not again...this time it looks like LICE! UPDATE AND ?

[whetzelmomma]

The Henry Milker would also eliminate hair and bugs in your milk.

 

[GrowURown]

Just FYI....a little update the dust has worked, the goats little "creepy crawly friends" are now seemngily all gone (though we do plan to retreat in a few more days like the canister says) and THANK YOU for the cheesecloth idea! That has stopped all junk from falling in the milk! That was an ingenious idea! Except for when I brought my milk in the house, set the cheesecloth in the sink, turned my back for a second and caught the cat practically ROLLING on it in goat milk heaven! You didn't warn me to watch where it set things when I came inside! But now I think we've got this thing mostly figured out for a minute

 

[Livinwright Farm]

Just FYI....a little update the dust has worked, the goats little "creepy crawly friends" are now seemngily all gone (though we do plan to retreat in a few more days like the canister says) and THANK YOU for the cheesecloth idea! That has stopped all junk from falling in the milk! That was an ingenious idea! Except for when I brought my milk in the house, set the cheesecloth in the sink, turned my back for a second and caught the cat practically ROLLING on it in goat milk heaven! You didn't warn me to watch where it set things when I came inside! But now I think we've got this thing mostly figured out for a minute

Oh goodness!! Good thing that we love our cats, eh?

I will add that I am STILL not seeing a re-occurence of lice on my herd and I dusted them once back in mid-December...

 

[damummis]

I so feel your itchies. I just came in from the barn, my goats have bugs. They look like little grains of rice. I think the sheep have them too.

Thanks for all the info.

 

[babsbag]

Oh goodness!! Good thing that we love our cats, eh?

Yes I do love my cats, and they never cease to amuse me. At least it is amusing now.
I was making goats milk soap a few weeks ago and had it all nicely poured into a nice new mold that is about 12"x12" square. I was going to move it off the kitchen counter a little later that night but just threw a towel over it so no bad, nosey kitties would get burned from the lye it they got curious.

About an hour later I go back in the kitchen and one kitty had found a new, nice, soft, WARM spot to sleep...right in the middle of the soap. It had already started to get hard so it had a big indent in the middle of it and high spots on the side. Into the remelting pot it went

Good thing for her I put the towel over it, silly kittie. Yes, it is a good thing we love our cats. Now my soap goes straight into the spare bedroom to cure.

Glad the cheesecloth worked out. I actually use it when I extract honey so I figured it would be good for goat milk too. Something else you might try is the nylon paint strainers that they sell at Lowe's. They are made to stretch over a 5 gallon bucket, might be easier to keep in place on the milking bucket.

 

[getchasome]

First can I say how incredibly thankful I am that I found this forum? There is such a wealth of knowledge here that, as the OP mentioned, isn't covered in the books!

While I was bottle feeding the babies earlier I was rubbing Heinzs head and noticed little flakies, so I started looking closer and the flakies were rice shaped and around the base of her horns and the top of her head ... after feeding I was sitting out with them just hanging out and noticed that she kept biting her side, so I checked her and found the same rice shaped things ... so grossed out!!

I'm going to get DE in the morning. As soon as I finished checking her, I cleaned out all the straw from their house and really raked their inner yard where their house is ... I've felt like there are bugs crawling on me since then ... I even came in and showered

A question - our duck shares the yard with the goats and our chickens side wall is the back wall of the inner goat yard (its chicken wire) ... the goats house is about 4 ft from this shared chicken wire wall ... do I need to dust the duck & the chickens since they are basically sharing space?

 

[Our7Wonders]

They're supposedly species specific, however, dusting the other areas is a good idea. I dust my coop, nesting boxes, and their main dust bath area on a regular basis. If I find any birds with issues we hold the hen upside down and work the DE in between all her feathers.

 

[getchasome]

I found garden grade DE today ... the wind here is really really fierce right now, so I'm planning on dusting in the morning