I was sick, so this may make less sense even than usual.
6am 310 ml
I tasted the milk, it was a bit better, and very rich, but still had a pretty intense “goat” fruity flavor. On the whole, better than last time though.
I put black baby goat with mother at 9am. Will take away in evening (6-7pm) and milk mother in the morning at 6am as usual. My hope is only to stimulate milk production enough to take the milk once the colostrum taste is gone / if that ever happens. The bad taste may be colostrum but it may also be from grazing whatever in the field or parasites. If milk taste is bad after 2 weeks, I will probably try a hay/grain only diet for a while.
I did some work on the goat shelter skids. The bevel angle is 60 deg which is really hard to do with my tools. If I was to make one only for chickens I would do 45 degree bevel. My kids said the milk goat has diarrhea. This could be parasites, which might explain some of the low milk supply. How did this happen? Well not moving them every day could be the problem, but I have held them at extremely low stocking density, and have let pastures rest a full year before reusing.
Davidson 1981 says that it is likely white tail deer carry parasites that are spread to goats: Haemonchus Contortis. This doesn’t actually cause diarrhea but, if its true for one parisite it’s possible its true for others, deer and goats are very similar. This is a big problem because deer are often in the fields here in NS. So even if the pasture is rested for a season, parasites may still be present if deer have gotten into the field. The parasites can survive up to 4 months. So you have only 2 options:
- exclude deer and keep a very long pasture rotation, close to one pass per growing season
- confine goats, and feed only hay or silage cut from the pastures that has been stored 4+ months. Well, probably ensiling kills faster but that still takes some time to cure.
In either case you have to keep fecal matter away from the goats feed. On pasture, you could train them to poop in a grated area. In confinement you could have the whole area on a slats (except for when kidding) or on a concrete floor that is mucked out weekly so the parasites’ do not have a chance to get to infectious stage before they are gone. They might only develop on grass, but at any rate they don’t go faster than 7 days from larvae in a fecal pellet to larvae that can crawly out on to hay and be eaten.
Excluding deer from the field year round seems very difficult. It likely would need a 6-8ft tall electric fence. That would also have to be maintained so the brush didn’t grow to high or close on the outside. In the winter they will need to have confined pen either way because the goats would turn the field into mud, and there is no advantage to pasture, the would still need hay. In the summer, for Nova Scotia, May – Sept on pasture they would be able to graze and need no hay. But, this also has the cost of labor to move the goat’s shelter and fencing. It seems likely that a stationary confined goat pen is better, with manure collection and spreading after treatment and then haying all the fields. This means you can’t really use the goats to clear the land, or at least not as easily.
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