Things I have said to goats

 STOP SHOUTING AND EAT YOUR FOOD

That's not your mama stop stealing!

I know that's not your baby stop chasing!

WHAT DID YOU DO

WHERE DID YOU FIND THAT

DON'T EAT THAT

WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EAR

You're doing this on purpose aren't you.

LET ME HELP YOU

*undifferentiated screaming*

Get your feet out of my pocket!

If you love the squeaky thing you need to FEED the squeaky thing! That's your baby!

NO SIT ON BABBY

Stop kicking your baby in the face! She needs to touch your boobs to get milk! (first fresheners: they have no idea what's going on)

DON'T DRINK THAT wash water is not delicious!

A diary of an old lady goat who just wants some respect dammit

 So I brought home two lovely aged does this weekend, Lily (7, in milk) and Champagne (9, bred), who have impeccable pedigrees and production records and will be tremendous assets to the herd. They have ideas about this.

Sunday afternoon: Lily and Champagne are happy to come out of the barn. They are suspicious of getting in the car but definitely too lazy to put up too much fuss. Is that hay in there? Get this puppy out of my way I am too old for this. (The puppy was very cute and received many pats.)

This new barn smells funny.

Still Sunday afternoon: Lily - whyyyyyyyyy I'm too oooooooold for this!!! Champagne - zzzzzzz

Finally home, Sunday evening: We have arrived just in time for everybody to be fed and milked. Champagne walks into the milk room and jumps on a milk stand like she owns the place. Lily converts into 160 pounds of rage and stomping. She does like the grain though.

Lily - I'M LEAVING THIS PLACE IS TERRIBLE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE. Sif - don't worry mama I'll make sure she stays safe!

I'll find my own herd! With PROPER STAFF!

Monday morning, milking: Lily - I DEMAND TO SPEAK WITH A MANAGER. AND MY PREVIOUS STAFF. I WILL GIVE THEM SUCH A TELLING OFF. Champagne - (chewing peacefully). Milk goes everywhere. Everything is wet. Nogoaty else wants to use the milk stand after that.

Are you sure you are qualified to do this?

All goats are released. Champagne finds the babies. Happy old lady goat noises commence.

They will come around and everything will be fine, but if you enjoy drama, bring home an aged doe. You've apparently got a 50/50 chance.

Maybe don't quit your sysadmin job

FIRST BLOG POST IN YEARS BABY!!! I am still alive Facebook and Twitter are just easier to keep up with. That said, one of my friends sent me this lovely list of reasons you should quit your sysadmin job and become a goat farmer: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4l7kjd/found_a_text_file_at_work_titled_why_should_i/

And as a goat farmer who works in tech (although I am a PM, not an engineer) I have a few rebuttals. Quotes in bold because I'm too tired to deal with prettier formatting.

• Left alone, Billy goats and Nanny goats do what they're supposed to do. You don't need to format them, monitor them, be on-call for them, step, trace or inspect registers.

• Indeed they will, but you will also probably be frantically drying kids in the middle of a blizzard if you don't at least enforce a schedule on them. 

• Goats don't page you.

• They are better at screaming than most stakeholders though.

• When it comes to "software" (food), EVERYTHING is compatible with a goat.

• No it isn't. Their requirements list for hay is as extensive as it is unknowable. And GOD HELP YOU if you package their software in a new or unexpected way because this is not what they asked for, expected, or need. Also, sometimes they eat plants that are literally poison. Apparently to keep you on your toes.

• You don't need to call a staff meeting to make sure everyone's milking goats the same way.

• Only if you find goat shenanigans funny or hate your substitute milk maids. Goats will enforce your daily schedule more intensely than the most anal retentive product owner on the planet, and they will do so by screaming, becoming boneless, and generally acting like you are killing them when you ask them to do things they do literally every day.

• You don't need to sign in with the front desk if you need to milk a goat on a weekend. You don't need to use a badge to open a front gate. If you find an empty coffee pot burning on the machine on a Saturday, you just yell at your wife.

• But you might need to sign in with the livestock guardian dogs, who are highly suspicious of any change of schedule. It is after all their job to enforce security policy.

• You deliver applications to goats. Goats do not deliver applications to you.

• Isn't that what kids are?

• Goat security is applied completely, thoroughly, and with all the features you'll ever need, using a stake and a rope.

• Also an electric fence, gates (no taller gates), 24/7 canine monitoring, and additional after hours electronic monitoring (if you're lucky, if not, physical monitoring) during high stress periods (kidding). They still get out sometimes and your neighbor asks if that's your goat in the road.

• You do not need to buy anything to "uninstall" a goat. Maybe a gun or a knife.

• Sometimes people pay money for the privilege of uninstalling the goat from your property for you!

• No meetings.

• Yes meetings. Daily (milking, feeding, watering), weekly (barn cleanup, worm checks), monthly (more barn cleanup), quarterly (minerals), and annual (breeding, kidding, vaccines) schedules strictly enforced by screaming and/or death.

• All your stuff will still work when you buy your 100th goat, and your 256th goat, and your 65,536th goat..

• Unless the previous goats broke it in new and exciting ways. That said, bailer twine fixes most of that, and the rest is a replace/upgrade scenario. No dev budget required unless you feel like getting fancy.

• Nobody can go through your goat and get you in trouble for what they find in there.

• Yes they can, selling a goat into the slaughter pipeline that you gave an unapproved patch (medication) without express permission from an admin (vet), with paperwork, will indeed get you in a lot of trouble. Because they will go through the goat. They will find out.

Would I quit my tech job to goat farm full time again in approximately two seconds if I didn't have to worry about money? Yes. But do goats have a surprising amount in common with most stakeholders? Also yes.

It's the little things, I guess.

So in addition to insane roosters, we have been dealing with "something is wrong with the milk machine" for the last couple of days.  It was just not sucking as much as it was supposed to, which really sucked.  I took off all the hoses and submerged them in water to check for leaks.  I drained and cleaned the overflow tank (there wasn't actually anything in there but air).  I knocked on the pulsator.  Don't laugh that is literally a step on the trouble shooting flow chart for my milk machine.  Nothing.  Slow death.  Hour long milking sessions.  Frustrated goats.  Dammit Pansy what have you done.

Then I took apart the hose that connects the pump to the pulsator.  Did you know that the screw together doodad in the middle of that hose isn't just for converting from small size tube to larger size tube, it has a filter in it?  A filter that is basically two tiny pieces of cheap Scotch Brite scrubby pads on top of each other?

Yeah a week of freaking out because I thought my milk machine was dying, and it needed like a $.001 part.  It works now!  Unfortunately now the suction is too high and I have to remember what the previous setting was.  I have it written down in this user manual somewhere.  And hey, in the morning I won't have frustrated goats... but I might have surprised goats.  Not sure if that is an immediate improvement, but I'll take it.

About six miles of tubes... all leak free.  Today.

Things that cause Cedar to forget how to use a milk stand:

• Moving.  It took nearly two weeks after we brought Cedar home to convince her that yes, this really is a milk stand, and yes, you really do use it just like the ones back home.  There is grain involved if you cooperate, girl!

"Like this, right?"

• Turning the milk stand to face the other way.  She cannot find the grain.  It is gone.  Clearly this is some kind of witch craft.
• Cleaning the milk room.  All the trash and dirt was clearly vital to her process.  Now that it is gone she can only get two feet onto the milk stand at a time.  Life is very tragic.

Hey, what did you do with my trash?

• Presence of chickens in the milk room.  Chickens are sneaky and it's very naughty for them to sneak into the milk room, so apparently Cedar gets to be sneaky and naughty too.  Sprinkles' grain looks tasty.  Surely no one will notice.

• Presence of human kids in the milk room.  They need a good sniffing and lots of kisses.  Again, it is impossible to get more than two feet on the milk stand at a time.  Cedar whines because her tongue is not long enough to reach the grain this way.

Ponchos might also secretly be snacks.  Forget the snacks ON THE MILK STAND...

• Removing a doe from the milk line.  Clearly it is not actually the milk room if Sundae doesn't threaten her on the way in/out.  (Sundae is in the barn recovering from an epic case of found something bad for her and ate a whole lot of it.  She is fine but needs to convalesce.)  Attempts to crawl under the milk stand to find out if the trash can is full of used wipes yet.

Nope not yet.

• Mom put the teat wipes at the wrong end of the milk stand.  Clearly it is a trap.
• Mom put something new on/under/next to the milk stand.  Also clearly a trap.  Unless it's treats.  Cedar attempts to eat the new thing.

I am beginning to see why Sundae hates Cedar so much - she is a bit daft.  I can only imagine it's worse if you actually speak goat.  I'm rather fond of my little Cinnamon Bun goat, but enough is enough, girl!

Sometimes I give up.  You win this round, goat...

The Great Johnes Scare of 2016

What're we going to do tonight, Sundae?  Same thing we do every night.  Find new ways to drive our human out of her ever loving mind...

One thing that is really, really scary, is when your goat suddenly has goopy sloppy poop like a cow.  This is both because a key reason why I got goats instead of cows is because cow poop is several orders of magnitude grosser than goat poop and because it is a sign that something has gone very, very wrong in Goat Digestion Land.

The first thing you always suspect is parasites.  Some vets will tell you that stomach worms don't really cause scours, and some will tell you what are you talking about of course stomach worms cause scours.  I don't really know which it is, but Sundae also had moderately pale eyelids (read: moderate anemia), which is definitely a sign of stomach worms, so I gave her medicine.  Which did nothing, so I gave her different medicine.  Which also did nothing.  Noting that her eyelids were actually starting to pink up by this point (which wouldn't happen if she were still fighting stomach worms), I called the vet.

Our vets are really very good.  We use the Virginia Tech veterinary school and have nothing but good things to say about them.  They are nice and calm and extremely knowledgeable about goats, and understand that "calm" is not something I'm capable of a lot of the time because I'm super high strung and have an anxiety disorder.  The first thing in a situation like this (assuming the goat is eating well, which she was, and reasonably energetic, which she was) is run a fecal float test.  Which revealed zero coccidia and very few worm eggs.  Sundae was about as parasite free as goats come.  Which means that the next most likely scenario was that she had somehow gotten Johnes.

Johnes is usually a disease of cattle, but sheep and goats can get it to.  It is bacterial, and infection is transmitted via the fecal-oral route.  The bacteria can live in the soil for up to a year, and it generally takes two years from the point of infection for animals to become symptomatic, during which time they have been shedding bacteria in their feces, contaminating the pasture and infecting their herd mates.  The symptoms of Johnes are scours due to mechanical damage to the intestines, rapid weight loss, and death.  There is no treatment except a bullet.

Needless to say there was much panicking.  Much, MUCH panicking.  Fortunately I had already sent blood to the lab for our annual testing, and had decided to add Johnes to the usual CAE testing this year.  While the blood test isn't great, it is a screening tool, and people ask about it from time to time.  The vet agreed that the blood test isn't the most accurate of tests, but in clinical cases it should turn up positive.

If you follow me on Facebook you know that the tests all came back negative, and in fact I had locked Sundae in the barn with a wether (I don't care as much if the wethers get sick) and her poop had gone completely back to normal by then.  Turns out she had in fact developed a taste for horse nettles, which are super poisonous, the chief symptom of which is scours.  But I have put together a list of things you can do to keep Johnes out of your herd, because once you have it, it's kind of an end of the world scenario.

1. Do not run your goats with cows of unknown Johnes status.  This is apparently the main way goats get Johnes.
2. Do not feed your goat kids unpasteurized cow's milk from cows of unknown status.  Transmission via milk is fairly well documented.
3. Quarantine all new arrivals (goats, cows, sheep, everything!) until you have negative Johnes tests in hand and it's been at least a month.  Three months is better.  I personally know a farm that narrowly avoided a new cow infecting their whole herd with Johnes because they had her in quarantine.  SAFETY FIRST!  This will also protect your herd from nasties like infectious hoof rot, CL, and sore mouth.
4. Consider annual or semi-annual testing.  Many dairy herds are already testing for CAE - if you do your testing through WADDL, they can do a Johnes test too, from the same 5 ml red top tube of blood even.  It's only $6.50 per test as of this writing, the same as a CAE test.  Our current plan (which our vet agrees is reasonable) is to test for CAE yearly (using BioTracking for non-Johnes-test years, since it's cheaper there) and Johnes every other year.  Since Johnes is a slow-developing infection, and the blood test will not detect it in its early stages, every year might be a bit over kill.  Put if you're paranoid it's a small price to pay for peace of mind, and testing new stock is always a good idea.
5. Do not let people walk around in your pasture.  Poo on their shoe becomes poo on your pasture becomes germs in your goats.  If you need to show an animal bring it out to the people.  The people will understand.  Or if they don't, screw them, because your animals, your rules!
6. Do not wear your barn shoes off your property.  I am really bad about this, but the same principles as above apply - you don't know what germs you are walking through, especially at places like the feed store.  I actually have a special pair of feed store shoes that NEVER EVER EVER go in the barn.  Because feed stores are fun but their floors are kinda icky.

So in closing, BIOSECURITY.  It's important.  Also GOOD WORKING RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR VET.  We are very fortunate that this escapade in paranoia only cost us one fecal float (which are cheap) and one set of blood tests (which we were going to do anyway).  After Murphy and his meningitis of doom there is not a lot of money left over for the vet.  Or rather, not a lot of money that the vet hasn't already taken.

Kidding check list

That time of year is rolling around again, that magical time where baby goats are born and I completely loose my marbles.  So with that in mind, here is my personal check list of everything I do to get ready.  It is also a convenient list of why you might not hear from me as much as usual until about mid-March.

Thirty days before the does are due, put everybody on the milk stand, trim their feet, and give them CDT vaccines.

A couple of days later, remember that I was also supposed to give them their annual selenium (I use oral gel) and semi-annual copper bolus (think really big vitamin).  Wrestle with the goats because they think I'm trying to poison them.

Put together my goat midwifery kit.  Contents:

• OB lube (I just buy whatever water based personal lubricant is cheapest at the grocery store.  In large quantity.)
• Vet-strength iodine
• Large numbers of towels
• A tube of oral selenium (in case the kids need it)
• Molassas, corn syrup, and CPMK (a calcium supplement)
• Tums (For the goats, not me.  Ok sometimes also for me.)
• Injectable Penicillin (kept in the fridge), needles, and syringes
• A big pile of empty feed sacks, which I have yet to actually use
• Bottles (the empty soda kind) and nipples (the black lamb kind), just in case

Two weeks before the does are due, I start them on their late pregnancy ration of grain, and start feeding alfalfa again.  The goats think I am God.

One week before the does are due, I start feeling tail head ligaments.  One of the surest signs a doe is about to kid is she "looses her ligaments" - ie, they become impossible to feel.  This is also about the time I start fiddling with their udders, which they hate, and trying to feel the babies move, which they hate even more.  The goats think I've lost my ever loving mind, except for Emerald, who will do anything to have her cheeks scratched.

I continue in this holding pattern until all the does kid - they are all due the same week this year, and goat due dates are plus or minus five days, so worst case scenario I've got about two weeks of absolute wackadoo.  I'll let you know how alive I still am when we have a head count and everybody is eating.

Dry off is coming.

I whine about winter a lot.  It is cold, it is often wet.  The hoses freeze, so I have to haul water in buckets.  I have to feed a lot of hay, and therefor worry incessantly about running out of hay (even though I never have).  So when Game of Thrones hit my radar, that "winter is coming" thing came out of my mouth a lot.  Gotta get the hay up - winter is coming.  I don't know if I have enough buckets - winter is coming.  Or better yet, why are the handles on my buckets breaking?  Winter is COMING!

But you know what I hate more than winter?  Dry Off Day.  Every goat needs to be dried off (ie, I stop milking her and her milk dries up) two months before she kids again, so that she can rest and rebuild her udder.  If you don't, lactation quality and quantity goes way down, particularly colostrum quality - and that stuff is liquid gold.  Literally the difference between life and death for those baby kids.  So Dry Off Day is super important for the goats.

But it also means no more milking, and chores without milking are just depressing.  It means no more milk, and the kids always cry the first week of store cow milk because it's just not the same.  It means I have to pay really close attention to my yogurt and cheese making cultures or they're going to be dead by the time I have milk again.

So down with winter, sure.  But next year, I'm staggering the breeding of my does so our dry season is as short as possible.  If I'm going to be out there freezing my buns off in the barn, I want MILK, dang it!

Goats: occasionally too smart for my own good

Now I love my goats.  They make me laugh every day.  They do however tend to develop some behaviors that also make me want to scream.  The most frightening at this time revolves around these kinds of latches:

And the fact that goats can open them any time they wants to.  Let's just make this clear: any time she wants to, a goat can get into 2/4 of the kidding stalls, the coop, the stall off the milk room, and THE MILK ROOM.  Did you know I keep feed in the milk room?  Fortunately none of them have figured out how to get open the twist top bins I use, even by knocking them over and jumping on them.  I am also grateful that, generally speaking, they only want in when I'm in there (they know I can get the feed cans open).

So now all my doors and gates have hook and eye latches higher than the goats can easily reach, too.  Or close with a carabiner.  Heaven help me if they figure out how to operate a carabiner.  This is also conclusive proof that goats are smarter than sheep - the previous owner of our property ran Katahdins, and found all these latches to be perfectly adequate.  He also kept several of the tube gates shut by hanging the chain on a nail.  Yeah, goats figured that one out in about five minutes.

Lessons from my first kidding season

First off, website still under construction.  Thanks for being understanding.  :)

Second off, I learned an assortment of random things this year, in no particular order.

1. Don't worry about catching kids on a feed sack or something.  All the websites say to do this so that there isn't birth goo everywhere, but there is going to be birth goo everywhere ANYWAY and some does will run away from you if you do this with two feet and a nose sticking out, which means MORE birth goo everywhere.  Just let it go.
2. Have antibiotics on hand.  If you own livestock, YOU are their primary care provider, not the vet.  Just seriously.  Have them.
3. If you see amniotic fluid, and it's been a long time, just go in and find out what's going on.  Some does do not push if the babies are malpositioned, so you can't use the "she's been pushing for an hour" rule that the websites suggest.
4. If the babies are floppy and weak and can't get up, put the babies in a stall, and put the doe in the stall next to the babies.  They cannot get out of her way and she is tired and sore.  She can hurt them by accident.  In the stall next door she can see them and smell them and love on them but NOT SQUISH.  Perk: the kids will think you are next to God because when you show up, they get MAMA.
5. If the babies are not floppy and weak and can get up, don't worry about the doe hurting them by accident.  They can get out of the way.
6. If the placenta is hanging out and dragging on the ground, tie knots in it.  The internet says to trim it but the chances of any doe I own standing still for that is virtually nil.

I will probably learn more next year, and I don't think I did too bad all things considered.  But if you speak goat, please teach me to say "Sundae I'm afraid if you have quads again it will kill one of us."  Girl is an overachiever.