How and why we built our goat and poultry care guides When we first started putting together our care notes, they were never meant to be public. They were for us – a giant, slightly unhinged data dump of everything we reference when we’re tired,
Life has been a little… a lot lately. The good kind of busy, the exhausting kind of busy, and the “how is it already Thursday?” kind of busy. Between work, animals, and everything that comes with running a farm alongside full-time jobs, we’ve been juggling
Living on a rural residential property in Mishicot, Wisconsin, we’re used to wildlife passing through. Deer, turkeys, opossums, raccoons, a coyote here and there – and cats. Most of the time, they keep their distance and move on. Last year, we noticed an adult cat
In December, we were hit with the news we’d been dreading: our fertility journey might be at an end unless we found a surrogate. The IVF provider we’d worked with for three years delivered that verdict – and then offered no real guidance, no next
Last week, we posted on Facebook asking whether anyone had some kefir grains to share. To our surprise, almost nobody knew what they were. The easiest way to think about milk kefir is this: it is like the sourdough starter of the dairy world. It
We try our best not to overshare personal issues on the farm blog… but here we are, blending cute critters with real life once again. For the past few years, we’ve been riding the emotional rollercoaster that is fertility treatment. This week, our doctor told
After months of prepping our bucks and teaser does, and despite a few kinks, we had a VERY successful collection with the help of a new friend who let us use her farm – and another who let us use her teaser doe when NONE
We have some VERY exciting plans for next season! Dr. Sarah Jane Owens has worked tirelessly with partners in the UK to be able to import new Royal Golden Guernsey semen to the US, for the first time in something like 18 years. Two bucks
She’s BACK! Sooo… we know we’re downsizing and all that, but one promise we make to our buyers is that we’ll do our best to help if they ever need to rehome goats we’ve sold them. We can’t always take them back, but Jess has
It seems like we only ever remember to post in here when we’re going through some sort of crisis, but things are mostly fine! We are very, very low on funds and have had to make some heart-wrenching herd cuts that we hadn’t expected yet,
On the day of our August milk test, our poor girl Pickles took a brutal headbutt to the udder. Her right half swelled up super badly and she produced about a teaspoon of milk. Any trauma can open the udder up to one of our
We’re chugging along through our busiest goat season to date, with not a ton of time for much else! We’ve been trying SO hard to schedule buck collection so that we can sell off some of our stinky guys and had finally found a couple
We had our first Linear Appraisal this Wednesday, and it was super informative! While prepping everyone, we learned that Ken is a master at clipping goats – he did it waaaay more evenly than Jess did! We haven’t taken decent pics of the girls yet
Trigger warnings: Miscarriage, drug addict contractors, IVF, infertility, doctors ignoring patients While working to run our little farm, we’ve also been dealing with personal fertility issues for the past 3 years. It has been exhausting! In 2022, we decided to give having kids a go.
This was our biggest kidding season ever, and we have now learned our limits! We’ve had trouble keeping up with the birds again this year, so we’re downsizing a bunch in both areas. The Goats 2025 Total Kids Born: 16 Bucks, 20 Does! Here’s a
We knew it’d happen sooner or later, and honestly, we probably wouldn’t care if the person hadn’t gone out of their way to mislead us & then block us. As the person repeatedly said after being caught, there are two sides to every story. Here’s
Sorry to keep posting all the death and despair in this blog, but we’re hoping it helps others in our situation! About two weeks ago, we both came down with bad stomach flu, and at the same time, a few doelings also started acting sick.
The top two killers of goats are pneumonia and internal parasites. There isn’t an easy way to predict pneumonia in a herd, but for parasites, we can do fecals. Most vets will be willing to do them, even if they don’t see goats. Our livestock
FINALLY! After months and months of nothing, we have a few eggs again! We found out the other night that part of the reason for the dearth was a family of opossums that we caught yolk-handed – we first learned that they had broken into
We’ve still been unable to complete our pairings for Lasty and Midnight, our final two planned does of the season. We hadn’t seen any heats out of either of them at all, so we decided to get help from our team of vets. They suggested
On Friday, we received our final update on Meow – the lab results were inconclusive because there were no relevant bacteria or parasites found in the culture, but their findings when looking at his intestines indicated poisoning, enterotoxemia, or coccidiosis. When we went out to
On the exact day we started our latest IVF cycle in the effort to overcome our unexplained infertility, our very best buckling, *B 4Petesake The Cat’s Meow, started acting sick. He was self-isolating and not being his usual sweet, nosey self. The next day, massive
Whew, the past few months have been a whirlwind! We’ve definitely learned some things about ourselves and other people. Here’s a brief overview: We Can’t Control Nature & Our Time Is Finite This was our first major kidding season and, while everyone is thriving, it
When I went to check on everyone yesterday morning, I heard an unfamiliar voice in the doe pen – looking into one of the calf huts we’re preparing for the kidding due next week, I found Penny cleaning a brand new baby! As I crawled
We’re in the middle of a polar vortex that started right after last week’s blizzards, and temps are below zero. With windchill, the average Real Feel is -35F. Things seemed to be going as well as they could until last night – despite our best