I snapped this picture of these guys (facing north) and turned and there were more! (facing west)
Then I looked up and North
And upward and south
So I decided to stave off any attacks and make an offering of my unfortunate gosling that had died, I went to get the shovel out of the chicken coop. I opened the door to the coop, my mind fully on the vultures and the shovel, and AAHHHHH There's moving things in here! Geez! How dare the chickens jump out at me like that! It's not like you'd expect the chickens to be hanging around in the chicken coop!
In other news, when I finally got around to milking Ellie I discovered that my scale mus be broken. It read that I received five lbs of milk! Hmm. That can't be right...I stressed her out yesterday by taking her kids for walks on leashes (them bellering the entire time) the dogs went too and ran and jumped around the kids, forgot to give her hay until well after feeding time, brushed her on the stand in the evening (which she hates), and also made her be tethered out to eat grass (also something she hates). All this stress and a late milking equals more milk???! Something funny going on here....
Could it be the extra serving of grain to keep her still while she was brushed? Maybe the alfalfa pellets the girls both got as a treat last night for putting up with my tormenting? Could she have been too busy watching me to feed her kids this morning?? Or maybe it was that her kids are so nervous around me now after their lesson yesterday that they bellered the entire time she was being milked??
I took the milk to the house and ran it through the filter...Oh my! It really is five pounds! Over half a gallon this morning! I wonder what the kids are going to have for breakfast?? Hay??
Memo to me: Next year we are bottle feeding and having nice calm babies that don't freak out when learning to lead because they aren't attached to mommy's hip.
7 comments:
LOL! We dam raise and ours usually are pretty calm anyways since we don't milk usually after they're weaned though since it works better for us that way.
What type of goat are you milking? I'm lucky to get 1 pound per milking. The best I've ever done is 19 ounces in one milking. And our baby is bottle fed!
She's a Nubian Christy. And she only had good bloodlines on one side of the family. I'll be getting two doe kids at the end of the month that should be fabulous (10+ lbs/day) milkers next year when they freshen. Although it depends on the age of the doe and how many kids they had too. A doe will hit her top milk production at 3-4 years of age (mine is a two year old) and the more kids they have the more milk they tend to make. Yours is a Nigerian right? How old is she and how many kids did she have? I know she moved to your place after having the kids and the stress could have caused probs too. Hopefully she'll do better next year.
Hello, I've been meaning to comment on your blog for awhile now.
Yep, we have those darn red headed vultures too. Last summer they roosted in trees across the road from our place. We do have Bald eagles,Golden Eagles, Red Tailed hawks( chicken hawks) and yes even owls. My personal favorite is the Bald Eagle. We also see lots of water fowl living on the river. Pelicans are so fun to watch fly together.
Don't know a thing about goats, in fact just learned a few things about sheep this Spring, as our Dd raised 3 bum lambs for a friend.
Just wanted to say hello, and thanks for listing our blog under your favorites.
Blessings from,
The Never Done Farm
This is her first freshening, she is 2. She had 1 kid this time, so I expect her milk production to go up next year. And being a dwarf I know she won't have huge milk production. I just want to get up to the minimum average for her breed.
Alot of people say that the dwarves have only slightly less milk production that the full size but I haven't tested it. She should at least go up next year
Wow! We are hoping that one or two of our Nubian does might be bred to our angora buck. We don't have (or really want) a Nubian buck, but if we got some goat kids that had harvestable fleece AND good milk volume, now that would be a treat and a dual purpose breed too!
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