Nature Happens

Nature Happens

Having animals and children - you can imagine the comical conversations about nature...the birds and the bees sort of thing. 

Having goats especially boy goats (bucks) on the farm is an all together different experience. They are disgusting!!! They smell and act like something I have never experienced before - but it is their nature. 

They hump every goat in the vicinity, stick their tongues out and make this god awful sound while attempting to lick the back end of a female goat (doe). According to the internet and some of the books I have read, this is how they "court" each other. Another method of courting is their "musk" - yes the way they smell. While to get the right scent they - are you ready for this??? - they piss on themselves, they literally spray themselves with their own pee. If you have ever watched this occur the bucks have a sprinkler on the end of their penis that works the same as the impact sprinkler - I bet you have quite the mental picture now!

Well NATURE happened with Gary and Cookie! No - we did not plan it nor were we ready! But with anything on a farm - you expect the worst and hope for the best.

Our youngest asked one day "Hey Mom, what are they doing? What is Gary doing to Cookie?" For any parent this is a loaded question! Hmmm....must consult your father on this one - I did not want to hide the nature that was occurring on our farm however I did not want to explain it with so much unnecessary detail for a 5 year old. Therefore my husband simply put it that the girl goats have a garage that accepts seeds and in this garage they build baby goats. The boys have to put their seeds into the garage and that is the only way to get them in. Perfect and funny all at the same time! Now when our son passes the action he always makes the comment - "putting your seeds in, hey Gary! Good job". So now our child thinks that all boys shoot seeds - oh boy - we will need to have another conversation down the road with this child. 

Back to the goats - Cookie had Candy 5 months later - another beautiful white goat that was full of energy. As Cookie is a Saneen goat she is considered a milk goat therefore Cookie had so much milk that she would feed Candy and still looked uncomfortable.  Her utter was hot, hard and still quite full. I was worried about all sorts of complications that could occur - thanks to all the books I read - I knew that I needed to milk her, to release the pressure and avoid the additional problems.

I have NEVER milked anything in my life, while besides myself I guess! How do I do this? What do I use? Where do I put the goat? What do I do with the milk afterwards? Oh - so many questions with no one to ask. I did not know anyone that raised goats before, I knew people who raised sheep, cows, horses - but goats that is a whole different ball game.

Thank goodness Cookie is a "my" goat and did not mind me touching her - Amber on the other hand - NEVER - you could pet her but if you got close to her udder the jig was on. So...out I go to the barn with a glass container and gloves to milk Cookie - bent over/kneeling with a Candy jumping on my back I milked Cookie. It took quite a long time until you get the hang of it. Watched a few videos, which helped with my technique, and I returned to the house with 2 litres of freshly squeezed milk. This became a daily activity as Candy simply did not eat enough to ensure Cookie did not become ill. 

Cookie produced 2-4 litres a day for our family and fed Candy. So we dived into drinking goats milk - what else do you do? We learned how to pasteurize it in the IntsaPot and the need to cool it quickly. But as a family of 5 we could not drink enough either, we were giving 2-3 litres of milk to the pigs per day and still had an abundance. This is when soap making was in the foreseeable future.....

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