KIDDINGS SEASON IS NOT FAR OFF NOW

Posted on February 9, 2012 by admin

We are getting ready for kidding season to begin in just a matter of days. Daisy, our alpine/nubian cross doe is the first due to kid followed by Shanti and Buffy at the end of the month. March is our busiest month this year but kids are expected into June.

Yesterday, while we were doing some cleaning and rearanging of the barn, I spent some time with the milking herd and their livestock guardian dog Dixie in the upper paddock. The mild warm weather this winter has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that we are able to work outside without being up to our knees (or higher) in snow and a curse in that we are having one heck of a long mud season. The goats have been out much more than they would in an average winter and they have been loving it. The time outside gives me the opportunity to check over all of the girls with plenty of room and also makes it easy to get some pictures of their baby bumps.

This is Lakshmi who is due on March 11th. Her belly has popped really nicely. I can’t wait to see what she has in there.

 

 

 

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2012 BEGINS

Posted on January 21, 2012 by admin

No matter how good  my intentions are it always seems I don’t find the time to post in this blog during the farmers’ market season. The months from May through November are just so busy that the best I can do is a quick sentence or some photos on Facebook.

So here it is January 2012 and I return to the blog. The summer and fall of 2011 were pretty remarkable. We had an insane amount of rain especially late in the summer. I noted that between mid August and mid- September we had about 30 inches of rain. This is three quarters of the typical YEARLY rainfall in New York. This astronomical amount of rain was partially due to two tropical storms that produced record breaking “500 year” floods in the region. We were spared much of the flooding since water tends to run downhill and we sit at the bottom of the Shawangunk Ridge. We had rivers running through the property and water flowed into the milking parlor but overall it wasn’t too bad. New Paltz and other areas further north were not so lucky. The first time I drove into New Paltz after hurricane Irene and I saw the silt line at least five feet up the trees along the road I was stunned. The farm fields were grey and dead and debris was everywhere. I will hold a picture of the devastated farm field with the toddler car sitting in it for a long time.

Two sales venues shut down after the storms because there just weren’t any veggies to sell and the vegetable growers are the backbone of any farmers’ market. This left us feeling the economic impact of the storms but we were still better off than so many others. Eventually the markets that remained open after the storms picked up a bit. In late October, just as things were beginning to feel a bit normal, we had a freak snowstorm that left about eight inches of snow on the ground. At that point most farmers just threw up their hands and hoped that the year would just be over so maybe things would return to something managable.

Yeah, so here we are at the beginning of 2012. I hate to say it but the winter hasn’t been very normal either. Today we are having our first snow of the winter. Up to this point the weather has been unusally warm with regular rain storms. The weather was so odd that the goats didn’t realize that breeding should have been underway and we bred our last doe only a few days ago.

Kidding season will begin in a few weeks with does due into June. I sure hope the weather is a bit more even tempered this year so everyone can get back on track.

Cheers~

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THE SUN FINALLY CAME OUT…

Posted on May 16, 2011 by admin

The sun finally came out last week and it was glorious… warm and bright and inspiring. I spent most of the week catching up on gardening – the trial potatoes got into the ground as did brocoli and seeds for wax beans, spinich, cilantro, yellow squash, butternut squash, beets, and swiss chard. The dill is popping up all over, including between the paving stones. The blackberry and raspberry canes got a finally cleaning out of old canes and the strawberries are blooming. Asparagus are showing themselves and the rhubarb is gigantic.

Once the veggie gardening was caught up on I planted the cala tubers and cleaned up the flower gardens and planted the deck boxes and front porch planters. It was a busy week.

Here is a sample of what is in bloom

 

 

The end of kidding season is in sight (finally!) with four more does due to kid between now and the beginning of June. Persephone, a yearling doe, had a single doe kid on 4/29 and Cassandre had a doe and a buck yesteday. Inanna looks like she will kid in the next day or two then we wait for the end of the month and June… it has been a long season this year.

Persephone’s little brown doe and Cassandra’s twins…

 

 

The rain has returned and is expected to stay all week… so much more difficult to accept after the beautiful weather last week. (we have already had two inches of rain with 4 inches or more predicted).

We are once again selling at Brook Farm Project CSA distributions and markets will be opening for the regular season over the next month or so. Cheese is once again being delivered regularly to Meadow View Farm in Gardiner.

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SPRINGING FORWARD

Posted on April 21, 2011 by admin

The past month has been a blur in many ways….

We were able to keep Pandora’s little premature buck alive for over 36 hours but he just was too small to survive beyond that. He rallied at the end, like so many will but he faded and passed in the very early morning of what would have been his second day.

Our yearling alpine/nubian cross Daisy kidded two weeks ago yesterday with twin doelings and they are just the cutest little things…..

They are 3/4 nubian and 1/4 alpine but the alpine shines through in how bold they are and they don’t have roman noses although their ears are trying to hang down – lol. Daisy is milking very well and I have hopes that she will be a fine addition to our milk line.

We sold many of our buck kids for Easter and now only have does and a few young bucklings as the most recent wave of kiddings begins. We have four of the very early doe kids still here with one sold and others who we hope will be heading off to new homes soon. The mid-February through March kids are doing very well with most sold and only one other we hope to see heading off to a new home. 

Oreo Cookie is looking great with long legs, ears and nice body length at six weeks old….

The group of kids born on 4/1/11 have been reduced by two that went off to their new home and we have two beautiful buck kids that will be going off to their new home soon. Two other bucks are still available out of that group.

Today Selena, our oldest doe, kidded with triplets. One did not survive but her two daughters are doing well and Selena is once again looking as if she is ready to feed every kid on the farm. We have many of Selena’s daughters and they are all wonderful milkers and we are thrilled to see her kid with not only multiples but two does.

There are another five does due to kid in the next few days and then kidding will be nearly over for this year. 

We have pretty much finalized our market schedule for this year so check out the find us page on the website to get all the details.  We are excited to be returning to Kingston and New Paltz and continuing with Gardiner Green Market where we had a great time over the winter. New markets for 2011 are in Marlborough/Milton, NY and Washington Township, NJ in northern NJ. We are also currently back on campus at SUNY New Paltz and continueing with Gardiner Green Market indoors on the third Saturday of May. Check out the Rip Van Winkle Wine and Cheese Festival on May 7th on the waterfront in Catskill NY for a special spring day on the Hudson River.

This spring has seemed to flutter in and out with more cold than warm and more wet than dry but the daffodils and forsythia are blooming and the apricot tree is beginning to bloom so spring it is….

… and the kids are at play even when the wind howls off the mountain.

 

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STRANGE ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

Posted on March 30, 2011 by admin

A very strange day on the farm today.

I thought I would be getting some things done today out in the garden and other things that would be helpful if we actually do get a foot of snow on Friday. I headed out with loppers in hand to prune the blackberries and fruit trees. I managed to clear out the old canes on the blackberries and had moved over to the apple tree when Dixie our Anatolian Shepherd Dog began to whimper and went into the barn near the kidding pen. I thought maybe one of the three does in the kidding pen was in labor but before I could take a step Dixie was back out of the barn and looking across toward the buck/youngstock shed. Dixie was very excited so I went up to ask her what was wrong and I heard what she heard – a doe pushing (as in kidding!). I know two yearling does were bred to kid within the next week or so but this particular young doe who was clearly pushing  shouldn’t have been bred. She was our tiny baby from last year who weighed in under four pounds – the runt of triplets out of a very nice doe who is not terribly large herself.  Well young bucks will be bucks and clearly she had been bred as she was about to give birth.  Pandora stuggled and with a bit of help she delivered a tiny little buck kid who weighed in at 3lbs 11oz. He is weak but seems to want to live so we have him in a basket under a heating pad and we are feeding him tiny amounts of colostrum. We will see how it goes over the next 24 hours or so. Pandora is fine but she did not give any colostrum for her baby so I fed him some that we had frozen. I will go out shortly to see if she is up for feeding her baby.

The other strange of the day was my  conversation with the vet about the necropsy done at Cornell University on Rainbow who died suddenly and without any warning two weeks ago today. The preliminary report indicates that she died from a “greater than 360 degree twist at the distal end of the cecum”. Basically a twisted gut. Twisted gut is not uncommom in goat kids and many pet owners will have heard of it if they own a large breed dog. It IS NOT common in adult goats. Puzzling and strange and we many never know why it happened.

Three mature does in the kidding pen who could kid at any time and two yearling first fresheners due to kid within the week. Add a predicted Nor’easter that could dump a foot or more of snow on Friday and what do you get? 

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MARCH MUD

Posted on March 16, 2011 by admin

March has been very wet and we are only half way through. Rain has come down multiple inches at a time and the snowpack melted away creating flooding in the milking parlor and near the cheeseroom refrigerators. Mud is the second challenge of the transition to spring – boot sucking slippery mud everywhere we try to walk. Today it is raining again.

Three more does kidded over the weekend and Monday. Neesa had a beautiful black doeling with solid black ears on Friday night. She will be staying and we have named her Oreo Cookie. Her face is white while most everything else is black except for the brown markings on her lower legs. Saturday morning Isis had a single buck kid, very handsome with moonspots and it looks like he has a home already. I was thinking I really don’t need another buck but it would be a shame to send him off for meat – lucky fellow will be going to a local farm as a breeding buck. Monday afternoon Peaches had a huge buck kid who is funny with a half black and half pink nose. That finishes this round of kiddings with the next group due around April 1st.

 

 
 

Neesa's doe

 

Isis buck kid

 

 

 

Peaches buck kid

 
 
 

 

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WEATHER -BLESSING AND CURSE OF THE FARMER

Posted on March 7, 2011 by admin

Spring is coming the calendar tells me but the winds blow cold and the ice is still many inches thick over much of the property. We were teased by warm weather for a couple of days and then the rain came through again and nearly flooded out the milking parlour and the kid shelter as snow melted and the sky poured down over still frozen ground. I spent most of Saturday on the roof of the barn taking temporary steps to stop the leaking roof. I succeed in that at least and no more water came into the barn with the latest storm. The ice behind the barn remains in place and is the cause of the flood in the milking parlour – only warm weather will make that go away although I hope I can hack at the ice enough to divert some of the flow. Those are just the obvious weather concerns. Yeah, it stinks that water is getting into the milking parlour and the area outside the cheeseroom (read inside my house!). Yes, I panic when I walk into the kid shelter and my feet sink two inches in soggy straw and hay but at least the kids can take refuge in their kennel and igloo. What I can’t stop is the mucky wet air that comes with the wetness. The climate that is so not in tune with a goat’s natural environment (yup, domesticated for seriously long but still inclined to arid places) that I worry that pneumonia will develop in some unsuspecting animal. The muck that churns up mud that coats udders that must be cleaned and sanitized to prevent mastitis or can cause hoof problems. Growing milk is as prone to the whim of weather as growing crops but the season for milk is the full year while the crop farmer gets a reprieve in the winter to contemplate the coming season and recharge to have the energy for the coming challenges.

I read today about the volume of antibiotics used in livestock production and I shook my head. Yes, I suppose prophylactic antibiotics can avoid some illness but in the end the animal’s immune system will not become strong and the bacteria will evolve to become resistant to the antibiotics rendering them useless. A no win situation.

I don’t mean to sound so negative and truly I am not complaining – just running through the concerns of the moment and looking ahead to what comes with the turn of the season. In a few months the goats will be browsing bright green growth and the air will be warm and the sun will shine longer each day. The kids will caper and hop in the joy of just being….. the beauty far outweighs the difficulties …. there are moments though when everything is just …. muddy

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MORE NUPINES

Posted on February 27, 2011 by admin
Buffy, the second alpine doe, kidded this afternoon around 2pm. Like last year she had a huge buck kid first follwoed by a more reasonably sized doe kid. This year the buck is white and the doe black, the reverse of last year Buffy looked huge and I was hoping for triplets but… they do what they want to do. The buck kid has been crying since we brought the kids in even though they have been fed twice. Just like his attention needy mother – lol

 

Buffy in labor

 

Buffy's buck kid taking a moments rest

 

Buffy's doe kid

 

 

In other news, the kid that was stuck in Gaia has pneumonia and we thought we were going to lose him last night (yeah, Doni said he was a doe but when we looked again he is a he). He made it through the night but right now he sounds really gooky in the lungs. I am doing everything possible for him and he was doing much better earlier today so I hope this is just a rough spot and he will improve again.

This job has some serious ups and downs.

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ANOTHER DIFFICULT KIDDING

Posted on February 21, 2011 by admin

Wow, another stressful kidding this morning.

Last night Durga decided to kid just when I would have like to get into bed. I heard the sound of licking and wetness in the barn and when we went out to investigate Durga had deposited a very tiny baby in the straw of the kidding pen. We got the little one wrapped up in a towel and quickly Durga was pushing again. This time the kid was full breech and with a little manipulating I got the back legs straightened out and the kid was quickly delivered, another doe. After getting the second kid dried off Durga was ready to go for a third kid and out popped a buck kid with pure white fur and a few black spots. We were back in the house with the kids very quickly and got them fed and headed for bed. We didn’t think Gaia would make it through the night, she just had that look.

At around 3:45 this morning the sound of a kid woke me and I couldn’t decide if I heard it on the barn monitor or if it was a kid in the dining room. Rather than take any chances we went to the barn to investigate. At that point no kids but Gaia was at the back of the kidding pen and definitely looked like she would kid soon. Back to bed but slept with one ear on the monitor. At about 8am Ray came in with a kid and wasn’t sure who it belonged to. Shortly afterwards he discovered that the kid belonged to Gaia but she was not actively doing anything that implied she had another kid coming. I fed the babies in the house and headed out to check on Gaia and after brief observation it was clear she had another kid that needed to get out. I felt around and found a kid (it felt like it could have been two) that was totally in the wrong position. I tried to get the kid straightened out but after fifteen minutes it was clear that the kid had it’s head turned back as if it was doing a tumble in an attempt to return to the womb. To complicate things one front leg was extended and I couldn’t find another leg to grab a hold of. I called Lynn, who has many more years of experience than I do and she made some suggestions on getting the kid’s head turned toward the world. I got my daughter up to help and went back to work but I just couldn’t get the head turned around so I called Lynn back and she called Doni to see if she could help out. Fortunately Doni was able to come over and she go the kid out but it was a really tough time for a while and we all thought the kid wouldn’t make it. My first priority was to do what was right for Gaia… there will be other kids in the future and she is an important part of the farm milk line – no compromise she comes before the kid. Amazingly Doni got the kid’s head turned (through some rather rude maneuvers) and pulled the kid into the world and…… she was alive – stressed and weak but alive. Gaia was holding her own through all of this but there was some serious yelling going on during the rearranging of the kid. The kid was wrapped up and stimulated to cough and breath and Gaia was given a bucket of warm molasses water while I gave a huge sigh of relief.

The kid that was stuck is doing very well as of right now but earlier she was very cold  and weak so I had her under a heating pad for a couple of hours. She just now stood up on her own (only six hours or so from her rough ride into the world) and she is eating well. Gaia is weak but we got her to stand up so I could milk her and I am going back out to milk her again and will offer her a tonic of vitamins, electrolytes, probiotics and molasses to help her recover from the invasive birth. We will be watching Gaia closely for any signs of infection and hopeful this will all be a dim memory for everyone very soon.

 

Durga's tiny little doe kid

 

Durga's kids around Gaia's first doe kid

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THE NUPINE KIDS OF 2011

Posted on February 20, 2011 by admin

A few years ago some friends gifted me with two alpine does. Willow and Buffy were a family milk project that just wasn’t going to happen and Stephanie and Paul felt they needed to be somewhere where they could do their job so they joined my herd of nubian goats. Well alpines and nubians are very different creatures. Nubians have more refined bodies while Alpines are built like very solid tanks. Nubians have dignified roman noses while alpines have classic concave faces. Nubians give very rich milk that is great for cheesemaking while alpines give huge amounts of somewhat less rich milk. Alpines can be very aggressive while nubians like a nicely maintained herd pecking order that can be reworked as sparing sessions dictate.

So Buffy and Willow moved in and changed the universe within the barn. They terrorized the nubians for quite some time and will still hog food but neither of them has been elevated to herd queen (Rainbow, the big face on the farm facebook page photo, took that job after her mother died). Since I don’t have an alpine buck I have been breeding these two alpines to nubian bucks and what we get is a mix that is pretty much dominated by the alpine body style with various expressions of the concave or roman nose and we pretty much always get very silly ears. Alpine ears stick out from the goat’s head and can be positioned to express various moods while nubian ears are long and pendulous giving the goat the look of an Egyptian queen wearing a headdress. Nupine kids have goofy airplane wing ears of various lengths.

I hope this year I will finally find out what happens at the milking end of the crossing of the two breeds. I kept Buffy’s doe kid from last year and I hope she will kid late in this years kidding season. Daisy looks a lot like an alpine but has long ears and she is white while the two adult alpines are classic black with white trim.

Last night Willow finally kidded. She was due on Thursday and had been in the kidding pen with the three nubians who are also due to kid since Wednesday. It wasn’t pretty having four mature very pregnant does in that small pen but that was the way it had to be. I thought Willow would have kidded on Friday since she was spending her time at the back of the pen and was focused on laying down and grunting most of the time. We checked the pregnant ladies many times yesterday and finally last night my daughter came running in from feeding kids to announce that willow had hooves sticking out of her back end. By the time I got my winter layers on she was trying to push out a very large kid. She worked and finally got the head out but I had to help her deliver the shoulders and finally out came the rest of a big buck kid. We got him wrapped in a towel and Willow was pushing again and she very quickly delivered a smaller doe kid. A nice quick and normal birth on a very cold and windy night.

Mom and kids are all doing well.

Willow's buck 12 hours old

 

Willow's doe 12 hours old

 

 

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