The farm is full of baby goats! So we are going to continue with our baby goats facts!
Baby goats, kids, are standing and walking within minutes of their birth! They have long, lean legs and knobby knees. It so much fun watching as they fumble around trying to figure out how to get stable. It doesn’t take long though! Within an hour or two they are running and leaping like pros.
Another week has gone by and Hillary is still pregnant! Thank goodness! As of today she reached what is considered “viability” for the kids. Any kids born now will have a higher probability of survival, since their lungs have had an opportunity to develop. If we can make it to next Monday their chance of survival is very good, and I think there is a good possibility that she will make it until then. Last week she dropped, so instead of holding the babies up high and being very wide her stomach is now really low. When she dropped I could once again feel her ligaments. They aren’t incredibly strong, but they are most definitely there! We are still being very gentle with her and doing our best to keep her from stressing out, however she is not a fan of being treated with kid gloves. She wants to eat on the milk stand like everyone else! I swear she is rolling her eyes at us. She will kid sometime next week… Check back to hear all about it.
Our 2015 garden is starting to coming together. We have finished prepping last year’s beds for this year’s plants. We are going to till the new garden space hopefully later this week. We aren’t happy that we are having to till, but it’s very necessary this year. Next year, and hopefully with every year that follows, we will be able to avoid tilling. It feels so good to have warm weather back and to be able to spend the day working outside… oh my goodness I love spring.
Yesterday we debuted our laundry detergent on the our website. We are so proud of this product and can’t wait for everyone to try it!
What I busy week it has been… I think the “slow” part of our year is officially over!
It’s finally here: Our Goat Milk Laundry Soap!
We’ve been working on it for months and have put this laundry detergent through the paces! It has worked wonders on our red clay caked farm clothes and we have heard nothing but great things from our soap testers! It was able to get stains out of our clothes that have been there for a long time, and it works it’s magic with only a tablespoon of detergent. You get over 50 washes out of our 24 oz containers.
It is always exciting to release a product that you know your customers are going to love and we can’t wait for everyone to try it! Check out the detergents on our website…. and remember orders over $50 receive free shipping!
Warner is our new herd sire! We purchased him early spring 2014. Before 2014 we bred our does with driveway breedings, which is where you wait until your doe goes into heat, pack her into the truck, drive her to the farm where the buck lives, let them breed, then bring the doe home. It can be difficult to tell when your doe is in heat when you don’t have a buck around, and they never go into heat when it is convenient (of course!). We felt with 4 does to breed this year that it was time to get our first herd sire!
We reserved a buck at a local farm that has very strict standards for the bucks that they sell for breeding. The others, the ones who don’t reach the standards, are sent for meat. The day we went to pick out Warner they had sent all of the other bucks off to the butcher that morning. There was only 4 bucks there for us to pick from. She walked us over to the buck pin and the boys rushed up to greet us. The moment I saw Warner I knew he was ours. I don’t even recall what the other bucks looked like. I’m not sure I even looked at them. Warner was just so handsome and sweet! He caught my eye immediately!
Warner has been a great herd sire so far. He is so sweet to the girls. I can’t wait to see what the kids he sired look like! With as beautiful as our girls are, and as handsome as Warner is, we are in for some gorgeous babies!
Our 2015 Spring and Summer farmers market schedule has finally come together. Below you will find our weekly schedule. This year we will be at 5 markets a week! That gives you so many more chances to buy our soap!
Today’s fun farm fact is about goat kids! Goats can have 1-6 kids per litter. Twins are the most common kidding, followed by singles and triples. Anything above three is considered to be very rare. Two of our does (Tina and Hilary) came from a kidding of six. This was considered one of the largest kiddings in Virginia. Because of this we ultrasound the girls with each pregnancy to make sure they are not carrying more than three… if they are we will need to be prepared!
Oh what a week it has been! In the last week we have had 2 kiddings, resulting in 5 kids. 2 kiddings down – 2 to go!
On Thursday morning Sonia kidded. Her kidding went beautifully. She had 2 perfect kids, a buck and a doe! They both look exactly like their mom. She milked great right after and has been producing the same amount of milk that our does last year were producing in the height of production. She’s a rock star.
On Monday, 4 days before her due date, Ruth kidded. Why so early?… Because she had triplets! Generally kiddings with more than 2 come a little early. The kids were a great size though. Only one of them, the doe, looks like a premie. Ruth had 2 bucks and 1 doe. When Sonia gave us as much milk as she did I was shocked, when I saw what Ruth was producing I was BLOWN AWAY! At her first milking she gave us a half of gallon of milk. This wouldn’t be unusual for a second freshener (a doe who has had a previous kidding) but for a first freshener (this was her first pregnancy) this is outstanding. A half a quart to a quart is more normal for a very first milking (right after they kid) in my experience. The production increases over the next 2 months then levels off. Our first fresheners last year were giving us a little over a half a gallon A DAY in the height of production. Ruth gave us half a gallon in one milking. I can’t imagine what she is going to be giving us in 2 months when she reaches the peak of production. Even now that we have her on a schedule she is giving us 3/4 of a gallon a day. Her utter is huge and beautiful.
Now on to Hillary… She’s giving us a bit of a scare. She is a second freshener and isn’t due until the 28th. Hillary came from a kidding of 6, which is extremely, extremely rare. Tina was in the same kidding. Since there is a possibility that she, like her dam, could carry a large number of kids we ultrasound her at 45 days pregnant. At her ultrasound the vet saw one kid with a heartbeat and the potential for two other water bags, which means we could have 1-3 kids. Goat ultrasounds are not as clear as human ones, and rarely tell you the exact number of kids… so far every ultrasound has underestimated by one kid. We were expecting Sonia to have 1 (she had 2) and Ruth to have 2 (she had 3). Hillary always looks huge when pregnant, even last year when she was carrying 2, but this year she is enormous. You have heard me talk about ligaments a lot. These are the best way to tell if a goat is about to kid. When they disappear the kids will soon make their appearance. On Monday while Ruth was kidding we put the other goats and llamas in the back pasture so Ruth could have a quiet, peaceful environment to kid. Hours later when Ruth was done, cleaned up, and milked we let everyone back into the front pasture. Hillary was following far behind everyone else, walking slowly with her back legs spread. I checked her ligament and I couldn’t find them. She didn’t have any other symptoms but this was very concerning. I called the vet and she said there isn’t much we could do, to just keep her calm and comfortable. If kids are born before 10 days from the due date they will likely not survive. In an effort not to upset her and stress her out I have not been checking her ligaments a lot. I’ll go and peak in on her here and there and listen to the monitor very closely. We need to get her to next Wednesday to have the kids be viable. All of this leads me to believe that she has more than 3 kids or the kids are huge. She is already larger than Ruth was when she kidded her three… but like humans, goats all carry differently and comparing one goat to another will get you nowhere. Please send good vibes our way that Hillary will last until at least next Wednesday but preferably until next Saturday or later!
Kidding is full of excitement and worries. I love the anticipation and watching new life come into this world. I am always so proud of my girls.
Hopefully there will be no new kiddings to report with next week’s What’s up Wednesday.
More details, pictures, and even video for each kidding coming soon!
Eleanor is Elsie’s full sister, the goat we introduced two weeks ago who had the traumatic birth. She is the opposite of her sister in nearly every way. They may be twins, but their personality couldn’t be more different. Eleanor was born without us even knowing. Her mom didn’t make enough noise during her labor for us to hear her over the monitor, so she was already born when we went out to check on Tina. Her sister had an extremely dramatic labor. Eleanor has a sweet, calm, loving personality. She follows rules and is very easily lead. She very rarely gives us a hard time. While her sister is hard headed and will never do what you want her to. And even with all of these differences these sisters love each other and are always at each other’s side.
Eleanor’s calm personality makes you gravitate to her. She is so sweet and loves to give kisses.
Every month we take and post pictures to our Instagram that are outside of the 365 Project “A Picture a Day from The Freckled Farm” but like with the 365 Project we don’t want those who don’t have Instagram to miss out on all of the fun pictures from the farm. So here are the “other” pictures from February… There aren’t as many as there was in January, but I know there will be a huge number for March because of all of the baby goat pictures! Follow us on Instagram to keep up with the pictures each day.
We are now officially in Kidding Season! So it seemed fitting to have the facts over the next few weeks be kid and pregnancy related. Today’s fact is about goat gestation:
Goats have a gestation period (length of pregnancy) of 5 months. For standard breeds (like ours) it totals about 150 days and for the miniature breeds it’s slightly shorter at 145 days. While goats might “show” a little in the later months of pregnancy they don’t really start looking pregnant until their last month of pregnancy.