comfrey udder salve

My first freshener Dirty Socks delivered a single healthy buckling a few days ago without complications, yay! Unfortunately, I did not realize she was producing way more milk than needed and the little buckling was only nursing one side... She is a daughter of Thirteen, my main milker for years who would get so much milk that the teats would be too big for newborns to suckle, so I guess I should have checked...

I did check the buckling latched on successfully, that I learned from Thirteen, but I did not check to make sure both udder halves were used... so now Socks has a hardened right udder, which can mean many things including plain and simple backup, edema, mastitis or even CAE. For the past two days I used hot towels, massage, hand milking and even taped up the other teat to have the buckling help suck out the blockage during the day, all to no prevail...

So I went on the internet and came up with a couple of udder salve recipes, based on products and recipes listed below. I made two versions, one a short but hot au-bain-marie infusion of dried comfrey leaves into sweet almond oil, and one a long term cold infusion of fresh comfrey leaves in olive oil. I went down to Wegmans to pick up the EO's needed, Greenstar is closed as it is easter, gosh darn it :)

Version One:
dried comfrey leaves, as much as will be covered by oils
4 oz sweet almond oil
1 oz shea butter
1 oz bees wax
1 tbs natural menthol crystals
2 tsp natural vitamin E
10 drops Peppermint EO
10 drops Tea Tree EO
10 drops Lavender EO
10 drops Eucalyptus EO
10 drops Frankincense EO
5 drops Helichrysum EO

heat up oils au-bain-marie with dried comfrey leaves, cover and simmer for 3-4 hours until the oils turn dark green. filter out the leaves (it's smart to measure after filtering, I did before and lost about 2 oz of bulk)
add grated beeswax and heat back up in au-bain-marie
when everything is liquid add crystals, menthol and EO's, stir well and cool down.
this made about 6oz of salve.

Why these EO's?
Peppermint oil applied to the skin can cause surface warmth, which relieves pain beneath the skin.
Tea tree oil may kill bacteria and fungus, and reduce allergic skin reactions.

Lavender for soothing and inflammation.
Eucalyptus oil contains chemicals that might help pain and inflammation.
Frankincense to promote cell renewal and reduce edema.
Helichrysum because it promotes healing, cell renewal, and regeneration.




(Next time at Greenstar I'll get some Melaleuca for anti-microbial properties to add as well)

Version Two:
3 oz comfrey infused olive oil
1 oz shea butter
1 oz coconut oil
1/2 oz bees wax
1 tbs natural menthol crystals
2 tsp natural vitamin E
15 drops Peppermint EO
15 drops Tea Tree EO
15 drops Lavender EO
15 drops Eucalyptus EO
15 drops Frankincense EO
15 drops Helichrysum EO

 Heat oils, shea butter and bees wax au-bain-marie
when liquid add Vit E, menthol and EO's
stir well, makes about 8 oz


http://fiascofarm.com/herbs/oils.htm#masalve

http://www.flipflopbarnyard.com/critters/homemade-udder-balm/

http://slowlivingessentials.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/comfrey-ointment.html

http://experimentalhomesteader.com/ah/2013/06/10/mastitis-udder-massage-salve/2/

http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2011/11/diy-homemade-udder-balm.html

first kids of the year!

We have kids!

Maybe delivered two healthy little kids Tuesday morning at 11am; a boy and a girl, 7.5 and 8 pounds each. And a perfect day for it too, sunny and in the fifties! Much better than today, around freezing with a winter snow storm going on! The kids are a saanen boer mix and look almost identical to their mommy, the girl with pointy saanen ears and the boy with floppy boer ears. Maybe comes from a show farm so was not allowed to nurse her own kids, and at first did not like them looking, but settled in quite quickly when realizing they sure take the pressure off. 


We liked the boer buck we used last fall, and these two are some nice kids, so we hope to buy one of our own for the coming season. Makes it easier if we have a buck right on property, I won't have to chauffeur the girls to their date :)

Snow White also gave birth to a nice buckling during the night, but as far as we can back track the little buck asphyxiated on a piece of inhaled caul and was found dead at the morning feed... I'm going to try to keep her in milk, but she's not having any of that, and sits down, right on the bucket!

It's Spring! I think...

Our first kid of the year!
He was born Monday morning, and again Gazelle the mom choose a very, very cold day but now I was prepared and installed a goat safe heating lamp. It's a healthy little boy, tho quite large, but then, he's all by himself, enjoying free access to all the milk he can get!

Hopefully the snow will disappear soon - and stay away! - so mommy and kid can enjoy the outdoors, play on the goat playhouse and eat fresh grass (I'm sure there is some somewhere...).

 

Simon likes to visit after school and hang out with the little one, and he's becoming quite friendly. I hope the other kids, Thirteen could go any moment, show up soon so he'll have some friends to play with :)

A short video of our new baby goat kidding around!
p.s. Gazelle is part lamancha, so she has no ears (her nubs are called fairy ears, some lamancha have nothing at all). In case you'er wondering :)

http://youtu.be/3b2oqSNyePI

Coffee & Cream

Meet our two new does, Coffee and Cream (or maybe Cappuccino and Espresso?!). They are a Nubian Saanen cross and most likely pregnant. They're a little younger than I would normally breed (it was an oops) but it is the industry's standard so we'll just go with it this time as older, experienced milking goats are quite valuable - if you can even find one!

And I think we lucked out all around, I found two healthy milking prospects and they did not go to the weekend meat auction! I happened to email just at the right time...

Monica, may she rest in peace

I'm real sad to say that our trusty milker Monica died this week...
She was ailing for a while, had milkfever after kidding last spring, had real trouble putting on and keeping on weight over summer and then had a miscarriage followed by milkfever this winter... I tried high nutrient food, extra vitamins, splitting up at feeding just to make sure everyone got what they needed, and just when I thought she was getting over the last set down she died. Poor, poor girl.

In collaboration with Cornell Ambulatory I donated her body to the vet school Anatomy lab. Hopefully an autopsy will reveal what went wrong so I can learn and prevent my other girls from having to go thru a similar ordeal like her. And maybe her remains can help teach the student farm vets...

animal medley

 This picture is just too funny, it's "three in a row"! Yes, we've been playing "Four in a Row" quite often recently with the four and a half year old... Here you see loaner buck Jamie on the left, herd queen Thirteen in the middle and cart goat trainee Spot at the end.

Two weeks after hatching and the ducklings are already half mommy's size! Just a little while and the box stall will be too small for all of them, I need to add litter several times a week to create a semi dry floor. When I clean out that stall whatever part of the garden gets it will be sooo happy...

We have a buck!

And his name is Jamie... yes, he's the little kid all grown up which I blogged about two years ago, the one wearing a diaper and watching TV with my two year old! And boy, is he grown up... all hormone and no girls at home!

He came on my birthday early October and apparently two of the girls were in heat and he pretty much went bonkers, peeing all over everything, jumping the gates to get to them at night (I was still milking and thus separating the mom's) - generally being a typical teenage boy, haha. He got to worrying the girls so much that one evening when I came down to feed the herd was in their side stall, Greni was in his main stall and Jamie was at the door, outside... Greni had separated Jamie from the herd and was blocking him from going thru the main stall to the girls! He was giving them a rest! After that Jamie was a lot less intense. Thank goodness!

I'm hoping to get a nice girl from him next season and plan to keep her as a replacement milker, probably to upgrade Monica (eats more for less milk).

vacuuming leaves

 

A nice sunny winter day finds the goats in the back pasture, enjoying the crunchy leaves. Looks like they mostly hang out there in dry weather, which makes sense as there is mostly leaves to eat and they only like dry ones. It's pretty clear in both these pics which side of the fence the goats live permanently - it's like the ground is vacuumed!

Here Greni is saying hi to our regular visitor Murphy. Greni grew up with dogs, Murphy did not grow up with ponies and is still a bit in awe by this gigantic dog / goat / whatever...

pony in, goat out

Greni did not seem to be loosing all that much weight so at the end of the summer I made these two swinging gates. This way Greni is confined to a small rectangular space at the barn but the goats can wander in and out at will. It works great, except now Greni is hanging over the fence to try and reach the grass over there!

So, one morning I walk down to the barn to feed the critters and I see a pony in front of the barn... not behind it like normal. Low and behold, Greni is standing, quietly and a bit sheepish, on the grass yard in front cause he had fallen right thru the side fence! You could see two gouched hoofprints in the lawn where he'd landed (and I swear I saw a nose print :) and at least half a dozen poopy piles on the outside of the pasture where he'd quietly waiting for mommy to put him back where he belongs! So now I have another piece of fence I need to fix...

I was thinking to add a hot wire on top of the fence to prevent coyotes to jump it and devour my goats, now I'm thinking to add a hot wire on top to prevent my idiotic pony from destroying it :)

But, he did not run away, or even wander off, and I'm happy to know that! Maybe it's not that bad living with us...

finishing the back pasture

 It took two years, but finally the back pasture is done! The end of August we added the two gates and hinges and now the goats have free access to the woodsy pasture out back. The first couple days we could not see them back there but within a week the bottom shrubby vegetation was consumed and it opened up the view. With nice weather the girls like to hang out there and munch leaves (they like dry leaves, not wet ones, apparently) but not for too much longer - when winter really starts I'll close it off to prevent them from moving up to tree bark. Too many nice big trees back there!

Greni is not allowed back there, I used a one foot long piece of PVC pipe and a chain fed thru it to partially keep open the back fence of the main pasture. That way the goats can sneak in and out but Greni is locked out. This way the girls have a horse free area as especially at first Greni LOVED to chase them around, just like my four year old human! But also Icelandics are known for eating trees and that will not go over well with my hubbie... this whole back pasture idea already was way over his comfort zone! For some reason he enjoys trees more than happy goats, the weird guy :)

Greni "helped" us with both gates and loved to watch drilling holes in the fence posts, sticking his nose right up to the drill (also just like the four year old...). When we started to pack up he took a nice roll around - a job well done!

Stretching the wood pasture fence

 Finally, after two years a bit of work here and a bit of work there we put our hands together, asked the help of some friends (dutch friend Quirine and the parents of Simon's playmate - all wanted to learn how to install wire fencing anyway) and stretched the new fence! Last spring I had pounded all the posts, a few at a time, which worked ok as it was a wet spring and the ground fairly soft. I pulled a few crooked posts this spring, repounded them and it was a lot harder to get them in! But it was not bad at all to have postponed turns out, during a pretty severe windstorm our (one and only) black walnut uprooted and as it was designated as a corner post it would have taken the whole fence with it! Now I only had to reline a few posts after the tree was chopped down and out of the way...

 

Here hubby Rolf is stretching the woven wire fence. We had to do it in two stretches but could use a tree to hook the ratchet on to each time, which was nice. When we fenced the pasture we had to use the hitch on the Volvo a few times as there were no handy tree trunks around!

Behind the roll of wire is a gate between two close trees, that way we could walk all the way from the barn thru the pasture, thru the back gate, thru the woods pasture out the back door and connect to our swamp boardwalk for a nice stroll...

 

First part stretched, Quirine and Rolf enjoy a well deserved cup of coffee. Quirine plans to have goats at some point as well and liked seeing the process of properly installing a wire fence. Not all that difficult, and mostly all about the right equipment, as Simon (Sungiva's dad) demonstrated while securing the fence wire to the T posts "that's what you're supposed to use to twist the connectors?! no wonder it was so darn difficult when I did it..."

Testing out the goat harness

 

Fltr: Rolf with Knickers, Susan holding Murphy, Eileen, Sungiva & Simon in cart, Angelika with Konrad on back and Leila on leash.

A big hit with the two toddlers, and a nice change from "mama, I'm tired, can you carry me..." to "I wanna be in the cart, no, I wanna be!". I don't think either Sungiva or Simon walked very much that day so as a device to burn excess toddler energy it's not as useful, but to get Murphy the pony dog to slow down / stop pulling and use some of that strength usefully it worked fine!

The harness is from a design off the internet and assembled with expert sewing instruction from Eileen. I think it cost about $20 in webbing and buckles. It's sized to a full size goat (and a Murphy). After using it with a dog I know now why dog harnesses are different, as this one is not attached to the cart at the back / butt he can swivel his body around within the shafts and get twisted - goats are not that flexible. I have used it with boer/saanen cross goat Monica and she seemed fine with it - goats need (more) training as a following cart can trigger their flight response - but as she is either pregnant or nursing most of the year she's not ideal. Which is why we designated a buck goat from this year's "crop", wethered him and are training him to walk on a leash, with cart training starting next Spring...

After about halfway he got used to it - plus we were on the way back home - was wagging his tail, grinning his grin, and started to pull away again!

Spot and Oreo

 I just love this picture of first time mom Gazelle nursing her one week olds. It seemed like such an idyllic and perfect way to start life. And then Gazelle's character kicked in and about a week later she refused to nurse Oreo. It took me about three days or so to figure that one out, not until he started to get unkept and skinny looking and became really pushy for food did I realize she was not letting him nurse.

 

In the picture above Gazelle is getting away from her kids by jumping on the kids sleeping box. She'd hang out there a lot, so much that when she would come down the kids would jump on her to try and get milk making her want to hide from them some more... For a few weeks I would first pin Gazelle down against a wall so they could nurse, which gradually got better in me just restraining her and even later in her eating with her head thru the hay manger (I'd put her bowl in there) and letting them nurse while she ate. I think it took at least six weeks before I suddenly noticed both boys being able to nurse on their own again, and they've been fine since.

As a side note, here are the girls eating goat potato chips - as in crunchy dried leaves! When I pick up bagged leaves in town I put the real light weight ones (a.i dry) with nice leaves like maple separate for the girls to much late winter and early spring. When I feed leaves in leaf season they have no interest in them, but when I feed them when there is snow on the ground and nothing else to find, they are like fast food and get nibbled up fast!

neutering the kid

And of course I mean the goat kid :)

I decided to keep Spot the real pretty spotted nubian mix and neuter him for smell free handling later on. It's easy to neuter with a bander early on, not so easy when they're older and it's an invasive surgery. Spot needed a tetanus booster, some pain meds and one elastic band around his nuts. The main thing to watch for is to double check both testicles are in, they can be slippery, otherwise he's still a buck, even with only one nut! Cornell Ambulatory was extremely nice to demonstrate and rent the equipment.

The left pic is spot intact and the right one with the band around his sack. He walked funnily for a day or so but did not seem in real pain (the pain meds worked I guess) and after that ignored the whole thing. Which slowly dried out, shriveled up and seems to have completely fallen off by now, two months later.

He's already in training to walk on a leash, tho lately it seems my human kid needs more instruction than the goat kid, and does great. We walked around the veggie yard, around the back and even out of view of the barn partly down the woods path. He's doing good!

monica is down...

I already thought it curious she did not try and steal Gazelle's food that morning and when I went to give them their evening meal she did not come into the barn... I looked around and found her down next to the little bachelor pad! I could get her back up, and she trembled her way back to the barn, but did not want to eat or drink, and pretty much collapsed again.

Something about this triggered my memory, something about new moms, milking and some sort of deficiency, so I contacted Cornell Ambulatory Services right away and they suspected hypocalcemia or milk fever. The vet was nice enough to let me pick up the meds (it was after hours) at Cornell and for a mere $20 she was all set! I gave her 80ml of calcium and thiamine plus vitamine B complex and within minutes of injection (under the skin) she tried to get up, ate some washing soda and started munching hay! wow.

It took about a day for her to get back to normal. I kept her in the kidding stall overnight to get a break from her kids and even tho the next day she was ambling along looking real tired, she did have milk for them and was able to let them drink without falling over :)

I sure am very grateful to have such a great resource as Cornell right around the corner...

more boys!

I know, I know, it's a little behind the fact - Monica delivered her two boys little over a week ago, but still, it's something to commemorate - healthy kids and an uneventful delivery!


She again delivered mid morning, which I'll remember for next year, and we again missed her delivery, this time by minutes! The orange one still had his birth sack wrapped around him, which completely grossed out my four year old - he did not want to get into the stall until 'that thing' was removed LOL

Simon went ahead and named these two boys; the orange one is now Pumpkin Pie (Pumpkin) and the mostly white one is White Guy (Guy) which is I think the first time he named animals and not called them 'Simon'... And yes, last year we had five girls and this year we have five boys! And a girl, who almost did not make it and now is the most affectionate of all. And jumps on my back... those little hooves do not feel all that good...

our one girl

Our doe Thirteen is a very easy milker, she has big teats which make milking easy for beginners - but very hard for goat kids! Last year we had a problem with the triplets not being able to suckle the first three days or so - I milked her out and helped the kids until they figured it out. This year she had twins and the buck's a big kid and could suckle on his own within a day - unfortunately his sister could not and after a 20 degree F night pretty much gave up... I went to check up on them early morning as I had not seen her suckle yet (she did not take direction well) and found her nearly dead...


I rushed her up to the house, where fortunately the woodstove was already going, had her on the hot tiles in front of the stove all day (I remembered the stories of farmers putting hypothermic lambs in warm ovens!) while force feeding her mothers milk with molasses and low and behold, by the end of the afternoon she started to perk up! I actually saved one!!

I kept her up at the house overnight, on a warming mat, just in case. By evening she was drinking from a bottle, with a good suckle, so at least that was looking good - now hoping the mom would recognize her and have her nurse again!

Fortunately, I needn't worry - the moment she heard Cookie Doe's tiny bleats she rushed out to meet her, lick her and seemed genuinely happy (and surprised!) her little kid was back safe and sound. Nursing was no issue, at least with a little help from me and the bottle for a few days, as she figured out how to get that enormous teat in her tiny little mouth. As my four year old would say: "good job!"

my big little helper

It's been quite a difference between having a three year old around or a four year old! He's much more aware of how body actions affect animal behavior (a.i. throwing arms around equal running away kid goats) and is actively interested in what and why we do things - like weighing the newborn kids! Of course, he thought it hilarious, having kids in a bucket :)

Here he is showing first time mom Gazelle her kid is fine, she kept bleating for him and Simon understood without prompting what about, and what to do about it :)

and for some good news

more kids!
These are the two new ones from Thirteen, Cookie Doe and Buck Lightyear. Gazelle, on the left, Monica, in the middle and still pregnant, and mom Thirteen are checking them out. Thirteen totally took me off guard, her pelvic ligaments hadn't seem soft like Gazelle's to me at all. Plus, tho she will call out to me when the others are delivering, she will not say a thing when it's her turn - she really likes her privacy!

goats eat trees

including Christmas trees - I blogged about it last year, but now have visual proof! First go th needles and then goes the bark, strip by strip... They do seem to like certain pine species better than others looking at the assorted half dozen we gave them, but not sure what makes which better or worse. Except one that was really dried up - dropped needles by the bucket load - they never really touched it... I shouldn't have either, my husband's Honda civic trunk is still full of needles.

I pick threes up around new years from the side of the road BUT if you do make sure the trees don't have artificial snow, tinsel, spray glitter or other plastic, glue, weird stuff in them.

By the way, this is why the trees out in our pasture (one pine and a handful of junipers) have seven foot tall chain link fencing wrapped around the trunks! They'd strip'm bare...