More About Goats

Last week I helped put up an electric fence, with a solar panel to run it, so the goats can have quite a bit of area to roam and forage. The mainly prefer bushes and trees over grass, and seem to be eating buckbrush, poison oak (yay), low redwood branches, ferns, some bunch grasses, and native blackberry vines, and other stuff no doubt. They like to lay in the dirt because it helps keep bugs and flies away so they dug the grass away and made a bare patch to hang out in.


A few days ago the little baby girl, Summer, broke her leg somehow, we do not know how, but Jim and Deleh took her to the vet and she got a splint on it. When she got home it was quite bright teal, but now it is dusty. She hobbles around ok, but is slower than her brothers, and the rest of the goats.

Two of them have been being milked every morning. There are four adult females here, one adult male, and five kids born this spring/summer, four of whom are males. The mother of the triplets has not been being milked, they need all the milk still, and one of the other females did not get pregnant last year so does not have milk now. The two with older kids get separated at night so their kids don't drink at night and they will have milk in the mornings for us. We are getting between 3 quarts and a gallon of milk a day, and after the older kids are weaned and the triplets are being separated from their mother at night we will be getting quite a bit more. A bunch of people here drink the milk and use in on cereal and the like. And we have been making cheese, a simple cheese, more like goat milk curds once, and twice Chevre, soft cultured goat milk cheese, it takes two gallons of milk to make it and with so much milk consumption it is a while before that much is available.