Spring Rains Bring Greener Pastures!

Welcome to the new GoatWorld blog format! This is the first post I am attempting using WordPress so it should be interesting. lol

There has been a lot of strange weather around the world for quite some time now, and Southeast Colorado is no exception. There have already been wildfires and higher than normal seasonal temperatures around the region. There has also already been cooler temperatures with ample amounts of snow proceeding the warmer temps. Doesn’t look like Mother Nature has been quite able to make up her mind.

Here in Southeast Colorado, we are always 2 weeks away from a drought but thankfully, we received some very beneficial moisture in the later part of May which has the goats out and about, enjoying the lush pasture weeds that seemed to emerge almost overnight.

With more pasture grass and weeds to work with comes the need for more goats. And given the current state of the economy (a discussion for later), comes the need for milk goats just in case the supply of milk becomes scarce.

We took the plunge and bought a goat or four to bolster our dairy production. One specific Toggenburg named Mali that I am milking daily has turned out to be quite a good goat after working with her for a little while. She now looks forward to our milking sessions and leads me to the milking stand rather than the other way around. We’ll soon have enough fresh milk ready for making such delicacies as cheese and ice cream, to possibly even soap and bath bombs. Of course it’s hard to overlook daily consumption such as cream in your coffee.

Of course once we decided to get back into dairy goats to some extent, I suddenly remembered that I had given away a milk stand that I had fabricated some 20 years ago out of wood. It wasn’t in the best of shape but had served its purpose well for a number of years. So I immediately knew that building a new milking stand would be a first priority and I began thinking of ideas how to build something new, leaning on my experience from before, and from various ideas across the Internet.

One thing you learn when milking (or the attempt thereof), is that the older you get, the harder it is to bend down and get back up. I kept thinking of the wrestling match and goat rodeos of yesteryear and knew that this new stand was going to be quite a bit different, and much easier on myself and th goat as well. This new stand will be mostly made of metal, making cleaning a lot easier. I will go more in depth with the new milk stand hopefully in the next blog when I have it more completed.

While it took a little while for Mali to get used to working with me, her daughter Precious is a clean slate and young enough to learn from the beginning. It will be quite awhile until she climbs on to the milk stand, but I work with her a little bit everyday so that it will be a very easy transition.

Soon it will be time to find a quality Toggenburg buck for the next round of kids for Mali. As is good practice in our opinion, we’ll wait until Precious is over a year old to expose her to a buck.

The second Toggenburg we bought I named May (since we acquired her during May) came with her own little buckling who is still nursing. I’m not sure of the story behind him as far as May’s prior breeding. He look to be more of a chocolate colored Toggenburg, but in many situations you just don’t know the history and don’t want to take the chance of too much dairy crossings and interbreeding. He may become more of a future sire candidate for some of our Cashmere does. That might be an interesting cross.

In wrapping up this blog edition, please stay tuned as we continue to integrate the old school aspects of our site with some of the newer features that editors such as WordPress offer. We have a lot planned for GoatWorld so this is really just the beginning – again – of continuing to build a great community that has been a well-respected Internet resource for over two decades.

Please feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below. We’d love to hear from you.

Stay calm and goat on, Gary

GoatWorld.com

Spring Rains Bring Greener Pastures!