rachels.haven's Journal

[Ridgetop]

We're at 9 weeks and some of the Lamanchas are either forgetting how to suck a bottle or their pallets are too big for the gray caprine nippies and they move on to trouble making after 12 oz. I'd like to get them to 50 lbs before weaning and the ND to 20. Right now the average lamancha weight is about 35 lbs with one at 40 and the ND are 14-17 so my goals may not happen with the Lamanchas. They always got full before 20 oz and only wanted 3 bottles/day...but they eat a lot of grain and hay. I may have to settle for weaning them but keeping them in a stall on free choice grain and hay until they hit that point if the bottles become a thing of the past.

I used to only feed 1 quart at a feedig to each (standard size) dairy goat plus an extra quart for the pail. By 9 weeks you can drop to 1 quart each am and pm. The goal is to get them eating more foughage and essmikl By 3 months they should be completely weaned off. The goal in dary s the mik for YOU not for the goat kids. With diary goats the weaning weight is not important as long as they are in good condition and are eating planty of hay. We didn't even grain ur replacement does since they need to concentrate on building a larger rumen and grain feeding diminishes that. We only grained for the last few weeks of pregnancy, and during milking. 1 pound grain for 1 pound milk. I used bulk dairy cattle grain - cheaper than goat grain and more copper.

I bought some billboard tarps to cover the garden over the winter or if we don't get it all planted.

Another thing you can do once the ground is tilled is to dig a trench and start throwing all your kitchen vegetable/fruit garbage in it along with all garden trimmings, weeds, etc. Put a layer of dirt back over the top. It makes a good compost pile right in the garden where you need it. Cover it with the cleanings from the goat pens. Come spring you just till the entire compost pile back into the garden dirt.

 

[fuzzi]

Only if they are the "snake hugger" kind. Out here we have the don't kill the rattlers, they are good folks. GRRRR - They say "relocate them" yeah right (stay the H away from my ranch). See it all the time on the neighborhood or fb pages. Makes me sooo mad. Then I post -- 'want to pay that $8,000 vet bill from last year?' and that the rattler vaccine only buys you time and not an immunity! They quiet a bit, and then start their save a snake chant all over again. We quietly dispatch/permanently relocate. And yes, I do wish those charmers of snakes get a taste of a good bite. There is no other way they will learn.

SSS

Shoot
Shovel
Shut up

 

[rachels.haven]

I used to only feed 1 quart at a feedig to each (standard size) dairy goat plus an extra quart for the pail. By 9 weeks you can drop to 1 quart each am and pm. The goal is to get them eating more foughage and essmikl By 3 months they should be completely weaned off. The goal in dary s the mik for YOU not for the goat kids. With diary goats the weaning weight is not important as long as they are in good condition and are eating planty of hay. We didn't even grain ur replacement does since they need to concentrate on building a larger rumen and grain feeding diminishes that. We only grained for the last few weeks of pregnancy, and during milking. 1 pound grain for 1 pound milk. I used bulk dairy cattle grain - cheaper than goat grain and more copper.

This batch threw me for a loop and wouldn't take more than 16 oz max at a time so I'm going for weight rather than time. Normally we'd do closer to the above. My guess is that it has something to due with bringing in a novel high end meat goat creep feed right from the start. The kids got right on creep from the first week. And then they started disappearing the hay super fast. I've never seen that before. Even the late born mini kid was in the grain bucket at a few days old, copying the rest. Currently we're down to 2x16 oz bottles/day for the standards, half that for the ND (the mini kid that still hasn't sold still gets lunch). And they are growing fairly well.

We have just a little longer left. Within the next 3 weeks we will need to go down to one bottle, the grain will get cut at the end, and I'll need to introduce alfalfa hay because they need to be out with the herd during fly season and no big goatie going to let babies have grain.

The added temporary bonus to all the milk consumption is that we're still dragging from the flu, so I don't want get into cheese mode yet and we're still getting about 2-4 gallons/day extra milk that I don't know what to do with and is usually getting dumped. At this point we could probably add a bottle calf and still have enough in the kitchen and cheese. (Dan would require it be a dairy heifer, even hypothetically.)

 

[rachels.haven]

Time to plant my trees and bushes. But first I think I'm going to home depot to gather some soil amendments...and maybe a few more bushes.
Next week is chick week.

 

[rachels.haven]

03/31/25 test came in. I've decided that Emmi has a blown enough udder** and high SCC (cut it off because I'm working on seeing if it can be resolved). I'll be sending in culture samples and see if anything comes up because it's shipping to the Delmarva + something like $4/sample. Zelda (Snooter), one of my bought in mini Saanens that did leak a bit pre-fresh is elevated too this round, but only half of what Emmi is. Previous test Sandra was elevated, but now she's one of the lowest so I may wait to see what Zelda does next time before culturing her.

*Sandra (FF) and Bri are ND,
Lumi, Zelda and Hope are FF minis,
and Emmi, Summer, and Dot are standards.
Milk amount is in pounds. There are about 8 pounds to a gallon.

**Emmi is done being bred and will be permanently dry when she's dry this time if I have anything to say about it which shouldn't be too hard because she doesn't tend to be very interested in the bucks even when synced and in heat.

 

[rachels.haven]

LOONG story alert.
Last night was full of drama.
All day long it was foggy and misty and raining on and off. Now is the time so I over seeded the pasture on the mower with a lawn spreader with a four year old on my lap. The dogs love following the mower back and forth (afterward Shaun somehow whipped both Cookies and even somber Riker into a crazy play frenzy with him-a first). Then I opened both pastures for the goats to nick the grass as low as possible before germination happens. Because of all that, Riker found a nest of baby bunnies. Baby bunnies are helpless creatures, so he decided to do what he does with helpless creatures and put them in the barn shelter the goats use...and remove all the goats and keep them out so he could snuggle and lick and guard his baby bunnies unmolested. However Cookies had nothing (i've watched this play out between them before). Something to guard and let others covet made Riker powerful and she wanted something too. Riker could not be allowed to nurse his litter of bunny puppies unmolested. She is the on and off again boss now, after all. So Cookies took one of his bunny puppies. And she was cleaning it too rough making it squeak and cry. To Riker this was unacceptable so he started using his LOUD, "help, there's something wrong" bark to call me and tell on Cookies and her taking and abuse of HIS bunny puppy. While the goats screamed outside their shelter in the rain.
At this point it was about 8:30 pm so i was feeding pm bottles in the barn, getting ready to milk. I figured the does were loud because they wanted milked now so they could go to bed and they often get extra loud before it rains and it was raining so that was all it was.

Well, then Riker started going off and I came out and heard squeaking coming from Cookies, who was licking and licking something in the rain over by an empty hay feeder. So i came to take whatever little animal she was torturing to death this time away. Of course she didn't want to give it to me, so she got her first lesson on, no you can not run from the boss lady. She may have found her 100+ lbs self in the path of the my closest potential projectile and a croc as she tried to carry her crying bunny away...which shocked her, and she dropped the rabbit which i took and put into an empty pasture and Cookies ran away to go hide in the bunny producing pasture (sure, "hide").

So i left the pen and went back to go feed the remaining bottles, except Riker was still not letting the goats in their shelter. And he was crouching funny and grinning like an idiot because of course he had another bunny he was trying to nurse. So i "sh-shh"ed him away until he gave up and submitted (idk why but he's terrified of that noise) and I grabbed the bunny. Unfortunately it looks like in the Cookie commotion he accidentally stepped on the bunny. It had blood coming out of its respiratory tract and was in the process of suffocating. Great dane sized lgd mutts do not make good bunny parents. Cookies was rounded up and the ungrazed pasture closed off again. That was a depressing end to the bunny party but at least they weren't opossums this time.

So the soggy does were likely really hungry because the round bale feeder was in the pasture barn shelter with Riker and they were already wet because they'd been kept outside so what do they have to lose? Plus i was using my home made milker that's mounted to the wall in a side room and I was milking behind a closed door so they could hear me but weren't sure where I was and what their routine was anymore. It's loud, but I didn't want to roll my quieter capralite milker through the rain(Also the home made milker has the pulsation set a bit higher so it milks them FAST so we did not take the normal amount of time with everyone in their places doing their things). So when i went to milk they were not content to stay in the barn and wait their turns and chew off the hay i stored there. No, Emmi went running around the barn, lowing in her ultra deep voice (emmi is BIG) and tried to get in the barn window. Emmi is the jr herd queen. She is also normally milked last even though she is "special" but this was too much for her. So a bunch of does followed her and thought this was a great idea and started browsing in the dark. She wound up frantic by buck pen and the back barn door which was closed because of rain. The other does eventually went back in to eat alfalfa and she needed to be found and rescued and I figured that was that. All the does were back in the big barn except for her queen Summer who insisted on going back to the pen barn and being let inside the fence. Well, because Summer went out into the night, a few of the does decided alfalfa hay was not good enough and a select few decided that even lush grass and pine bows that they were previously grazing was also not good enough for them. So that select few left the fence and went to the semi lit front yard and while I was hand milking high scc, stressed out Emmi, they began eating the pieces of the large nandina bushes I took down last month, which are deadly toxic in all parts. Since I failed at getting through to DH to take them to the free dump site in one of the trucks I'd been trying to hire a junk hauler to take them off but failed at that too they were still there (and I hadn't even removed the azaleas!). So Dot, who is a small bodied doe that is putting it in the pail and always starving and eating but still rail thin and the three mini Saanens, who are always pigs, competitively ate dry, berry loaded Nandina for a good 5-10 minutes, until I put Emmi, who was still feeling fragile, clingy, and upset, in the pen and I looked over and saw my black and white ND doe who was glowing in our front yard light trying to work up the nerve to go through the gate to join the pigs filling their faces up with cyanide glycosides because every part of the bush will kill a goat.
So I snagged the ND's that hadn't had any. Then Dot. Then the stupid, suicidal mini Saanens who had undoubtedly already eaten the most for the body size and were likely a lost cause. And then I cleaned up and went to bed thinking they'd all be dead by morning (nandina is so toxic it kills birds). I didn't bother with the charcoal paste because I only have enough for one goat, not 4 and it's VERY old. I'm not even sure it would come out of the tube.

So this morning everyone is still alive. Dot looks thin like she had a sick stomach and hasn't eaten for a while, or like she's gotten behind on hay processing. The mini Saanens still look fat because they are fat. Everyone is acting normal. I think I'm going to start dry lotting them on my bought in alfalfa when the rain lets up so the pasture seeding can grow in and also buy like 10 tubes of charcoal paste because I realize now I don't have enough to treat a group if they get out and do that. And I'm going to continue cursing the barn layout and whoever planted azaleas and nandina by the house on a "horse farm", and where I'm stuck milking (milk in a previously unventilated, insulated tack room with weird mold issues, pick a stall, but all need redone so they can be level and cleanable, or milk outside in the elements). The big barn is set up more like a horse garage as if horses were cars to be taken out on the weekends, not living beings that pee and poo and need biologically appropriate mental stimulation (I now know horses are more destructive than goats. They literally EAT wood walls and posts, drool concrete, and somehow get poo stains head height.). The goats live in a big shelter barn I can't milk in. And the whole everything needs work.

But I guess at least nobody is dead yet and I don't think they will be. I think supposedly at least the berries Nandina lose toxicity as they stand for months so by April they're near a low point and the leaves were dried and branches probably mostly dried. I think usually cyanide evaporates so maybe everyone will live and I won't have to drive any remains to the local crematorium today.

Also, my dogs are potatoes.

So I guess the moral is don't seed the pasture and then let Riker out in it. He really wishes he were a brood bi7ch with oodles of bunny puppies all around and will find some and then all other priorities will be out the window.

Still raining. Alfalfa was doubled today. Dry lot fencing will go up when the rain stops.

 

[SageHill]

Phew - glad everyone is ok so far - that should be a good sign. Too funny about the bunnies though!

 

[Baymule]

Bunny puppies! Hah hah haw!!
Glad none of your goats poisoned themselves despite their best efforts.

 

[murphysranch]

OH MY GOSH. OH MY GOSH!!! That was quite the ordeal!!

When will husbands learn???

 

[farmerjan]

OH MY GOSH. OH MY GOSH!!! That was quite the ordeal!!

When will husbands learn???

Never, unless it directly affects something they personally treasure...