Catching Up

I thought I would finally try to catch you all up on what's been going on around here.  Mostly, we've been trying to finish up on our school year and taking care of goats.  We are really winding down on school, and going to finish up some of the last priorities slowly.  We really need summer vacation NOW!

I finally started planting things in the garden.  I really cheated this year and bought quite a few plants already started.  I got 8 tomato, 8 broccoli, 8 cabbage, 8 celery and 2 cayenne pepper plants.  They're all tucked in and nicely growing so far.  I did manage to plant potatoes a while back and they're growing nicely as well.  Just yesterday I finally planted the onion sets, so now I'll be anxiously waiting for them to come up.  My little girls started two pea plants and a corn plant indoors, and they've gone into the garden as well.  Very cute. :)  All in all it's been a very slow start with the garden.

My little goats have kept me very busy up to now, but I think it's getting easier.  I had each doe kid in her own little pen and let her bond with her babies there first.  When the youngest were 2 weeks old, I tried to begin separating all the babies from their dams at night and milking in the morning.  After 2 days, the twins got diarrhea.  I separated them all again, cleaned everything and waited to see what happened.  It seemed that they would have a short bout of diarrhea overnight, them be fine again for a number of days as long as I kept them on only mom's milk and grass hay.  I also gave them some goat probiotics.  Finally, after several bouts of the diarrhea, and several total pen cleanings, I started cocci treatment on the twins.  After three days of treatment (with two more days to go) I cleaned every pen with bleach water, sprinkled DE on the floors, and cleaned all feeders and the dog kennels we put in the pens for the kids to snuggle up in.  That alone took about 6 hrs. with my son's help.  I was satisfied that I'd done the best I could, and we put all the kids and moms together in the big pen with the outside run.  So far, so good!  We have now separated the kids from the dams for two nights in a row.  With the runt still with mom at night, I got a whoppin' quart of milk from all three does this morning!  That may not seem like much to you all, but I'm finally thinking this whole thing is starting to pay back.  I just had a nice cold glass of milk, and let me tell you, it was great!   I'd like to get more, but at this point I'd be satisfied with a half gallon a day.  Really, I should be able to get at least 3/4 of a gallon a day within the next couple of weeks.  I'm not ready to blame it all on the goats though, since we're all learning how to do this whole milking thing, goats and myself.  We're definitely getting better! :

The absolute hardest thing so far has been disbudding these cute little rascals.  I had to do my biggest buckling twice, and I DON'T recommend that EVER!  I don't think I'll ever be able to do that again.  He was so big by the time I knew I'd have to do it over that it was almost impossible even with hubby and eldest daughter all holding him down.  It bled a lot more then when they were small, too.  When I finally did get it all stopped and let him go, he scratched it with a hoof and started it bleeding again.  By then he wasn't letting us anywhere near his little head, so the best I could do was spray it with blue coat and let him go.  Poor guy!  However, he still loves us.  Go figure.  I guess we could all learn a whole lot from these animals! :

I'm having fun catching up on all your blog posts, but that's taking time.  I never would have imagined how much time and thought (downright head scratching thought, second guessing thought, down on my knees praying thought) these goats would take.  I'm so new at this, so I keep telling myself to give it time.  It will get easier, and I won't always be in such a conundrum about everything.  Please, all of you tell me I'm right about that! ;)