Baby Goats on Pasture


Goat babies and their portable taco truck shelter

Y'all are due for an update on the baby goats. It's been a while!

Almost three months into their little lives they are all wonderfully happy and healthy. Our final tally was 7 doelings and 3 bucklings. We are retaining all the doelings to grow our milking herd and we're also retaining one of the bucklings to serve as a herd sire next year. The other two bucklings are available for sale, so shoot us an email if you're interested (farmer@littleseedfarm.com), both come from great milk lines and would make excellent herd sires. One is an Alpine and the other is a Nubian.

Until recently, we had been training the goat kids to the electric fencing by rotating them around our front and back yards. The grass is shorter in the yard and we can keep an eye on them a lot easier. After grazing all day we would put them back in the pen where they would spend the night. We used a pen/barn area at night to keep them safe since they didn't have a guard dog with them.

But now they're big kids and they turned into voracious foragers. Our lawn just wasn't cutting it for them and they were proving to be well-trained to the electric fence. All they needed was a portable shelter and we could have them out in the fields, rotationally grazing just like the big goats.

I went on Craigslist and found a trailer that had been in the process of conversion into a "food truck" of sorts, but never quite made it. It was a guy's pet project for making a portable food trailer for his family's BBQ's, but he just didn't have the time to finish it out. It just so happens the unfinished food truck projects also make excellent portable goat housing. So I snapped it up and now the kids have their own taco truck. I love watching them pile out of it, it's like a clown car, only it's baby goats jumping out of a pseudo-taco truck, which is far more entertaining than creepy clowns.

Read More

Goat Kidding Season A Success

 The final two

As of this afternoon we are officially past our first goat kidding season. Mayday, one of our original does, gave birth to a beautiful little doeling and quite possibly the cutest buckling we've ever seen. Our grand total comes to 10 kids with 7 doelings and 3 bucklings. Everyone was born healthy and all of the moms are in great shape. There were very few surprises, other than the first goat kidding three days before her due date! We are thrilled and thankful that it all went well. Thanks everyone for all the kind words and for joining us through this adventure.

Mayday's buckling

As beginning farmers you always expect the worst and pray for the best. Intense preparation during the weeks leading up to the births really helped us through it. Our friends at Edgwick Farm gave us wonderful recommendations for what to have on-hand. Spur of the moment questions and concerns were happily answered by neighbors and fellow goat-raisers. Goat-raising books provided solid advice. And of course, our trusty friend Google saved the day a few times when we needed to see images to make sure everything "looked" ok. 

Everything looks ok

And so now it's on to milking, cheesemaking, bottle-feeding, and so on. We'll have an update post soon, it's been far too long. Hopefully we'll get back to posting more frequently, it's been a busy time! 

 

Goat Birthing Madness: The Elite Eight

We're in the midst of our own version of March Madness. Goat Birthing Madness. A week ago we posted about Sandia, our first goat born on the farm. Over the intervening time we had four more does kid and now we're awash with eight little baby goats. We have one more expecting mother, Mayday, who is due on April 8th, and then our kidding season is over for the year. It's been a joy and a true privilege.

First up, the photos, because that's what everyone really wants to see! At the end I posted a few takeaways.

The Elite Eight, in reverse birthing order:

1Oak and Santos Party House, born to Tenjune (the bad NY nightclub line)

Milk lips. Ready for a napCalima and Chinook, born to Zephyr (names of winds)

Calima, born to our Alpine buckChinook, born to our Nubian buck

Read More