Zen

Xoe kidded on April eighth to two bucklings and a doeling. We lost one of the bucklings and the doeling. Above is a picture of the two bucklings sleeping together. Below are pictures of the first and surviving buckling. His name is Zen. He is black and white/light tan and he weighs seven pounds. In my last post I said that Xoe kidded last year on day 150, but I realized that she actually kidded at five pm on day 149. This kidding was also on day 149 and if there hadn't been complications she would have delivered mid to late evening. To make a very long story relatively short, I began sitting with Xoe at about seven p.m. and around midnight it seemed like she wasn't making as much progress as she should be. My friend April was with me (this was her first time attending a goat birth). We decided to intervene. The first kid was upside down with his legs in the wrong position and his head was turned. With much effort April was able to straighten his legs and his head, we tried pulling him out but his head kept returning to it's original sideways position. We ended up having to turn his whole body sideways and finally she was able to pull him out. We should have gone right back in but we gave mom and baby about fifteen to twenty minutes together before going back in. Again the kid was upside down with legs in the wrong position. This time April was able to quickly get the doeling out. When she came out she wasn't breathing and we weren't able to get her going after much nose-mouth wiping/sucking/blowing and lots of rubbing. While I was trying to get the doeling going, April went back in and pulled out a third kid, a very tiny and weak buckling. He was breathing and alive but he was so weak it seemed like we lost him a couple times and got him going again. By the time all the kids were out it was probably about three or four a.m. and we spent another couple hours with them, trying to get the big kid to nurse, and trying to feed the little one milk in a dosing syringe. The two bucklings fell asleep so at about five a.m. I decided to leave and let everyone rest. I could only hope that when I returned they would be stronger. I had Dustin check on them an hour later about six a.m. Then I made it back up at eight thirty and the little guy had died. In retrospect I should have brought him to my bedside to make sure he stayed alive and kicking. I wish we had gone in earlier for the first kid and then right away for the second two and maybe we would have a doeling. Goat raising is not for the faint of heart, and incidents like this certainly shatter one's confidence. Yesterday was a gray day around here. It was the first overcast and cloudy day in weeks. When I watch Zen my heart ache for the little ones we lost eases up a bit. I'm looking forward to the kids that are still on their way.
Zen is about seventeen hours old in this picture. He is real wobbly, learning how to stand and walk. In just a couple days he will be running, skipping and jumping...flying really.
Here are a few photos of Noah, Avery and I spending a little time with the new family. In the photo below Xoe is facing the camera and her daughter Yin is behind her. So far Yin is rather indifferent about her new brother.


To make matters more complicated, Xoe isn't willingly caring for and nursing her son. So every few hours (as often as possible) we are helping Zen nurse. He is in an indoor pen on his own, mostly sleeping on fresh hay. I guide Xoe in and hold her in a neck lock while I guide Zen to her teat and kind of angle it into his mouth. We had to do this with Xoe and her kids last year as well. I think if her labor hadn't been so complicated and she hadn't lost a couple kids, we wouldn't have this issue because she wouldn't be near as stressed. I think within a couple days she will regain her mother capacities and be nursing and caring for him on her own.

Waiting for goat babies

These are pictures of Xoe's birth last spring, 2008. Today is her due date and we are expecting kids anytime. For the last four nights Dustin and I have been taking shifts going up to the Doe's stall and checking to see if Xoe is in labor or if there are kids on the ground. Xoe is huge. We've been so certain that we've been seeing signs of imminent labor, but we've been fooled into our sleepless nights. Well, once again I am sure that she is in early labor stages. We looked at last year's birth dates an did some math. Last year Xoe had her kids on her 150th day at 5pm. A friend of mine and local goat expert informed me that his goats tend to have the same length of gestation from year to year, kidding within hours of when they kidded previously. First timers may be exempt from this, but we are going to see if this rule applies to us.
In the picture above and below I am drying of Xoe's firstborn, Yin. Xoe is like "ouch that hurt, what is going on?"These kids were born right as I was in last minute dinner preparations for Noah's second birthday dinner. Our family was just arriving as we finished gettting the kids to nurse once.
Here is a photo of Xoe's kids at a few days old. The doeling on the right is Yin; our first Wild Roots doeling. On the left is her brother (we called him Yang), we sold him along with one of our other whethers as a pet/ brush clearer. We were pretty fortunate to be able to sell all four of our first whethers as pets.
Other news: I stuck eleven eggs under Honey on Sunday night. So we will be checking twenty-one days, or a day early, for baby chicks. Our feed store is getting sexlinks in a day after ours are due to hatch so I might be able to graft them on to Honey. Today, I ordered a half a pig from Delta Meats. We've been wanting to order a half a pig since last fall, just waiting until we had the money to do so. If I'd planned ahead I could have specified the cuts I wanted. This one was already processed it and it's been a while since I've done any research. We will be getting sausage, bone in ham, bacon, short ribs, spare ribs, roast, pork chops and so forth. They deliver it into town tomorrow. Time to go check for goat babies!

Avery Food

Avery has been eating solids for about two months now. It is way easier to breastfeed than feed her solids and I knew once I started there was no turning back so I held out as long as I could. When I couldn't eat a meal in peace because she was constantly grabbing at my hand, arm, utensils, dishes, and following every bite of food from my plate to my mouth while drooling. Well then I knew it was about time. When Noah began eating solids I read the book Super Baby Food, and it greatly shaped how we fed Noah from day one. The author simply lays out what foods you should introduce and when based on how easily the foods are digested and how likely they are to cause an allergic reaction. She recommends waiting until baby is closer to one before feeding much dairy, meat or seasoned and salted foods. We made most of Noah's food, but as we were in the middle of construction and often didn't have much of a kitchen, or were staying with friends, I did buy some organic baby food in addition to feeding some of the commercial baby cereals. I have to say that Noah is the best eater I know as far as kids go. From the time he was about a year and half until recently he enjoyed eating everything we ate. He loves foods you wouldn't think of like kalamatta olives, pickles, salmon, broccoli. This time around I don't think I'll have to buy any commercial baby food unless we take a vacation. Avery has loved eating from day one. She has also wanted to be in control of the spoon from the beginning and gets quite upset with me when I take it from her, or try to keep her from getting to messy. If I have the time I just take her shirt off and put her in her highchair in her cloth diaper and let her get as messy as she pleases. Then I just stick her in the sink for a bath afterwards. But I don't always have the time or energy to make her feeding an hour affair. I've found that I can usually get away with feeding her banana and avacado with just a bib on, whereas sweet potato (referred to incorrectly as yam at our supermarket) makes quite a mess and it is about her favorite. She also enjoys fresh mango, papaya and winter squash. I've been making up rice cereal by grinding it in a coffee grinder (that isn't used for coffee) and cooking it in boiling water. Then I take out a little scoop and mix it with her veggies. We mash bananas, avacados, mangoes and papaya on spot, the sweet potatoes and winter squash I puree in big batches and freeze in ice cube trays, then I just pop one out to thaw before hand. I took some pictures of the process recently but haven't uploaded them onto the computer yet so I'll include those in a future post. But that is the technique I will be using for a lot of other veggies soon; peas, beans, carrots etc. Here is a picture of Avery enjoying a meal.Below is a picture of Avery feeding herself with a little baby feeder. I don't know the correct name for it but it is a mesh bag that opens and you stick the food in it, we use bananas most often, then close it and there is a little handle for her to hold on to and she can feed and entertain herself with it. This little device is just awesome. If she is hungry and I'm cooking for the rest of us I just stick her food in here and she does the rest. I often use it to bide myself a few more minutes doing whatever I'm trying to get done. Some foods really make a big mess, banana seems to clean up pretty well. When she sees the bag in my hand she knows just what is going on and gets excited, often I will refill it for her and she will eat most of that too. Then I have a warm rag and water bottle I exchange out for her when she starts tiring of the fun.
Avery loves bath time. Here she is with a rag on her head. I have to start doing a better job of cleaning up all the dishes around the sink because she is no longer content to just sit and splash and play with a toy or two. She wants to get into everything in reach. For a while I was feeling quite clever because I could wash dishes in the sink next to her but now she constantly pulls herself up and trys to stand and reach into the other sink. So sink baths may soon be a thing of the past.
I'll be writing more about baby food as the months go on. I am thankful that we are going into spring and summer, there should be lots of quality fruits and vegetables for her to consume over the next several months. For now here is a shout out to the power of the cuisinart...

Emily's Portrait

This is me, Emily Stahl age twenty-nine. Last week my friend Adam Schiesel asked if he could take some portrait photos for a project he is working on. The night before we were going to meet up both my kids came down with a cold and I was feeling like I might be it's next victim. So I called and said I might have to cancel if I couldn't stop blowing my nose, or if the kids had a fever. On friday both children were better. I however could not stop blowing my nose and I had a sore throat, but I'd been looking forward to getting out of the house and I didn't know if I cancelled if I'd get another shot...and my nose wasn't red- yet, besides as Adam pointed out it was in black and white.

I enjoyed seeing Adam's studio and some of the other pictures that he's been working on. He explained things about his camera and the photo style and most of it went over my head. If I understood correctly, something all the pictures have in common is that because the camera has a wide scope, the pictures are soft and fuzzy around the outside and very clear and defined right around the eyes and lips. Some of the first photos he had taken looked aged and lighter around the edges and he said that he'd been given some film that had been aged, I can't remember the correct terminology but someone had left it in a window, or in the light and rotated it and over time the film had faded. I found it interesting looking at the group of people Adam chose to photograph-mostly made up of his friends and co-workers, an Alaskan Coffee Roasting Company/ Lulu's Bagels / Marlin (bar)/ College crowd. Many of the people he has chosen to photograph seem to match the style of photo well. There is a roughness and uniquely rugged and stoic look to many of the participants. I think he has paired the style of photo with some of Fairbanks finest hooligans quite cleverly.

Mixing Chicken Feed

Tuesday was chicken feed grain mixing day. This was only our second time mixing a batch of chicken feed. In one of my first posts I gave the recipe I'm currently using. So far so well. Once I began giving the chickens this feed, they wanted nothing to do with their crumbles and I don't blame them. They love the oats, barley, wheat and corn. I'm not sure how much of the meal they eat, or if they just push it out of the feeder to get to the grains. I don't think I'll buy alfalfa meal again. They love alfalfa hay. I think I'll just give them a small amount of hay once or twice a week. I'm not sure how much nutrients are still in the meal by the time it gets to us. Who knows when the alfalfa was ground into meal and how stale it is. Well here are some fun photos of Noah helping mix grain. Above is a photo of Noah giving the birds some kitchen scraps. They pretty much expect scraps daily when we let them out. It is probably one of the healthiest parts of their winter diet, comprised mostly of vegetable scraps with a few crusts of whole made multigrain bread and sometimes goat cheese dairy leftovers.

Noah is my mix-master. This is the perfect job for Noah. Lets just say that Noah lives to dig and scoop and dump. And to help me measure out a hundred pounds of grains and meal and then mix them all together in a big tub, he was in heaven. I had to distract him in order to start scooping the mixed ingredients into a lidded garbage can...he would have played in the tub of grain all afternoon if I'd let him.

Noah mixing about thirty pounds of corn into all the other ingredients.
Go mix-master!

Above is a picture of my most prized ingredient, Alaskan Salmon Meal. Fish meal, crab meal and soybean meal are all high protein ingredients. When I first began researching fish meal, I learned that there is a wide range of quality in the different types of fish meal, and that it was important to find out what kind of fish were in the meal, where the fish are harvested and how the meal is processed. When I purchased the bag of salmon meal the lady at the register didn't know anything about it. I figured I would just buy it and check out the bag and company when I got it home. When I saw that it was Alaskan Salmon Meal from Kodiak Fisheries I was so stoked. I think it has got to be one of the better fish meal sources. This is a fifty pound bag and it is one one of the higher dollar ingredients. I'm adding about five pounds to each hundred batch of mixed feed, so I figure this bag is going to last me at least six to nine months depending on how many birds we get this spring.

Here is a picture of about four pounds of flax seed. Omega fatty acids are quite the buzz word today. For humans and most animals, flax seeds and other small seeds like sesame need to be ground for us to get anything out of them - otherwise they just pass through without being digested. I think the chickens are better suited to eating flax seeds just as they are. The other thing about ground flax seed is that it goes stale really fast, so if you are grinding it, keep it in a cool place (fridge) and only grind up as much as you can consume in a couple weeks. We use a five pound bucket to weigh all the ingredients. I thought different ingredients would vary greatly in weight, but pretty much this bucket full of any of the ingredients is five pounds.

Whole grains are amazing. I've heard a cool quote that I wish I could remember. But what other foods can you drop on the ground and instead of going to waste they start to grow. In the center of this photo are red winter wheat berries, they are one of the more expensive ingredients, but oh so nutritious.

Xoe

Xoe is on my mind. She is a darling goat. I feel for her right now, because in the not all too distant past I was expecting myself. Unlike Xoe, I am not a goat - thankfully, and so I was not picked on, pushed around and butted by my peers. The gestation period for goats is about 150 days, but it is wise to start checking for labor signs a good week before. Often they'll give birth five or so days early or late. Last year we were expecting Maggie to kid first, but Rose; the third doe we'd bred kidded first. Maggie kidded late, everyone else was more or less right on time. Xoe kidded to twins last year on April thirteenth- (Noah's birthday). As you can tell from the following pictures, Xoe is very pregnant and starting to have a hard time getting around. The other does are starting to pick on her and take advantage of her weakness. They aren't mean really, this is just what goats do, no matter how sweet of a goat they are it is in their nature to establish their rank in the herd and try to move up if they can.

We bred Xoe for the first time in December 07 and at the time she was our youngest goat bred, just seven months old. She was a big healthy kid who was at least ninety pounds by the time we bred her. When breeding goats their first time, I believe they are suppose to be at least eighty pounds. Well, I know now from experience that I probably bred Xoe too early. When she was about a month from kidding her front right leg started giving out at the ankle when she put pressure on it. I had to wrap her front two legs to give her extra support so that she could walk. She did kid to twins, but if she had been a few months older I don't think it would have been an issue.
When Xoe kidded for the first time, she was totally out of it and was completely disinterested in her kids. We tried to put her in a small pen with them thinking she would come around, but that made it worse. So we ended up keeping her kids in a kennel together and every couple hours we would go up and hold Xoe so that her kids could nurse without her butting them into the ground. She was really rough and mean to them. Thankfully after about a week of this we starting letting them hang out for supervised visits and within a few more days she was taking to them just fine. I was glad that we hadn't given in and just started bottle feeding. Today Xoe's daughter Yin enjoys the position of adolescent dilinquent within the herd. She and her mother are very close. I am not sure when Xoe finally cut Yin off, as far as nursing goes, but I am certain that she is no longer nursing. Xoe's udder has been empty for a month or so and has started bagging up over the last few days. It will be interesting to see how Yin treats her new siblings. Jealousy issues? Sibling rivalry?

Xoe is due to kid on April ninth. I predict that she will take to her kids just fine her second time around. And I feel certain in saying that there has got to be at least two in there. Xoe is sweet and eager to please. Before she kidded the first time she had been second in the herd. Now she is close to last. I would like to make sure she is dried off by September and then give her a few months to grow before we breed her again in late winter next year. Goats do not reach their full size until they are about three years old. So I'd like to give her some baby free time by late summer / early fall.

We would like to keep everyone's first daughter. We would also like to restrict ourselves to two doelings a year. This is going to be a challenging decision this year, as it would be so interesting to keep Xoe's daughter (if she has one), because we bred her to Xavier instead of Lew this year. So it would be a while but possibly by next spring we could be comparing Yin, (Lew's daughter), to her half sister,(Xavier's daughter). I am most interested in seeing how their udders differ in size, shape and teat placement. We have four does kidding, they are most likely to have two kids each. There is a good chance that we end up with multiple doelings. Hopefully we will, because this is the only way we can make money off of our goats at this time- selling kids. There is much more demand for doelings than bucks. I plan on selling doelings for around three hundred dollars. So if we could sell a couple that would certainly help pay for feed costs. Anyways...for now I'm mostly thinking of Xoe and when she is going to surprise us with our first kids of the year.

Chicken laying flourescent eggs

We have a buff cochin laying flourescent pink and yellow eggs! Here is a peak at the eggs she is sitting on. April Fools! Honey has gone broody for the second time this winter and this time we are rejoicing. We are saving Brahma eggs to put underneath her. As soon as we have a dozen eggs we will exchange them for the fake eggs. We could of course just sacrifice a couple real eggs, but they are sooo precious.


This isn't the best picture of a broody hen. But you can see that she is ruffled and upset with me for disturbing her. She has just gone broody, so we should have plenty of time to get the real eggs under her. Unfortunately all the birds like to lay their eggs in the same box. So every day we have to reach under her and take out the real eggs. For one , we don't just want to hatch any of the eggs. Two, it would be disastrous to add an egg every day or two because they need twenty one days to hatch and once the first eggs begin hatching she will only sit on the eggs for so long before leaving them to care for the new chicks. Ideally we should have a broody box to move her to. There she would have a more spacious box where she could get off her eggs to move just a foot or two to drink water and eat some food. We might get a broody box up and running here before we put the real eggs under her.

As far as April Fools Day goes, it has never gotten much attention in my family because there is a much bigger celebration going on; My Mom's Birthday. Happy 50th Birthday Mom! We are having the family over for thai food tonight accompanied by some special drinks. So what am I doing here on the computer? Time to start prepping. We are having spring rolls, chicken basil stir fry, rice and pad thai. For drinks options include Saporro, a Mango cocktail, Champagne ( and nice bottle) and most likely wine. Should be a good time.