Baaa

Since we lost our milking goats to mastitis, I figured it was time to get another goat so we could have milk. I love the benifits and the taste of raw goat milk.

This is Marina. She is part Alpine and part Nubian. She is registered also.

When I bought her, she had twins on her that were ready to be weaned. She isn't giving a whole lot of milk right now but I hope that she will come up in the future.

Below is an Alpine that my goat partener (Deb) got. She is only 8 weeks old. She will make a good milker someday.

Loosing friends

What a week. Actually the last few weeks have been so emotional.

We lost one of our registered nubian milk goats about a month ago. She had gotten mastitis and just went down hill in 3 days till she died.

Two weeks later, we found two other goats with mastitis so we started doctoring them. The next day one more had it. One of the first two was another registered nubian and she died within 3 days. The other one didn't get down like those two did. The last one went down hill fast and we were sure she would be dead the next day. She was my first milk goat and it was really hard for me. We found some old medicine in the cabinet that we had used last year for a different kind of illness and we said, "what have we got to loose?" so we gave her a really strong dose. By that evening she was sitting with her head up and then the next day she was up and munching grass. I was so excited. She is fine now except she will loose half of her udder.

In the meantime, I got a call that a really good friend of mine had a stroke. It didn't look good. She was in the Austin hospital since that is where she was at the time. She ended up dieing a few days later on Monday. So this was a greater lose than those two goats. It is still hard to believe.

The next day after my friend passed away, we decided to take the two remaining goats to the vet to have them put down because we had read some stuff about mastitis that they would pass this on to their kids. The vet talked us out of it and told us to dry them up and doctor them some more. We brought them home. I am so glad we did.

So here I want to say good bye to two great milk goats Foxy and Mammy.

I don't have a picture of Mammy but here is Foxy. Mammy was her mother.

I want to also say goodbye to Martha but I want to put that in another post.

Goat Milk

We have milk goats. Have you ever tried goat milk? It is so interesting when we tell people that we drink our milk and they wrinkle their nose. "I have never tasted good goat milk", or " that stuff is nasty." They haven't tried OUR milk. hehe. We have good milk.

What about the goat milk from the grocery store? Most of this, in my opinion, is nasty. I am so glad to have my own goats and my own fresh milk!!

We milk into a sterilized bucket, filter into a sterilized tote that is submersed in ice water, after 3 goats, we take this mix to our milk kitchen. While we wash dishes the milk continues to sit in the ice water, after most dishes are done the milk is poured into sterilized 1/2 gallon jars. At this point the milk is cold enough to drink.

That is why our milk does taste good. It can keep at least 3 weeks in the fridge and it still taste the same. Of course ours hardly last that long but it can.

Goat Milk has lots of good benifits. Check out this site.

Compare the Health Benefits of Goat Milk Versus Cow Milk
Goat milk is consumed in most parts of the world except the United States. It is becoming more common in the United States as more people are discovering its health benefits.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/136851/compare_the_health_benefits_of_goat.html

Now, go find some fresh milk and give it a try!

First Kids of the year. Twins.

We got twins this morning. I didn't get very good pictures.

This is the first of about 7 goats, if we keep them all. We are looking in to getting rid of some and getting 2 bred nubians due in March. They are milkers and we would bottle feed the babies.

I just love kidding seasons. Brings such excitement around here. Little man wants to go to the goat pen every 30 minutes. LOL.

We are getting ready for some baby goats in February. We will be milking two to start with and since it will be cold we are building a milking parlor. I am so excited about this. We were milking outside before but were blessed with good weather. There was a few times milking in the cold but never got rained on.

Here are some of our milking goats getting ready to kid.

We painted the milking stand too.