Hello everyone,
May has been a beautiful lush month for our goats to enjoy. The momma’s with their new kids in tow have been free-ranging our back property and enjoying much hawthorn, rose bushes, grasses and weeds. I did have to purchase some tree guards to wrap around young fir trees as the goats loved stripping the bark and eating the sweet sap. It has been nice letting them roam but there have been occasions where they will go through the barbed wire to browse in areas I don’t want them in yet. Having our dog Sasha who is a McNab Border collie has been a huge asset. She is getting a lot of experience in herding goats this spring. I am very proud of her. We would like to get enough field fencing to fence all of the back 18 acres we have behind the house where they are roaming now. It will be an expensive job as well as labor intensive. Eventually I’ll set up temporary pasture areas with electric rope fencing to contain them in areas close to the house so they can mow the weeds down and yet keep them out of flower beds and other off limit areas. It’s just a lot of work setting these up just to move them every week to two weeks. Now that we have more goats, I have to make the pastures larger or move them more often. We did set up an electric rope fence for Tovia our buck and Winter our wether. I’m hoping they will behave and stay in this pasture for the summer. It’s large enough with lots of browse to last them all summer. Our wether is leash trained and Tovia is such a good boy that he follows along. I never have to worry about either of them being aggressive.
We had some excitement here in the White Bird area. We had the world champion jet boat races on the Salmon River. They took off from Hammer Creek just across the bridge from White Bird, Idaho and raced down to Lucille, Idaho and back again. These guys were averaging really high speeds taking about 12 minutes to do 25 miles. The overall winner was Gord Humphrey from Fort Saint John British Columbia, Canada. The CX class winner was Justin Hill from New Zealand. The races took place not just on the Salmon River but also did the Payette River, Snake River and St. Joseph River. These rivers are all located here in Idaho. I didn’t watch the boat races but took advantage of the tourism and set up at Hoots Shop & Stay gas station just outside of White Bird along highway 95. I sold a couple pairs of earrings as well as a few other items. I could hear the jet boats taking off down the river from my location. I did get to see some of the jet boats and their drivers. I know there was at least one from Alberta, Canada and there were others from different parts of the world.
The next step in registering our Does and kids happened in May with attempting to tattoo their ears. I say attempting because we were completely new to doing this and it was challenging. I swear we got more ink on us than them. Needless to say, we learned that you really got to get the tattooer pressed down hard enough to leave a good indentation in the ear and then really rub the ink into those indents. We had to do a round two of tattooing in June as most of the ears we did didn’t take well. We were advised by our local vet to try using a toothbrush to really brush the ink into the indents. Hopefully round two will work. The American Dairy Goat Association requires tattooing for registering the goats. I can understand why as it is permanent whereas tagging an ear the tag can get ripped off by other goats pulling on it. One of our Does has a rip in her ear from a past tag. She in particular was very hard to tattoo. She did not like her ears touched.
Life on the farm is not always hard work and joyful memories. We experience our losses here and this month was one of them. Our beautiful seven kids are down to six. My favorite little guy, who we named Vanito, became lethargic and wasn’t eating. We immediately took him to the vet in hopes we could prevent whatever was going on. The vet said he likely had a stomach ulcer by all the signs he was showing, grinding of teeth especially when his rumen was pressed on, lethargic and starring off into space. The vet gave him a penicillin shot and we gave him that shot every 12 hours along with an antiacid pill and a probiotic. The vet said the ulcer was caused from too much milk consumption. He was 30 pounds and her opinion was that he was big for his age. We decided not to bottle feed after all this year because it was so labor intensive. So, the kids have had free range of momma’s milk. I told her his brother was even heavier but so far is acting fine. She explained that due to certain bacterium in the soil around here which would then be transferred to the milk through momma that it can cause Enterotoxemia. Vanito’s momma is young so may not have built up enough of an immunity to pass that immunity to her kids. My understanding is this on top of the high milk consumption is what caused this ulcer. He passed two days later on May 30th. One way to prevent this issue in the future is to vaccinate with CDT our Does 4-6 weeks before kidding and then vaccinate the kids at 4 weeks of age. This has been a hard lesson to learn. I love my goats and I get pretty wrapped up emotionally. I will miss him. He was the smallest one born but had the best personality and the best beautiful markings. I’m just glad I had that special short time of his life to enjoy his sweet loving self. His brother is a sweet guy but not near as affectionate. We buried Vanito next to our former dog Kaiya.
This is a hard ending to my newsletter but better times and better memories to share coming. In June we have a lot of garden work and a second round of tattooing.
Many blessings,