Ok. So I've been completely lax in writing on the blog. My goal is to be more current with this blog as it is a great help to me when I'm looking back on things.
Here's what happened over the last year. In September 2015, we found a place to move into that had enough room for everyone. It is five acres, with a barn and a shop. The goats are loving it, the chickens don't have a coop right now, but we're working on it. And the dogs love having all the space to run around. The entire property is fenced so we can actually let them run.
All of my does kidded early in 2016. Anna was the first on January 1st. She had twins and they both were very healthy - Elsa and Olaf.
Tumbleweed kidded on January 22nd with triplets - Juniper, Tulip and baby 3. They were all completely formed, but we lost one of them in the birth. I think Tumbles was so busy with the first two that she didn't get to the third on in time to clear the amniotic sac from her nose. Two weeks later, we lost another one of her babies when it jumped into the horse trough and drowned. I have never had that problem before but we will be filling all of the troughs with cinder blocks from now on.
Lilo kidded on Valentine's Day. She had twins - Bow and Arrow. They were small but well formed.
Asha was the last to kid. She was bred by Fool's Gold - our Boer buck. She had a single - Fin. I'm not sure exactly what the date was as I didn't write it down in my calendar, but it was the end of February. Fin was the first cross bred kid...very big and beautiful.
All the babies grew well. Kobi chose Juniper as his market goat, but he got cocci and was down for a bit. It stunted his growth and Kobi chose to work with Elsa instead. Marli chose to work with Fin and Zayne chose to work with Olaf.
Mid-spring, we sold Bow and Arrow to a gentleman for butcher. It was a stretch to get them up to 60 lbs. We started using a creep feeder with all of the babies, keeping it full all the time.
Beginning of summer, we sold Freestyle - our Alpine buck. We decided that having an Alpine didn't fit with our overall herd plan. We really have been focusing more on meat babies and Freestyle didn't help with that at all. I sold him for a song.
We prepared for fair, fighting to get everyone up to weight. We fed Dairy 16 and alfalfa pellets free choice to all of the babies, but they just didn't grow as well as we wanted. In the end, Kobi's goat came in at 72lbs - 3lbs shy for auction weight...again. Marli's goat came in largest at 90 and Zayne came in at 81. Both boys did very well in auction - fetching $5 and $5.50 per pound respectively.
Oh..we had a strange problem with frothy green bloat. The goats were out of their pen for the night and the next day both Asha and Lilo were sick. J said they were throwing up, but we all know that goats cannot throw up. They were actually slinging their cud, which looks a lot like throwing up. Two days of frothy green mouths and very unhappy girls. They would cough up their cud and throw their heads around, flinging the green cud everywhere. We gave them vegetable oil to help break up the gas in their rumens. It seemed to help but it was slow. Afterward, Lilo continued to cough every once in awhile.
I put in a vegetable garden but it wasn't very productive. There was a lot of grass in the yard and I didn't keep up with weeding. The ground was deplete of any nutrients and nothing but the potatoes grew very well. I plan on covering everything with black plastic this winter and see if we can kill the weeds. Either that or bring in raised beds. The only thing I don't like about the idea of raised beds is not being able to till. But I suppose if I have great soil, I can just plant overwinter crops and then remove them in the spring when I'm ready to plant. I got more from the 3ft by 12ft garden I had that was done as a square foot garden than I did out of this 24 ft by 24 ft garden.
We lost our bunny - Captain America - to heat stroke this summer. We had given Black Bear to a friend for her daughter. M wasn't spending as much time with them and we thought it might be time to get rid of the rabbits altogether. I think that there might have been some lack of care that went into his death, but nonetheless, M was crushed.
And last but not least, after fair we came home with a new goat to add to the herd - even though we have been downsizing the herd. J is in Guam so he didn't have anything to say about it. Her name is Buttercup. She is two or three years old and a purebred Boer. She does have horns which was my only concern. But she is proven and we hope that she will give us some great babies for fair next year. We put her in to the pen with Fool's Gold today to start the breeding process. We are waiting with the other girls - next post will explain.
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