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- #4,521
rachels.haven
Herd Master
The 6 does due in January have kidded. Now I have 14 baby goats in my bathroom and I am very tired from all the midnight and 4 am checks in the cold temps and ice and snow. Someday I will have a nice enclosed barn with barn cams again so any standing around I do will be warmer and I will be able to check does from under my covers because of this magical cell phone world we live in. Here are the totals.
Allie: 1 buck, 1 doe
Dot(FF): 1 buck, 1 doe, tried to deliver both at once with buck in reverse so she presented with a doe's nose and front hoof and the buck's hind limbs all trying to come out at once. That was fun.
Summer: 3 bucks
Trinka: 2 bucks, 1 elf ear, 1 gopher
Hera: 2 does, 1 buck
Emmie: 2 does
I've picked out 3-4 bucklings out of my best and favorite does to grow out for a few months to pick a backup for Pete. The rest of the boys are listed on CL as bottle kids/cabrito (sorry boys, but the menfolk want their bathroom back)
The next doe is Dan's awful Noober Galaxy, due February 5th, followed by Tonka and Elsa on the 13th.
I may need to make some tough cuts in the coming months. Allie got severe mastitis on one side during our abrupt dry off after the CAE exposure that almost killed her. I was hopeful treatment had helped because the infected side shrunk down to nothing with the normal side during dry off for months but when she bagged up one side bagged up heavy and hard and it's almost impossible to get milk out of it. Reading as I write this it's pretty obvious she needs to be sent down the road to the processor and that's the most humane option. Crap.
The other tough call is probably my Little Orchard doe Hera. She has always had masses in her udder over her teat canals so i can't machine milk her much, but her udder feels much worse than last year and one of her sides appears to also be a dud and can't be drained much. It could be conjestion, but there's a good chance it's increased mastitis. This cut is particularly hard because I'll probably never get a doe as nice as she is again unless I breed it. And yes, she gave me a buck and three does, so I guess I won't lose her genetics totally, but I still hate it.
The last cull I need to make is a herd cut. I have a 75% lamancha experimental with 25% of her background being alpine and she is a hardhead that always needs a personal invitation to do anything and if anything isn't her idea she digs in her heels and obstructs you and if she can backs up so negative progress is made. This makes milking not enjoyable. This is hard because her only physical flaw is that while we were in Mass I probably over fed her on phosphorus high hay while she was a growing yearling FF and her ankles tried to roll out. She is wide, she is deep, she is long, and she is not too tall and her pedigree is so fancy and gilded with recognizable herd names and very nice proven animals it's OBVIOUS she was intentionally bred and is a quality animal. Her udder is almost perfect to boot-teats close together, perfect size, perfect orifices, perfect attachment, perfect shape, perfect texture, high production. She could do with a little more foreudder extension so it's totally smooth with the body, but she's a living work of art with a bad attitude that makes milking difficult unless it's her idea (and with her bulk she weighs like 300 lbs of butthead). I love looking at her but hate working with her and she throws the dispostion traits in her kids. I also have her american lamancha daughter, and I may sell them both, possibly together because they are both PERFECT pills. I guess I can wait until February and sell the two after the daughter freshens again in case there's anything born I can keep. Or not.
So...culls. Culls make me sad. But we are a hobby farm and not a commercial dairy. While we use the milk and need the milk I do not need these does for milk to make a milk quantity. They are here for enjoyment and the last doe listed does NOT contribute to my zen milking time at all.
That, and we're a one woman freak show, so keeping goats that make me unhappy other than in pictures or are a biohazard to other goats on the milk line or to themselves (since making milk is what they are wired to do yet they can not do healthily) is not something I can afford to do.
Time to stew.
Allie: 1 buck, 1 doe
Dot(FF): 1 buck, 1 doe, tried to deliver both at once with buck in reverse so she presented with a doe's nose and front hoof and the buck's hind limbs all trying to come out at once. That was fun.
Summer: 3 bucks
Trinka: 2 bucks, 1 elf ear, 1 gopher
Hera: 2 does, 1 buck
Emmie: 2 does
I've picked out 3-4 bucklings out of my best and favorite does to grow out for a few months to pick a backup for Pete. The rest of the boys are listed on CL as bottle kids/cabrito (sorry boys, but the menfolk want their bathroom back)
The next doe is Dan's awful Noober Galaxy, due February 5th, followed by Tonka and Elsa on the 13th.
I may need to make some tough cuts in the coming months. Allie got severe mastitis on one side during our abrupt dry off after the CAE exposure that almost killed her. I was hopeful treatment had helped because the infected side shrunk down to nothing with the normal side during dry off for months but when she bagged up one side bagged up heavy and hard and it's almost impossible to get milk out of it. Reading as I write this it's pretty obvious she needs to be sent down the road to the processor and that's the most humane option. Crap.
The other tough call is probably my Little Orchard doe Hera. She has always had masses in her udder over her teat canals so i can't machine milk her much, but her udder feels much worse than last year and one of her sides appears to also be a dud and can't be drained much. It could be conjestion, but there's a good chance it's increased mastitis. This cut is particularly hard because I'll probably never get a doe as nice as she is again unless I breed it. And yes, she gave me a buck and three does, so I guess I won't lose her genetics totally, but I still hate it.
The last cull I need to make is a herd cut. I have a 75% lamancha experimental with 25% of her background being alpine and she is a hardhead that always needs a personal invitation to do anything and if anything isn't her idea she digs in her heels and obstructs you and if she can backs up so negative progress is made. This makes milking not enjoyable. This is hard because her only physical flaw is that while we were in Mass I probably over fed her on phosphorus high hay while she was a growing yearling FF and her ankles tried to roll out. She is wide, she is deep, she is long, and she is not too tall and her pedigree is so fancy and gilded with recognizable herd names and very nice proven animals it's OBVIOUS she was intentionally bred and is a quality animal. Her udder is almost perfect to boot-teats close together, perfect size, perfect orifices, perfect attachment, perfect shape, perfect texture, high production. She could do with a little more foreudder extension so it's totally smooth with the body, but she's a living work of art with a bad attitude that makes milking difficult unless it's her idea (and with her bulk she weighs like 300 lbs of butthead). I love looking at her but hate working with her and she throws the dispostion traits in her kids. I also have her american lamancha daughter, and I may sell them both, possibly together because they are both PERFECT pills. I guess I can wait until February and sell the two after the daughter freshens again in case there's anything born I can keep. Or not.
So...culls. Culls make me sad. But we are a hobby farm and not a commercial dairy. While we use the milk and need the milk I do not need these does for milk to make a milk quantity. They are here for enjoyment and the last doe listed does NOT contribute to my zen milking time at all.
That, and we're a one woman freak show, so keeping goats that make me unhappy other than in pictures or are a biohazard to other goats on the milk line or to themselves (since making milk is what they are wired to do yet they can not do healthily) is not something I can afford to do.
Time to stew.
