Happy Goat Kids, Playing

As promised for those who did not want to see the graphic realities of difficult births and still-born goat kids (I don't blame you one bit!) I am reposting the video of Rachel's twins and Bailey's boys. Four minutes of happiness for your enjoyment. It was balm to my heart to sit and watch their silly bouncing while Sean cleaned out the kidding stall. I hope your heart feels that happiness, too

Thanks for visiting with us today. Sean & Sonja

Additional Spools for the Goat Pasture...

Enrichment equipment is the technical term, but around here, we call it plain old fun. Our goats main pasture already had three wooden spools of various sizes for the goats to jump on or lounge under. But, if three are good, more must be better. And, it is! We now have seven spools of various sizes for the does and their kids to play on, under, and around. I confess I am uncertain who has the most enjoyment from the new toys; the goats who pounce around on them or me watching them from my studio window.

In the coming days, between the demands of preparing garden beds, adding moulding to finish the new kitchen window Sean installed, fencing in the kitchen herb garden, planting our orchard, clearing the mudroom, and cleaning out the chicken coop and barn stalls, we will spend some time making the new play equipment even better. Our plan is to increase the distance between the shorter spools and secure walkways between them. We'll turn the shortest spool on its side and create a teeter-totter from it. We hope these changes will make the play equipment even more fun for the kids and yearlings to explore.

One upgrade we want to make this season is adding grooming station areas. Our thought is to recycle old, worn out wooden push broom heads. I can buy inexpensive brooms online for less than $10, but we try to breathe new life into things that would otherwise be discarded. So, while I will purchase some if necessary, I would much prefer to put out my plea and give y'all an opportunity to put your unused, worn out push broom heads to good use. :) We need wooden heads with natural bristles, like the ones pictured here. It honestly doesn't matter how tattered they are, so long as the wood is sound to screw through. Our plan is to screw through the bristles and wooden head into the wood of the spools. Some affixed from overhead, some along the sides. These will give the goats places that will feel good to scratch itchy growing horns and shedding undercoats on. If we can collect enough, we'll add scratching stations inside the barn, too. As a bonus, we'll offer a trade: we'll gift you with a bar of our fantastic goat's milk soap for each usable broom head you donate to our cause. 

If you would like to donate your used wooden push broom head to our goats, feel free to call or text Sean at 207-323-0520.

Today is apple tree planting day. We may try out a live remote while we put them in the ground and spend some time in the field with the goats. If you have "liked" us on Facebook, you'll get a notification when/if we do.

Thanks for visiting with us today, friends.
Sean and Sonja ♥

Some Days Feel Like a Win. ♥

Sean is on his way to get an estimate for our van repair from the accident on Monday afternoon. While he is gone, I thought it would be a good time to try to write a bit. The house is quiet and no one needs me at the moment. :) First of all, let me start with this adorable image of goat kid cuteness because goat. kid. cuteness, but also because this will be the image that attaches to this post and I think it is more becoming than the stall door images to follow.

Ebony and the silkies have the run of a 5 foot by 10 foot stall. I made
Ebony a hay cave under the stairs.

Ebony was not sure about this new home.

We spent the morning cleaning out Ebony's winter stall and building a 5th kidding stall in that room. Eventually (as in hopefully tomorrow), it will have a door to access it from the either the regular exterior door or from inside the kidding stalls. I love the new configuration of the barn. I am sure there will be tweaks as time passes, but for now, I anticipate this set up will be so much more convenient than ever before. Already the new hay mangers have almost completely eliminated the bullying from the dominant does towards the more docile ones. With so many feeding stations available, there is no need to fuss. An added benefit is that this new system has meant significantly less waste of the hay and that means that it costs us less money to feed them. I have lots of pictures of the new set up and also some video and I will get to posting about it as soon as I can. For now, I want to focus on an update on Levi, tell you about Anna's lad, Pete's struggle to get milk from his momma, and share a video of kid "play time" from last night.

Levi's Update:

We woke this morning to an alert Levi. He spent the night in the wooden crate in front of the wood stove. He was quite ready for Sean to help him to stand outside so he could urinate and defecate this morning. He stood unassisted and took care of his physical needs. Back inside, he had a good appetite for both hay and water. Since Sean and I planned on being in the barn for a good portion of the morning, we brought Levi outside with us so we could keep an eye on him. (I don't really enjoy having a goat kid in my kitchen, y'all. I will do it because it *has* to be done for the next few days, but it is NOT high on my list of wants.)  Levi stood unassisted and walked around under his own power for just about three hours while Sean and I cleaned out the stall and building. He laid down in a snow bank when we were nearing the end of our project, so Sean brought him inside the barn and settled him in some hay to rest while we finished up. Back inside, we administered his medicine: .5 CCs Banamine injected IM and .8 CCs Ivomectin injected sub-q. He got a treat of a celery stalk and 2 small broccoli heads while Sean was giving his shots as a distraction. It worked. Levi has been resting in his box for about an hour, sleeping on and off, eating fresh hay or chewing his cud. When Sean returns, we need to get back out to the barn to finish chores and Levi will come with us. The exercise and air will do him good. Because we are anticipating cold temperatures (of the 8* variety) overnight, Levi will remain inside in his box at night and return, goat-coated, outside with us during the day until his strength returns.

Anna's Reluctant Nursing:
Anna gave birth on Monday to a lovely Lamancha buck. She had him in the wee hours of the morning without notice nor assistance. By the time Sean found the kid, Pete was already mostly dry and standing on his own. As Monday passed, Anna gave no indication of allowing Pete to nurse from her. Colostrum is imperative to a kids health. According to this paper published by the Iowa State Extension Office, ideally goat kids should receive half of their colostrum needs within 4 hours of birth and must have it within 24 hours. After that, the kid's body cannot absorb colostrum- the window is shut forever. With these thoughts in mind, it was very worrisome that every time Pete attempted to nurse, Anna would kick him off and walk away. She had no trouble cleaning him, would call if he got out of sight, but eat? No way. Through the day Monday, Sean held Anna steady for 3-4 minutes and allowed Pete to nurse. We hoped that she would settle into the swing of things and by morning, everything would proceed normally. At least we knew that Pete got colostrum within the window.

Tuesday brought no change to Anna's inclination to feed Pete. Sean or I held Anna gently and helped Pete to latch on and nurse for 3-4 minutes until tail wagging was achieved. In some ways, bottles are easier. At least with them, you can see how much your little one is eating. Every time we got near their pen, Pete seemed famished. We checked Anna's udder and she did have milk- though her bag was terribly small. There was no telling how much milk she was producing. Milk production is normally an elegant example of supply and demand; the bigger the demand, the bigger the supply. Most of the time, this works perfectly. Sometimes it does not, though. With that in mind, Sean liberated 3 ounces of milk from whatever doe was close to hand for us to supplement bottle feeding Pete each morning and night. While this little is certainly not enough to feed Pete exclusively, it did a great deal to soothe my worry.

Wednesday dawned and nothing changed in Anna's mind. Rather than continuing to milk a doe and giving Pete a bottle, we decided to skip the middle man and allow Pete to nurse directly from another doe while we watched. Pete was able to finally latch on unassisted and Keziah was willing to allow him to nurse- so long as she didn't realize it wasn't her kid. We couldn't try to adopt Pete out to Keziah. For one thing, she was uninterested in adding to her parenting responsibilities. For another, Anna was an attentive mother in all other aspects. I didn't have the heart to take her offspring from her. The end of Wednesday marked 72 hours~ roughly 15 attempts to get Anna to fully accept her young. I admit, we were beginning to worry that Pete would become a bottle baby.

Thursday dawned with wonderful tidings. Sean walked into the barn to check on everyone and found Anna allowing Pete to nurse from her. Full on, standing still, tail waggin', nursing!!!! Success! 12 hours later and I actually sighed while writing this to you. I cannot tell you the relief this is for us.

Finally, I promised you some video of those goat kids playing. Tomorrow we begin milking four of the does who have kidded; Abby, Jane, Rachel and Keziah. We won't milk Anna this year at all. Though it was also Keziah's first year kidding, she is a year older than Anna and we planned on breeding her. She has a nice udder formed and I feel comfortable introducing her gently to milking. Anna is younger than we'd like. She bred before we wanted her to. This year, we are going to let her focus on being Mom to young Pete and not put any kind of pressure on her to give us any milk. We'll make decisions about which does will be milked this year as the others kid and we can evaluate them.

To prepare for sleeping in a separate stall from their mothers, we gave the kids some goat kid play time- away from their Moms. The mothers took it in stride. I nabbed Rachel's twins last and she yelled and yelled at me... until I took her kids. With a look of relief to her kid-sitter (me), she quietly turned her attention to eating in peace. It was hilarious. I could only imagine her yelling, "Wait! You forgot to take mine! I need 2 minutes of peace to pee in private! C'mon!" The kids had varying reactions. Some just wanted to tackle the stump. Others wanted to tackle each other. Some never made a peep and didn't notice Mom wasn't in the same stall. Others called and called until their mother stuck her head over the stall. With nine kids in the same stall, it won't take more than a night or two for the kids to settle in to the new routine.


I am excited to begin milking- even without shelter, in 8* weather. I have been missing the joy of fresh cheese. I should have enough milk to make chevre tomorrow and feta on Saturday. I am in cheese making heaven. To add to my excitement~ Sean got the spider webs ::shudder:: removed from the barn tonight. This forward progress feels soooo good. ♥

Thanks for visiting with us tonight friends. You make the journey all the more pleasant.
~Sean and Sonja ♥

Deep Litter Method: Goats

When I read this post from Lil Bit Farm, I had to commiserate. We use the deep litter method. For those of you who don't know what that means, I'll give you a brief explanation. Basically, instead of cleaning the stalls each day, (like we do spring, summer, and fall) in the winter, we pile fresh hay bedding on top of the soiled hay bedding, layer upon layer, all. winter. long. The benefits of doing this is that the bottom layers begin to break down into compost over time and that produces heat. Heat is a good thing in Maine during the bitterly cold winter months, especially this year when we had steady weeks where the temperature failed to break the zero degree mark. Another benefit, in all honestly, is NOT having to chip away soiled, frozen waste and then wrestle to remove said waste through mounds of snow, several feet deep in below zero temperatures to add it to the compost pile on a daily or weekly basis.

While the "Deep Litter" Method of dealing with animal waste works, we pay for it come spring in the form of screaming muscles and the sweat of our brows- (In all honesty, there was no "we". It was Sean's brow, but you get the point). We have enjoyed a string of days well above the freezing mark, culminating in temperatures yesterday hitting 42 degrees. How did we celebrate? That's right... mucking. Sean worked for 6 hours straight pulling roughly a foot deep of compacted, soiled hay from both doe stalls. Each of these stalls are 10 feet square. That makes roughly 200 cubic feet of waste to remove by hand and shovel. Not to mention the smell! Covering the soiled hay daily prevents the smell from being offensive over the winter. Once you start digging into the rotting layers, let's just say, "offensive" doesn't come close to describing it. Sean is Superman.

The stalls look fantastic covered with a fresh layer of pine shavings. If the weather stays around the freezing mark or higher, we will be able to resume mucking the stalls regularly. Without heat, the barn stays a good deal warmer than the air outside when the doors are closed and the animals are inside- comfy, cozy for the animal inhabitants. 23 days until spring. We are in the home stretch now!

While Sean was shoveling away, I kept him company and played with the goats. Of course, I couldn't resist more videos and images of the growing barn gang.


Please, notice the "before" and "after" images of the bedding, won't you? I try to show how much I appreciate all the work Sean does around here to help keep us running. You can help me. Why not take a minute to comment? How cool would it be for Sean to return home from work today and see his efforts have been noticed not only by his wife and animals, but by our neighbors near and far, too. He might call me silly, but I bet it'll make him feel good. ♥

 Jesse ♥

Snuggles with Elisha. 

Totes Ma Goats. ;)

 One of our resident barn roos, Simon, was feeling his oats. He kept dancing for the girls and crowing for attention. Silly boy. All the girls ignored his show completely.

Simon slept outside one night last week instead of going into the barn or coop. Sean found him roosting in the bed of his truck in the morning. Consequently, Simon's waddles are recovering from frost bite. We have been keeping an eye on them for infection, but they seem to be healing on their own. We'll keep a good watch on them because an infection can be lethal.

Miss Leghorn has resumed laying white eggs for us. Her nesting place of choice is in the pig stall.

Rachel loves scratches under her chin. She is such an affectionate girl. Sean paused in shoveling to give her an ear scratch. Rachel reciprocated by licking his forearm repeatedly and rubbing against him. Just look at that face! You can just about see the love shining from those eyes. ♥

Asher was quite interested in these new little bucklings. Once the first doe stall was cleaned, we opened the door to allow the does to take a walk into the snowy pasture if they wanted and their kids to meet the rest of the herd. I was close by in case of any rough introductions, but for the most part, everyone sniffed and tussled playfully. Leah kept good watch on her young lads, too. She is really a good mother.

This week, I am working on a post regarding introducing Molly to the goats, chickens, and Jasmine. We have been working with her every day and Molly is learning a lot!

Still no news on the kidding front. Everyone is doing well right now. I'll be sure to update as soon as the rest of the kids decide to be born. :)

Thanks so much for visiting with us today, friends. I am so thankful you are here.
~Sonja ♥