Walking on a Lead

Teaching young goats to walk on a lead would be an unnecessary exercise were several of our young kids not scheduled to make an Easter Sunday appearance in Nashville. With the So Green is My Grass Daycare space reserved, the kids are managing short separations from their dams with some grace; however, moving several at once remains a challenge.

Yesterday I tried pairing off the kids, forcing them to travel as a team. The concept worked well last year, especially for BullyBob (the sire of all but two of our kids this year) and Leo, the wether who has since moved on to a household where he’s the only goat—and so rather the rock star at that address.

Will and Walter, Thumbelina’s twins and our oldest kids this season, managed well as a pair yesterday. They managed well enough that this morning I clipped them together on a short lead and left them in the home pasture, together, while rounding up others. They traveled around efficiently, hardly dragging one another, seeming to understand the teamwork required to succeed when hitched together.

Samuel and Mister Maguire, meanwhile, had settled down in some hay for some serious morning napping. The adults in their life had been taken away without raising any alarm and they were enjoying their freedom beyond the confines of the barn. (My plan was to not only get the boys and their momma accustomed to separation before Easter morning, but also to allow Miss Marcie to build up a bit of milk for the humans who live here before afternoon milking time.) With all the eating they’ve been doing—Marcie produces somewhere around three quarts of milk for us each day, and these boys had milked her dry on more than one occasion—the boys are getting heavy. I took them out one at a time so as to carry them successfully. Later on, after they were awake, they could practice walking on a lead.

Samuel, then, was the first kid left in the daycare pen. He was concerned and disoriented, but he did not panic. Next I brought down Miss Mary. Then I found Walter and Will patiently waiting by a T-post where they’d gotten hung up by trying to pass it on different sides while hitched together. They were so good about their predicament that I was well pleased. They traveled to the daycare pen on foot and the process went smoothly. Then I roused Mister Maguire from his sunny sleeping spot and he lazily allowed me to lug him down the hill. By the time he arrived, Samuel had discovered the tasty the green grass and was little concerned about his twin’s appearance. Finally I hitched two of Jennifer’s triplet boys together—Ted and Todd. They did not travel well.

Todd exhibited mammoth lung capacity for such a little guy, and he pulled and flipped, bucked and twisted the whole way down the hill. When the pair arrived at the pen, I left then hitched together because Todd made it clear that even tied to his brother he was going to do everything in his power to avoid me when I came to move them again.

The So Green is My Grass Daycare was a happy, lively spot for a few hours while moms Gwen, Thumbelina, and Jennifer grazed freely below the enclosure. I was able to milk Leslie a little while still leaving her plenty in reserve for her boys, and got about a pint and a half from Miss Marcie, too, before bringing the Nubian buckling back up the hill. Little Samuel and Maguire make a serious pair. Coming back uphill, they traveled well hitched together and separated from me by a long lead, as did the Walter-Will tandem that traveled alongside them.

With another day of successful separation behind them, I’m anticipating a successful Easter activity if we just bring those five kids who traveled well and leave Jennifer’s three and Cocoa’s Theresa back on the farm. Indeed, I rather think these five will enjoy their excursion to new pastures and will enjoy the attentions of new people.

The other four will need more time to master walking on a lead. They may have all the time they need.

Making Mozzarella

Yesterday we learned to make mozzarella cheese. We’d been meaning to get to it as the refrigerator shelves filled with more and more milk over the week, but when we were hindered by a lack of proper equipment. A few trips out to the Wilson Farmers Co-op, Tractor Supply, and the Kitchen Collection store at the local Outlet Mall were necessary to gather enough large stainless steel vats for the task.


The recipe we used calls for four gallons of goat’s milk. Two gallons need to be heated while two gallons are chilled. This meant we needed at least two 9-quart vats to hold the milk, plus two larger vats to hold the heating water or the ice water bath. Just when I thought we were ready, I read the instruction that called for combining all four gallons of milk into one vat and reheating the lot—and back to the Kitchen Collection I went for their 20-gallon stainless pot.

The refrigerator disgorged the heavy glass jugs with relief, practically sighing each time one of these weights was removed, the bottle emptied and tipped up to drain, then washed clean. While our Operations Manager is urging me to purchase a second refrigerator just for dairy, I’ve been pinching the purse strings shut—preferring to make cheese in order to lessen the load, and fearing that more space will just mean more chances for spoilage.

While the separate vats heated and cooled, I measured and mixed the lipase powder, citric acid, and rennet mixtures. While I do not yet thoroughly understand the roles of each of the ingredients, I am becoming less intimidated by them. When it came time to pour all four gallons together for reheating, I found that the 16-quart stainless pail was filled to the brim—before any thoughts of mixing or stirring—so I ladled off about a pint to please the resident cats and dogs.

When it came time to drain off the whey, I realized that our one colander was NOT going to be enough, and quickly called our oh-so-helpful next door neighbor. She was quick to come to the fence to trade her colander for some cheese-milk for her cats. Thank you, Theresa!

Once all of these little hurdles had been surmounted, I was faced with the most daunting task although I did not realize it until I tried stretching the cheese. The book instructions I was using would have me placing a handful of cut curds into hot water, then removing the lot to stretch the cheese until shiny, then balling the shiny cheese mass and setting it into an ice bath to chill. It was the stretching part that stymied me. I kept trying to follow the directions, and could sometimes see a bit of shine in stretching cheese, but mostly I was just squeezing off excess moisture and I had a bad feeling that this would result in dry cheese.

Thankfully a video on Gourmet Sleuth demonstrated the technique and instructed cooks to avoid losing any of the liquid butterfat that could be retained. The last few cheese balls came out looking somewhat more shiny and less lumpy and dry. Plus, the white cheese goat’s milk produces no longer looks quite so odd to me; for yellow cheese one must add coloring.

For a first batch, the results are not too bad. Indeed, the cheese is usable, even tasty. And the vast quantities of whey will serve to feed the dogs for a few days to come.

Cheese success!

Grand Opening: So Green is My Grass Daycare

On the first sunny day where the grass was glowing green upon the pastures, we liberated the young'uns from the home pasture (now a "mud lot" according to the local vernacular, or a "sacrifice lot" using the USDA NRCS's federal terminology). Using the hog panels (36" tall by 16' wide) we set up a nursery on the greening lawn beside the house, just in front of the deck. Much of the morning was spent rounding up the kids and delivering them into this new enclosure. This being the first time any of them had been separated from their dams, some exercised the full power of their little lungs--nearly deafening me. The first five kids were relatively simple to catch and carry off, although their resistance limited me to carrying one at a time. During this process, I began letting the dams out of the home pasture to wander freely below. When the Nigerian Dwarf goat kids Todd (whose dam is Jennifer) and Theresa (whose dam is Cocoa) were the only ones left with the alpacas, Todd and Theresa were engaged in a whirlwind chase around the pasture. They both understood that I was targeting them and neither had plans to be captured.

Cocoa, Theresa's dam, is nice enough but she tends to be a hands-off kind of gal. She passes her skittishness around humans along to her kids. Theresa is a very sweet little kid, but unlike the kids who will race to greet me and taste my boots or climb up onto me, Theresa keeps her own counsel. At long last, both kids were cornered and carried off. They were glad to join their herd when they arrived at the daycare pen.

Our good neighbor Theresa came over to sit on the porch for a bit, and to meet her namesake. We filmed Phyllis's attempts to catch the kid, and the phenomenal power of Theresa's lungs when caught. Yet, as soon as the kid was passed over the fence and placed into Theresa's arms, she thoroughly relaxed. Heck, she even cuddled. The change was remarkable and each Theresa seemed taken with the other creature bearing that name.

When the shadows grew long, we opened the gate to the daycare. By shaking a bucket of grain, we enticed the goat gals to follow smartly along behind us, and the kids stuck close to their dams for the short trip back up to the home pasture.

Hopefully, we'll get them back out to the green grass frequently enough that the home pasture's recovery will be hastened. So far the greening patches look tasty but are not yet worthy of serious grazing.




For some refreshing reading, goat aficionados will enjoy Brad Kessler's Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese. I was lucky enough to be given a copy by a dear friend this winter and have enjoyed sampling it in bits and perusing it at length. Readers are sure to learn more than they previously knew. Enjoy!

Leslie Lupine Kids

On Thursday afternoon, March 4th, I found that Ms. Leslie Lupine, our final large dairy doe to kid, had kidded. At first I thought she had a singleton buckling, a handsome black fellow with white ears and a white spot on the top of his head; however, when I was working with a cattle panel stall divider in that stall, a little bleat emitted from a dark corner alerted me to a second buckling. The second kid was the same pretty brown as his dam. Although the firstborn was up and about when I heard his voice, this second born was lying flat, having wedged himself into a dark, inconspicuous, and very chilly corner.

He was too weak to nurse, so I tucked the little fellow in under my sweatshirt and trotted him to the house. Once inside, I got busy. A towel placed in the bathroom sink provided the shivering kid a place to wait for me. A quick call to the Wilson Farmers Co-op answered my persistently unanswered question of "Which side of a goat's throat leads to the stomach and which to the lungs?" and gained suggestions for raising the kid's body core temperature quickly. A stop at the veterinary section of the house revealed a lamb feeding kit--a 2 ounce (60 ml) syringe and a flexible tube with a rounded leading end. A look into the freezer revealed an ice cube tray filled with frozen cubes of colostrum from Marcie's recent kidding. With colostrum cubes melted and heated to 102 degrees, the gastric tube tipped with olive oil to help it slide, and the syringe loaded to capacity, I returned to the little buckling.

We set up shop on the floor in front of a portable ceramic heater turned up high. I wedged the little guy between my knees, aimed the gastric tube into him through the opening on right side of his throat, then slowly filled him to capacity. He tolerated the intrusion quite well, and I left him basking before the heater while I headed back to the barn to coax some colostrum from Leslie Lupine for her at-risk buckling. She was cooperative.

Indeed, I'm surprised by how much formerly-skittish goats will tolerate from me in the first several hours of their entry into new motherhood. Miss Leslie not only allowed me to milk her (a first for this first-freshener), but she hardly objected when I inspected her buckling, cut his umbilical cord and dipped it in iodine, then set about moving them to an isolated spot with a heating lamp.

Her firstborn stood sleepily in front of the reflective Tekfoil insulation by his heating lamp, allowing me to snap this photo of his velvety softness. She had delivered a fine little specimen, one I hoped would have his twin back beside him shortly.

Inside, the brown buckling suffered another 2 ounces of colostrum delivered directly into his stomach. Then after napping long enough to regain his strength, he stood to suckle eagerly on the rubber-nippled bottle I had prepared for him. Satisfied with his recovery, I took him back out to the barn and returned him to his waiting momma before sundown.

With nighttime temperatures in the mid-20's, I thought to check on the kids a bit after midnight. They were warm enough, it seemed, but the brown buckling wouldn't nurse when I asked him to, and began shivering uncontrollably soon after I'd pulled him out for a feeding. With apologies to Leslie Lupine, momma extraordinaire, I trudged her tyke back to the house. He refused a bottle and seemed chilled to the bone, so I intubated him once more--two ounces fresh milk--set him in a box surrounded with hot-water-filled containers, and placed him beneath the bathroom heater so that I could grab a few winks. It was nearly 3:00 a.m. and we had plans for a long drive that day; I caught about two hours of sleep.

At dawn the little guy still refused the bottle. He was warmer, but weak and would not suckle or swallow, even with the bottle forced upon him. Having seen kids refuse to nurse before, I knew this was a death sentence for the little guy. With the night sky just pinking on the horizon, I brought him back to the barn where he would presumably either freeze or starve to death in the company of his goat family before our farm sitter arrived midday.

Our sitter had helped name the kids over the phone the prior evening. The firstborn is Samuel, named for our sitter--a Master Gardener friend--who enjoys his moments in the country. The brown kid was named for another good friend, our County Extension Agent who works with the Master Gardener program, Mister Maguire. When I left the farm that morning, even with Samuel and our wonderful neighbors Theresa and Tony on call, I fully expected Leslie Lupine to be parenting only one kid by the time we returned Saturday night.

Well, the temperatures rose and stayed up, so Mister Maguire didn't freeze. And despite his lethargy when Tony checked on the kids, both bucklings were up and nursing when Samuel came to the farm. As I write this, it appears that we do have two new Nubian bucklings: Samuel and Mister Maguire. Welcome kids!