Countdown: 10 Days Til Kidding Season Begins

A nice break in the weather yesterday gave us chance to kick the goats out of the barn long enough to strip their stall, put in their new rubber mat flooring and re-bed it with fresh shavings. Just in time, too, since kidding season will start here around March 5. Ten more days, and then things start really getting busy around here.

The bedding we remove from the goat stall gets repurposed and given to the chickens, who love foraging through and cleaning it up. After they break it down naturally by scratching through it for a month or so, we will transfer it to the gardens to use as mulch and fertilizer.

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Abbie really wins the prize every year for the biggest pregnancy display. I always think there is no way she can get any bigger, yet she proves me wrong each time. Not only does she currently look like she's smuggling two beach balls in her belly, but she's moaning and groaning a lot as the growing babies crowd up her insides. Counting from the first day she was exposed to the buck in the fall, her official due date is March 5. However the last two years she has gone a day early. Either way, we will be on baby watch shortly after the first and will report any news as soon as there is any. Molly and Greta are possibly due the same week, and Sage (we think) is a little further behind.

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Here is a short video I took yesterday of Abbie snoozing outside of the barn, enjoying the 63 degree temps we had all day. Yep, that's her moaning and groaning nearly with every breath! Ten more days... can you believe it? She's HUGE! Care to take a stab and guess how many babies Abbie is hiding in that belly of hers?

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Team Greta

Friday, February 9th started off as a normal day in the barn, but as I was doing chores and feeding the horses and goats, I quickly suspected that Greta, one of our La Mancha goats, was showing early signs of labor. It was her due day, so I wasn't surprised. I removed her from the herd and placed her into one of the three kidding stalls in our barn so that she could have some peace and quiet. Four hours later at 10:46am, she delivered two beautiful big twin boys. As per her normal (this is her third year with babies), she was quite proud of herself and insisted on showing them off to me nonstop. The twins were up and wobbling around in no time and Greta was a busy mom fussing over them. Saturday morning was uneventful and Greta and her twins were comfortable in their kidding stall, but by early afternoon, something wasn't right. Greta wasn't finishing her meals and she just seemed tired. I took her temperature at 3pm and it was normal -- 101.9 -- even though she...

Barn Improvements

I've been putting off a much needed barn improvement project for a while in hopes of catching the necessary materials on sale. Specifically, high grade rubber mats for the stalls and aisle way. The heavy stall mats I needed finally went on sale today so Seife & I headed into town. We will need to remove the old mats in the stalls and do some leveling of the clay floor before we put the new ones in place, as well as have some sand brought in to raise the floor level in the aisle way because we occasionally have flooding problems when it rains a lot. Project benefits: Reduce bedding costs (which are at an all time high) because rubber mats keep the bedding from being ground into the dirt/clay floor. Reduce flooding problems by allowing us to raise the floor level and then protect it with the mats Reduce dust issues... our barn is very, very old and the aisle way is made up of very, very old fine dusty dirt that gets on everything. This will also help keep our milking stat...

Heated Buckets

We recently installed heated water buckets in the barn, one in each stall for the horses and one for the goats. I probably should have done this years ago but I think I've finally had enough of busting ice in the morning only to have it refreeze a couple hours later. The buckets have cords, so you have to put some thought into where you are going to hang them. The cords are wrapped in a protective metal spring to deter chewing, but especially with goats, the cords need to be completely out of sight of them. I don't trust their wandering mouths. I placed the goat bucket pretty much on the ground (still attached to the wall by a bracket) so that it is low enough for the chickens to access it also if needed. They frequently come in the goat stall for water, especially if all of their drip waterers are frozen. The cord goes through the slats in the wall so they can't reach it. I also put a bungee cord around the bucket to keep them from moving it at all (and possibly exposing...

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