UPDATE 8/22/12: Starbuck and Boomer went to their new home yesterday. They were the last of our goats available for 2012. Stay tuned for the 2013 arrivals!

UPDATE 8/17/12: Crake and Anakin have gone to their new home! At this time, Starbuck and Boomer are still available.

We have a variety of Oberian (Mini-Oberhasli) wethers who are looking for their new homes. All are very friendly and will make wonderful pets. All are from Mystic Acres’ quality Oberian dairy goat lines.

Crake Anakin Starbuck Boomer

Crake and Anakin are cousins; Crake is 3 months old and Anakin is 2 months old. Both of these boys have intact horns, and have been castrated. Crake is a deep reddish brown and Anakin is a medium brown; both have black markings. Both of these boys are sweet and friendly, and with training, could make great pack goats. It would be wonderful if these two kids could find a home together. Starbuck and Boomer are 4-month-old brothers. Both are disbudded (de-horned) and castrated. Both are shades of light brown with black markings, and both have a frosted nose and ears like their mama. They are best friends, and can usually be found curled up together for their afternoon siesta. We would love for these two boys to be able to remain together. We are asking $125 for each pair, or $75 per goat if sold singly. Goats are herd animals, and need to live with others of their kind. We will not sell any of these goats separately unless there are already other goats on the property (preferably of a similar size and/or age). Best buddies

This is Sephira, one of Zoe’s daughters from this year, at one month old. She is now four months old, and has gone to live at her new home, with her uncle Barnabas and aunt Clarisse (Aberdeen’s kids from last year). I can’t believe I didn’t get any more recent photos of her before she left, but fortunately her new person has already sent us several photos of her in her new digs. Some of our critters get to stay with us for years, but some are with us only for a short time. It’s getting easier to accept that, as time goes by. Our current totals, including both the recent losses (to hawk and to hatchet) and the recent gains (namely, Maud’s new chicks):

• 31 chickens (it’s too early to tell the gender for sure yet on this year’s chicks, but those that turn out to be male will be destined for “freezer camp”);
• 9 goats (two of which are for sale: Zoe’s other daughter, Isis, and Lulu’s boy, Galahad – details on those two coming soon!);
• 1 dog;
• 1 cat;
• …and hundreds of plants!

We’re moving our goats to a new area about 300′ from the old one, and the new goat house is almost ready. No, I’m not using a cheap camera; 90° angles are rare here, due to the use of salvaged lumber and also my inexperience with building anything on this scale; it’s sometimes difficult to push a thousand pounds of lumber into the perfect position and secure it with just two hands. But it’s darn solid and should be much nicer for the goats. Here’s the front, with a nice wide door, to reduce the bottleneck when 9 goats try to rush through at once: The basic structure is 4x4s with plywood sheathing, which would not stand up to the antics of a goat herd for very long, so the lower part inside is reinforced with, what else, shipping pallets: …and their new pasture area is really, really ready for some munchin’:        

A gift from friends and neighbors Taryn and Jeff…

We’re SO glad that a friend snapped a pic of this sign fail at our wedding:

Galahad (more commonly known as “You Little Weasel” or simply “Pesky”) meeting the rest of the herd for the first time, with mama Lulu keeping watch Galahad introducing himself to cousin Isis (again, with mama Lulu keeping a close eye on things) Sorry for the blurry image, but I love this shot… and goats love Peter! Broodies, broodies everywhere… (The record so far was seven hens broody – i.e., wanting to hatch eggs, and therefore not laying – at the same time. I did give in and give eggs to two of them, one in each coop… 1-1/2 weeks until we have chicks!) Nettle harvest, from a very small patch by the river – enough for a nice helping of steamed nettles for each of us with dinner! (The nettles were so tasty, I can’t even remember what the main course was…) I’m hoping to get one or two more meals from this patch before they get too large and tough. Our first spring salad! Lettuce from the farmer’s market, volunteer arugula, spearmint and chives from our garden, wild dandelion leaves, oxeye daisy leaves (so sweet!) and purple deadnettle tops, and wood sorrel from the woodsy area by the river… eating this salad, my body sang! Our beautiful eggs, from our beautiful hens… these are a staple in our diet almost year-round

Three nights of very little sleep, thinking she was going into labor. Today, finally, in labor. All day. Single birth. Giant kid, with really giant head. First-time goat mama, with really tiny birth canal. Head stuck. Amniotic sac burst. Me pulling while she’s pushing. Mama goat hollering. Can’t budge head. Mama goat tiring, stopping. Kid’s tongue turning blue. Thought we’d lost him. Still not sure how we finally got him out of there. Wonderful surprise to find him still alive. Choking and wheezing on aspirated amniotic fluid. Swung him several times, now seems fine. He’s a little firecracker. Mama Lulu is tired and torn, but seems happy with her brand new baby. Did I mention he’s huge?

Any minute now, Lulu…

Finally threw together some footage of Zoe’s babies!

Two little doelings, one black and one bay; born at about 5:15 or 5:30 this morning. The black girl came out first, frank breech (butt first). Zoe was a trooper – that couldn’t have felt good! It took us a minute to figure out what we were seeing – most often the kids come out in a “diving” position, front feet and head first, so we were looking for a pair of hooves and perhaps a nose. When we first saw a “blob” with no hooves, we thought we were seeing the head and that the front legs were bent back. In that case, it’s important to gently reposition one or both legs so that the baby doesn’t get stuck at the shoulders. So, I scrubbed up, lubed, and (gently!) went in. I had to feel around for a minute to realize that what I felt was not the head, but the butt. Meanwhile, Zoe was still pushing, but the baby seemed to be stuck at the vulval opening. While Peter held Zoe and encouraged her, I used my lubed hands to gently help her vulva open wide enough for the baby’s big butt and back legs to make their way out. With a breech birth, there’s more of a danger of the baby aspirating some of the amniotic fluid, so as soon as she was fully out we moved quickly to clear her mouth and nose of any fluids. Then Peter held her up by her back legs and (again, gently!) swung her back and forth. This is a trick we learned from our friend and goat mentor to ensure that any fluids that may have entered her lungs are drained back out. This all happened in the space of only a minute or two, and immediately after we plunked her down on a towel in front of mama Zoe, so she could get down to the business of cleaning off her new daughter. While Zoe licked and cleaned and Peter towel-dried the newborn, I turned my attention back to the two little hooves showing at Zoe’s back end. They were back hooves, meaning that this baby was coming out footling breech (back feet first). So, this one would also need to be “swung”. She came out smoothly, a tiny little thing, and we once again worked quickly to get her mouth and nose cleared. But we couldn’t swing her – her umbilical cord was thick and twisted around and around on itself, and only a few inches long. It had not broken or separated on its own, so she was still attached to her mama’s insides. Did I mention it was only a few inches long? We couldn’t move her, couldn’t swing her, couldn’t even get her out of the now chilling puddle of amniotic fluid in which she was laying. I held her and rubbed her vigorously to try to warm her while Peter grabbed dental floss and scissors from our birthing kit. He used the floss to carefully tie off her cord in two places, and then cut the cord in between. He immediately swung her to clear her lungs and placed her on a clean dry towel in front of Zoe. Zoe went to work cleaning her up while we rubbed her vigorously with towels, both to get her dried off and to get her warmed up and get her blood pumping. At about this time we noticed that she was bleeding quite a bit from her umbilical cord, so we tied it off again, as tightly as we could. It took a little while to get this second little girl warmed to the point where she was no longer shivering, but surprisingly, she was the first to go for the teat. She was determined to get her colostrum! Zoe didn’t know what to make of this at first and kept moving away, but once her little girl latched on and started guzzling away she settled right down. We began cleaning up while we waited for Zoe to pass her placenta. While scooping up the sopping towels and fluid-soaked straw (birth is messy!), we also kept an eye on the little black doeling, who hadn’t yet nursed. Once we had helped her to find the teat and we saw that she got a good dose of colostrum, we packed out our birthing kit and garbage and brought Zoe some grain and alfalfa and a fresh bucket of hot water (Peter had already brought her a bucket of hot water with molasses immediately after she finished kidding; she sucked most of it down right away). At this point all that was left to do was to dip each kid’s umbilical cord in iodine, in order to prevent infection. We poured our iodine solution into a pill bottle, picked up the first kid, dipped her cord into the bottle, and then tipped her over onto her back with the bottle pressed firmly to her belly. This ensures that the iodine coats the entire area. We repeated the process with the second kid, and then left mama and babies to rest and bond. And, oh yeah – about that placenta? Zoe, smart mama that she is, ate most of it. What little bit she left went to the dog. Nothing goes to waste on the farm!