That’s My Milk!

That’s my milk, Athena!

Cinnamon and Athena

I still cannot convine Cinnamon and Athena that I should get all of Cinnamon’s milk.

And since Athena is much more efficient at milking than I am, she gets all the day milk.  I do still get milk from Cinnamon in the morning.

Haley waiting to get milked

All three of the girls I’m milking are drying up though.

I am getting less than a quart a day.  I’m thinking I might quit soon.  Like today might be my last day.

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Winter Storm

We were under a winter storm warning most of yesterday.  It really missed us.  Thankfully.  We only had a few flurries.  There was lots of wind, and it got cold, but we missed almost all of the storm.

Haley

I did decide to take precautions.  I got the window tarps stapled down in the barn.  I also covered the window in the soap room.

Penny Lou

I’m hoping since my nephew finished harvest on Thanksgiving day, we can get my barn cleaned out and bedding brought in to make that much cleaner and warmer for the goats.  It really has been a rough year for getting all the fall work done.

I made sure I had a new shorter bucket for the chickens.  Hopefully, the geese don’t just splash it all out.

I also scooped some of the dirt from in front of their door, so I can get it shut when the ground freezes.  They’ll get fresh bedding when it gets here too.

It looks like the cold is here to stay for a while unfortunately.  I don’t like to trim hooves and expose that newly exposed hoof to bitter cold and hard frozen ground.  Thankfully, I did get a few more sets of hooves trimmed over Thanksgiving weekend.

Margarita

I still have a handful of girls to do, and they are not going to be the easy ones.

LilyAnn

I am back to almost being able to touch Hera, and I know that trimming hooves will ruin that.

Hera

I might try to save her (and Antigone, Cupid, and the little bucks) until winter break.  Hopefully, we aren’t going to stay with January temperatures until then.

Hooves

I’ve been trying to trim a few sets of hooves each evening.

It’s a lot of work to keep up with their feet, and as wet as we were in September, I didn’t get many done.  Sadly, I seem to have missed Caroline on the last round, so her feet were pretty bad.

Caroline

Now I’m working hard to get caught up.  Of course, my milking girls are easy.

Zinnia and Haley

Some goats are not quite so cooperative, and I have to tie them in front of the food.

Litha

Of course, I have a few goat that just know what’s going on and refuse to let me catch them.  Then it takes way too long before they get trimmed.

Betty Lou

I feel really bad because I cut Wanda’s toe.

Wanda

She had to wear a gauze and duct tape bandage.  You can still see where I cut it, but it is healing. I hate when I do that. 😦

I don’t think I’ve mentioned that we now have white line disease in the herd.  You know, because everything else isn’t enough of a challenge.  I discovered it in Victoria when I did her hooves this time.

Victoria

It makes the outside of their hoof separate and allows mud to get up in there.

white line disease

It can be really painful.  I clean it out.

Then I keep them trimmed back, but there’s no cure for it.

Sigh… I don’t even want to know what’s next.