Patience may be a virtue, but laughter is the only way to survive goat milking. You can strive for the perfect fencing. You must aim for good nutrition. But, don’t kid yourself. When it comes to milking, you do not get the last word.
When I decided to add milk goats to my backyard farm I envisioned pitchers of milk cooling in the fridge while cheddar rounds age in my cellar. Spirit, my first nanny, had other ideas. There is an old saying I just made up: “Don’t expect instant gratification from your very first dairy goat lactation.” Like dating, expecting nothing is the first step toward not being let down. Perseverance is the next step toward surviving goats with your sanity moderately intact.
Spirit proved mutinous in milking. Even with twins at her side, she had ample milk to share. Generosity was simply not her forte. However, like falling off a bike or getting thrown from your horse, when you find a goat leg lodged in your right ear, you must climb right back on.
To help other potential farmers deal with inevitable frustration, I have provided the following journal. It documents my first full month of milking Spirit. From this draw hope. There is light at the end of the nipple.
Day 1: Leashed goat runs around tie post kicking and bucking. Never got near the teat.
Day 2: Build "EZ One Hour Goat Milking Stand" from online instructions. Define five hours in hell.
Day 3: Adjust Goat Milking Stand so goat’s big fat head will fit through the stocks into the feed box.
Day 4: Adjust Goat Milking Stand so goat’s skinny little head will not retreat from feed box out through the stocks.
Day 5: Collect 3.5 tsp. milk from flailing goat on milking stand.
Day 6: Dido.
Day 7: Tether goat’s leg. Goat kicks loose in .3 seconds.
Day 8: Tether goat’s leg better. Goat kicks loose dumping over 3.5 tsp. of milk.
Day 9: Try new tethering technique. Collect entire ounce of milk. Goat’s effort to kick loose succeeds only after she sheds 3.5 tsp. of hair into the shot glass of milk.
Day 10: Go to store. Buy milk.
Day 11 – 14: Discouraged. Just squirt some milk straight onto the milking stand so that the apparently dwindling right teat stays active.
Day 15: Goat now standing still while I collect three ounces of milk. Then the cantankerous witch sticks her foot in it.
Day 16 – 18: Dido, dido and dido.
Day 19: Right teat has all but vanished.
Day 20: Right teat empty.
Day 21: Spirit’s legal team serves me with papers declaring her functional left teat off limits and for her babies only.
Day 22 – 23: Practice milking technique while coaxing droplets from withered right teat.
Day 24: Have mastered milking with right hand while my left hand holds the receptacle up, dodging the maniacal wenches attempts put her foot in the milk. Net bounty from flat tit approx 1.4 oz. Note: Goat still shedding.
Day 25-26: Milk rations slightly increasing. Goat and cottonwood trees now both shedding into the milk receptacle.
Day 27: Babies distract me by biting my shirt while I am milking. Spirit’s foot returns to the milk receptacle.
Day 28: Babies adamant about eating my clothes while I milk. I steal milk from their precious left teat.
Day 29: Babies try to distract me by eating my hair. I try to ignore them. Goat flinches. My foot avoider reflex overcompensates, hurling the milk directly inside my protective LASIK goggles. Startled by my French, both babies run off in opposite directions with my hair still in their mouths.
Day 30: And the beat goes on.
Day 31: Average daily yield now totals around 10 oz. Source: two milkings per day from 1.2 tits.
Remember, when the day comes, and it will, where you just walk up to your nanny and quickly squirt a little milk straight into your morning coffee then wander off sobbing, bear in mind with a little patience, all this can be yours.
Showing posts with label country life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label country life. Show all posts
Monday, December 28, 2009
Chicken Rearing 101 – How Not to Raise Chickens
Chick: A hatchling
Capon: A castrated male used for meat. (How much could that yield?)
Pullet: A female chicken under one year old.
Hen: A female chicken over one year of age
Rooster: A male chicken over one year of age.
Raising Chickens for the first time can be intimidating. When I first called the Feed Shop, I was trying to sound like a pro. I asked, “Do you sell pullets?” “Yes”, the man replied. “Are they all females?” It’s been an uphill battle ever since.
Pullet parenthood is an much of an adventure as child rearing, only with more feces per pound of body weight. However, I’ve been reading quite a bit on poultry matters. (Yes, my coolness just turned over in its grave.) So if I am correct and I am quite certain I am not, here is how chicken rearin’ goes.
Go to your local feed store and purchase $10.00 worth of chicks and $50 worth of food and supplies. Don’t forget the water dispensers. Buying the metal ones, never plastic is always advised. I have yet to see a metal one.
Next, place the chicks somewhere sheltered, like a bedroom closet. Toss in some highly flammable straw or wood shavings and promptly dangle a glowing heat lamp just above them. Note to self: Update homeowner’s policy.
For the next several weeks feed them 3 lbs of food per day and remove 4 lbs of sh*t per day from the closet. Despite all logic the birds get bigger. As the adult feathers grow in be sure to clip one of their wings. That is one per bird, not just one wing total. If clipping is done late chicks will nest in your toilet. This is a bad thing.
Clipping can be accomplished by tossing your scissors and your body into the heaping mound of chicks, poop and straw. Grab a wiggling screeching bird from the bile pile. Restrain it with one hand. Stretch the wing out with your second hand. Clip off 50% of the wings outer ten feathers with your third hand.
As the birds grow adjust the heat light temperature down by one degree per day. No, this is not actually possible. That’s not my point. You start at 100 degrees for hatchlings then continue down by one degree per day until your bedroom is a minimum of 3 degrees cooler than the spring blizzard outside your window.
Once you have frozen your ear to your semi-cannibalistic down pillow and the chicks have grown their adult feathers, they can be moved outside to the coop. I estimate the initial closet rearing stage to have taken five years.
Before the move, experience the Joy of Wing Clipping one more time. Feather clipping never works the first time. No one knows why. Still, after all the hassle you probably don’t want them to fly the coop in under sixty seconds. Of course, if you’re like me, by this time you may be inclined to pack them each a lunch and leave a stack of Greyhound tickets by the open coop gate.
Regarding habitat construction: Hen houses and chicken coops are a competitive art form. There are a myriad of web sites showing off architectural designs from Chicken Chateaus to Bird Bordellos. The meticulous craftsmanship makes my own home look like – well – like a chicken coop.
Always fashionable, I went with a shabby chic motif for my coop. The nesting boxes are an eclectic mix of stolen milk crates affixed to the wall by anything in arms reach. As for the coop itself, there is a gift for tight chicken wire, which eludes me. Quite frankly, my first attempt at a coop looks like Dr. Seuss dropped a hit of acid, blasted some Jefferson Starship and rolled around on the wire with every Who in Whoville. I think I’ll keep it.
Inferior design aside, I ultimately learned a thing or two. The nesting boxes are supposed to be up off the ground. That is correct. For those of you keeping score you just spent two weeks cutting back the birds flight feathers only to hang their houses in the sky. It’s just sick.
Higher than the nest boxes, you are to build a roost. This is where the birds crap at night so they do not crap on your breakfast eggs. Of course the roost is usually OVER the nesting boxes, so whatever you do, don’t use those perforated plastic milk crates.
For young birds maintain a heat light in the hen house. Then on cooler nights an animal with a brain the size of an bulimic toe nail clipping will make the conscious decision to forgo your nest boxes, bypass the instinctual roost and leap into a tanning bed.
And finally there is the feed regime. I asked several experts and read up on feeding as well. Make sure to give your chickens, starter formula, mash, growth formula, start & grow, brood formula, grit, no grit, scraps, no scraps, goat placenta, nothing suggested on the internet, tetramyaicn, no antibiotics, medicated starter, non-medicated starter and never ever switch in-between.
I may not be Queen of the Coop yet, but I’m working on it. Though I am still a zoologist and I still know Birds 101. Here are two myths I can help with. First, you do not need a rooster to get eggs. Most folk, especially those who have never owned chickens, will advise you on chickens. Each will insist you need a rooster for a while to do his manly duties, then you can slip him in the pot. As appealing as this concept is, your pot is a separate issue.
Roosters are only needed to make fertile eggs. Hens are all that is needed to make breakfast eggs. Fertile eggs are just peachy if raising chicks was such a joy the first time you want to repeat the whole freakin’ process. In addition there is always the risk of breaking a fertilized egg open and finding a 50% formed chick fetus hitting your hot skillet. Yum! Years of therapy will follow.
To keep it straight in your mind consider this: You are going about your life. Suddenly massive balls of calcium start stacking up inside your abdomen. Are you going to hold on to them just because you have not had sex lately?
The second bird myth is totally unrelated so I thought I would mention it. Penguins occur in nature from the Equator on Southward. That is down to the Antarctica, not the Arctic! No, they do not hang out with Polar Bears who live in the Arctic. No, you did not see them when you worked in Alaska, in the Arctic. Those were puffins. No, I am not sorry you look stupid to all those folks you told penguin tales to.
Yes, some penguin species even reside on the Galapagos Islands at the equator (Cold weather would kill them), not floating around on icebergs - and not in the Arctic! Yes, I realize my eggs are not all in one basket. Delusional, close-minded people who insist you need a rooster to fertilize your penguin eggs so polar bears won’t loose their food supply drove me crazy!
Capon: A castrated male used for meat. (How much could that yield?)
Pullet: A female chicken under one year old.
Hen: A female chicken over one year of age
Rooster: A male chicken over one year of age.
Raising Chickens for the first time can be intimidating. When I first called the Feed Shop, I was trying to sound like a pro. I asked, “Do you sell pullets?” “Yes”, the man replied. “Are they all females?” It’s been an uphill battle ever since.
Pullet parenthood is an much of an adventure as child rearing, only with more feces per pound of body weight. However, I’ve been reading quite a bit on poultry matters. (Yes, my coolness just turned over in its grave.) So if I am correct and I am quite certain I am not, here is how chicken rearin’ goes.
Go to your local feed store and purchase $10.00 worth of chicks and $50 worth of food and supplies. Don’t forget the water dispensers. Buying the metal ones, never plastic is always advised. I have yet to see a metal one.
Next, place the chicks somewhere sheltered, like a bedroom closet. Toss in some highly flammable straw or wood shavings and promptly dangle a glowing heat lamp just above them. Note to self: Update homeowner’s policy.
For the next several weeks feed them 3 lbs of food per day and remove 4 lbs of sh*t per day from the closet. Despite all logic the birds get bigger. As the adult feathers grow in be sure to clip one of their wings. That is one per bird, not just one wing total. If clipping is done late chicks will nest in your toilet. This is a bad thing.
Clipping can be accomplished by tossing your scissors and your body into the heaping mound of chicks, poop and straw. Grab a wiggling screeching bird from the bile pile. Restrain it with one hand. Stretch the wing out with your second hand. Clip off 50% of the wings outer ten feathers with your third hand.
As the birds grow adjust the heat light temperature down by one degree per day. No, this is not actually possible. That’s not my point. You start at 100 degrees for hatchlings then continue down by one degree per day until your bedroom is a minimum of 3 degrees cooler than the spring blizzard outside your window.
Once you have frozen your ear to your semi-cannibalistic down pillow and the chicks have grown their adult feathers, they can be moved outside to the coop. I estimate the initial closet rearing stage to have taken five years.
Before the move, experience the Joy of Wing Clipping one more time. Feather clipping never works the first time. No one knows why. Still, after all the hassle you probably don’t want them to fly the coop in under sixty seconds. Of course, if you’re like me, by this time you may be inclined to pack them each a lunch and leave a stack of Greyhound tickets by the open coop gate.
Regarding habitat construction: Hen houses and chicken coops are a competitive art form. There are a myriad of web sites showing off architectural designs from Chicken Chateaus to Bird Bordellos. The meticulous craftsmanship makes my own home look like – well – like a chicken coop.
Always fashionable, I went with a shabby chic motif for my coop. The nesting boxes are an eclectic mix of stolen milk crates affixed to the wall by anything in arms reach. As for the coop itself, there is a gift for tight chicken wire, which eludes me. Quite frankly, my first attempt at a coop looks like Dr. Seuss dropped a hit of acid, blasted some Jefferson Starship and rolled around on the wire with every Who in Whoville. I think I’ll keep it.
Inferior design aside, I ultimately learned a thing or two. The nesting boxes are supposed to be up off the ground. That is correct. For those of you keeping score you just spent two weeks cutting back the birds flight feathers only to hang their houses in the sky. It’s just sick.
Higher than the nest boxes, you are to build a roost. This is where the birds crap at night so they do not crap on your breakfast eggs. Of course the roost is usually OVER the nesting boxes, so whatever you do, don’t use those perforated plastic milk crates.
For young birds maintain a heat light in the hen house. Then on cooler nights an animal with a brain the size of an bulimic toe nail clipping will make the conscious decision to forgo your nest boxes, bypass the instinctual roost and leap into a tanning bed.
And finally there is the feed regime. I asked several experts and read up on feeding as well. Make sure to give your chickens, starter formula, mash, growth formula, start & grow, brood formula, grit, no grit, scraps, no scraps, goat placenta, nothing suggested on the internet, tetramyaicn, no antibiotics, medicated starter, non-medicated starter and never ever switch in-between.
I may not be Queen of the Coop yet, but I’m working on it. Though I am still a zoologist and I still know Birds 101. Here are two myths I can help with. First, you do not need a rooster to get eggs. Most folk, especially those who have never owned chickens, will advise you on chickens. Each will insist you need a rooster for a while to do his manly duties, then you can slip him in the pot. As appealing as this concept is, your pot is a separate issue.
Roosters are only needed to make fertile eggs. Hens are all that is needed to make breakfast eggs. Fertile eggs are just peachy if raising chicks was such a joy the first time you want to repeat the whole freakin’ process. In addition there is always the risk of breaking a fertilized egg open and finding a 50% formed chick fetus hitting your hot skillet. Yum! Years of therapy will follow.
To keep it straight in your mind consider this: You are going about your life. Suddenly massive balls of calcium start stacking up inside your abdomen. Are you going to hold on to them just because you have not had sex lately?
The second bird myth is totally unrelated so I thought I would mention it. Penguins occur in nature from the Equator on Southward. That is down to the Antarctica, not the Arctic! No, they do not hang out with Polar Bears who live in the Arctic. No, you did not see them when you worked in Alaska, in the Arctic. Those were puffins. No, I am not sorry you look stupid to all those folks you told penguin tales to.
Yes, some penguin species even reside on the Galapagos Islands at the equator (Cold weather would kill them), not floating around on icebergs - and not in the Arctic! Yes, I realize my eggs are not all in one basket. Delusional, close-minded people who insist you need a rooster to fertilize your penguin eggs so polar bears won’t loose their food supply drove me crazy!
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