Funny Song-I Kissed a Goat and I liked it

Glycerol to Replace some corn in rations

Some one asked about this very topic today on one of my lists. I can't find the post to reply personally. This research is on dairy cows, but since both dairy cows and goats are ruminants, I feel it is valuable information

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Feeding value of glycerol as a replacement for corn grain in rations fed to lactating dairy cows
S. S. Donkin*,1, S. L. Koser*, H. M. White*, P. H. Doane{dagger} and M. J. Cecava{dagger}

* Department of Animal Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907
{dagger} Archer Daniels Midland Company, Decatur, IL 62521

1 Corresponding author: sdonkin@purdue.edu

Growth of the corn ethanol industry has created a need for alternatives to corn for lactating dairy cows. Concurrent expansion in soydiesel production is expected to increase availability and promote favorable pricing for glycerol, a primary co-product material. The objective of this study was to determine the feeding value of glycerol as a replacement for corn in diets fed to lactating dairy cattle. Sixty lactating Holstein cows housed in individual tie stalls were fed a base diet consisting of corn silage, legume forages, corn grain, soyhulls, roasted soybeans, and protein supplements. After a 2-wk acclimation period, cows were fed diets containing 0, 5, 10, or 15% refined glycerol for 56 d. Cows were milked twice daily and weekly milk samples were collected. Milk production was 36.3, 37.2, 37.9, and 36.2 ± 1.6 kg/d and feed intake was 23.8, 24.6, 24.8, and 24.0 ± 0.7 kg/d for 0, 5, 10, and 15% glycerol treatments, respectively, and did not differ except for a modest reduction in feed intake during the first 7 d of the trial for 15% glycerol (treatment x time effect). Milk composition was not altered by glycerol feeding except that milk urea nitrogen was decreased from 12.5 ± 0.4 to 10.2 ± 0.4 mg/dL with glycerol addition. Cows fed diets containing 10 and 15% glycerol gained more weight than those fed rations containing 0 or 5% glycerol but body condition scores did not differ with glycerol feeding. The data indicate that glycerol is a suitable replacement for corn grain in diets for lactating dairy cattle and that it may be included in rations to a level of at least 15% of dry matter without adverse effects on milk production or milk composition.

http://jds.fass.org/cgi/content/abstract/92/10/5111?etoc

Key Words: glycerol • energy • biofuel

Oh No!! Don't Go into the Woods today!

Without tucking your pants in your socks, that is. Just what we need, another tick-bourne disease!


Researchers have found that up to 15% of ticks collected carry Anaplasma phagocytophilum part of the same group of bacterium that cause Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Fifty cases have been identified in humans in the past three years. Ticks in the western part of the United States, yes, the same ones who carry Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, the deer tick is the culprit.

There are antibody tests in place to diagnose Anaplasmosis.The antibiotic doxycycline is the treatment. Use precautions against tick bites that are in place for prevention of Lyme’s disease.


Read more at: http://www.examiner.com/x-7707-Infectious-Disease-Examiner~y2009m9d12-An-emerging-tickborne-disease-seen-in-parts-of-the-United-States-What-is-anaplasmosis?cid=examiner-email

SGCH Heaven's Hollow Shotsi 5*M 92EEEE is the 2009 ADGA National Champion

Congratulations to Shotsi and Jill. Last year Shotsi was Reserve Grand Champion in Louisville. This year she strutted her stuff and won the 2009 championship in heavy California competition.

We are thrilled with this because we have her 2008 son Heaven's Hollow Pistol Pete here. He is a fine young buck and sired five does for us this year. Looking forward to the next crop. He was collected last fall and we got 24 straws. We donated 5 straws to a charity auction where it went for over $200!! I have a waiting list for this year but if everything goes all right should have more semen to sell and/or donate this year.

Great Info on Goat Forage - Turnips, rye and alfalfa

This is another great article that Noah Goddard found and put on his lists. I got really excited when I read about sewing turnips for winter forage. I'm going to try it if I can find some turnip seeds. If you do this, please, please, please publish the results somewhere and let us know in a comment about your experience.

----- Original Message -----
From: Bruce E Anderson
To: HAYFORAGE@listserv.unl.edu
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 1:36 PM
Subject: Hay & Forage Minutes for July 20 through 24 -- turnips, alfalfa pasture, fly into corn

69. PLANT TURNIPS FOR WINTER GRAZING
Interested in a high quality pasture for late fall and winter grazing? Then plant turnips into wheat or oat stubble this year. Stay tuned for more.

You need all the grazing you can get this year. One way to get more grazing is to extend your grazing season into fall and winter using turnips. Turnips provide good grazing beginning in October and often lasts into the new year. Also, turnips are cheap to plant since seed can cost less than ten dollars per acre. And late July to early August is the time to plant turnips for fall grazing.
Seedbed preparation and planting can be done several ways. Some turnip growers work soil like a fully prepared alfalfa seedbed. Others heavily disk their ground, but leave it fairly rough before broadcasting seed. And a few growers spray glyphosate or Gramoxone on wheat or oat stubble to kill weeds and then plant no-till.
Whatever method you choose, good early weed control is essential. Turnips do poorly if weeds get ahead of them, but once started, turnips compete very well. Since no herbicides are labeled for turnips, weeds must be controlled either by tillage or by using contact herbicides like glyphosate or Gramoxone before planting. Then plant quickly to get the turnips off and running.
Plant only 2 to 4 pounds of turnip seed per acre. Turnip seed is very small, so barely cover it. If you drill your seed, just scratch the surface with your openers. Simply broadcasting seed onto tilled soils works well for many growers, especially on rough seedbeds where rainfall or irrigation washes soil onto the seeds for soil coverage.
Then wait. With a few timely rains you will have excellent green feed for late October, November, and December.

70. ALFALFA FOR SUMMER PASTURE
When pastures are short and low quality during summer, what can you graze to maintain animal performance? Maybe alfalfa is your answer. Stick around.

Most pastures have difficulty providing abundant, high quality grazing throughout the summer, regardless of whether they are drought stressed or not. Yearlings and calves can really use better pasture at this time. Both drought-stunted alfalfa and well-growing alfalfa might fill that role of a better quality temporary pasture.
But, how do you get started and how do you avoid problems with bloat? Begin by dividing fields so animals graze no longer than 5 days at a time on any one area. One rule of thumb is that one ton of standing alfalfa hay will provide about 45 cow days of grazing. If you estimate your alfalfa would yield one ton of hay if you cut it right now, then one acre should feed 45 cows for one day. And if possible, limit the size of paddocks to 10 acres or less to get more uniform grazing. After grazing a paddock, plan grazing and haying so at least 35 days of regrowth will occur before harvesting the same area again.
To reduce bloat, begin grazing alfalfa after it begins to bloom. Short, drought-stunted, yet blooming alfalfa should be pretty safe. Also, be sure animals are full before first turning onto alfalfa and never let animals get hungry. In addition, begin grazing mid-afternoon and do not turn them onto fresh alfalfa that is moist with dew, rain, or irrigation. Yearlings tend to bloat less than cows, but feeding supplements like poloxalene, rumensin, and oxytetracycline can help reduce bloat for all classes of cattle.
These precautions and management practices can help you use alfalfa for pasture and overcome the late summer pasture slump.

71. FLYING TURNIPS OR RYE INTO CORN
Crop residues like corn stalks provide good winter feed. Adding turnips or cereal rye to them can sometimes make them even better. Stay tuned for tips and risks.

Corn stalks are one of the better and least expensive winter feeds we have. But once cattle finish eating the grain and husks, what remains isn’t all that good.
Some growers have improved both the amount and quality of corn stalk grazing by flying turnip or rye seed onto standing corn in early August. When successful, turnip or rye plants provide more grazing days and extra protein when corn stalks become poor quality.
Let me emphasize the words ‘when successful’. It’s not all that easy to get a good stand of either turnips or rye to become productive in a growing corn field.
Several factors limit success rates. Moisture easily can be limiting in dryland corn, but also can be difficult to manage in surface irrigated fields. Even under pivots, providing water for rye or turnips without slowing corn harvest takes planning.
Another problem is the density of the corn canopy. Irrigated fields can be especially thick, acting like weeds to prevent adequate light from reaching new seedlings. Chopping corn for silage or combining high moisture grain early helps.
And speaking of weeds, herbicide carryover also causes problems. Turnips are very sensitive, but rye also is affected.
Lastly is wheel traffic at harvest. Turnips are damaged more than rye, but both lose stand if fields get muddy.
I do like improving corn stalks with rye or turnips. But be aware there are challenges, and try to find ways to overcome them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Bruce Anderson
Extension Forage Specialist
Department of Agronomy and Horticulture
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE 68583-0951

voice: 402/472-6237
fax: 402/472-7904

Prison's Cheesemakers in Colo.

An interesting article going around Yahoo lists.

Prison's goats fuel industry
By Douglas Brown
DENVER POST
Sunday, Jul. 19 2009
CANON CITY, Colo. - The men wearing green uniforms and tall rubber boots spread
out across the compound, herding goats into pens, pouring grain into feeding
troughs and serving as nursemaids to those giving birth.

Many of them, all inmates at Skyline Correctional Center in Canon City, had
never touched a goat or heard one bleat before becoming involved with Colorado
Correctional Industries, a division of the state Department of Corrections.
It's likely, too, that few of the prisoners had ever tasted goat cheese.

But that's what happens to nearly every drop of milk the prisoners draw from
the animals, most of which goes to Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy in Longmont in
northern Colorado. Cheesemakers there transform thousands of gallons of milk
from the Canon City goats into chevre logs, cubes of feta, pungent rounds of
raw milk cheese and more.

And then a shopper at a Costco or a cheese connoisseur at a gourmet boutique in
Philadelphia, or a diner at a fancy restaurant in San Diego will buy the
cheese. The diner will chew the slice of Red Cloud and marvel over its
evocative flavor.

How does milk from a prison complex in remote central Colorado end up in a
high-end restaurant?

It begins in the pen.

Tall, muscular, tattooed and in prison for cocaine distribution, Thomas R.
Major III seems an unlikely nurturer of goats.

But a year into his seven-days-a-week apprenticeship, he's a leader of the
goat-milk operation.

"It's human nature. You get attached to something the more you hang out with
it," said Major, 31, as 56 goats standing on a pair of concrete platforms on
either side of him ate grain as they were milked. Between the goats' staccato
cries and the rhythmic shushing sound of the milking machines, he had to nearly
shout to make himself heard.

It takes about two minutes to milk a goat, and when they all are finished,
prisoners herd them out through one door and usher in the next group of goats
for milking.

Major and the other 29 men who tend the animals give them vaccinations, trim
their hooves, move around hay, build barns, clean the milking machines and do
everything else it takes to run a goat farm.

By the end of the summer, the prisoners will manage about 2,000 goats,
including Alpines, Nubians and Toggenburgs, said Mary Provost, who oversees the
operation.

Most of the minimum-security prisoners shrug when asked whether they will
pursue careers in livestock when they emerge from prison.

Not Vincent Gonzalez, 26, who is in for kidnapping.

"I like milking," said Gonzalez as he cleaned equipment in a small, humid room
full of stainless steel tanks. "When I get out, hopefully, my parents have land
near Calhan. They want me to learn as much as possible so I can open a goat
business."

Gonzalez has studied every aspect of the trade. He even learned how to ferment
cheese, which would make him one of the few prisoners who can imagine what
happens to all of that white liquid after Haystack employee Bill Napier pulls
up in his truck, pumps 9,000 pounds of milk into a refrigerated steel tank, and
drives back to the dairy.

Haystack buys milk from the prison because it is the only nearby farm large
enough to accommodate the dairy's needs, said Haystack's Chuck Hellmer.

In June, Haystack took about 110,000 pounds of Canon City milk.

A day after Napier delivers the milk to Haystack, Wendy Freund puts rennet, a
substance used to coagulate milk, into a vat holding 1,800 pounds of raw goat
milk.

Five minutes later, Freund presses her finger on the milk; it has developed a
skin.

She dips a steel device called a harp into the vat and begins pulling the milk
toward her, breaking the curds into smaller pieces. She raises the temperature
slowly, and switches tools, from the harp, which was sort of like the frame of
a paddle strung with wires, to a rake.

Freund got the gig three years ago, after moving to Longmont from Houston. She
knew nothing about cheese, but was intrigued by the ad for a cheesemaker in the
Longmont newspaper. Now she's passionate about the subject.

"Cheese is a living creature," she said. "It's like a big science project every
day."

After raking the curds, Freund hauls scoops of them from the tank and packs
them into cheesecloth-lined wheels. The rounds of wet curds drain for a day,
and by the time they are placed in a walk-in refrigerator they have gelled and
hardened.

Haystack turns the goat milk harvested by prisoners into a variety of cheeses,
from their best-selling chevre logs, which feature the kind of simple,
pasteurized goat cheese that you can spread like thick hummus, to Sunlight, a
raw-milk cheese that you slice.

Soon, they may be adding a camembert to the list, a project the head
cheesemaker, Jackie Chang, has been working on since January.

"I wanted a mushroomy, lemony taste," said Chang, in red rubber boots and red
shorts one afternoon as a fresh load of milk from the prison arrived. "That's
the part about my job I love, experimenting every day. It's like raising kids.
Lots of caring, lots of love."

The product of at least some of Chang's - and the prisoners' - toil ends up
every week at the Denver restaurant Rioja, where Haystack cheese makes
appearances in a variety of dishes.

Chef and owner Jennifer Jasinski buys so much goat cheese from Haystack that
the company ships it to the restaurant, instead of going through a distributor.

"There are much cheaper ones out there," Jasinski said during a recent lunch
rush. "But the quality is the first answer. I think it's an excellent product.
And I like that it's 40 minutes away."

Elsewhere in the kitchen a cook placed dollops of a Haystack goat-cheese and
artichoke mousse onto squares of fresh pasta, which he then folded into
tortelloni, which are large versions of tortellini.

The dish - the pasta served in an artichoke broth and draped with shavings of
Haystack's Queso de Mano - is the restaurant's signature, said Jasinski.

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Dam of New Junior Herdsire arriving in 2days!!

SGCH California Kalvin's Special K, 90EEEE, #1 top ten milker




According to information available from the American Dairy Goat Association, our little buck’s story started with a doe named White Haven Nasake, an Oberhasli donated to the university by Jean White, Molalla, Oregon. The breeding of this doe to Clovertop's Ecktorsketch Kalvin, a buck donated by Lorrie Echols, Sebastopol, California, herd name SquawMountain, produced the dam of our buck, California Kalvin Special K.

The Clovertop buck behind this breeding was masterminded by a well-known dairy production breeder and ADGA judge, Raymond Vieira, Artois, California. Our buck was the result of an potentially great AI breeding to White-Haven Remus, from semen contributed by Jeannie White. Picture of Remus' dam coming soon, she is a national show champion.

My bucks half sister, the 2009 Spotlight Sale doeling, Kia, was the result of artificial insemination, via donation of semen from the Udderly Crazy herd, Carolyn Hoeker and family, Monroe, Washington.



More about the sire, White-Haven Remus soon.