Udderly Fantastic

This morning marked the beginning of my goat milking schedule. I will be milking 5, but only on my days off. The couple of days I work the kids will still nurse all but two, until later this summer, when they are sold. THEN I will surely be getting up in the wee hours of the morning!

My three top producers this morning yielded almost 2 gallons of milk between them. Here are pics of two of them, the third I deleted somehow but will show later.

The one on the left is Marta, a registered french alpine. She was my first milk goat and though she is not the highest producer(only because she is trying to rival Buddha with her very round belly instead of producing milk!) she is an easy milker and produces quite a bit. I am retaining her doe kid this year as Marta is getting on up there in age. Roxanne, on the right, is a registered saanen. She is producing a gallon plus a day and is also an easy hand milker. I sold her little doe kid early on . The one that I will post tomorrow is Linnea, an American alpine who also milks a gallon plus a day . She is by far the heaviest milker I have and even though her kid is a cross this year, she will stay. The other 2 little does are yearlings and I was very pleased with them. Oma, the little girl who is a saanen / lamancha cross was very impressive! She milked out almost 40 oz's. Being that she was the last on the stand I decided to give her a dose of garlic and trim her feet. I never knew that goats could spit~ until today. Yes, they can and will spit ALL of the garlic barrier dose on you. I now smelled like the bread sticks from the Olive Garden. I finished feeding the kids and headed off to find the little bottle lamb. She was having a fine time in the tall grass but after a few calls, she bounced up. She likes to be held while she sips her bottle so I picked her up and proceeded to start feeding her. While holding her I felt a lovely warm stream start down my side on my leg. So nice of her to share.

Those chores finished, I turned my attention to the cashmeres. They needed to be dewormed in order to turn them out on the new pasture. Again the girls were relatively easy to handle, the bucks however tried to maim me as usual and I came to the grand conclusion that reinforcements would need to be called in to handle them in the future. Finally, all done I once again limped to the house to change clothes.

I finished up the day by planting a few more things in the garden. It is slowly starting to look like a garden but things are going to be very late this year, I think.