Linear Appraisal and other updates..

Happy Independence Day everyone!
Well, took me awhile to get these up here, but here are the results from the linear appraisal!
There were two disappointments, first the kids couldn't be appraised because they were a few days less then the minimum of 8 weeks old, and then Sheila had on tattoo which wasn't quite clear enough to read, so she couldn't be appraised either. But over all it was a great experience!

Winsome: 86 VVV+
They loved her! Her main flaw in udder was large teats and her rear udder could use more capacity, but her udder height score was very nice and they loved her head, body capacity, and overall dairyness!


                                          
Lily: 80 +V+A
Their favorite thing about Lily was her dairy character! She is built to produce! She could use more strength in her bone, although her body capacity isn't bad, and her rump should be more level.


 Heather: 77 +++F

Heather had a bad day and did not want to cooperate! She just didn't want to stand still! Her main conformation faults are lack in capacity and they gave her a "twisted udder" miscellaneous fault, which means one side of her udder is slightly farther forward on one side then the other. I had never noticed this before and didn't even know about this look for it! :D They loved her back, feet/legs and the space between her hocks.

King: 82 +V+
King behaved very well, stacked himself, stood tall and proud and showed absolutely no misbehavior! They were impressed by his size and strength in the chest! His head they loved for it's balance and refined strength. His fault is that his wonderful body capacity does not flow all the way to his hindquarters, making his hind legs closer then desirable.He loved them though! :)


I was disappointed to not get Emmylou and Prince appraised. I had brought them along, all clipped and everything, just in case they'd let them in, but I have pictures! Prince looks so much like his daddy! :)

Fun Kid Photos and Updates!

So I mentioned on my previous post that the kids are all registered so I thought I'd tell y'all their new official names! Emmylou (Heather x King) is Winsome F's HKOH Emmylou, Prince (Lily x King) is Winsome F's Prince Caspian, Prim (Lily x King) is Winsome F's King's Primrose and we named Sheila's doeling Winsome F's HKOH Roesli (Roesli is a Swiss name). Winsome's two bucklings are sold (going to their new homes in two weeks..) and their new owners did not want papers so they don't have official names, but I call the eldest Baby and the younger one Roy.. :D
They are all growing so fast and are eating solid foods (hay, forage and a bit of grain) so well that I am already weaning them down to a once a day feeding schedule! I weighed them yesterday and they range from 23lbs (Emmylou) to 14lbs (Prim).

 Anyways, here are a few fun photos of them from the past two months. You can never have enough pictures of baby animals! :)

Hour old Emmylou!

Emmylou

Emmylou and Eva

Prince

Baby Prince

Eva and Prince

Prim and Roy

Prim getting colostrum

Prince telling Eva his secrets

Brothers, Baby and Roy

Peek-a-boo, Roesli!

Eva and the kids

LOL! :)

They will follow you anywhere!

Linear Appraisal is IN THREE DAYS!!!

I am so excited! This will be my first time to get my goats appraised and I can't wait to see how they do!
For those of you who aren't familiar with Linear Appraisal (often simply called "LA"), the American Dairy Goat Association describes that this  ".. system evaluates individual type traits that affect structural and functional durability, in order to take full advantage of the potential for genetic improvement through selection. ADGA’s Linear System evaluates each animal individually, evaluating traits on the basis of one observed biological extreme to the other. It includes traits that are, at a minimum, moderately heritable as well as economically important.". So basically it is a evaluation of a goat to show their strong points and their weaknesses so that you can be well equipped to make good breeding decisions.
For example you can look at the scores of a doe in your herd, and say you find she scored poorly in the area of udder attachment in the fore. You can then look at different bucks you are interested in using and if their dam, daughters, or grandams' were LAed then you can look for a buck with Excellent scores in that area which will help improve the fore udders of your doe's future kids.
I am learning a lot about conformation by (rather obsessively!) reading up on the subject and studying champion goats from herds like Redwood Hills, Tempo Aquila and Cherry Glen. But the lady signed up to judge my goats in LA has been doing this for almost as long as I have been alive! It is a great opportunity to have experts evaluate my herd, and if used to it's full potential this system can really help improve herds fast!

So I've been busy preparing! All the kids are now registered and everyone is tattooed. I clipped King too shaggy right now..
awhile ago (he was the first goat I ever clipped!), but now I need to do the others. It isn't required that you clip them, but it helps the judge evaluate them if they don't have to look through a shaggy coat! I may just get the longest areas and their udders' though because they really aren't
Hoof trimming was done this week and because of how wet it was I just did some extra worming. The kids hooves were trimmed for the first time. It was interesting.. I didn't have any help so I sat on the ground and put each kid on it's back in my lap with their legs sticking strait up in the air. It's to bad I couldn't take pictures, because it was probably a pretty funny sight!
I have been trying to get a bit more weight on a few of the does that they lost after kidding. They are getting extra grain and some alfalfa pellets and are doing well!

Check back soon to see they all do! :)

Cheese Making Class Photos

OK, I'm back again!
 Here is a little collection of pictures from the fantastic Italian cheese making class I took last month (I know, it took me awhile to get these up here! (: ). It was put on by Dr Larry and Linda Faillace of Three Shepherds Cheese in Vermont. They travel all over the world to give cheese making classes! This was actually my second class I had taken from them, the first was at the same location but was a 101 type class. I would really recommend their classes to anyone interested in getting into cheese making, either as a hobby or a business. They are the sweetest people ever and very knowledgeable!

Testing the curd..

Cutting the curd with a fancy knife!

Provolone curds.

Dipping provolone curd in 170 degree 

whey to prepare it for stretching.

Stretching provolone!

Winsome Kids!

On May 8th I had plans to travel to Granbury Texas for a three day class on Italian cheese making, but May 7th rolled around and Winsome still had not given birth and was showing no signs.
My sister was staying home and was planning on milking and feeding the kids for me, but was, understandably, not happy about the idea of handling a birth. So we had been praying every night that Winny would hurry up and have those kids!
Well, at 5:00am on the 8th, she did! My dad is a night owl and it happened that he was up in his office near the goat barn at that time, not able to fall asleep, and heard the dogs barking. He poked his head out the door and heard Winny yelling at the top of her lungs, so he called us in the house and ran out just in time to catch the first baby boy! I met him on the path to the house as he was carrying the baby in, and went to Winny. My sister soon joined me. Winny was so big we knew she had to have more then one!
We waited for maybe 5-10 minutes, standing over her with a lantern and a flashlight, and then we saw a bubble start to appear. After that there was not much time before Winny, standing, dropped the second baby in my arms. I gave him to my sister who took him immediately into the house. I stayed with Winny for another 20 minutes to be sure there were no more babies.
The second baby turned out to be a boy too, a gorgeous broken Chamois. His big brother was a Chamois with adorable little round, brown wattles tipped in black. They both weighed almost exactly 9 pounds! Poor Winny had been carrying around 18 pounds of kid! We gave the boys their colostrum mix and they finished their first bottle in less then 20 minutes!
Winsome had it rough because every year in the past she had raised her kids herself, so she knew what was missing at the end of her labor. She searched through all the bedding and licked every object that could possibly be a kid; a bucket, a piece of wood, a mound of hay, me.. When I tried to milk her she only let down maybe 2 or 3 squirts per teat. I gave her a break and tried again later that day, but got the same thing. I soon had to leave for the class, so my sister tried again for me one or two more times that day, and milked her several times each day while I was gone, but she didn't start freely letting down her milk until maybe a week after the birth of her kids, even though her udder got hard and swollen. She wanted her kids to have that milk! Poor girl. It's hard to take kids from a doe that has raised them before..

So now all of 2014's kids are born! We ended up with 6 in total, 3 bucklings and 3 doelings. I couldn't be happier with them all! King really seems to have done a good job of improving length, height, pastern strength and overall refinement to the kids as well as throwing a few wattles, neat colors, and they all his super expressive eyes! I see a lot of their mama's characteristics in a few of them too! Can't wait to see how they grow!

    

Sheila Kids!

It's been awhile since I've wrote, raising dairy goats keeps you busy! I guess I'll divide the events I have to tell into several posts to make them more readable. :) 

On May 5th, at approximately 11:30am, Sheila kidded! She really didn't
show many signs at all before hand. I went out side check on her before I sat down for lunch, and she was in labor, with two little toes sticking out! She walked around like that for maybe 15-20 minutes, snorting and pawing and groaning. finally she laid down and really pushed and the farther out the baby came, the wider our eyes got. The head was HUGE! At least the same size as week old Emmy Lou's (if not bigger!) and dark brown, almost black in color.
When the baby finally came out fully, landing in my hands, I took a quick look and could not believe my eyes, the giant baby was a girl! I handed her over the gate and she was dried off with clean towels while I gave Sheila some grain and tried to comfort her.
 She was a bit stressed out and snorted with her hackles raised as she searched nervously around the barn. She is a first freshener and probably didn't know exactly what she was looking for, but her mothering instincts were strong.  Sheila is an interesting case because she is 4 years old and just now freshening for the first time! I prefer to have my does freshen as yearlings, or possibly as 2 year-olds if they are slow to mature, because it has been shown that does left unbred for longer can get fat built up in their mammary which makes their udder smaller and less productive then it would have been otherwise. But I bought Sheila as a three year old and she was actually supposed to have been bred before I picked her up. But I am still impressed with her udder, however small! Her teats are very uniform and of a nice size. Her orifices are also nice and big, making milking her fast and easy, although she did kick a bit on the milk stand the first few days...

As the baby girl dried off we saw her coloring and were further amazed! She is a rich mahogany color with a darker chocolate brown with a purplish tinge on her lower legs, back, tail, the inside of her ears and the top half of her head. My dad couldn't stop talking about her coloring all day! She weighed 9lbs and was taller then Emmy Lou and the twins as a newborn!
Today she is still the tallest kid in the bunch. She is also showing a sweet, alert, playful temperament  like her mama, Sheila. She learned to walk very quickly and runs around like a wild thing when we let her out to play! Wild blackberry leaves are her new favorite food!

Lily Kidded!

Lily kidded this morning with twins! 

Last night I noticed that the ligaments above her tail were very soft and so the hammocks were

strung up in the barn and we camped out to keep an eye on her. Nothing happened that night, but this morning when I brought them all up on the milking stand one at a time to get their grain as usual I saw her ligaments had completely disappeared, exactly what Heather's did the morning Emmy Lou was born!
 We kept an eye on her all morning, hoping she would hurry and give birth in time for us to make it to a graduation party we planned on going to at 11:00. At around 9:40am she had some discharge and shortly after that appeared started a noisy labor. She yelled and grunted for about 15 minutes or more and we pet her and her sister and auntie Sheila came and checked on her and she finally gave birth to a 8.2lbs baby boy! We took him and wrapped him in a towel and waited for a bit and were just about to leave to bring the baby in the house, when we turned and looked at Lily and there was a second baby, a tiny 4lbs girl with wattles! We hadn't really expected her to have twins since this is her first time!

They are both doing well although the little girl takes some extra coxing to eat. She is getting strong though and has the sweetest little baby squeaky voice. We are calling her "Prim", short for "Winsome F's HKOH Evening Primrose".
Her big brother is going to just like his daddy. He is a sweet cuddle bug! :) We haven't named him yet.. thinking maybe "Winsome F's HKOH Prince Eclipse" or  "Winsome F's HKOH Princely".. Any ideas? He is for sale since I can't keep another buck. :(

Heather Kidded, It's a Girl!

On Wednesday April 30th at approximately 2:30 pm Heather kidded, with a single girl! We named her Emmy Lou.
I was sitting on the couch after a late lunch, reading "The Wave", and listening to George Strait ( I know, it was a little distracting..), when my sister ran in saying, "Heather's in labor, hurry!". So we ran out with an arm load of clean old towels and a camera and found Heather walking around like nothing was happening, with a little black nose and a toe sticking out of her! I wiped the mucus off the little nose and we herded Heather into the new barn. She then suddenly went into labor in earnest, laid down, and Emmy Lou was born about 1 minuet later, right into my arms.  Actually she was half way out and she started trying to stand up! I had to gently pull her out with the rhythm of Heather's contractions because, since she was laying down instead of standing as usual, gravity was not helping.
After we got her out, my sister took Emmy Lou into the house and dried her off with the towels and a blow dryer. I stayed with Heather and made sure there was not a second kid and that she passed her afterbirth. I also gave her a handful of Texas Naturals Sheep and Goat Feed (this is a non-GMO, soy free, corn free pelleted feed which I purchased at Brenham Produce) mixed with a drizzle of molasses to give her an energy boost. She passed her afterbirth an hour later and seemed to be doing very well. Then I notice that she had a small tear in her vulva. I had never had this happen before, but then, she is also my first first freshener! I put an antibacterial iodine wash on the area and it seems to be healing quite fast! I tried milking her out but, although she did not kick once (good girl Heather! :D), she was not letting her milk down and what I got did not look like colostrum! I worked on her for awhile but only got about a cup and she was still quite tight.  Her teats are also small, but that is already improving. Luckily we had a colostrum re-placer (Manna Pro brand) on hand so we fed Emmy Lou that.
I am a bit proud of how fast Emmy Lou took to the bottle, it was like she had been drinking from it for years! :) Her mama and Aunt Lily had taken some coxing to take theirs. She drank the whole bottle, about 2 cups, that afternoon. Before she ate we weighed her and she was exactly 7 pounds.
Emmy Lou has been lots of fun so far. She sleeps through the night in her little box without a peep until she hears us moving around. She is staying in the house until she is through with colostrum, (about 3 days) and we have a few more kids born and ready to keep her company.
We have 3 dogs, 2 sweet Anatolian, Great Pyrenees, Akbash mix dogs, Eva and Zeki, who stay outside and protect everyone, and my sister's little Boston Terrier, Joey. Emmy Lou doesn't realize she is smaller then them and neither did Eva and Zeki. She chased the big dogs quite a bit before they realized what was really going on! The same thing happened last year with baby Lily and Heather! Now Eva thinks of her as her own little puppy and is always waiting by the door for Emmy Lou to come out so she can lick her and follow her around. Joey sees Emmy Lou as the only thing smaller then him on the farm, and at first he thought he was going to be her boss, but Emmy just ignores his attempts to be dominate and nurses on his face wrinkles and chases him!

Emmy Lou also got to meet her daddy, King. He was tied near by to eat a patch of poison ivy when she came out to use the bathroom, and when he saw her he immediately stopped and just stood there and watched her. We decided to let them meet, and picked her up and brought her to him. He was very gentle. He sniffed her very carefully and then just stood back and looked at her. She was very quite. It was the sweetest thing ever! :)

Today Emmy is really getting frisky! She prances around constantly! She is a joy to watch. :)