Two More Goat Kids, Rainy Days, Wet Fields & Spring Forage

We capped off February kidding season with two more goat kids born on Tuesday and Wednesday.

First was a very tiny (and adorable) doeling from a yearling doe.

I am jonesing to get a sling and scale kit we can weight kids in the field because I really think this one might be even tinier than the twin born in November that was initially rejected but her mother, but now is doing amazing. Check out Little Tiny’s initial story here.

This one is a tiny little butterball and despite her size seems to be doing fine. There’s something about her vibe and stance that makes me a little suspect about her long term prospects, but so far, so good.

Then when I dashed out to the goats on Wednesday morning, already running late, just aiming to briefly put eyes on everyone, I noticed another yearling doe in labor.

Grant was at a meeting in Baton Rouge and while our farm staffer, Cade, is amazing, I couldn’t really imagine telling him to go post up with her, report her progress to me and then instruct him, over the phone, how to assist her if she wasn’t making progress. So stayed and made sure the kid was out before I left!

She seemed mostly fine, it’s just that when you discover them with a bunch of amniotic fluid already on the ground and feet sticking out and you don’t know how long they’ve been in labor, it’s hard to gauge when you should intervene.

The feet coming out like that is the proper presentation, but there can still be issues like the head being turned or even those being back hooves instead of front hooves! (I watched one of my goats successfully deliver a-back-feet-first breech kid in November and was so surprised it all went smoothly!).

As soon as I knelt down to check on her, she seemed to understand and absolutely acted like she wanted help. A lot of times if they’re still walking around during labor and I try to assist, they walk or even run away from me.

I felt the kid’s feet with my right hand initially and then decided I probably wanted to reach in and see if I could feel the head. So I went to take my rings off my left hand and as I did that, sweet momma must have smelled the fluid on my right hand and immediately started licking my hand. The hormones were flowing and she really was ready to lick her kid off.

We just had to get it out first!

So I was able to gently reach in and feel his head in the proper positioning. Then working with her contractions, I got two fingers behind his ears best I could and gently pulled. It was tight as he was a HUGE kid for a yearling. But once the head (often bunched up with the hooves) comes through, the rest is a piece of cake.

She got right to cleaning off his face and I was fairly certain with his size that there couldn’t possibly be a twin in there, so I told Cade and Grant to check on her later and took off.

And I was correct, it was just him, one giant buckling (about three times the size of the tiny doe). Although again, that’s where a scale would come in really handy.

And that wraps up February kidding season. There were 32 kids born in November and 20 born in February. I’m expecting a few more outliers in March and April and maybe even May.

Cara and Pippa should kid around mid to late March, based on breeding notes and then Heidi may kid in April along with some other yearlings. As soon as I get a chance I will write up some more information about November doelings available for sale as we certainly don’t need to keep all of them at this rate!

Other than that, the main farm news is that it is super wet after several rainy days this week! And every time it rains like this, it reminds us of where we need some new ponds and swales in various low spots that hold water.

There’s one spot in the field where the cattle are in these pictures for sure, along with one near the tree line in the field with the goat hoophouse and our old tiny house and one in the field with our farm house. If only time, equipment use and culverts were no object!

We sent off five beef to the processor this morning, so we should have more filet, ribeyes, chuck roasts and other favorite cuts that have been out of stock back in two weeks or so.

And in the meantime the remaining herd has more and more spring forage to eat every day. The yellow flowering plant in the photos is buttercup, which is actually known to be toxic to cattle. However, we’ve never had an issue with it.

One of our mentors, a grazing expert for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, said that in his career, he had only ever encountered cattle poisoning from buttercup in situations where they were basically starving with no hay or supplemental feed or other forage to choose from.

So although it looks like this field is mostly buttercup, there’s also grasses, white clover, curly dock and more, plus the cattle still have access to hay and are given supplemental feed (that is not grain and in line with the American Grassfed Beef Association’s guidelines) if needed. Generally with toxic plants, the cattle seem to know to avoid it or even only eat a very tiny amount to “treat” themselves for parasites and the like.

On my walk this morning, I woke up both one of our big boars and all the feeder pigs, all cozy in their hay bales. You can see how annoyed the boar looked as he followed me to the edge of the paddock, still with hay on his nose!

We keep IBC totes of feed near each set of pigs that are ration fed (the feeders just have their huge feeder filled every few days), so I did do him the service of feeding him for the day since I woke him up!

The feeder group has a big area and lots of different hay bales, so I was so curious to determine how they split themselves into groups at night. The 17 of them were spaced out among four different hay bales. I’d love to know their internal group dynamics!

The chickens’ setup is perhaps the most frustrating to deal with when the fields are wet. They’ll likely be getting another round of coffee grounds and hay spread out before we’re ready to move them again.

When the fields are wet, moving their coops is pretty difficult without rutting up the soil and potentially getting the coop or the tractor stuck. Plus it can also be better to keep them contained to one “sacrifice area,” versus letting them scratch up all the fledging spring forage.

Their egg production continues to inch a little upward each day, though, regardless of the weather!

A few more goat and farm scenery pictures to end on. The goats bring me so much joy and also so much worry and occasionally heartbreak. I guess you can’t have one without the other? If I didn’t care as much, the joy wouldn’t be as rich.