The Shotgun Shack

Okay, this morning at 03:00 I took the wife for a drive 240 miles over to the new place, for the irrigation dry run- well, wet run. And then back to Davis.

The pasture is "wild" - meaning it's been pasture for a decade, but it's not "natural" pasture in the 2384573903 year old ecosystem sense. It's ...pasture. very green, very workable. I'll need to subdivide it at some point and I will definitely have to tune up the fencing ins many spots.

I've got enough materials from the existing stallion corral to build a night time pen for the goats, and I'll have to build a goat shed.

Let's go in order:

shed? I'm thinking of roughly following the plans in the current backwoods home issue, give or take a bit. Or maybe just tossing together one of my own design. milking area, dry roofed area with a door that can be closed. That's it. This will be next to the existing dry corral for the horses, though I could just take that over since it is already fenced and has a shade barn. I'd just have to add the cattle wire to the 3 rail fencing. it's about.... 30x40? with 4 horse stalls (sorta) in the shade barn area. Maybe that's the way to go. Add on a buck run.

Once I've got the pen, feed. Hay, and.... ??? They have a decent pasture, but I'll have to have some supplements.

Got some stock tanks, and water isn't an issue.

so then....

goats.

We want to run kinders- eventually 30-40 since these will be a lot of our meat, in addition to some milkers.

No kinders nearby. Lots of nubians, pygmies, and some boers on craigslist, and there are 2 weekly stock autcions in town we have to start visiting. So what the hell, we'll get what we can. $30-$90 going rates on all sorts of goats in the area. We have a shetland on the property who is staying (my 3.75 year old daughter is chanting PONYPONYPONYPONY all day and all night)

how many goats? starting with one is, obviously, silly. Don't think we'll end up with a herd being available for flat out purchase, but who knows?

one pygmy buck is a given if we are starting from sctratch (though we may eventually find a kinder buck, but we'll need at least 1st gen cross stock then to breed to) - and ... we can deal with a couple assorted whatevers for meat, and 3? nubian does for breeding and milking..... I guess.

I suppose....

sounds like a lot to do, any milking goats? if so how are you going to store the milk for a few days til it is marketed or made into cheese or whatever you may make?

Kinder Goat Breeders Association.

http://www.kindergoatbreeders.com/area2.html

We'd like to run 2, maybe 3 milkers, that will give us milk during each ones off times. We have 3 fridges, oddly enough- one is there, 2 are moving with us. We'll be doing cheese, for certain. Probably some butter, as hard as it is to do.

Haven't looked into marketing the milk and don't really think we will- I'm a knifemaker, my wife is a nurse, our other housemate is doing the dedicated farmwoman thing (though I'll be doing a lot, and jess will be doing some, and the kids....) Still, runnign a dairy farm seems to require a lot more investment in regulatory mandates crap than we can afford or have acreage for.

Blue-

I've looked at the site, and had made some calls last week. The Klover Leaf is gone, no kinders I can find in Fallon- some of the CA breeders are within reasonable driving distance, but most aren't. *IF* we get through the first couple seasons and want to really breed true, we'll contact one of them for a buck once we've got some gen3 stock. Outbreeding a bit that way would be good.


I'm working up my timeline so the pasture doesn't turn into jungle too much while we are working. The stock corral conversion should be a 2-3 day job, along with knifework and my shop reset. The pature fencing enhancements will require more than we have in fencing materials, but won't be more than a solid long day of work.

Good Luck, Koyote


Every time I read about someone getting milk goats, I think of folks I knew who set up a goat milk dairy farm and named it the "NOW WHAT ???!!!???" Dairy Farm.

You have my very best wishes.

We're naming the "ranchette" Santaroga. Once we get the market crops going for the farm market in town, we'll use the "Jaspers" name, too.

I'm not a fan of the novelty breeds so much because they are usually more expensive and because they are smaller way harder to keep in.

Also I have big hands and those tiny teats are tough to milk. The good thing is a kinder is half pygmy and half Nubian and Nubians are the lowest milkers of the standard breeds so although the tiny teats make them harder to milk you don't have to milk them for long because they don't give very much.

Sounds like you have the idea down though. Is hay pretty available in your area?

My hands aren't tiny, but... we'll see. That's a point, I havent' tried to milk one. Though that may end up not being my job for the most part


One of the nice things about the potential of doing the cross ourselves is that we will still have the original stock.


Hay is one of the main products of farming around Fallon. We're well set that way. There are a fair number of goats out there, too- more cattle, by far. Sheep are, for whatever reason, looked down upon in heavy cattle areas.

If you are going to milk something twice a day for 10 months a year it's really important that the udder, teats and orifices work ergonomically for you.

Also remember say a really good kinder might give 1000 lbs of milk a year. A good saanen or alpine could potentially give you 3000.

So with the smaller goats you'd have 3 times the amount of vaccinations to give, kids to have to sell, animals to worm and feet to trim for the same amount of milk.

Jim

Jim-

your points are really good. I've thought about this some, and I'm trying to figure out what we really need. Our diet might end up more milk heavy, but right now the household (7+1 coming on october) is using about 2 quarts of cream, a pound of butter and 3 pounds of cheese per week. I'm as worried about an excess of milk as I am about enough. It's entirely possible (and our most likely daily milkers all have small hands) that 2000 pounds will be an excess- depending on exactly how self-reliant we intend to be. I know that My Wife will go throug 2 quarts of yogurt a week, too. If we can yogurtize goatmilk.

Most of what seems to be around the area are boers, nubians, and pygmies. It's not stupid hot, but the temperatures will be in the 90s a lot in the summer.

The butchering tasks are another interesting thing. It is important that we be ablt to move the carcasses fairly easily, but yeah- buthering 20 goats versus 8 goats a year is a big difference!