Samssimonsays: Blazing Acres journal

[samssimonsays]

The rain has had everyone off their game here lately.... As I'm sure it has everywhere.
The girls gave their ultimate low in milk this morning and I got nervous.... Scarlet in left. May on right.

Then tonight's reassured me that it is going to be ok. May on left. Scarlet on right.

Total for the day... Not bad. Not bad at all.

 

[TAH]

Way to go girls.

 

[Hens and Roos]

our does are off too, being hot/humid seems to be goofing them up!

 

[samssimonsays]

our does are off too, being hot/humid seems to be goofing them up!

I feel for ya. This weather has been wonky everywhere...

 

[samssimonsays]

Way to go girls.

THANKS! I got pretty close to what they gave me last night this morning as well so if all goes well tonight I should have gotten 3/4 of a gallon in a day.

 

[samssimonsays]

Scarlet: 13 Weeks First Freshening
Full Side...............Full................Milked out

May: 8 Weeks First Freshening
Full.....................Full side...........Milked out

 

[Goat Whisperer]

Looking good

Question, are you sure they are all the way milked out? Sometimes it can take a minute for more milk to be let down. The teats will be flat as paper when they are milked out. The udder itself depends, sometimes it milks out like a glove other times it still has some flesh.

If you can, massage the does udder and let her walk for a minute and put her back up on the stand and see what you can get.

 

[samssimonsays]

@Goat Whisperer So far Scarlet, the Nubian, has nothing more in there when I am done. I usually give her a minute but that is how she looks all the time even when I would milk her and give her back to the buckling, it never changed after he would try his hand at frantically nursing so I assumed that was just her udder. As for May, the alpine, I am not 100% but I milk until it is only dribbles that come out if that. I usually will give them a break and go feed the others then come back and attempt to give it one last try with nothing more in there. I am too new to know for sure but I don't just milk the teat, I do squeeze the udder up as far as I can and work it down by the very end? I watched others do it and was walked through it once. Scarlet is still getting used to not going back to her buckling and he still screams for her but she hasn't been holding back on me like in the past. Before he would start to scream and it was like a faucet, she would stop eating, lift her head and it instantly turned off. Now she just blows in my ear and goes back to eating until I am finished.

 

[samssimonsays]

Well, I have been away for a few days...

I made 2 types of Cheese (hard and farmers), caramel and fudge on Thursday. The cheese all turned out great according to those who like cheese (I say that because I just don't like the texture of cheese so it is hard for me to know... ). The fudge didn't set up so I put it in jars and YUM! It is amazing and will be on ice cream in the near future for sure! The caramels though.... OMG they are amazing. Just. YUM!

Then Friday I started watching a farm for a gal in town here. She has 19 milking goats alone.... That doesn't include the yearlings, kids, meat goats and bucks.... WOWZER! Saturday I had chores there morning and night along with my own chores and a rabbit show all day. Sunday morning I had her chores and father's day. Then came the storms.... Tornado hit way too close for comfort. less than 6 miles away. Funnel cloud went over us. We have 4 funnel clouds in the vicinity.... Hail the size of softballs. Predicted some the size of grapefruit. We were very lucky. No damage, no loss of trees, nothing. They were predicting damaging winds but not multiple funnel clouds. The goats had been nestled up cozy and dry in the barn and rabbits got rounded up and put in as well. we did, however, lose one of the rabbits in the storm. We don't get storms like this often. But I got the dogs down in the basement and we rode them out. We were very lucky. No one was injured in the storms. Some major damage with power lines down, trees down, a garage, three barns and part of a roof destroyed but no human losses.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Oh wow - so glad you came through safely! Sorry about the loss of the rabbit.