More chevon for my freezer…

**** Warning: Pictures of raw meat that used to be our goat Dwalin*******

When you castrate a male goat it is referred to as a “wether.” They make awesome pets because they are docile like does, but can never get pregnant (obviously) and they don’t get as big, aggressive, or stinky as an intact buck. We had a boy born last summer and he was a very sweet little wether. However, like most wethers he was always destined to go into the freezer. That happened yesterday. It’s not too bad for me because I still get to maintain something of a disconnect between my animals and my food. He left as Dwalin and then my husband brought back two sides of chevon that I’ll be breaking down Tuesday. For those of you who are interested…

17 month old Nigerian dwarf wether: live weight = 56 lbs. Hung weight = 27 lbs. actual yield = to be determined on Tuesday.

  

Rather than slaughter and dress him on our back porch, the husband guy opted to take advantage of a company in a neighboring city that will kill and field dress anything from a little goat to a huge steer. It was $25 for someone else to do all the work, plus Neil got some good ideas on how to do it if we ever process a goat at our house in the future.

Little man went along for the ride and was eager to see everything (minus them actually shooting the goat).

  

Neil sent me this picture on my phone and my first thought was that “wow, he had a lot of fat!” When I texted Neil that, he replied that everyone where he was at thought our goat was really lean. Guess butchering pigs gives you better perspective for that sort of thing. And that’s what a goat liver looks like. I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with it, but at the very least it should make our cats happy. You better believe that if the liver and heart make it into people food, I’ll be blogging about that.

  

A reciprocating saw! Brilliant! We just need to get a different blade, and the husband’s newest toy power tool will be way more versatile than we thought!

Neil has Christmas Eve off, so all we have to get done during the day is breaking this loveliness down in to a more useable form and toss it all into the freezer. I’m really curious to see how much meat we get and in the mean time, I need to go look up recipes for BBQ ribs a la Dwalin.

Disbudding

**** WARNING: Not sure what to say here, but you’ve been warned! ****

It is common knowledge that goats naturally have horns. However, in the modern farm setting, horns tend to cause more problems than they solve and so it is now the norm to remove them. Removing full grown horns from an adult goat would be a horrific experience for everyone involved, thus the practice of disbudding.

Disbudding is the removal of the horn bud from the skull of a baby goat. We thought it was supposed to be done at a few weeks old back when we were total noobs with regards to all things carpine. Nope, that’s why you get scurs (partial horns that grow and can curl back into the goats skull, killing them). Our wether, Dwalin, has scurs because we had him disbudded way to  late. He has knocked them off once, but as he is destined for the freezer, we aren’t too worried about removing them again. Well, we know better now and since we are going to be having a lot of kids in our future farming experience we figured it was time to learn to do it our selves.

A brief run down of the process: you shave the kids forehead, hold a burning iron (think circular branding iron) around the bud, let it burn down to the skull, release baby. We are not the first people to do this so we turned to the internet to learn how to best do it from the experts.

 

If bow ties are cool, then power tools are sexy.

 

The best way to hold the baby goat still so that no one gets hurt when you are using the disbudding iron, which has a tip with a temperature of 3 bazillion degrees, is to build a box. There are lots of different plans online, but Farmer Guy liked this one the best and it will work with both our Nigerian kids and our Kinder kids, when ever they come.

  

We decided to start with the boys, because their horns grow in faster. Thus the need to disbud much earlier. We took them through the process one at a time but I thought I’d just show the pictures for each step together. First up was haircuts!

   

Now there is the actual disbudding with the iron. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to hold their heads (wearing thick leather gloves while Neil did actual burning), and take pictures. I was kicking around the idea of having Garyn take pictures, but quickly decided I didn’t want any human kids near anything that is 3 bazillion degrees. Maybe I’ll figure it out today when we do the girls. The white on the inside of the circles of left boy’s head is bone.

Now to explain some things. This is the most humane thing you can to with regards to horns, unless you have a good reason to let them keep the horns, which we don’t. The kids cried and freaked out way more when they were getting their hair shaved, than when the burning happed. The iron is so hot it cauterized any nerves almost instantly, so really the goats are more angry and scared about being held still in a box than what is happening to their heads. As soon as they were out of the box they were happy as could be. I’m proud of my husband guy, because he was big and brave and did an awesome job on his first go. He was always meant to be a farmer, apparently.

Baby Goaties! Again!

So this is the real secret behind our family’s popularity with our homeschool group. No one else can offer this kind of educational experience in nearly as awesome a package. I have several friends coming over this weekend to take in the sheer cute that is a 2 day old baby goat. Or four. Did I mention Frosty threw QUADS? She did! She’s my favorite for a reason.

 

These are the twins. They were born first and the one on the right is a girl (she has blue eyes….so pretty!).

 

This brown boy also has blue eyes and he is so handsome I understand how goat owners become “weird goat people.” If there was room in our herd for a gorgeous Nigerian buck I’d totally keep him. I might make room, because honestly, I’m already weird goat people. He looks just like his sire and if he is anything like him, this baby would definitely be worth keeping. The other is a sweet girl (Naomi named her Rapunzel…shocker) with solid black ears (that’s how we tell her apart from the twins).

 

 

I called this “Science” for the day. Here is what happened:

I was going to change Corra’s diaper around 1:30 in the afternoon and I glanced out the window and saw Frosty cleaning up two wet kids out in the yard. What the what?! When Ginger was kidding we heard her yelling a mile away. Not Frosty apparently. And no cushy, comfy shelter. No. She’ll birth in the dirt, thank you. Well I moved her kids into the shed after I cleaned them up a bit. She followed and I ran in to check on my human kids. I went back out to check on her about 15 minutes later, and there were the other two, wet and sticky. After I dashed into the house yelling for my kids to come out and grabbing towels, we went back out to clean up the new babies. We got them clean, made sure they were nursing, then let Frosty do her thing. She is a wonderful mama and seemed so much happier to have them on the outside. She and I bonded over being stupid huge pregnant in the summer. I empathized with the relief wafting off of her in a big way. In less than an hour she single hoofedly almost doubled our goat population. Well done, Lady. Well done.

 

When Neil got home, we all went out to play with the babies. Including kitten, who took it upon himself to be the big guardian watch cat of the goat yard.

So now the babies are a bit bigger, frolicking around the yard when they aren’t head-butting their mother nursing.  If you’ve never seen a baby goat frolic, you should add that to your bucket list. It will restore your faith in all that is good and sweet and awesome in the world. Next up is disbudding. I’ll do a whole post on this but it won’t be for the squeamish among you. Now I’m going to go stand at my window and laugh at my new babies.

Kids with Kids

 

 

 

Baby Goaties, They’re finally here!

I was cleaning in the house yesterday and Ginger was being loud. She usually never makes noise so I thought it was a bit odd.

I came out and this is what I saw. No wonder she was loud! So I raced back in the house for the camera and my husband and kids. Mostly I grabbed the camera and yelled for the others as I was headed back out the door. While we worked on cleaning up baby #1, Ginger had some more contractions and dropped baby #2. Yes that is the proper word for it. You can also say “she threw her kids yesterday.” Anyways, we wiped the straw off of them and helped them stand up to nurse.

 

Munchkins thought it was cool, and Garyn wasn’t grossed out at all. I think Naomi will like the clean and playful kids better than slick, birth-covered newborns. The goaties were up and about really quick and so curious. We thought our cleaning job would be easier minus the soaked hay (plus we hadn’t gotten clean straw in there before the birth) so Neil cleaned out the shed and got new straw.

We did check for gender as soon as they weren’t slimy. Two baby boys. Sigh. We were hoping for a girl that we could keep as another milking doe, but the boys are pretty cute regardless. Ginger went to town licking them clean and I tried not to include pictures of the placenta that didn’t detach for 45 min. or her eating it afterwards.  Glad that was never part of my home birth experiences.

 

The one on the left and in the foreground was the oldest. He has really cool brown patches on his sides. The baby in the background has similar markings only his are white instead of brown. We are thinking of naming them Balin and Dwalin as they are dwarfs and our other boy is Pippin. Can’t go wrong with a Tolkien-based naming convention. More pictures to come as they get more mobile!

A home for Goaties

We figured out pretty quickly that our goats would be happier with more room and since we did in fact have a ton more room we thought they deserved to be happy. Plus with bouncing baby kids on the way very soon, we figured everyone would be better off. Plus Neil got to pull out his tools, buy some beefier power tools and learn some cool stuff about carpentry. However, I think these guys were the real winners though.

Popsicle on a stanchion? Yes Please! that’s the real reason it was built right?

Anyways, here is the site and a whole bunch of chain link fencing that Ron gave us. We had t-bars just lying in the yard from the guy who had horses here before we moved in so we had the fence all ready to go they just needed a better shelter.

Beautiful building assistants.

Handsome nail boy. And for the record everything can be done barefoot or in flip-flops. Including all things goat related (milking, framing their house, trimming hoofs…no wait that one ended in Neil getting stepped on and bleeding alot…nevermind).

 

Almost done and done (well minus the super cool sleeping bench that Neil put in later). Did you know that goats like sleeping on raised platforms? Well now you do.

As much of the yard as I could fit into one shot. The goats are happy, we are happy. Oh and you can’t see it but over to the right there are some railroad ties that Ron had lying around that they can climb on. Its awesome to see Pippin standing proud and majestic about 2 feet off the ground, and you know he is channeling his inner Himalayan Mountain Goat.

And of course the real reason why our neighbors won’t mind our roosters. Have you ever heard a peacock? They are ridicuouls loud! and they sound like a human moaning. Well sometimes one comes into our yard for a visit, and Garyn chases it around on his bike. Fun for both of them…I’m sure.