2013 Kinder Goats Video

Enjoy!

New Kids 2013

Greetings!

We are in the midst of kidding season and I wanted to share some early photos with you.  Splat and Dancer have kidded, and Smores is due next month.  So far there are three  doelings (Whoopsie, Daisy, and Pearl Gray) and two bucklings (Reggie and Scofield).  Check out the size of Splat's udder!  That girl's got MILK!

If you might be interested in any of the kids, feel free to contact me.  More information and better pictures of the kids singly will come soon.  We're proud of our herd!

Blessings to you!

The Kids Are On the Way

We are getting ready for a new season of kids!  All three of our does are very large with kids and Splat is first, due in the next week.  Splat is the queen of our herd and our best milker.  She gives a lot!  I'm looking forward to seeing what Dancer and Smores will do this year, also.  They were first timers last year and we'll see if their milk production will come close to Splat's records.  We sure are missing our milk and cheese around here!

Our does are enjoying alfalfa and orchard grass, In Season grain, free choice minerals, kelp and baking soda, handfuls of black sunflower seeds and woodland browse.  They sure love the salal and blackberries.

I think we have everything in order:  towels, molasses, baby monitor.....  It's always hard to know *exactly* what to have on hand for emergencies.  From talking to other goat folks, I have things in my herbal and medicine cabinet, but honestly there are times when THE thing you need happens to be what you're not equipped with.  Sometimes rotten things happen regardless of how ready or prepared you think you are.  And sometimes you have everything on hand with a dozen years of experience and still things go awry.  What I have found in our goat-communities is a lot of love and grace for those things that don't go as well as we hope, even when it is our own error.  There's always someone who has been there, done that (and then they give you their private telephone number so you can chat!). You sure learn a lot of humility raising these wonderful animals, too.

I'm not sure there will ever be a time we enter into this season without soberness and a bit of anxiety.  But it sure is helpful to know that ultimately these creatures are God's and we are just their caretakers.  We are praying for a sweet season, and for lovely homes for the kids when the time is right.

If you are interested in getting put onto a waiting list (no pressure to buy), feel free to contact me and we can do that.  If you know much about kinders, they usually sell fast!  We sure do love our goats.  Check back in soon; I hope to have news of successful kidding to share with you!

If you are not nearby, you can check out the new Kinder Goat Herd Map and find a breeder closest to you.

Saying Goodbye

We've been releasing our 2012 kids to new homes this past week.  On one hand, we are very proud of the quality of our kids.  They are healthy, strong, happy and so very friendly.  On the other hand, well.....they're our babies.  We trimmed their hooves and administered Rescue Remedy to some of them, patted them and kissed their little noses.  We did our best to ensure they went to good families, but it was still a bit hard to take them from their mommas and the barn they grew up in.  We even sold one of our does in milk because we couldn't keep up with so many right now.    She wouldn't go anywhere at all with the new owner (a stranger to her), but once I started leading her, she just came submissively wherever I led her.  Out the gate.  Into the waiting car.  Trustingly.  I thanked God I really liked her new owner, and that she was going with a barn buddy.

I know we are still learning and gaining experiences with our dairy goats, but I'm not sure this part of the season will ever get easier.  If you've bought a goat from us, just know that they were very, very loved.  And that tomorrow I'll be sitting in the barn with the (very few) goats that are left for a long while, praying that your new additions will be just as much a blessing to your homes and lives as well.

Starry Night

In the midst of kidding and disbudding we ended up on a little side road through some tough situations.  But first, here is a picture of disbudding.  I hate disbudding.  The wee kid is screaming and there is smoke (burning hair).  But I will say that within seconds they are off and running around like nothing happened at all!  I think they don't like being confined, it's not necessarily just the disbudding process.  We use the Rhineheart 30X.  Disbudding is a management issue and good goat owners disagree on whether to do it or not.  We disbud.  And I'm glad my guys consider it a "man's job".  My job is to give them some tincture I made ahead of time for pain relief, but honestly I'm not sure they really need that.  But it sure makes me feel better!

Having eight kids was a challenge; last year we only had one doe kid.  But thankfully all of the mamas birthed their kids easily and during the DAY.  Score!

Starry Night was a surprise.  Here she is with her brother and sister.  As you can see, she is easily a third the size.  She weighed 1 pound (yes...ONE) 12 ounces at birth.  We were waiting for her mama to pass the placenta and suddenly she began pushing again.  And out this little wee black doeling came!  I (and her mama) immediately gave her up for dead; my friend and daughter however displayed courage and heroics and revived her.  Lesson learned for me!  Every life is precious!

Starry Night spent every moment she wasn't being handled under a heat lamp.  We decided to keep her in the barn as the temperature was moderate and she could hear all of the goats around her.  She had a sweet little nest box that my 12 year old son built.

My 14 year old daughter took charge of the little darling.  She learned to tube feed and for the first 4 or 5 days tubed Starry Night around the clock.  I remember waking to feed my own newborn baby (born during the same month!) and seeing my daughter and husband making their way quietly to the barn in the dark.  We made sure Starry NIght got some colostrum and a little bit of Fastrack.  But three days after her birth her breathing became labored.

As it turns out, we were encouraging her to try a bottle at that point and I think she probably got some dribbles of milk into her lungs.  I think she developed drenching pneumonia.  We treated her initially with penicillin (with advice of another goat owner, who apparently got the same advice from her vet), but learned that what she really needed was a sulfa drug to dry up her lungs.  We gave her five days (full dose) of Di-Methox, and true enough, it calmed down her breathing and we were over the hump.  So we thought.

One morning her head got floppy and her eyes clouded up.  We immediately pulled her off of milk and used just plain water with baking soda.  We added B complex because of her eyes clouding up, and two days later she, again, looked like she was doing well, even getting up and wagging her little tail.

So we decided to try her on some milk again, just a wee bit (like 2cc) in water.  We left her in good, capable hands for a much needed break and road trip, but hours later she just shut down and stopped breathing, and died.

There were a lot of tears, for sure.

We learned a lot during this time.  If you are not part of a yahoo or other goat group, I would highly recommend you find one you fit with.  The people in our group were a tremendous support and I am so thankful of all of their help and loving encouragement.

We gave Starry Night a burial place of honor next to the other animals that we have loved and lost.  Such is part of keeping animals, but we trust God in all things regarding them and are thankful for His comfort.

Kids 2012

The kids are here!  All of our mamas delighted us with normal births that occurred during daylight hours (grin).  You can see them soon on the Kinders for Sale page.

And yes, it's very difficult to get photos of these quick guys and gals!  They love to run, jump and play!!

A Congested Udder

Poor Splat.  The girl's udder was ginormous just for one kid, and although I milked her out a bit on day three, I waited until day six to try again. Two lessons:  one, I needed to milk her out sooner than day three to save better milk for the antioxidants to freeze.  And two, I should not have let her go that long before trying to relieve the poor dear.

In any case, trying to milk her out on day six was terrible!  Her udder was so swollen I couldn't even get a grip on her teats!  I worked on her for a while (staying low on her teat) and managed to get her milked out about a third of the way before we (she and I) were both *done*.

Twice more that day I went out to milk and thankfully by that evening she was looking (and I bet feeling) much better.

One of her teats was giving me some clumpy milk however, that would stop up her flow and I had to gently strip it all out.  Uh oh, I thought.  I tested her for mastitis and thankfully that was negative.  But I still had to deal with the clumps and the fact that her udder was not in primo condition.

This is what I did, other than milking her out multiple times and gently getting those clumps out.

I made a herbal batch with 8oz molasses, 4oz seaweed, 1/2TB of my ImmuniTea herb mix (with immune supporting herbs), 1/2 TB powdered ginger, 1/2TB marshmallow root, and a chopped up raw garlic clove.

Then I added warm water to the mix, to make a slurry consistency.  I gave Splat some of the mix as I was milking her. To it I added a strong herbal wormer, some probiotics, vitamin C and a teaspoon each of Diamond Yeast and dolomite.

Onto her udder, I massaged her first with warm water with Thieves essential oil, and then with a comfrey salve.  It's a nice consistency and gives my hands a better grip.  After milking, I massaged her again with UdderMint Balm, which has eucalyptus (amongst other things) in it.

All to say, at the end of the second day, things are looking much, much better.  The clumps are almost all gone and there is still plenty of milk.

As I say, lessons learned!  I will be more careful with my doe's udder next kidding.  Only three more does to go this spring!