozen (or more) let me know…it’s $20 for 5 weeks worth or it will be $5 per dozen if you buy them singly.

Baby goats are happening! Our best milking doe is on a “date” with a very handsome buck (out at our breeder friends) right now, which means Frosty will be having babies in the fall. We are so excited! Peaches is also there working on getting knocked up as well. The plan is to sell Peaches as a bred doe, keep any does that Frosty throws, and breed Wishes in the fall for her first freshening which would give up babies in the spring as well. I can’t wait, I love baby goats!

Wishes loves the camera!

http://comfyposy.com/2013/04/27/circle-of-life-part-two/ Last but not least…vermicomposting! or for you non-hippie, non-gardening freaks…earth worms! So far so good with our worms, we are going on one week with them in their box and they all seem to be happily…uh…doing worm stuff? and more importantly, no nasty smells are emanating from their box. Yay!

Christmas presents for you

We are now officially ready for Christmas. Early? maybe a bit. But soap takes time and we wouldn’t let a few silly things like Halloween and Thanksgiving deter us from thinking about lovely presents. Our three Nigerian Dwarf Dairy goats are giving us tons of milk and the soap from that milk is just gorgeous. Feel free to search the blog for previous soap posts but the best part is right here:

These are perfect for co-workers, teachers, neighbors, and pretty much anyone on your list (and don’t forget yourself, sets of just mini-bars are only $3). Of course there are other full-sized 4 oz. bars available, and discounts for pre-orders and large orders. Please e-mail for current scents.  I can also ship them anywhere as the weather won’t melt them in transit. And just in case the contact info is fuzzy — Lindsey McGuire (702) 624.9656 darkblueskye@gmail.com

More pictures of options!