I can't take credit for this since I saw it on the internet but thought I would share for any goat owners that want to make feeding an easier daily task. What we like to do is give a flake of pure Alfalfa per goat in the mornings then after the grain feeding they get to run free and eat pasture grass. This feeder is also in the middle of their fenced yard (this yard is for the times we have to leave and they can't escape)
The huge bale in the cage is 1,000 pounds of grass, alfalfa mix so moving it can be a challenge. I pounded a T-post through the middle of both sides and used my tractor to drag it into the yard. I then enclosed it with metal Cattle Panels that the goats can fit their heads through to eat and still have minimal amount of waste. it's so nice having this. Their is nothing worse than having to fill feeders in the hurricane force winds impaling your eyes with hay stems. And it minimizes the knuckle head goats from fighting over feeder space.
P.s. The hay is much greener than in the photos. Diana is the master of the camera settings .. I just know how to make it click.
~Ken~
Our herd has been tested CAE free. The babies have been nursing off their moms and they get so much attention from us since we can't resist their goofy and adorable nature. These two goats are going to be very good tempered and fun to raise. They make us laugh everyday. Their mom has paper work to be registered as native on appearance and she is a great milker. Her name is Millicent and photos of her can be seen here. The father is Miguel from Dewmar acres. His lineage is available here. He is a top line breeding buck registered with the ADGA and we have all the paper work to register the mom and babies if you would prefer this option. Just let us know and we can start the process and tattoo them. The boy is going to be weathered soon and registering him would be unnecessary. We currently have a 1 year old buck and weathering them makes them tame like a puppy dog plus not smelly at all. We found our buck to be very useful in helping us know when our does go into heat and he would make a great pet as well. Their mom is a white Lamancha and excellent milker for a second time freshener. They were born April 13th and should be weened and ready for their new home by June 1st. They will also have their CDT vaccines as well and they have already been dis-budded so they won't grow horns. They both were born with the same markings with the only difference being the girl having more gray lines and the boy's is brown markings. They are the best babies and we hate too see them go but we just don't have the room. We have their birth on video as well if you would like to have that too keep. The photos below are when they were born and the video of me getting mauled by the babies is fairly recent. If you would like to stop by the farm and meet the kids and mom you can contact us by email or call Diana at 719-966-7465. We are offering them up for sale with a deposit option of half the price and the remainder due when they are weened and ready for their new home. We would like to sell both together but if you only prefer one that is OK too. They are herd animals and don't do well without a companion. You can reserve either of them here. Thank you for your interest. I know they will be a great addition to your family. Click photos to enlarge.
Granted I don't have the experience of bottle fed babies and only ones that milk off mom but our babies are so playful and loving with us every time they hear the barn door open. We just can't keep them all from tugging on our pant legs looking for play time while we try to clean the barn. I can only think the bottle feeding is much like giving them attention time. We play with our babies a lot and don't bottle feed but they are so people friendly.
We researched and debated on how to raise our babies for the longest time. Bottle feeding farms v.s. natural nursing off mom seems to be about fifty fifty. The theory behind bottle feeding is to keep the babies away from mom then pasteurizing mom's milk to feed the babies 4 or more times a day to prevent caprine arthritis encephalitis. We have our herd tested yearly and they are all free of this. We didn't like the idea of keeping the babies from the moms and I'm glad we didn't. (Once you choose they will only drink from a bottle or mom so there is usually no changing it up)
Our babies run with the herd of big goats just as they would in the wild and while they are a bunch of goofs, our mom's are always watching out for them. We even let them run with the herd out in the electrified fields and they only got out once. Were still over protective and worry that they will get out again so we put them in the fenced yard when we leave. I think the one good shock was enough to train them though. One thing we found with the internet is that you can't always get a straight and definitive answer so sometimes you just have to go with your instinct. Farming just doesn't seem to be an exact science.
~Ken~
Below is me getting mauled by the four monsters. It's going to be soooooo hard to sell them. I think were going to keep the Toggenburg "Bubba Bell" at the least.
We have read a lot about using the deep litter method on various websites. We decided to give it a try and it does work. The concept being to spread dry hay over the messy hay in the barn creating layers that also keep the animals warm since the composting of it underneath generates heat. Occasionally we spread some horse stall freshener as well. It worked great all winter long. It never smelled and we never had to worry about heating the goats on those crazy cold days. However we never seen anyone say how hard it is to muck it all out in the spring.
It was the most awful experience and partly due to us not thinking to make the barn accessible with a trailer at a big door. I spent a 12 hour day just chipping away at the layers of nastiness and wheel burrowing it out to the gate. It didn't smell until I started digging into it and it was the most god awful smell ever. Armed with a painters mask which felt pointless since nothing was going to keep that smell out. A pitch fork was all I could use to break it up and it had the shortest handle creating knots all up and down my back. I then spent the next two days shoveling it all again onto my trailer then taking it out to the end of our land only to shovel it a third time. This whole process about destroyed my back and broke my will :p Before I started, the hay level on the floor was so high that my head was in the rafters. Now, so much came out I can barely touch the rafters with my finger tips.
If you decide to do the deep litter method it really does help to have a tractor that can scoop the stuff up and a barn that you can maneuver a trailer into an easy position. Lesson learned. Our new barn in the works has two swing out doors.
Another farm blunder and lesson learned is the hay you can see in the photos. Each of those bales weigh 1,000 pounds or more. It's the cheapest way you can buy hay this year and this stuff is all organic (not sprayed with chemicals) Our goat mentor got a load delivered and she had these three on her trailer ready for us to pick up. She has a tractor with a hay fork to move the giant bales. The first load o fun was when I hooked my Dodge Durango up to the trailer. I thought in my little brain that since I had the big V-8 my Durango should do just fine. Well.... I lowered the trailer down on my hitch and that weight just about lifted the front tires of my Dodge off the ground. Thankfully Mary Sue was kind enough to then let us also use her Ford diesel truck to get it home.
Onto the next newbie blunder. I don't think Mary Sue has tried to man handle these things. She said we should be able to roll these off the trailer. I know I'm not that out of shape, but these things don't budge. Diana and I were on top of them pushing with our legs only to get sand spurs stuck in our bums. Here comes our old 1946 tractor to the rescue. We pounded fence T-posts through each side and then hooked a chain to them which made it possible to drag them off the trailer and onto pallets.
I then went on to get my steel wheel tractor stuck while using it as a rototiller. Something I thought I could never do with this beast of a machine. As the wheels dug down the towing draw bar lifted the tractor up. I could spin those metal wheels like wheel of fortune. Out comes the chains again and the Dodge to pull it out.
Farming rocks. I swear. Who needs a gym? What a week :p
~Ken~
About a week ago, Oreo got to come out to play in the barnyard with all the big kids for the first time. She was bouncing off the walls with energy - take a look!
So apparently Bella has decided that her mom Roxibelle makes an excellent trampoline - check out the video!
She started to make milk yesterday so we we're warned ahead of time but just like our Toggenburg she hardly made any noise. She gave birth just a little bit ago at 4pm and the boy was already out by the time we figured out it was time. She was bred to Miguel out of Dewmar Acres.
The Markings on these kids are just amazing. Millie did a great job. The boy has more brown in his face markings and the girl is more white. I can't place what the markings remind me of but they are also oddly enough born on Friday the 13th. We might have our hands full with these too and we're thinking up names. They were walking in no time and took to nursing like nothing. They are both some strong babies. I just want to take them inside like a lap dog on the couch. They are so fun to watch.
I went a little crazy with the photos like a goat paparazzi. The camera just doesn't do them justice
~Ken~
Well... I'm not done baby proofing, plus not totally prepared thanks to a month of bad weather. Our Toggenburg decided to go into labor a week early and planned to do this just as we wanted to go to bed. We were up till midnight but it was all worth it. At least she didn't get us out of bed a 4 in the morning. The baby is adorable! We're thinking of naming her Bella since her mom is Roxibelle. She's so dark she's almost black with curly hair and were not positive but I think she has blue eyes? Her pupils are too big to tell just yet.
It was a pretty gooey mess and the placenta didn't fall off until today. It was just dangling by a cord for the longest time and we couldn't pull it out, so as not to make Roxibelle bleed internally. Unfortunately, she was born with an underdeveloped still birth so we had to dig a grave in the dark last night. We're not sure what could have happened but we just know that's the way nature works. My boy was able to be with us for the whole birth, I'm happy for that. Everything else went off without a hitch and I'm glad the still born was facing the right direction so we didn't have to reach in.
Bella is gonna get the full treatment of vaccines, dis-budding, tattoo, and registration. She comes from great breeding lines out of Dewmar Acres. She will be for sale once we get her weened off mom, evaluated and all the other stuff taken care of. We just have too many goats but were on our way back to being in the milk business again. We have two other girls that look like over inflated balloons ready to give birth any day now so hopefully in a month we will have shares again ; ) Roxibelle is a machine. That goat makes so much milk and she is a great mom. We have the sound of babies around every corner. I love spring.
Were soooooooooo tired today it's not even funny.
~Ken~
Well were still not having any good luck with our breeding and things are looking bleak. Our girls Margie and Mallory went into heat again yesterday. We been on baby watch for Mallory and being 2 days over due she decided she's not even pregnant. We made so many trips to the breeders we can't even count now. I don't know why were not getting the job done and we even tried different bucks. We dried Mallory off thinking she was pregnant and Lamanchas are harder to get pregnant this late in the game. We may end up with goats out of milk for a year the way things are looking. We planned for Diana to do milk deliveries while I did more baby proofing but the day kept falling apart. With the threat of 4 to 5 dollar gas coming and a hay shortage more than doubling the cost of a bale this could be a rough summer. We bought $1,000 worth of hay thinking it should be enough to get us through the winter. Watching the pile get smaller we asked Falcon Feed when the first cutting should come in, we were caught off guard not knowing it wouldn't be until July. Lesson learned : ( We may have to buy more goats in milk to make up for the ones that wouldn't freshen, something we didn't want to do. We left the girls with their boyfriend while we did deliveries so all we can do now is hope this last chance takes. I had no idea it was this hard to get a goat pregnant. Were talking now of making a buck pen for next year so we don't have to go through all this again. Then to top the day off as you know if you live close to here the winds picked up shaking the water in the toilets and throwing bunnies across the yard. On that note.. here is some feel good pictures before we head out in the wind to clean and milk. We have some challenges to get through for sure. ~Ken~
I Copied this from Washingtontimes.com so you wouldn't have to go through the barrage of advertisements. We saw the story on Fox News channel that led us to look into it further. It drives us CRAZY! The way they treat raw milk with unfounded arguments and demonize it as if it was an illegal drug. They even mention marijuana in the article which gives you the feel they treat milk like illegal drugs. This is what the Feds are wasting our tax dollars on and shutting down good farmers trying to make a living as Americans did when this country was founded. At some point the government decided we don't know whats best for us and believes they can police everything we do. What they are really doing is killing jobs, opportunities for people to innovate and create an income other than unemployment checks and creating a food supply with unpronounceable ingredients under unsustainable filthy conditions. I just had to rant a Lil. I feel a little better now :p Here is the article.
A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stopRainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.
The product in question: unpasteurized milk.
It’s a battle that’s been going on behind the scenes for years, with natural foods advocates arguing that raw milk, as it’s also known, is healthier than the pasteurized product, while the Food and Drug Administration says raw milk can carry harmful bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria.
“It is the FDA’s position that raw milk should never be consumed,” saidTamara N. Ward, spokeswoman for the FDA, whose investigators have been looking into Rainbow Acres for months, and who finally last week filed a 10-page complaint in federal court in Pennsylvania seeking an order to stop the farm from shipping across state lines any more raw milk or dairy products made from it.
The farm’s owner, Dan Allgyer, didn’t respond to a message seeking comment, but his customers in the District of Columbia and Maryland were furious at what they said was government overreach.
“I look at this as the FDA is in cahoots with the large milk producers,” said Karin Edgett, a D.C. resident who buys directly from Rainbow Acres. “I don’t want the FDA and my tax dollars to go to shut down a farm that hasn’t had any complaints against it. They’re producing good food, and the consumers are extremely happy with it.”
The FDA’s actions stand in contrast to other areas where the Obama administration has said it will take a hands-off approach to violations of the law, including the use of medical marijuana in states that have approved it, and illegal-immigrant students and youths, whom theadministration said recently will not be targets of their enforcement efforts.
Raw-milk devotees say pasteurization, the process of heating food to kill harmful organisms, eliminates good bacteria as well, and changes the taste and health benefits of the milk. Many raw-milk drinkers say they feel much healthier after changing over to it, and insist they should have the freedom of choice regarding their food.
One defense group says there are as many as 10 million raw-milk consumers in the country. Sales are perfectly legal in 10 states but illegal in 11 states and the District, with the other states having varying restrictions on purchase or consumption.
Many food safety researchers say pasteurization, which became widespread in the 1920s and 1930s, dramatically reduced instances of milk-transmitted diseases such as typhoid fever and diphtheria. TheCenters for Disease Control and Prevention says there is no health benefit from raw milk that cannot be obtained from pasteurized milk.
Acting on those conclusions, the FDA uses its regulatory powers over food safety to ban interstate sales of raw milk and has warned several farms to change their practices.
According to the complaint the FDA filed in court, the agency began to look into Mr. Allgyer’s farm in late 2009, when an investigator in their Baltimore office used aliases to sign up for a Yahoo user group forRainbow Acres‘ customers, and began to place orders under the assumed names for unpasteurized milk.
The orders were delivered to private residences in Maryland, where the investigator, whose name was not disclosed in the documents, would pick them up. By crossing state lines the milk became part of interstate commerce, thus subject to the FDA’s ban on interstate sales of raw milk. The court papers note that the jugs of milk were not labeled - another violation of FDAregulations.
Armed with that information, investigators visited the farm in February 2010, but Mr. Allgyer turned them away. They returned two months later with a warrant, U.S. marshals and a state police trooper, arriving at 5 a.m. for what Mr. Allgyer’s backers called a “raid,” but the FDA said was a lawful inspection.
The investigators said they saw coolers labeled with Maryland town names, and the coolers appeared to contain dairy products. The inspection led to an April 20, 2010, letter from FDA telling Mr. Allgyerto stop selling across state lines.
He instead formed a club and had customers sign an agreement stating they supported his operation, weren’t trying to entrap the owners, and that they would be shareholders in the farm’s produce, paying only for the farmer’s labor.
Customers hoped that would get around the FDA’s definition of “commerce,” putting the exchange outside of the federal government’s purview.
The FDA investigators continued to take shipments, though, and last week went to court to stop the operation.
Ms. Ward, the FDA spokeswoman, didn’t say exactly why they targeted Mr. Allgyer’s farm, but that violations generally are determined either by FDA investigations or by state-obtained evidence.
Pete Kennedy, president of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, said undercover stings are not unheard of.
“It happens quite a bit. It’s almost like they treat raw milk as crack. It’s happened in a number of states, and at the federal level,” he said.
His organization has sued to try to halt FDA enforcement, and the case is pending in federal court in Iowa.
Mr. Allgyer’s customers declined to talk about the operations, and when asked whether they knew what would happen to the farm’s distribution, they said they would have to wait and see.
One of those customers, Liz Reitzig, president of the Maryland Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, said she started looking for raw milk when her oldest daughter began to show signs of not being able to tolerate pasteurized milk.
She first did what’s called cow sharing, which is when a group of people buy shares in owning a cow, and pay a farmer to board and milk the cow. But Maryland outlawed that practice and she was forced to look elsewhere for raw milk, and turned to Mr. Allgyer’s farm.
“We like the way they farm, we love their product, it’s super-high-quality, they’re wonderful. It’s just a wonderful arrangement,” she said.
“FDA really has no idea what they’re talking about when they’re talking about fresh milk. They have no concept - they really don’t understand what it’s like for people like me who have friends and family who can’t drink conventional milk,” Ms. Reitzig said.
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