rachels.haven's Journal

[Baymule]

Lava lamps! I had several those over the years. I approve of your decor too!

 

[rachels.haven]

Phew, the piano is out of tune again. Time to hide and update while the man goes through his repertoire. Picked up 3 more ND does for this year. I believe this will be the culling year for both breeds I've got going. If they do not freshen and look near perfect for their age I will let them go and not keep kids from them. Every outside doe kept takes the place of a potentially nicer homebred doeling. As one does.
By that logic I have 2 mini doelings almost at 8 weeks to sell that should be nice but I do not need. I also have sold one mini in milk and will sell a second as well as the two nubian crosses in milk that I just freshened when I can, turning 5 new milkers into 1, with one retained 75% lamancha nubian doeling for a project on the back burner, that I may or may not hang onto. I kind of like her. I wish she got the gopher ears.

I may have to sell one of my older does, Summer, too. I was going to keep her the rest of her life. When we went to pick her up way back when I noticed her older herdmates HATED children. Now that Summer is mature and getting older I'm noticing shes does too. The other day I was walking out with the four year old in the pasture and she started hunting him down and going after him of her own accord as if she was going to beat him up. She's 160 lbs. I've noticed she stops being irritated with or in this case going after kids once they hit 9 or 10, so he needs 4 or 5 more years before she'll act normal around him and he's 100% involved and in love with goats, so as part of making a safe environment I should probably make some choices...I also need to watch her daughters, I guess. Some lamancha lines just want to kill human children. IDK why. It's like kids are in the uncanny valley for them. I've heard horror stories from people of the lamancha does that like to run over and beat the crap out of kids for no reason at all-its a thing. I'm going to miss that udder that goes all the way up and attaches nice in the front and milks down to a dish cloth with 9" teats that seem to fix all the issues with my hands when I milk, but I'd rather my kid that likes goats not have an extremely negative experience or get seriously injured.

Shrinking those numbers...

Speaking of hands, I've been wearing the carpal tunnel braces at night that @Ridgetop suggested and all the numbness and tingling has pretty much gone away. If I milk tiny teats or do a lot of fine repetitive housework it starts coming back but it's almost non-existent anymore. I kind of wonder if my sleeping hand position at night was exasperating things. All that and just keeping my hands still and straight for 7 or 8 hours fixes things (i still drop stuff occasionally...but that's about as bad as it was 8 years ago). Kind of lame how far i let that go before i said anything to anyone. I should do better. But my hands are doing better.

Thank you, Ridgetop

 

[fuzzi]

Good news about the hands, weird about the goat.

 

[SageHill]

No brainer if she's not human kid friendly. Out with her one way or another. If something happened to a munchkin you'd be beside yourself. Accidents happen all to often.

 

[Baymule]

I did not know that about Lamancha goats. I wouldn't keep her either, no mean or stupid idiots that will cause harm are allowed here. I finally came to my senses and sold my nutty bat-sh!t crazy horse after she broke in half when I put my foot in the stirrup. I hit the ground hard, by the way I hurt and limped around for a couple of weeks, I probably fractures something, so I took her to the sale. If one of my sheep stalked my grandkids, It would be gone. I don't care what it is, there is no home for a mean animal here.

Summer is one of your favorites, It's a shame that she is turning out mean to kids. Dumb thing to do Summer, you will be gone! I have to admit, I like the floppy Nubian ears better than the no ears on Lamanchas. I have a friend that keeps 2 Lamancha does and 1 buck, She can milk through on her does, up to 2-3 years without breeding them. Do Nubians do that?

I'm so glad that the braces @Ridgetop suggested are helping you. Yeah, you should have spoken up sooner. Stop trying to be 10 feet tall and bulletproof, sez the 10 feet tall and bulletptoof old lady that is starting to get a glimmer of "NO you are NOT!"

 

[rachels.haven]

It's not all lamanchas. It's just certain ones, sometimes certain herds/lines. I almost wonder if it has anything to due with her being eight and maybe discomfort, but she's acting like she feels just fine. IDK what to do with her. She'll probably get sold in milk after kidding.

 

[rachels.haven]

Let the record show the counters were clean this morning in my zoo. Before the human animals woke up technically. Ignore the floor and the weapon known as "broom" that has been hiding from the little men on the floor over night (it was a rowdy evening).

The September kids hit 8 weeks this Saturday. A few of the bucklings seem to be forgetting how to suck to take a bottle and would rather chew the bottle, or bite and thrash it. Normally this signifies the end of milk feeding and in my doelings it occurred around 12-14 weeks. The three doelings are still not doing this and should be good to keep going, but the bucklings I wanted to keep back as meaties, so I wanted to dump milk into them for a little longer, but this is getting messy and taking a long time to get their two meals into them. Maybe I'll move them down to once a day and see if being hungry helps them remember to suck. They ARE going to town on grain and alfalfa and their bellies are usually full even before the milk so this should be fine (one, sometimes two big scoops of grain daily and a flake every other day). I'll be separating the boys and girls into separate stalls this weekend so I can more easily feed them differently if needed and prevent breeding in case any of these tiny does cycle and postpone castration for hopefully just a little bit of extra growth.

Rut 2025. Some of the bucks think this is the best ever time of year. I'm impatiently waiting for the porta potty smell that they love so much to fade so I can do pedicures.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Ha! Your countertops are cleaner than mine right now and I don't have any children living here!

I see on your stove the big bucket that formerly held Bioworma? Please tell me more! Have you seen benefits from it? Is it the most wonderful thing ever? Is it worth the price tag?

 

[rachels.haven]

Ha! Your countertops are cleaner than mine right now and I don't have any children living here!

I see on your stove the big bucket that formerly held Bioworma? Please tell me more! Have you seen benefits from it? Is it the most wonderful thing ever? Is it worth the price tag?

Aw, thanks. The bioworma buckets are amazing. I think they fit like a dozen bottles. They're very robust. I use the bioworma in my buck pen on their grain because they don't have pastures to rotate to and they kind of limit themselves to a very small area on top of that. I've used it for three years. It didn't seem to make a difference at first, but I also didn't do the blanket pre worming I was supposed to do so I probably had to wait for worms in their systems to die off of old age. Now i just plan on worming for tapes at the end of rut every year because apart from a few non approved meds nothing seems to get them and rutty bucks get them fairly bad and it hurts recovery. I don't really have worm issues beyond that anymore, although i did do that red buckling without checking fecal a few months ago because one day i woke up and suddenly he looked bad and i couldn't steal the time away for a FEC. But it does seem to result in less worry and maintenance.

Is it worth it? I think so. I recently sold a buck to a woman who bought a goat dairy and unbeknownst to her the previous owner had been worming weekly (and selling the milk...). They started losing 3-4 new does per week until they started using bioworma, presumably following the directions and starting with a worming. She said then the deaths stopped. And because i was about to run out again and i was thinking about stopping using it I also asked her if it was really worth the increased $350/pail price tag, because that's totally highway robbery. She said it absolutely was. It is less than a nice goat. So i guess it depends. I'm not sure it's worth the extra step for my does with our ability to rotate pastures unless I had a feed mixer (want one). That's a lot of extra step dust handling. It's better on sticky feed than dry and we feed dry, but i pour the grain over the buck's hay into their feeder so they get it there. And we're going to keep doing it. I think i use about one tub a year for the buck pen at about a TBS per day possibly longer and thats for four standard bucks, one mini, and five ND.

Another thing you can do along with is buy mosquito dunk bits and put a pinch/handful in the water weekly or when you dump and refill. It's a bacteria and not a fungus but there has been some research into the effect of bt on internal parasites. As an added bonus it keeps the mosquito larvae gone and therefore cache valley farther away. I do that too and it's like $19/year. I wish bioworma was that cheap.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Thanks so much for the review! I think I may give it a try in the spring.