Being Un"reasonable"

I hate when people put an advertisement up looking for some service or item and they say they want it at a "reasonable price". I have found that most of these people don't really mean that they are willing to pay a "reasonable price", they actually mean they want the item or service "dirt-friggin-cheap or better yet, free".

My definition of "reasonable price" as the seller of the item or service is different than their definition as the buyer. As the seller, I want to get the price that is closest to the actual retail value. If I am selling a service, I want a payment that will cover my time, travel, and materials at their fair market value. I am usually not interested in giving away an item or offering a free service unless I feel the item or service is not worth value to me.



The buyer, on the other hand, wants the lowest possible price. I understand this. I am a cheap person and want to buy stuff for the least price possible. It bugs me when people who are looking for a product or service don't put what they are willing to pay on their ads. I have no way of knowing how much they are willing to pay unless I spend the time to contact them and find out. It is a waste of my time to contact someone who has no desire to pay close to what I want. I just wasted my time giving them a price quote and they wasted their time waiting for my response. I look like a scammer to them because I gave them what they believe is an unreasonable price and they look like cheap bastards to me because they are unwilling to meet my demands. This can certainly hinder future business for both the buyer and the seller due to the gridlock. It can tarnish both peoples names and reputations for sure.



If you are going to post a want ad for an item or service, please put a range of what you are willing to pay for that item or service on the ad. If your stated price is too low, I may be willing to work with you to agree to something we both can feel happy about.

Kids!

Kids! Kids! Kids! I have too many kids this year on the farm. Since having my own human kid two years ago, I am finding that I have a lot less time for my goat kids. This year I bred three goats. So far I have gotten two sets of triplets. The third goat is set to kid right now. I am already overwhelmed with the kids I have so I am not looking forward to adding more to the mix.

I do love goat kids and enjoy taking care of them. But, I am realizing that I enjoy 2 goat kids more than I enjoy 10. The more kids I have to deal with, the less joy I get out of it. I like having time to play with each kid and get to know them. If I have a lot of kids then I lose that ability because the time I have to spent with each one gets divided by 8 or 10, depending on the number of kids. I only have a certain number of hours each day to play with my goat kids so if more of that time is spent feeding each one and cleaning up after it, then there is less them to spend playing with them and having fun. I enjoy playing with the kids and they enjoy it as well.

My biggest problem with too many kids is the looming dread of figuring out what to do with them all once they are grown. Finding a buyer for goat kids can be hard and getting the price you want for them is even harder. I would like to get a slightly higher price than before because this year all the kids are on CAE prevention. That means I have to pasteurize all the milk they drink and take care not to contaminate it with raw milk. Last year I just dumped the raw milk straight from the bulk tank into the kid bucket and didn't worry about viral contamination. It was a lot less work. I would like to get paid for the added work this year.

Unfortunately my goats aren't purebred and they aren't registered. That is automatically a check against them in the price category. People don't usually want to pay much over $100 for an unregisterable goat, regardless of health or herd status. I do spend a large part of my breeding program on high quality dairy animals. I worry about conformation and udder strength just as much as the fancy breeders with registered purebreds. I want a good quality animal that is going to produce lots of milk for me. Usually that means that it will be very closely matched to what a show quality, purebred, registered goat would look like. Thus even though my goats are not registered, they could compete in the milk bucket as well as the show ring against a more expensive animal.

Any kids leftover after weaning will become chevon in the fall. I don't mind raising up kids for meat. I like goat meat. I am happy to butcher my goats because I know they had a good life while they were on my farm. I don't have to worry about what their lives would be like if I sold them because they will die on the farm they were born on. I do feel bad if a good quality animal has to be butchered due to lack of buyer interest. I hope to sell some of the goat kids. I would love to see them folded into another farm's breeding program to produce milk and kids for other people.

Next year I won't be having as many goat kids. I will only have two does that I will be able to breed in the fall, so that will help me stick to that plan. I might try to breed both does to meat heavy bucks so the kids' futures will be destined to the dinner table. That way I won't have to fret over what to do with my extra kids and I won't have to worry about CAE prevention because they won't be used for breeding. I hope I will have a better time next spring with only 3 - 6 goat kids expected.

Changes in the herd

I have a feeling that this year will be a year of transition for my goat farm. I have six goats on my “keep” list but I know I can’t keep all of them.  Currently I can house and care for five adult goats through the winter. That’s all my barn can hold and that’s all I can handle. This doesn’t include breeding bucks since they get sold or butchered in December. This also doesn’t include any kids born in the spring because they are also sold or butchered by December. 

Normally I breed anywhere from two to four does each fall. This provides me with four to twelve kids each spring and lots of fresh goat milk. I am realizing that while I love goat milk and use it for tons of stuff, I don’t need 3 gallons a day. One gallon of that goes back into the kids. Half a gallon of milk goes into my family. The gallon and half that is left is fed to the neighbor’s pigs or I try to sell it. I am not using almost half of the milk I get each day. This is a waste to me in time, energy, and lovely milk. I could easily just milk two goats all the time and probably get plenty of milk for the kids and for my family. If I have five goats in the barn, I need to figure out which of them I will breed. Thus I need to make some decisions. 

There are currently three goats that I have no plans to sell or get rid of. One is my wether Angora, one is my soon-to-be-retired Alpine doe, and the other is an Alpine kid to be used as a breeding replacement for the retiree. The wether and the retiree will not be producing next year or any years after that. They won’t be making kids or milk. The Angora does produce some mohair but he is more for decoration on the farm than anything else. The replacement doeling is too young to breed this year but I have plans to start breeding her next fall. She should be a productive animal as soon as she is big enough. This helps eliminate three of the goats from the breeding line-up this year.

The three remaining goats in the group are a mix of older and younger, Nubian and Alpine does. There’s one 4 year-old Alpine who produces great milk and has a beautiful udder but she always has twin bucks, regardless of who she is bred with. There’s a 3 year-old Nubian who is really pretty and from good breeding stock but she’s dumb as a brick. Finally, there’s a one year old ¾ Nubian/ ¼ Alpine who is very pretty and hasn’t been bred yet. Being ¾ Nubian makes her slightly stupid but hopefully the ¼ Alpine part is the part responsible for the brains. Due to my barn constraints, one of these (or more) has to leave the farm this year. 

 There’s a shortage of Nubian breeding bucks in the area so trying to breed pure is tough. This makes me hesitate to even have Nubians at all. I could switch to a Boer buck for my Nubian does, but that would pretty much guarantee that I would be eating all of those kids. I would like to breed the partial Nubian to a full Nubian buck to bring in the longer ears. She has shorter ears and if I could get a brightly colored but long eared doe out of her I think I would keep that instead of her.  Although, there is no rush to do this since she is only a year old and has a lot of breeding time in her. The full Nubian always produces beautiful and colorful kids so she is worth keeping productive as a breeding goat. 

The Alpine is a great goat but she always has twin bucklings. She has had twin boys the past 3 times. I have used three different bucks and she still gave only buck kids in return. She has yet to kid this year but I would eat my hat if she has anything other than two bucks. I love her personality and she makes great milk but a lot of joy comes from the different types of kids I get. If she is only going to have bucks then she is losing a lot of her charm in a hurry. (I know that the male gamete determines the sex of the fetus but please explain to me how she can have twin bucks every single friggin’ year!)

In the end, I have a tough decision to make. I have to decide which of my goats is going and which is staying. Hopefully it will work out and the decision will get made easily. If I can find the right happy home for one of these goats, I will gladly watch them go.

More Babies!

Cookie kidded on Sunday with triplets! She had two does and a buck. Her ligaments were soft on Sunday morning. I told my husband that I was "100% sure that possibly Cookie might have kids that day". By 11am her ligaments were gone and I altered my assessment to "100% sure that Cookie will maybe have her kids that day". I called my friend and had her come over to watch the births and help out. Last time I called her over, we stood and watched Gloria for 6 hours and no kids came. This time I was pretty sure that maybe we would see kids soon.

After 2 hours of watching Cookie, she finally started pushing. She pushed and pushed and eventually a bubble appeared. I could see some parts in the bubble. Once I popped it, I grabbed a leg and pulled. The first kid was a big doeling. She came out fine with a little help and we hurried to clean her up. A little while after that Cookie started pushing again. A buck kid came out next. We cleaned him off and put him with his sister. I couldn't decide if Cookie was going to have a third kid so I waited a while. Eventually she started pushing and another doeling came out. We got them all cleaned up and into the house for some warm cow colostrum.

The buckling was having trouble getting his back legs under him the second day. He has very long legs and they wanted to splay out behind him. I had to go to a doctor's appointment that day and couldn't stay to help him learn to walk. When I got home I was shocked to find that my not-so-goat-loving husband had fashioned a sling out of one of his t-shirts and his boot laces. The sling helped hold the buckling up so he could get his legs under him and get some strength developed. That night I noticed that he was having trouble with sliding and slipping on the towel I had in the bottom of the kennel he was in. I made him a pair of booties out of rubber shelf liner and tape to give him traction. Today he is standing much better after his PT. He might be able to move out to the barn with the bigger kids tonight.

Baby Goats!

The baby goats are here! Gloria had triplets on Saturday. They are doing great!

This is Primrose. I might keep her to be another Alpine doe in the herd.

This is Brun. He's a big boy!

This is Bro. He was the last one out and is a little smaller than his brother.

My goats look good this year!

I think I have finally hit on the proper diet for my dairy goats. After years of struggling with poor coat quality, internal and external parasite problems, and lack of conditioning in my herd; I no longer have those problems. I feel that there are a couple of things that have contributed to this improvement.

The first thing I started doing differently was coupling herbal parasite prevention with traditional chemical dewormers. I began using Hoegger’s Herbal Dewormer and Tonic after I learned how to do fecal sample testing. I had been hesitant to rely on an herbal dewormer without being able to test its efficacy for myself. Plus it was time that I stepped up my parasite control to tailor it to what the goats actually were carrying and not what I guessed might be the problem. My first fecal samples a year ago showed barberpole worm, brown stomach worms, liver flukes and coccidia. My goats showed symptoms of pinworms by rubbing their tails on their stall walls and they had some lice that I could see. One goat had an intermittent cough from suspected lungworm infestation. I used Cydectin Sheep Drench and Sulmet 12.5% Drinking Water Solution to kill the intestinal worms and the coccidia. The whole herd was put on weekly doses of the herbal dewormer and tonic. I rotated out the Cydectin and used some Valbazen for the liver flukes and residual internal parasites. My next round of fecal samples two months later showed barberpole worm and some coccidia. The tail rubbing and lungworm cough had stopped. The lice were also gone. I gave a dose of Safeguard and didn’t treat the coccidia. All the while I continued with the herbs. Two months later, the fecal samples showed very small amounts of barberpole worm. The amounts were so small that I chose not to treat at all, but continue with the herbal dewormer. Last month, the goats’ fecal samples were completely free of all parasite eggs! The goats also have no external symptoms of parasites. Their tails have grown back, they don’t cough, they have no lice (the first spring I have ever had that was free of lice!), and their eyelids are nice and dark pink which shows they are not anemic from bloodsucking parasites.

The second thing I changed in my management this year was I started mixing my own grain. I was tired of buying commercial grain blends that were expensive. I had read that you could easily mix your own grain by using some basic ingredients. I had been using a sweet molasses grain blend but had read that molasses is a filler that can throw off a goat’s mineral balance. I wanted to get away from grain with molasses in it. I started mixing grain by using oats, chicken scratch grains which contain corn, wheat, and oats, and wheat bran. I mixed the grain in a big tote using 50% oats, 35% scratch grains, and 15% wheat bran. The big tote would hold about 60 lbs of mixed grain and that would last my herd of 5 goats for 5 weeks. The unused grain was stored in another tote in the barn to keep rodents out of it until I needed to mix more grain. I could get about two and a half totes worth of grain out of 3 bags of ingredients. Unfortunately the feed store stopped carrying wheat bran. I switched to Calf Manna grain supplement to take up the 15% that the wheat bran had added. The Calf Manna has lots of added vitamins and minerals so a little can go a long way.

When I started mixing my own grain I adjusted the feed ration my goats were getting. They had been getting 2 cups of grain and 2 cups of alfalfa pellets each day. In researching grain mixes, I learned that all grains contain lots of phosphorus and alfalfa contains lots of calcium. It is very important that goats get a diet of 1:3 phosphorus containing grain to calcium containing alfalfa. I adjusted my goat ration to 1 cup of grain and 3 cups of alfalfa pellets per goat per day. If a goat gets too much phosphorus rich grain in their diet and not enough calcium rich alfalfa, the phosphorus can block the absorption of the calcium and make the goat not able to supply calcium to its milk or its kids. A pregnant goat or a lactating goat have very high calcium demands so if dietary calcium is not available, they will pull calcium out of their bones until they are very weak and sick. This could be fatal to the goat. Phosphorus is necessary to balance the calcium absorption but too much phosphorus and not enough calcium is dangerous.

On top of the grain and alfalfa pellets, I added 1/3 cup of black oil sunflower seeds (BOSS) to each feeding. The BOSS has lots of protein and healthy oils to maintain weight and make a goat’s coat nice and shiny.

Another change in my feeding program was to get proper mineral feeders installed in each goat pen. Previously I had used a small feed pan or a bowl on the floor of the pen for minerals. Lots of times the mineral pans would be stepped in and dumped or pooped in or the goats just wouldn’t eat the minerals from the pans. When I mounted small mineral feeders in each goat pen I noticed the goats ate the minerals more consistently. The feeders were often licked clean and needing refill. Also less contamination of the minerals by dirt or animal waste occurred due to the feeders being off of the floor.

Supplemental minerals are very important for goats. I use a loose mineral blend made specifically for goats. This blend has the right amount of copper, iron, selenium, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus and other minerals to keep goats healthy. I use hay, grain, alfalfa pellets, BOSS and forage to maintain weight and condition in my goats. I use the minerals to keep everything in balance and maintain health. Mineral blocks and salt licks are not adequate mineral supplements for goats. They are too hard for goats to get enough from and are not formulated correctly for most goats.

With a good parasite control program, proper grain feeding, and mineral supplementation my goats are looking great this year. Currently 3 out of five are due to kid in a few weeks. Those three look healthy and shiny right now. Usually by this time in the spring they are looking shaggy and gaunt, but not this year. My other two goats are young yearlings. They are both in good condition and carrying a proper amount of weight for their size. I am looking forward to a productive spring with lots of healthy kids and tons of fresh milk!

The Perfect Goat

This is Gloria. She is my herd matriarch. She is nine years old this spring. In this picture (taken yesterday) she is 4 months pregnant. Let's talk about her.

Good points: I love her wedge shape and large barrel belly. She has a very "dairy" look because of this. This shape points to her amazing ability to produce about 2 gallons of milk per day in the middle of her lactations. She's very efficient at turning feed into milk. Her large udder is well-attached in the rear and front. I like her straight topline and the slope of her rump. It's not to steep or too flat for my taste. Her back legs are well-positioned under her hip. Her neck is straight and smooth.

Bad points: Her front and back feet are low in the pasterns. I know from trimming her hooves that her back hooves are a mess. They are very thin across and tend to curl under one another. This trait is highly genetic because all of her kids have the same problem. Her front hooves are good-sized and very wide. Her front legs are straight. Her back legs are a little hock-kneed. I would love to push her front legs forward and get them under her front shoulder more. She has a lot of brisket sticking out. She could be a little less U-necked for me. Due to her large milk production her udder is not very pretty. Her teats are large and not well defined from the udder cavity. They hang down very low to the ground and get lower every year. Her teat orifices are small and hard to milk. I suppose this is a good thing because with this large an udder, loose teat orifices could mean lots of leakage.

Even though I can point out things I would change on her, I love her the most! She makes up for her physical deficiencies with a calm personality that passes to each of her kids. Not much makes her upset and she never has a bad day or is grumpy.

She is the perfect goat for me!