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 I thought our plan for breeding the goats was all worked out – I’d monitored their heat cycles so we knew exactly when to take them back to Wild Wind Farm for breeding; and we were going to have goat kids by March 30th next spring (see Goat Kids – Preparing for Breeding). However, I [...] Continue reading Goat Breeding Plan – Hah!  Ultimately, the reason most folks have dairy goats is because they want the milk; and for this the does need to be bred and have Continue reading Goat Kids – Preparing for Breeding  Bit ‘O’ Honey, Jewel Box, and Tinker Bell are all past a year old now; and I’m determined to get some decent yearling photos of them before they grow their winter coats. Soon it will be time to take them for breeding, and I want to be sure we have some good shots before they start [...] Continue reading Yearling Doe Photos  The Nigerian Dwarf goats (Tinker Bell, Bit ‘O’ Honey, and Jewel Box) are old enough to breed, so the first “Kidding Schedule” page is now up on the Bramblestone Farm website (click on Kidding Schedule). I’m very excited to be planning their first kids, particularly since we’ll be breeding them to bucks owned by our friends at Wild Wind Farm [...] Continue reading Kidding Schedule  Worldwide, goat milk is the most highly consumed form of milk and, amidst the varying dairy goat types; Nigerian Dwarf goat milk is increasingly popular. But why is goat milk and Nigerian Dwarf goat milk in particular so popular? Better For You Goat milk is easier for human’s to digest than cow’s milk. It’s naturally homogenized, with [...] Continue reading What’s so Great about Dwarf Nigerian Goat Milk Anyway?  Tinker Bell Eating Pea Vines Each time I work in the garden and consider bringing back some garden trimmings for the goats and chickens; I have to stop and look through my reference books – to determine whether that particular plant is safe for them to eat. So, I decided to make a list of [...] Continue reading Garden Greens for Goats & Chickens  Jewel Box made “Picture – Of – The – Week” on Backyard Herds this week; doing her cutest goat on the catwalk look!
She’s the third Nigerian Dwarf doe we purchased for Bramblestone Farm; and is just a year old now. There’s more information about her (and her pedigree) at the Bramblestone Farm site [...] Continue reading Jewel Box is “Picture-Of-The-Week”  Abscess Before Testing – Right Shoulder One of our Nigerian Dwarf goats, Honey, recently developed an abscess on her shoulder, causing us to worry that it might be CL. Although she’d tested negative for CL prior to coming to Bramblestone; and the herd she came from tested negative, we were afraid that she’d somehow contracted [...] Continue reading Caseous Lymphadentitis (CL) in Goats  Springtime was cold and late in Northeast Ohio, so the goats didn’t get their coats trimmed until this week – their first trims as yearlings. After giving them their haircuts, we went to the American Goat Society (AGS) 2011 National Show (as spectators only). The show was a real learning experience; we saw many beautiful Nigerian Dwarf goats and met [...] Continue reading Bramblestone Goat Update  There are three types of injections that goats in our area need annually; tetanus toxoid, BoSe, and a vaccination for enterotoxemia. Since Tinker Bell and Honey are now over a year old, it’s time to give them these yearly shots; and I thought that’d be relatively simple. But, it wasn’t quite that easy – here’s [...] Continue reading Annual CD/T & BoSe Injections for Goats  I finally got around to creating a form (see example below) for keeping health records for the goats; and it can be downloaded here if anyone’s interested in modifying it for your own use (it’s in Microsoft Office Word). Fortunately, Honey, Tinker Bell, and Jewel have all been healthy and I haven’t really needed to track much [...] Continue reading Goat Health Record Form (downloadable)  As we’ve built things on the farm (house, barn, patio, etc.), we’ve collected lots of big rocks and we thought a couple would make good toys for the goats – they love to play; and it will help keep their hooves trimmed. So, the first job for the new John Deere tractor was to move a couple of boulders [...] Continue reading Goat Toys  When we brought the goats home, I assembled the basics needed for goat keeping (see Goat Starter List), including a goat weight tape. The instructions said to measure around the girth to determine goat weight, and then adjust diet as necessary. This didn’t work in practice at all; weight tapes are for full size goats – not Nigerian Dwarfs. So I don’t know their weight, and even if I did – what [...] Continue reading Body Condition Scoring for Goats  We brought home another Nigerian Dwarf goat; Wild Wind Farm R Jewel Box. She’s really shaggy in this picture, and she’s got her hair all puffed out because of the cold so it’s hard to tell – but she’s a beautiful doeling. She has great milking lines in her pedigree, and we watched her mother (Winjammer) win [...] Continue reading New Farm Addition!  I’ve been trying to decode Bit ‘O’ Honey and Tinker Bell’s pedigrees for several weeks now; it turns out a goat pedigree can be complex. I think I’ve finally succeeded so here’s the link to Bit ‘O’ Honey and Tinker Bell‘s pedigrees. Actually explaining them is hard; but here goes. In their pedigrees, the sires are listed on the top and the dams on the [...] Continue reading Understanding Goat Pedigrees |
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