Lamb challenges

Yesterday afternoon, Sarah came inside to tell me that the ewe lambs that had been born a couple hours earlier still had not nursed and that the mama's teats were huge. We had something similar happen six or seven years ago, and we had to milk the ewe for a couple of days to keep her teats small enough for the lambs to be able to latch on. So, Sarah, her boyfriend, and Mike went out to the pasture and brought Godiva and her two lambs to the barn.

That sounds so simple, but it really is not. Godiva is a little crazy. While most ewes are "sheepish," Godiva is doing her best to be the absolute opposite! If she feels cornered, she'll ram you, which is very un-ewe-like. I was happily surprised when we put her on the milk stand, and she stood there like an angel while I milked her. I'm sure she realized that it felt good to relieve the pressure on her udder, which was as big as one of my milk goats -- and that is highly unusual for a Shetland sheep. Usually we can barely see their udder because it's so small and they have so much wool. Her teats were stretched out so long that I could easily wrap all four fingers around them to milk her. I easily milked out a pint of colostrum and filled up a bottle, which Sarah fed to the babies while I put the bucket back under Godiva and milked out another four ounces!

Thankfully her babies took to the bottle like pros. Each one quickly sucked down six ounces each, which is more than the five percent of their body weight that they need to consume within the first six hours. A few hours later, Sarah offered them another bottle; one took three ounces and the other took six. This morning they were crying like they were starving when we went out to the barn, so Sarah milked Godiva and gave the babies another bottle. After getting the ewe milked out, she and Mike held the lambs up to her teats, and both babies nursed well. This afternoon, however, one side was quite huge again. The babies didn't seem terribly interested in the bottle, only taking about an ounce each, and their tummies don't feel empty, so I think they were getting a decent amount of milk from the one side that they had been nursing on. We milked down the full side, so maybe the lambs will be able to keep up with both sides now. Since Godiva's udder isn't so uncomfortably full now, she wasn't as cooperative at this afternoon's milking and laid down on the milk stand.

Of course, there is a tiny, silly little part of my brain that would be totally okay with the idea of them not being able to nurse because I love sheep yogurt, and if we had to milk the ewe every day, I'd probably be able to sneak a little of her milk to make yogurt a few times over the next few months. But it's not like I have hours of spare time every day and need something to do -- like milk a ewe and bottle feed two lambs. So the logical side of my brain says it will be a good thing when these little ewes are able to nurse full time.

Birth and death and ...

I miss blogging so much, but life has become completely overwhelming. Has it been a year (maybe longer) that I've been saying that I have to cut back? Well, I really have to cut back. I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last blog post. What's been happening around here?

My father-in-law died. It was barely two months since the passing of my mother-in-law. They had been married for almost 55 years, so even though he had Altzheimer's, I feel sure that he missed her presence in this world and didn't want to stick around without her.

And then Julia farrowed, which was wonderful, except then the piglets started dying. We're accustomed to the idea that one or two runts will die within the first 24 hours, but we lost five of the eleven piglets. After losing the third healthy piglet in three days, I finally realized that Julia's older daughter was wanting to sleep so close to her mama that she was suffocating the piglets. Since we moved her out of the barn, we haven't lost any more, so that's good. Julia is an outstanding mother.

And then the sheep started lambing. They're all doing great. Of course, they weren't supposed to be lambing. I'm cutting back -- remember? But alas, I was traveling last fall as my second book came out, and I was writing my third book. Somehow it completely slipped my mind that the young rams should have been removed from the pasture with the ewes no later than September -- before breeding season started. I'm not sure what's worse -- admitting that I forgot to remove the ram lambs or letting people think that I was silly enough to breed the sheep when I need to be cutting back. Either way, I lose. So, we have some "illegitimate" lambs. If no one wants to buy non-registerable Shetland sheep, I may just have to get over my aversion to butchering ewes. Plenty of people butcher ewes, but I don't like to. There isn't anything "wrong" with doing it. It's just one of my personal neuroses.

And in the midst of all the lambing, Gerti the blind goat died. We knew she had other "issues" because she was getting more difficult to feed. She would fight like you were hurting her as you were trying to get the nipple into her mouth. And then one day she stopped sucking on the nipple. Of course, there isn't anything you can do when a goat won't suck -- other than tube feed it. Knowing that she had multiple problems, it made no sense to prolong what seemed to be inevitable. I had even talked to a vet at U of I about her, and without doing lots of expensive testing, it would not have been possible to figure out what was wrong with her beyond a fairly simple diagnosis -- and we already knew that she was blind and had sensory issues -- but there wouldn't be a way for them to help her.

I'm in the final edits of the manuscript for my goat book. That should be done by the end of this month, and then I'll just have to do the final proofread once it's typeset. It will be in bookstores in September.

I'll be heading to New York City in another week. I'm speaking at a writer's conference there, and a friend convinced me to come a few days early for a vacation with her. A vacation was -- is -- a great idea. I know I need one. Hopefully I can get back to regular blogging soon.

Gerti the blind goat

by Sara
Antiquity Oaks apprentice

When I first arrived on the farm on February 17, I was put in charge of the two bottle babies, Anne and Gerti (who did not get their names until later). The first day I was here they were both outside in the kidding barn staying close to Mama and the heat lamp, and both seemed to do okay with the bottle. I thought it was fun, if a bit cold at times, to be their permanent nanny. I was told that the water bucket was hung on the side of the pen because Gerti had crawled into it several times and gotten completely soaked. They had some suspicions she had something wrong, possibly that she was blind.

Within the first few days of me being on the farm we cleaned out a stall in the big barn and moved Anne, Gerti, their Mom Sadie, their one nursing sibling, and several other Mom’s and babies into it. We did this so they could have more space, and to make room for the next round of kiddings. We put a heat lamp in their new stall close to the door, and many of the babies stayed fairly close to it for the first few days.

About a day after we moved all of the goats, I go in to give Anne and Gerti their afternoon bottle (around 1:00), and notice that Gerti was just laying in the middle of nowhere, while all of the other babies were either cuddled with moms or under the heat lamp. I tried to get her to nurse, but she wouldn’t take down more than 2 oz (she should have taken 4). I quickly brought her inside and Deborah quickly determined she had a minor case of hypothermia. She and Mike had to run into town so she gave me a heating pad for Gerti, and told me to hold her close and try to warm her up. She spent the rest of the afternoon in my lap or on the heating pad, she even napped with me for a little while.

When Mike and Deborah got home we put Gerti in a clothes basket and Deborah watched her while Mike and I went to do chores. When we came back inside Gerti heard the door and jumped out of the laundry basket, but got lost about halfway through the door. Again the idea that she may be blind came up.

Over the next few days she continued to get stronger and seemed to enjoy being inside. We began to notice more mannerisms unique to her that made us think she might be blind. She ran into things a lot when I let her run around my room. She put her head on her back and swayed (Deborah called it her Stevie Wonder impression). She ran in circles, a LOT. Plus whenever she would walk around somewhere new, she would keep her head down like a dog, sniffing/licking everything. When given a bottle she would run the bottom of her chin across the tip a few times and then grab it, like she was feeling where it was. Unfortunately she slowly began to forget what the nipple was, and so now we have to force the nipple into her mouth, though she sucks down with great gusto once we do.
Friday March 9th we decided we would move all of the bottle babies to the barn. It was fairly warm and there was no super cold weather predicted in the future. We also decided to bring Gerti out first so that she could get used to her surroundings before introducing everyone else.

Around 2:00 (warmest part of the day) I brought Gerti out and sat with her. Aside from a couple of bumps and not being used to the feeling of straw under her feet, she seemed to do really well. Around 2:30 I decide to go get Anne from the other barn. With me in the pen, Anne just climbed all over me, so I stepped out and watched how she interacted with Gerti and in the new space. She almost immediately reared up on her hind legs and tried to head butt Gerti, who was none the wiser. Anne then gave Gerti a small smack on the side. I thought “no big deal, she just wants to prove dominance and it should only happen once.” I went back in to fetch the six little babies, and over the monitor heard a baby scream. I thought and hoped it was just a Mom accidentally stepping on or laying on a baby (which does happen). When I walk back into the kidding barn with the 6 little ones in a laundry basket I see this: Gerti running around in circles, Anne full tilt running behind her trying to head butt her in the side. As soon as Anne sees me she stops and runs up to the gate, and Gerti stops her circling, all legs fulling stretched out panting and screaming. I immediately deposit the 6 little ones in their new home and scoop up Gerti, who proceeded to sit still in my arms, which she hasn’t done in weeks. I gave Anne another chance, which she immediately ruined by bowling over two of the little ones. I put Anne back in her stall with her Mom, sister, and other older Moms and babies and return to the kidding barn and sit down in the stall to help the little ones and Gerti.

At this point Gerti is running around in tight fast little circles, which she hasn’t done in weeks, running into the side panels of her new home, and running away from anything that makes the straw move. She ran into the panels so hard she made her head bleed. I picked her up and tried to comfort her, telling her Anne is gone and will not be coming back. She eventually falls asleep in my lap, another thing she hasn’t done in weeks, and once she woke up seemed to be calmer, although she was again wary of the six littles she had known since the day they were born.

The rest of the day seemed to go fine, until late in the evening. Gerti kept going into this weird position like she intended to lay down, but wasn’t going all the way down. I decided to put a towel in the corner under the heat lamp, hoping that would help her if she just didn’t like the straw. When I went back for the last feeding she took the bottle okay and I put her in the corner under the heat lamp and fed the other six. She backed up into the corner and just started shivering. I picked her up and her shivering was so violent I brought her back inside and told Deborah I thought we should bring her inside again for the night. She said it was up to me because it is my room, but she had been wondering how I would sleep tonight anyway since my room would be so quiet.

Gerti has seemed to do well since then. Realistically I know she can not stay inside for her whole life, but I don’t know how to get her used to being outside. We are also now faced with the task of figuring out how to introduce solid foods into her diet, which after a morning of Googling, I still have no good answers.

Even though she is more of a handful than the other seven bottle babies combined (I can hear her crashing into the sides of her play pen right now) she has a special place in my heart. She was the first baby who tried to die on me, and whom I helped bring back from the edge. She has been living in my room nearly as long as I have, and snores in the middle of the night so I know she is okay. I have grown very attached to Gerti, and wish I could take her home with me, but sadly my township has a strict no livestock law in which “goats” are right in the middle of the off limits animals. I do not know what is going to happen to her when she grows up. Deborah doesn’t really even know yet, but I know she will always hold a special place in my heart. I have read a few stories (in my Googling) about people who would rather butcher a blind goat than take the time to raise them, and although I have NO idea how to get her to eat solid foods, I can’t imagine making that choice right now. She is one of the kindest animals here, and I know she will be the one I miss most of all when I leave.

Farewell and thank you, Coco

There are some posts that I don't want to write, and this is one of them, most likely because a part of me would like to deny what actually happened last week and pretend that it didn't happen. But it did happen, and at times like this, I am reminded of Henry David Thoreau's words:

I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life. I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not when I come to die, discover that I have not lived. I do not wish to live what is not life, living is so dear, nor do I wish to practice resignation, unless it is quite necessary. I wish to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. I want to cut a broad swath, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. If it proves to be mean, then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it is sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it.

On Monday, March 4, 2013, my sweet Coco passed away a few hours after giving birth to quintuplet kids. Mike, Sarah, and I got two hours of sleep the night before, because we had taken her to the University of Illinois veterinary clinic when I couldn't untangle the last four kids that were trying to be born. They thought she was fine to leave, but she died less than two hours after we brought her home, and then they asked me to bring her back for a necropsy. They discovered that she had a 14 centimeter tear in her uterus and had bled to death into her abdomen, which was why we didn't see any blood.

It was painful and ugly, or "mean" as Thoreau would say. For the second time in eleven years, I questioned why I'm doing this. I felt horribly guilty. Had we not been breeding our goats so that we could produce our own dairy products -- because goats have to give birth to make milk -- Coco would not have died. For a brief moment as I was driving down Route 47 to take Coco's body back to the university for the necropsy, a part of my brain said that I couldn't do this any longer. But another part of my brain immediately fired back, "What is the alternative?"

Buy dairy products that came from cows injected with hormones, living in factory farms, whose babies are taken away from them at birth? Never! Buy dairy products from small family farms where the animals are treated humanely? Great idea, but there are limited options here, and in most cases the babies are still taken away. Become a vegan again? Not a bad option, but I love my yogurt and cheese, as well as goat milk in my coffee. And in my garden, I wind up killing bugs, sometimes accidentally and sometimes intentionally.

In our modern world, we are protected from so many of the essential facts of life -- far more than Thoreau could have ever dreamed. People in our modern world are so oblivious to the simple facts of life because it is all hidden away in factories and hospitals and other institutions. I couldn't tell you how many people I've met over the years who have no clue that cows are bred every year to continue producing milk in factory farms -- or how many people think that white chickens lay white eggs and brown chickens lay brown eggs. They apparently have no idea that there are gold-and-black-laced chickens and black-and-white-barred chickens and so on! The average life of a factory-farm cow is only about four years, even though cows can live to be 15 or more. And factory-farm hens, which are debeaked, are turned into odd chicken bits after little more than a year of life, which is spent inside a wire cage, so they never see the sky, run across grass, or catch even a single bug during their unnaturally short life.

When people have no clue about what is normal or possible, it makes it very easy for advertisers to convince them that things like confinement buildings, daily antibiotics, and debeaking are for the animal's own good. When we moved out here to grow our own food organically in 2002, my knowledge about our modern food system was a tiny fraction of what it is today. And with what I know today, I am more committed than ever to continuing this life, even knowing that sometimes it will get mean and ugly. Life is not a perfect, shiny, cellophane-wrapped package. Nor is it a dinosaur-shaped "chicken" nugget. Milk and meat and vegetables do not come from a store. Those are modern illusions.

Life is a chicken running through the grass, catching bugs, laying eggs, and sitting on those eggs until they hatch, bringing forth more chickens that will grow up and lay eggs or become a chicken dinner. Life is a sheep grazing in the pasture for a year to bring forth a few pounds of wool. Life is a turkey running from a coyote and flying up into a tree so that we can have a turkey dinner. Life is a garden that is filled with bugs, both good and bad, that will help and hinder us in every step that gets us closer to harvest. Life is a goat waddling around when she's pregnant and screaming through labor contractions to bring forth kids that will tell her body it's time to make milk to feed them. And life always ends in death.

In her nine years of life, Coco Chanel gave us 27 kids and hundreds of gallons of milk. I think of her every day when I see her daughters Vera Wang and Nina Ricci. And I'm sure I'll think of her often as her newborn Bella Freud grows up and becomes a mother and a milk goat. I can point to aging blocks of cheddar and gouda, which include milk that she produced, which we'll be eating in the years to come. Coco was an amazing mother, growing big babies, even when there were four or five, giving birth to them, and then nursing them. Even though she was carrying five babies this time, they were all the same size as normal twins would have been.

And unlike cows in factory farms that produce the majority of dairy products in this country, Coco was loved and appreciated. She had a name, not an ID number, and she had a personality that set her apart from the other goats on the farm.

One-day-old quints with Bella on the left, then Bill Blass, both of whom will be staying here.

I'll always remember Coco as my baby, the one who refused to grow up. She tried to die on me when she was only two weeks old, but I wouldn't let her. I remember holding her in my arms on the couch, crying, "Please don't die." It was only our second year out here, and I hadn't seen an animal die yet. In spite of my inexperience, we pulled her through. I called her PeeWee, and she wound up as a bottle baby. Katherine took her to 4-H meetings, where everyone cooed over the tiny little brown doe.

When we realized she really was going to live, we named her Coco Chanel, partly because she was chocolate colored and partly because she needed a classy name to suit her. Regardless of how old she got, though, she always thought she was a lap goat. Whenever I sat down anywhere near her, she would walk over and try to crawl into my lap. Even as we were driving to the vet hospital last week, she was trying to edge her over-sized, very pregnant body into my lap, as she and I were in the back of the car together.

As hard as this has been, I wouldn't trade the last nine years with Coco for anything, and although this was the first time we had a goat die as a result of kidding, I know it won't be the last ... because death is an inescapable part of life.

Homegrown chicken

We were awakened Sunday morning by a phone call from a post office distribution center about seventy miles away. They said our chicks had arrived! No, that's not a typo; yes, it was Sunday. Although I wasn't terribly thrilled about having to drive seventy miles to pick up the chicks, I was happy that they had only been en route for a day, rather than the usual two days when they arrive at our local post office.

Sunday turned out to be a rather crazy day, but Mike eventually made it to the distribution center by early afternoon. Kat was home from college for the weekend, and she helped me clean up the stall where we would be putting the brooder. I washed out the feeder and waterer, and we got everything set up, including the heat lamp, so their space could start to warm up.

I had ordered fifty white Plymouth Rock cockerels, which we're raising for meat. We raised a few last year, along with some Dark Cornish, because I was simply curious if we could get some fairly decent sized roasters out of them. If you want to know why we don't grow the modern mutants, the short answer is that I think there is something terribly wrong with any baby animal that can literally eat itself to death within the first week of life. For the long answer, click here and here and here.

Of course, my ideal is to be hatching our own meat birds, which will simply be the cockerels hatched by our hens. (The modern mutant meat chickens also do not lend themselves to a self-reliant lifestyle because they have to be artificially inseminated for reproduction.) For the past three years, we had New Hampshire hens, and although they are amazing layers, they did not get broody, and I want at least a few hens to get broody so that they can replace themselves and put a few chicken dinners on the table.

Last fall, I bought some Buff Orpington pullets. When we had that breed eight to eleven years ago, some of them did get broody, so I'm hoping that happens with these chickens. They just started laying within the last couple weeks, but I'm not expecting them to get broody until next year. If a couple of them do happen to set this year, it will simply be a happy bonus!

Goat rescue

Remember how we used to have floods two or three times a year before last year's drought? Well, after a year of not having pastures full of water or animals stuck in flooded pastures, we'd sort of become slightly complacent about the idea of floods. We had quite a bit of snow a week ago, and then temperatures started to warm up over the past couple days. It really warmed up last night, and it started to rain. When we woke up this morning, we were greeted by the old familiar site of flooded pastures and a creek out of its bounds.

As the day went on, we continued to watch the radar, and we started to worry. The goats across the creek are in a pasture that will flood with enough rain, especially when combined with melting snow. The radar was looking pretty scary, so we decided it was time to get the goats to higher ground. Crossing the creek was out of the question, but luckily we have a neighbor who said we can go through their property to get to the goats when the creek floods.

Mike hooked up the trailer to the pick-up, and because the cab of the pick-up was full of "stuff" he'd recently picked up at his parent's house, Kat and I had to ride in the trailer. 

I've never walked that route through the woods, however, and when Mike, Kat, and I were about halfway through the woods, I started to think that this was the craziest idea we'd ever had. How on earth would we get sixteen goats to follow us through the woods with only a couple of them on leads and two buckets of grain? I was imagining a confusing comedy of errors and us chasing wayward goats through the woods for hours.

I always say that goats are smart, and I'm happy to say that this time they came through with flying colors. In fact, I'm pretty sure this proves that they really are psychic. I've been saying for years that they can read my mind because as soon as you walk into the pasture with the intent of doing anything remotely unpleasant, such as trimming hooves, they won't come near me. Well, this time, they seemed to completely understand that we were taking them to a better place. As soon as we got them started on the path through the woods, they actually got ahead of us and started running -- in the right direction.

In fact, I'm glad that Mike and Kat are runners, because they got way ahead of me! It's kind of demoralizing to have a 14-year-old goat out-run you! Mike and Kat had the goats completely loaded into the trailer by the time I caught up.

And when we got home, they hopped out of the trailer and followed Kat to their new pasture and dry shelter!

Alexandria's quadruplets

by Sarah
Antiquity Oaks apprentice

After Alex gave birth to 4 healthy kids, and with no complications, Deborah asked me to write a blog post about it, so people could get an outside perspective. I was honored and thought it would be a lot of fun. Little did I know what the next few days had in store for me. But I am getting ahead of myself, so let me start at the beginning.

Thursday, February 28, Alex had been a little fussy all day. She had been bleating a lot, not eating very much, and walking around a lot. So we stayed close. I dressed up in my insulated overalls, several layers, and my nice warm work boots, and camped out in the barn office most of the afternoon reading a book. Evening chores came and went, and at 6:00 when I went out to feed Anne (one of the two bottle babies at that time), I thought, “Oh, I will just be outside for a minute, no need to bundle too much.” Never have I been so wrong.

Out I went with two layers on top and two on the bottom, none of it waterproof, no gloves, though luckily I remembered a hat. I make a point to go check on Alex just in case, and what do I see? A big string of mucus hanging out of her, so I quickly call over the monitor to Deborah that Alex is in labor and she needs to come join me.

By 6:30 we were both sitting in the straw waiting for Alex to get serious and talking about what we should have for dinner. Deborah suggests a quiche since we have gotten a decent amount of eggs recently. Between 7 and 7:30 we finally got our wish and her water broke and she began to push. She changed positions several times, eventually laying against Deborah, leaving me to look and see what was coming out. I saw a bubble, but for a minute couldn’t figure out what was inside it. I finally realize it is a tail, hence why Alex was taking so long. But then I see something else, something dark and fluid floating down. I ask Deborah if it is possible that the baby could poop while they were being born, she said yes, but she had never seen it. Suddenly the baby comes shooting out. We break the sack open, start drying the kid's face, and put it in front of Alex to start licking it. We check, and it is a girl! I then recount for Deborah what I saw, “it was like, bubble, tail, tail, tail, poop, baby!” It amazed me how fast the kid came out, and the fact that Deborah said many people freak out when they see breach kids seemed really strange to me. If you give the Mom a chance, they will do just fine, it just takes a little longer.

Before we know it, out pops the second kid, one hoof and mouth first. We begin to clean it off and it is a boy! The third one then comes shooting out, another boy with very “flashy” markings who was also breach. The fourth is another girl who came out hoof and mouth first. We continue to work on getting everyone dry and warm so that they will hopefully begin to nurse. At this point Deborah says that maybe omelets wound be better since they take less time to cook than a quiche.

We try without much luck for a while to get any of the kids to nurse. Finally the first girl born, also the littlest, nurses very successfully. The next to nurse is the larger girl, catching on quickly. Now just the boys are left. Boys being boys they were very stubborn and did not like us trying to help them very much, the first one just screamed and screamed when we tried to help. The flashy boy didn’t like it very much, but Deborah helped him through it. As we are sitting there talking about everything that happened, suddenly the first boy gets down on his knees and just latches on and nurses perfectly. Clearly he just wanted to do it on his own.

Since everyone had nursed we finally headed back inside for dinner and to warm up. Checking the clock on the way out of the barn we see it is 8:30. Deborah asks if scrambled eggs would be fine, I said it sounded fantastic.

Once we got inside I made myself a cup of tea, since I could barely move my hands anymore they were so stiff from the cold. Over dinner we talked about everything, the fact that it was not as gross as I thought it would be (this was my first time seeing a birth in real life), what people freak out about when they shouldn’t, everything. I gave the bottle babies their last bottle at 10:00, checked in on the new Mom, and she seemed to be doing fine, so I went to bed happy knowing I had seen my first successful birth. It was simple, and simple seemed good. The only thing we really had to try hard to do was get the kids to nurse, and in the end that wasn’t very hard either. It was an amazing experience, and I am glad her birth was the first one I ever witnessed.

Making our own wine

 

For years, I've wanted to start making our own wine, but I was adamant that we start with growing our own grapes. Well, that hasn't exactly happened yet. We've planted grapes a couple of times. Lack of water got them one year. Goats got them another year. And the last time I ordered vines, we just never got around to planting them!

So, a year ago I decided that making our own wine from concentrated grape juice would at least be a step in the right direction. I am not talking about grape juice concentrate from the grocery store. You can actually buy concentrated juice from wine vineyards all over the world. We've made Riesling from Washington State, Cabernet Sauvignon from California, Pinot Grigio from Italy, and more. We've made seven batches of 30 bottles already, and we've started drinking five of the different wines. We bought all of the equipment and ingredients from Midwest Supplies.

One thing I really like about making our wine is that we can reuse bottles. It used to drive me crazy to see perfectly good wine bottles going into the recycling bin. For years, I had even saved some of the prettier bottles with the idea that we could make drinking glasses out of them. Now we can reuse bottles after washing them out. After washing them out, we put them in the dishwasher rack to dry.

Making wine isn't really hard. And it isn't terribly time-consuming until you get to bottling. But you can procrastinate on bottling as long as you need. Our Gewurztraminer and Pinot Noir stayed in the carboy for three or four months because Mike didn't have time to bottle it. So, it got a head start on the aging!

In addition to saving our own wine bottles, we ask friends to save their bottles for us, but you can buy new bottles to get started, if you prefer. Although you can reuse bottles, you need to use new corks. We got this fancy corker to make it very easy to put corks into the bottles.

We couldn't be happier with the results! I was initially skeptical about the quality, because I hate "cheap" wine. I started off buying only wines with lots of 5-star reviews, but I got brave after a few and ordered a wine that had no reviews at all. We wound up loving it! Other than one very reserved response, friends and family have all given our wine two thumbs up, so I think it has about a 95% approval rating. And it winds up costing us only about $2-4 a bottle!

Although I felt like I was wimping out in terms of sustainability by not growing our own grapes, this is a better option than buying individual bottles of wine. One 2.5 gallon container requires a lot less energy to produce than 30 wine bottles.

And when I visited Monticello last year, I learned that Thomas Jefferson and I have something else in common beyond our love of farming. He was never able to grow grapes on Monticello during his lifetime, although he believed that America could someday make wine as good as Europe. In the meantime, however, he bought large casks of wine and bottled it on his farm, rather than buying individual bottles of wine!

If you've ever thought about making your own wine, I really recommend starting with a kit.

Lessons in neonatal goat care

Last night was the final night for our first winter intern, so we decided to take her out to dinner. Of course, as soon as I told her we were going out to dinner, I went into the kidding barn to discover that Sadie was in early labor! We decided to run out right away so that we'd be sure to get home in time for her kidding, especially because she was a first freshener.

By the time we arrived home from the restaurant, Sadie was still in early labor, so I checked email and did some paperwork and decided to get to bed by 10:00, which is early for me. We now have a video monitor to keep an eye on does in the kidding pens, so I was watching on the TV in my bedroom. I was in bed reading an article about dealing with drought when I heard a soft sound that was unmistakably the sound of a doe pushing. I jumped out of bed, ran across the hall to tell the apprentice that Sadie was pushing, and I went back into my bedroom to put my clothes back on. As I was in the middle of getting dressed, Sadie changed her tone and was in full-blown screaming panic! My son could hear her in the basement, which is two floors below the TV, and he said it sounded like she was being ripped apart by coyotes. The apprentice and I went into slight panic mode and went running outside with only one layer on our lower halves, which we didn't even realized until we were in the barn, and our legs started to feel really cold.

Within five minutes of our arrival, a black kid was presenting. Just as the apprentice said, "Oh, this one's breech," the kid shot out. I wiped off the nose, and realized Sadie was ignoring the kid. I held it in front of her face, telling her, "Look at your baby, Sadie. You need to lick your baby." She was ignoring it. I didn't want to wipe too much because I wanted to encourage Sadie to bond with her. However, my guess of the kid's size was about two pounds, which is quite small and very vulnerable to hypothermia. After a few minutes, Sadie started to lick it, and then she started to push again. After only a couple of pushes, another small kid came shooting out, this one nose and hoof first.

By now Sadie was licking the first kid, and I was starting to dry off the second one, and Sadie let out a little noise. I saw a third kid presenting, and handed the second one to the apprentice to dry off as I caught the third one, which also came out very quickly, also breech. A few seconds later, Sadie let out another yell, and a big bubble came out. It was dark, and both of us thought we saw kid parts in the bubble, but it was just fluid, which was good because we were running low on towels! Sadie had not been very large, and we were not expecting more than two kids.

Although the doelings were all quite small, they were very healthy and trying to walk around the pen within minutes. The second one, which was brown, was especially active, and I was calling her "our little world traveler." I realized that Lizzie was paying very close attention to the kid through the pig panel that separates the kidding pens, and it occurred to me that Lizzie is an outstanding producer, while Sadie is a yearling and will probably not be able to produce enough milk to feed three kids. Lizzie also happens to be Sadie's mom, so it seemed totally appropriate that she would nurse one of her granddaughters.

"I've never done this before," I said, "but I think this could work. Lizzie is so interested in this kid, and she just gave birth earlier today. I bet she'll accept this one as hers." So, I took the little brown kid into her pen and let her sniff it, saying, "Lizzie, you wanted a daughter, didn't you?" Then I placed the kid under Lizzie and tried to get her to nurse, which was fine with Lizzie, but the kid was oblivious. She had zero sucking reflex, and in spite of my efforts and Lizzie's patience, I realized this was not going to work, simply because the kid wasn't interested in nursing.

But kids also need ten percent of their body weight in colostrum within 24 hours, and they need half of that within the first few hours after birth. I had called over the TV monitor for Mike to bring my camera, and when he arrived, I asked him to bring me a milk bucket, bottle, strainer, and funnel so that I could milk Lizzie and give colostrum to the kids with a bottle. At this point, the kids were an hour old, and none of them had any sucking reflex at all.

I was on my knees milking Lizzie as she stood in the middle of her kidding pen until she lost patience with me, but I had three ounces, which would be a good start if I could get that into the kids. After trying each kid multiple times, I finally got an ounce into the black one, and a little later, I got another half ounce into her. Sadie let me milk her, and I added another ounce of colostrum to the bottle. After getting an ounce into the brown one, but nothing into the cream one, I said to the apprentice that I was taking the cream one into the house because I needed to get some colostrum out of the freezer, and besides that, I was freezing.

When we got into the house, we realized it was 1:30. We had been outside for three hours, and Sadie had given birth within the first ten minute after we got out there! I was thinking out loud about why we had three apparently healthy kids that were not sucking, and everything finally started to add up. I put my finger in the kid's mouth and realized it was not warm. It wasn't ice cold like a kid with severe hypothermia, but her body temp was definitely below normal. When kids get chilled, sucking is one of the first things to go.

By the time we had warmed up the colostrum for her, she was already warmed up quite a bit from simply being in the house, and she sucked down the ounce of colostrum like a pro. My theory now verified, I went searching for kid coats. I found only one, so I chose a sweatshirt to sacrifice and made two more, then took them outside to put on the other two kids. I wasn't terribly worried about them because they had already consumed a decent amount of colostrum, but I wanted to make sure they stayed warm enough. I came back inside, put the cream kid into a laundry basket and went to bed.

I knew the other kids would need more colostrum before morning, however, so I left the TV monitor on. At 4:30 I was awakened by one of the kids and Sadie talking to each other. I woke up Mike and updated him on everything that had happened, telling him that he needed to get more colostrum into the kids. He went outside and had no luck getting those two kids to nurse, and just as he came back inside, the kid in the laundry room was waking up. I wanted to help but still hadn't really warmed up myself. Mike defrosted another ounce of colostrum for the baby in the laundry room and she sucked it down. He handed her to me, and she started bopping my chin and trying to suck on it. I got excited and suggested he take her outside and see if she'd nurse on her mom.

Mike went back outside with the kid, returning about an hour later at 6 a.m. to tell me that the cream kid never nursed on Mama Sadie, but the other two did finally! Because the cream kid had just consumed another ounce of colostrum from the bottle I wasn't too worried about her. All morning, we've continued to check on them, trying to make sure they're nursing or taking some more colostrum from the bottle. Mike got another three ounces from Lizzie. Once two kids are successfully nursing on Mom, we'll bottlefeed the third one. The black one appears to be very good at nursing, and the cream one is very good at taking the bottle. Not sure about the brown one yet.

We said good-bye to our apprentice this morning, so now it's up to us to get these little does started on the right track. I'm afraid we still have a bit of a challenge ahead of us.

What a day!

I can't remember the last time I came inside and blogged about my day, but this was a day that won't be forgotten soon. We have an apprentice staying with us who is learning about goat birthing, and just as we were about to go outside this morning to milk the new moms -- because their babies are not nursing evenly on both sides -- I heard Sherri yell over the monitor. She was at day 148, and I was expecting her to give birth today because her udder was getting quite big when I saw it last night. So, instead of going to see the new moms, we went into the kidding barn to see Sherri.

She was pushing every now and then, and after about thirty minutes, I heard the phone ring in the barn office. It was a neighbor telling me that a llama was in her yard. Our apprentice had already seen two textbook births, and I'd explained a little to her about dealing with complications, but I said, "This is Sherri. She's had nine years of completely uneventful births. Usually when I hear a sound over the baby monitor, I come running out here to find a kid already born, so she knows what to do. You just have to wipe off the nose and put the kid in front of her face."

I called a friend and asked if someone could come over to help with catching the llama, so she and her teenage son headed over. It started to rain again, and I said, "What else could go wrong?" I realized my cell phone was dead, so we gave my friend's cell phone number to the apprentice ... just in case.

We headed out to find lady llama. We went over the river and through the woods and everywhere else, and we couldn't find the llama. After about half an hour, my friend's phone rang. The apprentice said, "A head is out, but there are no feet." I told her not to worry, we'd head back because we hadn't found the llama anyway. We were almost home when my friend got a text that said, "Kid out!" So, I turned the car around again, and we headed back to search for the llama some more. Then we got another text that said, "Buck doe twins." Finally, I headed home because I had a radio interview scheduled for 11 a.m. to talk about Ecothrifty, my latest book.

When we got home, I went into the barn to check on the kids, which were huge! Later I weighed them and found that the buck was 4.9 pounds, and the doe was 4.5 pounds, which is really big for Nigerian dwarf kids. I'm happy with 2.5 to 3 pound kids, and I'm pretty sure the does would agree with me on that one!

My friends left, and I came inside, waiting for the phone to ring at 11:00. It didn't ring, so I called the back-up number, and got a recording saying it was disconnected. Just as I started to panic, I got an email from my publicist asking if I was ready for my noon interview! Ah! The confirmation email was wrong; is said 12 eastern time.  I'm in the central time zone. An hour later, I did the interview and then decided we should head out to look for lady llama again. Turns out she was easy to find. She was in our pasture! Maybe I should have looked there earlier? I don't know. Maybe there is a place in the fence that was damaged by the storm, and she can now come and go as she pleases. Or maybe it was someone else's llama that was seen? People tend to assume any animals around here are always ours because there are not that many livestock owners in our area.

The deadline for my next book is tomorrow, so I'm hoping to have more time for blogging after that. I still need to tell you about the other births we've had so far and show you the cute pictures of the kids. We are up to 11 kids so far this year, and more are due in February.