A Jersey Cow To The Rescue!

Jersey cow milk is a beautiful golden-ivory shade!

Some friends have a Jersey cow that just gave birth.  The cow, apparently, is producing an amazing amount of milk.  So, we were able to acquire some to help supplement our not-nearly-enough goats milk supply for our baby goats. We prefer raw, fresh milk; we believe pasteurization destroys some of the nutrition of milk.  Of course, when I brought it home I had to try it and it is gorgeous!  It's a yellow cream colour, much more golden than goats milk.  It's rich and buttery and thick.

So as not to upset any little tummies, I started by just adding a splash, then over the course of a week upped the ratio until the cows milk was about a third of the bottle for each kid.  As the kids are already on to a small portion of grain and have hay to nibble, the over-all quantity of milk they are getting is being reduced a bit each week.  The transition was not a problem (animal owners have to get used to examining poop: it just comes with the territory).  So, our baby goats are growing big and strong with every passing day and 'the milk crisis' is lessening.  Mind you me, there is only a couple of bags of frozen goats milk in our freezer, so we may have to buy some commercial goat milk to get us through to weaning, which will be in about three weeks.  Maybe the mommies will produce enough: time will tell!

Now, having a nice haul of fresh milk in the house, and wanting to have a nice 'thank you' to our cow-owning friends, I did set a little aside to make some soap.  I felt a little guilty sneaking milk but.....It seems to have made a lovely soap!  Used it just like I would goats milk, freezing the milk in cubes.  Used our 'Simple Soap' recipe of nothing but Jersey milk, olive oil and coconut oil.  The soap, fresh out of the mold, is ivory but a little darker than goats milk soap.  It will probably darken a bit more during the curing process.  Can hardly wait to try a bar in our shower!

If you'd like to catch pictures of baby goats cavorting check out our Facebook page!  We share probably too many baby goat pictures!

There's Not Enough Milk for the Babies!

Ghost gets lunch!

We're milking goats twice a day, but are having a hard time feeding the baby goats!  Our poor Goldie became ill shortly after giving birth and during treatment her milk dried up....completely.  She's much better, thank you, but will not produce milk again until she has more babies.  That won't be until same time next year so we've got to make some adjustments.  Goldie not producing milk is a big set back for both our fledgling soap business and our current crop of baby goats.  Goldie was our biggest milk producer: her daily contribution almost doubled the individual output of our other two mommas, Chocolate and Mabel!

So, Goldie's two kids, Ghost and Giggles, are essentially without a supply of nourishment.  Mabel is not producing quite enough to feed her triplets Monkey, Muffin and Mink.  Chocolate is taking good care of her kid, Coco, who was growing fat and happy on her 'free-choice' milk bar.  So, Coco now is taken away from Mommy during the day and we milk most of Choco's supply each night, leaving some for dinner for the kid.  The kids are all approaching six weeks of age so they are starting to nibble hay and a wee portion of grain.  But still, it's not enough milk!

Fortunately, we had a lot of raw milk frozen.  It's purpose was to make soap - I had planned a good stash for getting ready for Spring shows/sales and the opening of Global Market.  We've slowly but surely been dipping into the 'stash' to feed the babies!  We could have gone to formula but....to us that's yucky, chemical stuff.  We could purchase bottled goat milk- but the cost is silly and we view pasteurized milk as almost dead, much of the nutrition destroyed.  So, the stash it is.

We're finding that, when it thaws, fresh, raw goats milk separates and has some 'curds' suspended in what looks like a mix of whey and thin milk.  We've quickly come to the process of thawing the milk in an ice cream pail and then taking the stick blender to it to reconstitute it.  We add in and blend anything newly milked, once it has cooled.  It's working well and all the kids are thriving!  However, I'm not making any soap right now or eating any of our lovely, fresh goats milk, saving all the good stuff for the kids.  Looking forward to the day when the kids are weaned and the excess becomes mine to do with as I wish!

Love The New Henry Milker!

I was the lucky recipient yesterday of the new Henry Milker.  I continue to be blown away by the service, the teaching and the connection with customers from these people!  I had emailed them looking to replace my pump, which has had some challenges lately.  Admittedly, we'd dropped it a couple of times, Farmer Man was doing clean-up and waterlogged it, and the usual stuff of day-to-day milking.  They sell replacement parts (and many other great goat things) on the Henry Milker website so I'd emailed about shipping to Canada.  The response I got was that Mr. Henry's been enjoying my blog and appreciates the mentions so he was sending me a whole new kit - for free!

The new version of the Henry Milker is awesome!  If you have a small herd of goats you should consider this tool.  We've liked it from the start because the whole connection from teat to milk receptacle is closed, so cleaner milk.  It uses large canning jars, easy to deal with, easy to clean and perfect for refrigerating milk for our use.  It's extremely lightweight and portable - a fact I have so appreciated when Mabel has rejected kids and I'm crawling around in the birthing pen trying to get that all important colostrum!  It's fast and no aching hands!

Well, the new version is a big step up.  You can milk both teats at the same time!  Yes, Mr. Henry has figured an awesome little system so that you can cap both teats and milk into the same jar.  I admire people who are so inventive!  There's a wee bit of a learning curve to juggle both teat caps, and Mabel was a bit surprised last night but milking her was over in a couple of minutes!  I'll so appreciate that tomorrow morning when I feel the pressure of having to get to work on time!

There's some other great new features, too.  The new lids are one piece plastic, the previous version used the usual canning jars lids.  I think these one piece lids will be more sanitary - less places for debris to be trapped and bacteria to grow!  The teat cups have an insert, easy to put in or pull out, so you can adjust to the size of the goats' teat.  Both sizes of tubing (one for joining to the teat cups and one for connecting the two cups to one pump) both come with their own little cleaning brushes!  Everything you need, except the goat!  The whole instruction manual has been expanded and improved upon, too!

So, if you've got goats I really think you should check out this wee machine here.  If you've got goats I think you should just go to the website anyway: lots of great stuff and info for goat people!  From cheese making supplies, to accessories like scratch posts and coats for cold climates to plans for milking stands and hay feeders to help with marketing!  The Henry Milker site is becoming a great resource for goat lovers!

It's Been A Whirlwind!

Muffin gets lunch!

Happy Easter to everyone!  I'm finding it really hard to believe that April is almost upon us!  Perhaps that has something to do with the freezing temperatures and three feet of snow outside!  This time last year the snow was completely gone and buds were swelling!  It's been such a loooooooong winter this year; it seems hard to get excited about Spring because it still seems so far away!

March is a bit of a blur for me.  So much happened, so fast and I feel rather like I stumbled through the whole thing.  We've both been sick, we've both gotten some work off the farm, we've been dealing with a predator in the chicken coop and we've had a passel of baby goats!  I have vague memories of cold nights in the barn with the goats, finding murdered chickens in the coop, studying for a new job, sneaking around the house while Farmer Man sleeps after working a night shift, trying to find the energy to get groceries and coughing and sniffling during every event!

The end result is that we have six beautiful baby goats: five girls and a boy!  Mabel had triplets first, on March 9.  She produced a boy, Monkey and two little girls, Mink and Muffin.  If you follow this blog, you remember last year she rejected them completely and her kids were bottle babies.  This year she was more accepting and cleaned them up, but could not seem to feed them.  It was also very cold the night they were born (-25 C) so eventually they came into the house and became bottle babies.  Once again, I was so thankful for my Henry Milker, so light and portable, with clean milk ready to use.  Farmer Man was at work, so it proved to be a long, stressful and tiring night for me!  And, admittedly, we weren't as organized as we could have been because we thought we were at least a week away from having babies.

So imagine my surprise when I go to the barn to refresh waters the very next day and hear the wee cry of a baby goat!  Sixteen hours after Mabel, Choco produced the cutest little dark brown baby girl, Coco Chanel!  Everything was going well with these two; Farmer Man set up a heat lamp, we helped clean up and put a little coat on the baby and mother and kid were bonding and feeding very nicely in a short time.  We didn't think Choco was even near her due date: she didn't look very pregnant, she'd been very placid and hadn't exhibited any signs of nesting.  Last year, she was the last to have babies, fully a month after the first birth, so we assumed she had resisted Randi's advances again.  It being a weekend, I was around and continued to do hourly checks.  It was still very cold outside, so we wanted to make sure the new mommy and baby were taking advantage of the heat lamp, mommy was getting lots of water (the water was freezing quickly, and needed replacement often).

Early evening, as I went to check on things I found Goldie in the throes of birth.  One baby was already out on the straw and she was obviously working on a second.  Fortunately Farmer Man was home and he worked on getting a second heat lamp installed in an 'adlib' birthing suite for Goldie and her babies.  We helped clean up and dry off the babies and got everyone in the warmth of the new birthing suite.  Goldie had two girls: a lovely, almost ivory coloured kid we've named Ghost and a little chocolate brown girl named Giggles.

Whew, all our babies within twenty four hours and freezing cold temperatures.  It was worrisome.  The babies in the house were doing fine, Mabel was getting back in the groove of being milked but she wasn't producing enough for triplets and we didn't feel we could take away from the other new mommas right at this time.  Thank heaven for frozen milk!  We had frozen a LOT of milk while continuing to milk into the fall, long after last years' babies were weaned.  It was intended for soap, first and foremost, but also for our use through the winter.  We really hadn't thought about a stash for this years' babies!  The thing about frozen milk is that it separates and clumps, so feeding time became a little long as we had to warm the milk enough to 'melt' the clumps in it; some of it I've also had to put in the blender to re-liquefy so that it would go through the bottles smoothly and not clog the nipple.

By Monday morning, Farmer Man, on an hourly check, realized something was wrong with Goldie.  She didn't want to get up and was very lethargic; the babies weren't getting fed.  By an early afternoon check, Ghost was lethargic and shivering.  Into the house she came!  Farmer Man was worried enough to call me at work and I raced home as soon as I could.  The little girl was very still and weak: Farmer Man had prepared a bottle and would get it in her mouth and squirt a bit, trying to get her to swallow.  He went off to work and I continued this into the evening.  On a check, Giggles seemed to be fading, so into the house she came, too!  Now five to bottle feed - thank heavens for the frozen milk.  Thank heavens, too, for pals Nancy and Deb, who came to help feed (and to play with baby goats!).  The twins rebounded, a huge improvement in just twenty four hours of consistent feeding!  We tried milking Goldie, but she was producing hardly anything.  She continued to be lethargic the next day so we called our vet, Dr. Sherry of Wheat City Vet Clinic.

Dr. Sherry's visit was not good news, but at least we knew what to do.  Goldie had a high fever and an infection of some sort and possibly mastitis.  There was no benefit to waiting to diagnose mastitis - she had to be treated promptly!  So, we added to the routine two shots and a teat drench.  Mabel, too, had a bit of fever and lethargy so she was included in the treatment plan.  I was squeamish about giving needles so Farmer Man stepped up to the plate on that one!  I did the teat drench - which is kind of like putting a blunt needle into the teat and pumping in medicine.  Goldie's milk production dropped to nothing, and will likely not return - a huge loss for us not only in terms of feeding babies, but also for soap production this coming year.  But, what counts is that everyone seems much improved and all the babies are doing well!  Here's to hoping that April calms down!

Box of Baby Goats....

Farmer Man and I have been very sick.  February was the month of a respiratory viral infection, and we're still not right.  Neither of us have been this sick in years!  Of course, on a farm, there are still chores to be done: someone had to drag themselves out of bed to feed and water chickens and goats.  Doggies still needed to go outside occasionally.  So, somehow, I missed the signs.  We knew our three Mamma goats were going to have babies soon; by our calculations mid-March would be the earliest.  Imagine my surprise when I was hauling water up yesterday afternoon and heard the thin, light cry of a baby goat.

A goat's gestation period is five months.  By our calculations, based on when we put Randi in with the girls, March 16th should have been the earliest possible due date.  There's, you know, a courting period, the females have to actually go into heat which is often brought on by being with a male in rut.  Well, Mabel must have gone into heat in a flash because yesterday afternoon she presented us with triplets!  All girls, we think, but we've been wrong before so we're giving it a day or two.

I knew Mabel and Goldie were getting close.  The babies had dropped, giving the females an indentation high on their hips.  I'd been checking for the mucous plug that indicates the start of birth but had missed that sign.  Everything seemed fine late morning when I checked on them on my way to collect eggs.  Mabel didn't appear to be 'nesting' or pawing the straw or any other signs.  Admittedly, I wasn't there very long.

So, I arrived yesterday afternoon to find one wee baby goat.  I dashed up to the house, called for Farmer Man and grabbed a few things.  I wasn't as organized yet as I could be, thinking I had another week to prepare.  A second baby was coming as I got back to the barn.  The lovely thing was Mabel was accepting them this time and was working to clean up the first one.  Last year she had triplets and then retreated to a corner of the pen and would have nothing to do with them.  When she became distracted by the arrival of the second baby, I continue to clean up and dry off the first.  We are having babies earlier this year, when it's colder, and we're very conscious of that.  The first thing Farmer Man did when he arrived on the scene was to close the barn doors, so that drafts were at a minimum.  Then he got the heat lamp out and installed.

The third baby arrived quite promptly and Mabel and I worked to clean and dry them all.  Then I started showing them where to feed, hoping Mother Nature would kick in.  The babies just didn't seem to get it; only one showed a natural inclination but couldn't quite figure out which end.  The other two seemed to have no idea of why I was standing them up and placing them at their mother's udder.  Mabel didn't seem to get it either and kept walking away, returning to clean and muzzle them.  Time went by and I felt that these little ones really needed to eat.  Out came the Henry Milker and I milked Mabel - not ideal, clean conditions but I felt it needed to be done.  Trying to bottle feed the wee things right there in the pen was it's own challenge, but I got a little bit of colostrum (the initial momma's milk, full of antibodies and good things) into each one.  I kept trying to show them where to feed, and Mabel kept walking away or putting up her leg like she was going to kick.

Even with the heat lamp, the babies were shivering so I went and got some little doggie sweaters my dogs had outgrown.  I kept trying to show them where to feed but nobody was getting it!  After about three hours, one of the babies seemed to be getting weak and was shivering consistently so up to the house into a big cardboard box.  I milked Mabel a bit more and went up to the house to feed the little kid.  I was hoping I'd return to find the other two feeding but slowly, over the next hour, all three ended up in the house getting bottle fed.  We'd really hoped not to have the responsibility of bottle feeding triplets this year but you can't always get what you want, right?