Sunday, November 4, 2012

Milk

Glorious raw goats milk. Two days into milking and all is going great. Clover ( the baby) is also going great though she does seem to favour one side more then the other so I am making sure I take more out of the other side when I am milking. My milking process is quiet simple I don't even have a milking stand. We have a small meat house behind our house and this is where I store all the animal food. So what I do is around 8.30 am ( this is when i get back from the school bus drop of) I take Moonie up to the meat house shut the door behind us so she can not get out and place a bucket of feed in front of her. She is quiet happy to just stand and eat I then give her teats a quick clean, strip the first little bit of milk out then away I go. Moonie isn't a friendly goat when out in the paddock she will only come to you if you have a bucket of feed, so it has been a huge relief that she is so easy to milk. I am only milking her once a day and the Clover has access to her 24/7. So far I seem to be getting just under 2 litres of milk a day ( 2 quart jars full) which  is plenty for us, for our day to day needs and for me  to start making some cheese. So be warned there will more then likely be a few cheese making post coming soon.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

A Little Girl



Its so exciting. I had a feeling Moonie ( that's the doe) was pregnant but thought that she wasn't that far along. On Friday night around 10 pm I heard a funny sound outside and thought it was a fox, as we have been having a bit of problems with the foxes. Instead of it been a fox there was two tiny little kids. As soon as I looked at them I could see one was a lot more alert and active then the other but I assumed that  the more active one was the first born. I dried the little boy of and left them with there mum. The next day the little boy still wouldn't stand, I gave him some milk but he wouldn't suck. Sadly we had to make the decision to put him down as after two days he still showed no sign of having any sucking reflex's and he still wasn't standing. So far this experience has been a mixture of emotions. Trying to reason with Lincoln has been the hardest, he is really upset by it all. However we now have one beautiful little girl kid that the children have named Clover and we also have fresh goats milk.