The goats scared some sense into me

So thinking that the "girls" (Goats) may be getting close to giving birth at all freaked me out a little bit.
I've been humming and hawing over taking an continuing ed course through Olds College.
The Course is actually Lambing 101. So not all of it is going to be applicable to goats. But at the same time it has sections about tube feeding and other things that would be more than usable with goats.
But seeing as were really short on cash I was going to put it off....
But having a kid land on the barn floor freaked me out enough to reconsider.

So this is the outline of the course...

Lambing Fundamentals (101)

1. Discuss Lambing


•normal births and dystocia births
•plus supplies needed.

2.Discuss Ewes: Demonstration and hands-on performing procedures such as:

•crutching ewes,
•vaccinations,
•check udders and teeth,
•palpate lymph nodes
•and oral deworming.

3.Lambs: (using live or dead lambs) Demonstration and hands-on, perform procedures such as:

•stomach tubing lambs,
•intra peritoneal dextrose injections,
•weigh lambs,
•band tails,
•castration with rings,
•injections and ear tagging.

So I signed up on-line I'm just waiting on confirmation that the course isn't full or been cancelled or something else that always seems to happen when I try for courses like these. But I think all of section 3. with the hands on demonstrations will be such a good experience for someone with no experience like me~

***Update***
Surprise. They cancelled the course due to lack of enrollment

wrappin' it up

My Goat Hypothermia course wrapped up this week. As usual Kathy's course was packed full of great info.

I mentioned before that I'd sent off the kid coat pattern to my MIL. We're meeting her for lunch on Sunday, and she already has two coats ready to go. I'm excited to see how they turned out.

The next project up from this course is the kid warming barrel. I'm on the hunt for the supplies ( like the 55 gallon plastic barrel). but it's next on the to do list. I found plans on the net to make a similar one here if your interested.

Now lets just hope that the sweaters and warming barrel is enough and I won't have to use the resuscitation techniques I learned!!!

A pattern and a confession

Last week I mentioned how I was going to sign up for the goat hypothermia class with Kathy at HMFF?

The class was up and rolling as of Monday. Today we received an e-mail detailing the pattern for Kathy's ever so cute little lamb/kid coats.
Which I promptly forwarded to my MIL

*Gasp*

Why?

This is the confession part...

I can't knit

*double GASP*

Yeah, I know. I have all these great plans that may or may not include getting animals like sheep, alpacas, and angora rabbits. Maybe even some angora goats.
All fiber animals.
And yet I myself can't knit.

Growing up I can remember my mother knitting me exactly one sweater. I also remember getting yelled at if you talked while she was doing this. "BE QUIET I NEED TO COUNT!!!"- My super crafty mother got right stressed out by knitting. In fact after she finished the sweater, I don't recall seeing her ever knit anything else.
This is probably why I have no idea how to knit.

I was absolutely in love with a Patons pattern  called Sally Secretary Monkey. I bought it and begged my MIL to knit me one. Which she did and I got got for Christmas. Awesome gift!

My favorite part is her little high heels.

Anyways, I can't knit. I've made my confession I feel better.
Okay not really.
One of my goals for 2011 is to learn, at least be able to knit a scarf by the end of the year? We'll see.
I don't suppose you could just raise fiber animals for the fun of raising the animals and barter/sell/trade all of the fleece/fur/wool???
Yeah, probably not really the point.

But right now I've talked my MIL into making me a couple of little goat coats. Because I've learned 2 very interesting facts from the workshop so far.

1) Kids can get hypothermia at any point in the year. They go from being inside Mom at a comfy 103 degree F. temp. to being dropped on a barn floor at whatever the temperature outside is sitting at.

and number 2 has nothing to do with why she needs to knit them for me, but it was an interesting fact about goat coats I thought I'd share.
2) They need to be made from Acrylic yarn. -because you can't use real wool. A baby animal can't smell even slightly like another animal to a new mom.
Something I totally wouldn't have thought of, pretty interesting huh?

Workshop sign up.

Oddly only days after I wrote the post about losing Larry to what I think was hypothermia. I got an e-mail from Kathy at Herbal Maid Fiber Farm asking if anyone would be interested in a workshop on Hypothermic Resuscitation. It's more for lambs and kids, since lambing and kidding season is about to start. But she's promising a pattern for a knit/crocheted kid coat, Instructions for making an incubator barrel for your nursery, pictorials on how to resuscitate a hypothermic newborn and more.
I sent off an email expressing my interest. If I'm going to be stubborn and stick with this goat deal. I have to start looking to the experts for more info!
Plus I took the goat milking and Cheese making classes from her last spring, and thought they were excellent.
She doesn't have the workshop listed on the website yet, but if anyone else is interested all of her contact info is there. Just shoot her an email and let her know.

I'm a Little Cranky

I was all set.
My Dad had even agreed to come up for the weekend and babysit the boys.
I was heading to Edmonton for the weekend of November 12-14, for the 2010 Goat West Conference.
And was so excited they had speakers ranging from Vets talking about herd diseases, to topics on marketing goat meat, to coyote predation.
And I was totally psyched to finally be able to slip out of the house, and mingle with "real"
 goat people. I figured I'd learn about a million things.

Of course.

The Alberta Goat Breeder Association now called and said the conference has been canceled due to low interest and registration.

I'm crushed.

Back to school decisions

I'm trying to decide if I should take some more classes right now.

Herbal Maid Fiber Farm is offering another 2 workshops in September

"Colored Angora Goat Genetics- (In time for making breeding decisions) This is a repeat of the intensive course I gave last year and would help you make intelligent breeding decisions for color, pattern, horn and eye color."
and
Putting up late summer bounty

She's offering them for 30 dollars each or 50 for both classes.

Our goats are Alpine not Angora. Although I would love to get into angora goats eventually and I'm thinking that knowing more about genetics and breeding them would help when you go to buy some. You would know for sure your looking at a quality animal right? Plus I know nothing about goat genetics at all. I'm already trying to decide if I want to breed little Linus in with the girls since he's not an Alpine like the rest.

oh and my garden crashed and burned this year. so taking the summer bounty course would only be helpful if I was willing to go buy all the veggies at the supermarket or farms market, cause they sure aren't coming out of our garden  (I mean weed pit) this year.

One thing I know for sure I want to take is being offered through Olds College Continuing Education.

Lambing Fundamentals 101-
yes it's about sheep not goats but it covers a lot of the same topics I think you will have when delivering goats. And seeing as I've never done either...
It's not offered until march But I'm hoping to set Romeo on the girls for December which means we should have kids until May and therefore...I'll be able to take the course and hopefully have some clue as to what I'm doing by the time the girls are ready.

there also offering an
Introduction to sheep nutrition in October.  But I'm really up in the air about if I would need that. Sheep and Goats seem to have very different tastes.

cow vs. goat

Taking this online hand milking/ cheese making and the goat soap making course is making me wild to get a goat or 3.
This weekend I bought some goat milk from the grocery store. Just to see if I could drink it. I think I've had goat milk at the farm before but that would have been 20 years ago easy.

It has a very distinct smell but it was much sweeter than cow milk. I can drink it (although I'm not sure I would put it in cereal just yet. But the best part was Nathan LOVES it. Like L-O-V-E's it. He insists on getting to drink the "special" goat milk and won't touch his regular milk right now.-Which is great news for when we get goats, that he'll drink the milk. But bad news right now since the goat milk from the store is double the price of regular milk.

So I'm all hyped up for getting goats and then I read this article about keeping a dairy cow in Mother Earth news. I still like the idea of cow milk better , but I assume that's because I'm more accustom to the taste.
However goat milk seems much more versatile. In terms of cheeses and the soap. Both of which I think I would be able to sell at local farmers markets.

I did like the article in Mother Earth. and thinks it's worth a read. But I do think their stats are a like off in the "annual Budget for keeping a Family Milk cow." as they quote the "Value of milk available for human consumption:$3,000 to $ 5,215"
1) I don't believe my family spends 3000 a year on milk- I could be wrong but that seems awfully high. so...
2) The rest of the value would come from being able to sell that milk, and the excess that your family is not able to consume, which I think would be more difficult than selling goat milk. Since Cow milk is available literally everywhere how would you be able to compete?

So although at some point I would love to get a cow, I really still think we'll start with goats and go from there.

class is in

Remember me mentioning how excited I was about Herbal maid fiber farm and Kathy's online classes?
You can see the previous post here

I started the first 2 classes today.
I'm taking a Goat Hand milking and cheese making class
as well as a Goat milk soap making class.

No we don't have goats yet.

But all of the course is sent in e-mails that can be saved for later reference.
Even if I can't participate in making all these fabulous looking treats right now (although I may post an ad on kijiji to see if anyone sells fresh goat milk in the area) I still think that just reading all of the information will help it sink in for when and if we get goats later on.

In fact Kathy has a guest instructor teaching the soap making, and she buys her supply of goat milk from local producers it doesn't sound like she has goats of her own either. So I don't feel quite so strange in doing this.