Saturday, January 31, 2009

Another Dose of Cute--Baby Nubian


http://queenacresonline.blogspot.com/ for more baby goat pictures

I thought you might to see this little guy getting his dinner. This breed is called Nubian and is the most numerous breed of goats in the U.S. It's got to be the ears!! They don't stay this little for long. He or she probably weighed about 5# at birth and will gain about 8# a month until she/he's full grown.

The Queenacres blog is chatty and fun, a glimpse into a farm family with goats and chickens, homeschooling and other lifestyle information.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Beautiful Rear Udder--Okanogan Oberhasli Hyacinth 2X GCH

Sigh. I wish she were mine. (Note the cutie at 2:00)

http://www.netneon.com/88257494006C1FEE/pitem/Okanogan_Oberhaslis_Hyacinth_2xGCH_-_Kids_9A003FEF56B243DD8825754E00236A11

OD on Cute--Baby Boer Goats


These aren't mine. I just thought this picture was so cute. Someone should think of a clever caption.

The are for sale on the Dayton/Springfield, Ohio Craigslist.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Top Ten Reasons Anyone Over 40 With Goats and/or Horses Should Own a Bobcat

I'm not sure not we would live without a Bobcat. We bought it with every penny we could scrape up about 2003. At the time I was reluctant to spend the money, but now...

1: Clean out pens. We take down the goats and panels that make up the pens and hubby goes in and scrapes up the manure and bedding. Doing this once a month is ideal, but we usually end up doing it more like every 3 months.

2: Along with #1, we bucket the manure/bedding to the area of the garden by the fenceline and let it compost for a year or two.

3: Hubby transports bales of hay, both large round and small, two or more at a time, from one barn to another.

4. While we're on the subject of hay, Bob made hay one year and the bales were all over the field. Neither him nor I had the backs to handle that much hay. He used the Bobcat and precisely stacked those bales on the trailer with great precision. And it didn't take that much longer. It would take a lot of practice to do a job like that but it is possible.

5. He has used the Bobcat as a jack. Yes, a car, tractor jack.

6. We had to bury a horse. that was a sad job, but it worked well.

7. He cleans off snow. You can either scoop it with the bucket or turn the bucket upside down, and driving backwards, scrape it.

8. You can put gravel in a truck or you can put gravel in a driveway or something. You can move heavy rocks or boulders.

9. You can pull out fence posts. You use a log chain, wrap it around the post, and lift the bucket.

10. You can use it as a mini-bulldozer to tear down an old shed, to scrape off heavy weeds, to dig a hole, to smooth out a low or wet area... actually about anything you need to do that would require heavy lifting.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Memories of a 50% Boer doe, Jar-Jar

Before I started establishing my Oberhasli herd a 50% boer doe came into my life. We named her Jar-Jar and she was really beautiful. She was red and white with white legs from the knees down. She reminded me of a majorette with white boots on, I loved that.

The reason she came to me was funny. She got into her previous owner's pocket and ate his cash, over $50! So she was worth more than $50 right off the bat! Can't you just visualize that! Jar-jar running off with his cash, eating it as she ran and him running after her trying to get it back, yelling and screaming and cussing. I assume he didn't have a gun handy.

When she kidded with two big old vigorous buck kids there was plenty of milk and after the bucks were sold, what the heck. I went down and dug my old milk stand out of dad's barn and set it up in the corner of the pen. About that same time I got my wonderful Cherokee aka Grandma, the heaviest unofficial milker in Ohio, and I started milking both of them.

Jar-jar drove me crazy. She had her head in Grandma's feed when I was milking and no amount of hitting, kicking or yelling would deter her. Then when she got her turn she would eat another scoop of feed, finish that and then look at me from the side of her eye and stomp her feet demanding more feed. That goat could both eat and milk! She stopped her pick pocketing but made up for it with her voracious appetite.

Milking Jar-jar was an experience. She had very small teats, four of them. The extra two were small, about an inch long, at the base of her normal teats and didn't seem to function so they weren't any problem at all. Her udder was so soft and supple, it was heaven and milked down to nothing, what you wish would happen with your dairy goats. The teats were so small that I had to milk her udder. That is, I would grab above the teats and work down to the teats. It was a different technique but worked just fine. Now I have automatic milkers and it wouldn't even be worth mentioning.

If you find yourself with a Jar-jar, just appreciate her for what she is. Like men, goats don't change.

How Goat People Ward off Cabin Fever

We are having a ball on the various Yahoo Groups lists I'm on. On chevontalk@yahoogroups.com we have had a lively discussion about CAE with Tanya leading the way and even had the president of a vet lab reply. Tanya changed the subject to CL, same thing. A lively discussion is in progress. This was my reply to her. I was thinking: wow that would make a great blog post so here it is:

There will soon be an effective vaccine out
for CL and from that point on there won't be any excuse for CL bumps
and lumps. I had CL in my nubian herd in the early '80s and had an
autogeneous vaccine (then highly experimental and expensive) made at
Ohio State through my vet. Over 3 years it was completely gone with
attrition.

Once animals are properly vaccinated there won't be the panic about CL
at shows, fairs, new animals. There won't be any point to keep blood
testing for it after that. Oh, happy day!

All I can say is since you haven't had CL first hand so it must be hard
to visualize. The capsules are actually lymph nodes which have captured
the CL bacteria (and antigen/antibody complexes I assume) . They grow
over a couple months, the top skin gets thinner and thinner and loses
the hair because it loses the blood supply. Then the weakened skin
opens and the pus seeps out. It doesn't really explode, per se.

Re internal abscesses, I've heard that that is more of a problem in
sheep. I don't really know. But thank goodness CL in goats is almost
just a bad
memory.
*******************************************

On nubiantalk@yahoogroups.com there is in progress a fascinating discussion of the history of the breed. And low and behold an English lady, Christine Ball, who you may recognize from the Golden Guernsey world, comes on and shares her knowledge from that side of the pond. What a treat! Maybe I'll ask her to write a guest blog.

For example, did you know that before the English ladies used Swiss breeds in their breeding programs they worked with an old English breed? Those were the goats that were crossed with 3 exotic Indian and African breeds to produce the Anglo-English. I just always thought, they took a Saanen and a wild nubian and voila, Anglo-Nubian.

But that's not all, now we find out that there's a breed in New Zealand that Capt. Cook carried off. A university in Spain is doing DNA tests to verify the lineage of the goats. Yes, I definitely need to capture this on my blog.

Raspberry and Bill Burghart and others have been discussing old herds, long dead bucks, sharing history, photos and all sorts of other treasures. If you join Nubian talk, you might want to go back a month or so and check out the archives. Even if you don't have nubians like me, I think you will enjoy these conversations.