Remus and Romulus

Yes, we have even more baby goats now. We adopted 2 one week old male kids from a local dairy. Typically, they kill the males at birth there, but they keep some to sell. These 2 guys were going to be sold as breeders if another of their (slightly better) does did not have boys. That doe did have boys, so the dairy gave us the slighlty less desirable ones. These guys still have great breeding and are pure Nubian. So we plan to raise one for meat and keep the other as our breeder for next season. Lily is mostly Nubian (her dad was pure), and Zella has some Nubian in her. Having more pure stock makes selling kids easier. We just placed an ad to sell Hoppy and her kids. Hoppy is friendly, but otherwise she is not a vey good goat. Hopefully, someone will be interested in a doe currently in milk. Anyway, the new babies will need to be bottle fed several times a day for the next 7 or so weeks. We are considering taking even more to raise for meat and help clear some of our land. We might have to come up with some system of feeding them, if we get a lot more.

In other farm news, someone else has responded to our ad to take down old barns in exchange for the materials. With the help of some wwoofers we were able to take down a small barn all in one day a couple of weeks ago. Now, we have signed up to take down about half of a 300 foot chicken house. This one will take us quite awhile, but we should be able to get a lot of great material for building our new barn at The Haven in addition to other uses.

-Annie

And Then There Were Ten

We now have 10 baby goats total at Full Life Farm and The Haven. Paul and Terra's goat, Duya, had twins last week: Savannah and Charleston. Vannah was tiny, weighing in at only 5.4 lbs. Both of them have the short La Mancha ears. Both kids are fine, but, unfortunately, Duya's milk is not. Duya was born with 4 teats, 2 of which were removed shortly after birth, but it appears that her udder did not develop normally, leading to bad tasting milk. Duya's sister, Vida, also has a birth defect: parrot mouth, a type of overbite. Therefore, it has been decided that neither of them will be bred anymore. The birth defects were the reason that Paul and Terra acquired the new buck, Pete Townsend, last fall, which has produced much better results. Now we will likely keep 2 of the female kids - probably Lily's girls, Sugar and Cocoa. Zella produces a little more milk than Lily, but Lily has the best disposition of all our does, and she has big teats for easy milking.

Most of the kids have been disbudded, like the 4 who posed so nicely for the above photo . A hot iron is used to prevent horns from growing. The kids cry while it is being done, but they seem to recover very quickly. I have mixed emotions about doing it, but it makes goats more sellable and makes them less dangerous to people and each other. Cocoa, on the right is our big acrobat. Below is a nice family portrait.

My father and sister and her 3 kids came to visit us last week, and the kids really loved the baby goats.

My sister and I celebrated our birthdays together - on a day during the 3 weeks inbetween our birthdays - just like when we were kids. :-)

On my actual birthday, two of our wwoofers, Sara and Violet, put on a lovely water dance performance at nearby Tanner Lake. They didn't exactly do the dance because of my birthday, but it turned out to be a good day to do it, which made the day more special. Jeff also cooked a fabulous dinner on my birthday. He made home made ravioli pasta filled with ricotta cheese made from our goats' milk. He also made chocolate mousse for dessert. It was fabulous! Below, Violet and Sara are posing for the camera in their aries/ram costumes (left), and they are in the middle of their dance on the right.

-Annie