Beaman's Fork Farm Blog

It's that time of year... Time for my hopefully well rested arms to get back to work hand milking goats every day. Last night we separated Molly and Abbie from their combined six babies and then milked them this morning. The babies were then reunited with their mamas and will have full access to all of the milk they want from her all day long. At night they will sleep in separate stalls in encourage the babies to start eating solid food (which they've been nibbling at for a week now already). And each morning we will strip the mothers of their night's production of milk and back with the babies they go.   I think the mamas actually like the break from the babies at night, quite honestly. Eventually they will be fully weaned and the boys will be sold to their new homes. And so it begins... Milking equipment and glass bottles and sanitized work areas and fresh milk. I'm ready for yogurt and cheese and ice cream and cereal for breakfast!

It has been a busy few weeks here on the farm, especially on the goat side of things. Late in the evening on March 5, our Alpine/Nubian doe Abbie delivered quads. Yep, that's FOUR.  Full term, all normal size, two girls and two boys. She has always had two so we weren't expecting to walk into the barn that evening and find four balls of wet fur in the stall. Like clowns in a clown car, they were. No wonder mama Abbie was so miserable for the last few days before delivering all of these babies!  She has successfully been feeding them all, unassisted. These babies are 3/4 Nubian, 1/4 Alpine and named Arlo, Alice, Abner and Annabelle. Barely three days later on March 8, one of our Lamancha does Molly had twin girls with impressive paint jobs. Molly has a history of only having one big baby, so we were surprised that she had two.  We named them Matilda and Mabel and they are half Lamancha, half Nubian. Three more days go by and our darling Greta (who was born here two years ago to

Like many people with livestock, this time of year is crunch time for hay supplies. Our goats wasted more hay this winter than we had planned for (a problem that we have since fixed, and will continue to improve upon this summer) so our hay supply has been running short. Our regular local grower is sold out, like most places, but I was able to get a lead on ten bales from another source so I set out early this morning and claimed it. This definitely takes a stress off of me and should get us through until spring. Now I can take a deep breath and turn my attention back to the anticipation of goats kidding soon. We pasture bred all of the does this year so we don't have exact due dates, just estimates, but we are pretty sure Abbie (pictured) and Molly are ramping up to kid soon. Abbie is definitely ready to go soon so we are keeping a sharp eye on her right now. I think Greta and Sage both have a little ways to go.