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
In about 45 days, we’ll have this year’s first goat kids on the ground, and we can’t wait! Here are some of the big-ticket items we’ll be using this year: Kidding Stalls We had planned to purchase some nice, heavy-duty Sydell pens and a ShelterLogic
After losing our buck Mark this spring and then struggling with pneumonia a couple months ago, we REALLY wanted to get our boys collected this fall, but weren’t able to make it out to the scheduled stop. But since then, we’ve been learning more about
We’ve officially performed all but 3 of our planned pairings at least once, so now we’re playing the waiting game to make sure everyone sticks. We’ve had to retry a couple so far, and poor Penny miscarried at least one embryo last week. Since all
It’s officially that exciting and nerve-wracking time we’ve been building up to, Breeding Season for our goats! Over the weekend, a few girls were in standing heat and had their first rendezvous with the boys: Riesling was bred to Maui. Penny was bred to Maui.
The pneumonia saga continues! After full courses of Draxxin and Resflor Gold, we thought we had kicked the disease. But with another couple weeks of rain and temps bouncing from 40 to 80, everyone is acting “off” again. Nobody seems SICK sick like they did
Please note that we are not medical experts and the following should in no way be considered medical advice. We always recommend consulting a veterinarian. What we did below was in cooperation with our (amazing) livestock vet. We are still dealing with pneumonia in both
When we were first researching goats, the #1 warning that we heard everywhere is that they’re VERY prone to respiratory issues. They evolved to survive in arid climates and don’t handle humidity or dramatic temperature swings well. That’s why, when we had a week of
Every now and then, a chick will hatch with a slipped achilles tendon. This is a fixable issue, but it is critical to help the chick within the first couple days of life, or the condition might become permanent and debilitating. Please note that we
A lot of people ask us how to help chicks hatch. We are assisting a struggling chick right now, so I thought I’d write a post about our experience and steps we take. Please note that we are not medical experts and the following should
Last Thursday, we were SO excited to bring home an amazing little buckling, Mosaic’s Smooth Criminal. We don’t care all that much about superficial flashy stuff – we focus more on udders & conformation, but this guy has it all – multiple MDGA Top 10s
When we first started up our official company and website, we decided to be cheap/lazy and build our site in GoDaddy, which is our DNS host. GoDaddy unfortunately has a LOT of limitations, including a 50-page max for sites that use its builder. After adding