Bye Bye Boys/Waiting On Kids

Not a whole lot has happened with our goats since I last updated the blog. We sold our bucklings and wethers at market (the ones we ourselves don't plan on eating), and we realized that we really really really need to get a livestock scale. We were essentially guessing the weight of our boys by having me stand on a house scale while holding the individual kids; we knew it wouldn't be accurate, but at least we would have a ball park weight. Unfortunately this method is not good at all and we wound up sending our boys to market weighing about 10lbs less than we would have liked them to. We'll be looking for a scale for the next while and if all goes according to plan we will have purchased one before the next time we need to send our goats to market.

Currently we are waiting for three of our does to have their kids. We put them in with our buck on May 4, so Oct. 1 was day "150", but there are still no fresh kids in our pen. The average goats gestation is 145-155days, so we have been keeping a close eye on these girls since they were at day 140. We do not watch our goats enough to know the exact day that each of them were bred, so all we have is an earliest date (145 days after being put in with buck) and a latest date (155days after last day in with buck). Lucky for us, we have already experienced approx. 20 different goats delivering so we know a bunch of the signs that will help us know when we really need to start watching for new kids. I say 'a bunch of the signs' because there is no real sure sign that a goat is about to have a baby other than them laying down and having that baby. The ligaments by the tail soften  yes, but for some it's days before and for others it's only hours; there may be mucus present on some goats weeks before they have a baby where as others don't get any until right before; some get nice bags a couple days before, others don't bag up until after the babies have been delivered; some pace and call for their not yet born babies; some make themselves a nest; some find a place of their own far away from all the other goats; some have their babies right by the feeder where all the other goats are hanging out; and I am sure that there are many other 'signs' that a goat is about to have kids, but this is all I can think of off the top of my head.

Hopefully my next post will be one about new kids and whether or not we notice any differences between spring and fall kidding.

Three New Does

Yesterday DH and I drove three hours to pick up some new does; two boer and one boerX. Now, these girls may not be show worthy, but we're hoping that they produce some strong/healthy kids for us next spring. It appears that the "blonde" has never been bred, hopefully that means she has never been introduced to a buck. One of the "red heads" has large/funny teats so her future kids might have difficulties sucking; this is something we will be watching carefully when she does kid. All of the girls are in decent condition, so they will most likely be put with our buck this fall so we can get some spring kids out of them.

All three of the girls appear to be a bit copper deficient so we'll be treating them for that soon. It seems that many people do not realize that goats NEED copper in their diet; almost every goat we have purchased was showing signs of being copper deficient upon arrival, or shortly there after. To be fair, we did not know how badly goats need copper until recently, it's just one of those things you learn as you spend more time researching and talking with other breeders. Our entire herd was deficient for a while, but we have since remedied that and will be making sure that their copper levels stay within a healthy range. We have yet to build a system for feeding our goats loose minerals, so unfortunately we've been having to give them a mineral block. Goats do not get nearly enough of what they need from a block so we have had to supplement our girls; hopefully we'll have a loose mineral feeder built soon so we won't have to give our girls extra copper boluses (which is not a fun task).

Two of the three does we bought yesterday, were in desperate need of a hoof trimming (DH and I tackled that job this afternoon). It is really important that a goats hooves be well maintained, but sadly some people either don't realize how important it is, or just don't bother doing it. Even though these does are a little wild we still caught them and struggled with them until their hooves were as nice as we could make them. I am terribly slow when it comes to trimming hooves, but I'm learning and I'm sure with time and more practice I'll be able to keep up with the men no problem.

The new does are currently in "isolation" so hopefully they will get a bit friendlier as we need to bring them water, grain, and hay everyday. Whenever we buy a new animal for our herd, we keep them in a separate pen, where they cannot access our  current herd. As soon as they arrive we deworm them (just in-case) and decide if they need any extra attention (ie. copper or hoof trimming). We monitor them for three weeks, and if all appears well they are then released into the herd :).

Goats For Sale (Northern Alberta)

So the time has come for us to say goodbye to our bucklings and wethers. We weaned our boys a couple of weeks ago, and will be selling them starting August 26, 2011. Although weaning the boys and keeping them separated from the females for this long did mean that we had to feed them longer, we believe that it is important that our boys be in great condition before they leave our farm. If we did not wean a kid before selling it the buyer would certainly notice some loss in condition, and this is something we try to avoid. We are not in control of the health of an animal once it leaves our farm, but we still like our goats to be as healthy as possible before they leave.

For your viewing pleasure, here are the bucklings we are selling. These boys are Boer/Kiko/Nubian/Spanish X's, and are nice and meaty. For more information on each buckling, as well as prices, please visit the "For Sale" section of our website at www.flatlakegoats.webs.com .

Wickham

Collins

Darcy

Bennet

Fitswilliam

Boris

Mufasa

We also will be selling our wethers at this time. Here are pictures of just a few of them.

-H

Pictures of Sally's Babies

Here are our last kids of spring/summer 2011.

 The kids together.

 The doeling: Sophie

 The buckling

Sally and her babies.

We're Officially Done Spring/Summer 2011 Kidding!

There you have it folks, we are officially done this seasons kidding! Stella had a single buckling a few weeks ago, and yesterday Sally gave us a doeling and a buckling :).
It has been a fun season, and we have learnt a lot! Our main goal for next year is to figure out why our goats had such thick sacks, and then try and cure this problem so that we have fewer deaths. We are also quite certain that our herd has a bit of a copper deficiency so we will be giving them supplements this weekend (if all goes according to plan that is), when we de-worm and trim hooves.
I have not taken many pictures of the new babies, but I will hopefully get a few either tonight, or tomorrow some time. In the mean time here is a cellphone picture I took of Stella's baby moments after he was born.

Lambing season is also done for the year, so we now only have to wait for the cows to finish up, and we'll be done with babies until October (if our Does were bred).

Picture Day

I went out and snapped some pictures tonight, thought I'd share as I hadn't updated in a while :).

Peaches, mother of Dawn, Grandmother of Sally

Dawn

Sally

Rambo

Pichelli

It's been a little while

Okay, so I haven't updated for a few days, but in my defense the farm has been really busy.

After the kindergarten class visited on Tuesday, we had a pretty steady day Wednesday. I worked Thursday and Friday so T and MIL were on their own. Unfortunately for them, there were 21 babies born on Thursday! They went out at 9am to do one job and it didn't get done until 6pm because it was so busy in the pen. T told me that at one point she had her arm in a ewe and saw an even worse problem and had to get out of ewe #1, catch ewe #2, re-glove and pull a very stuck baby. Happily there were no serious issues, just a lot of basic problems that would have resulted in the death of the babies if T and MIL had not been there to help (such as the stuck lamb that would have suffocated).

Saturday we had a bunch of friends over for a wiener roast (turned out to be a bbq because of fire bans) and to see the baby animals. The children were all thrilled and did a fantastic job holding and playing with the lambs, kids, and cria.

Today was a lazy day for me. There weren't many lambs so I actually had enough time to finish planting my garden (yeah!).

We did have a new cria today, so that was exciting. He is really cute, and will be our last one this year (hopefully we have 2 or 3 again next year). Here he is, we're thinking of calling him Rusty:

I'll try to get a picture of him with my camera instead of my phone soon :)