Humble Garden

ReSkilling for future food independence

Archive for March, 2012

Kidding season 2012

Posted by Nika On March - 22 - 2012

I am using my iPhone to compose this post so I apologize for any odd formatting.

This years kidding season has been a bit Trumatic here on the homestead. Our reliable milker Torte lost her babies in a miscarriage early on this winter. Spelty had been crushed in the goat shed collapse in October 2011 snowstorm. If she had been pregnant she lost it or was never able to get pregnant. That’s okay because her hips may not have been able to handle a pregnancy after healing from her crush injuries.

Luna and Ama kidded out twins each and they look awesome. Unfortunately Luna is rejecting her babies and her milk doesn’t seem to be very robust this year. Ama is having to milk or rather nurse all four babies. Ama has a ton of milk so that’s okay for now.

The really terrible news is that we lost Millet and her two babies to some sort of odd failure of her large intestines. She died on the first day of spring.

What all this means is that this year we only have one goat in milk so I’m going to put away the portable milker and we will milk her by hand and have hardly any milk. Hopefully next year we’ll have better success.

About Me

We are a family of 5, including Nika, Ed, Q (14), KD (7), and Baby Oh (4). We garden 1024 square feet of raised beds plus assorted permacultural plantings. We also have 13 LaMancha dairy goats, 40 chickens, and one guard llama.

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