Yesterday, she delivered her kid! I was working in my office, shortly before noon, when one of our children excitedly began pounding on my door with the big news. I put down what I was doing and made a detour to the goat stall on my way in for lunch. Sure enough, she had delivered a beautiful little buck kid. Though he was still damp with am
niotic fluid, he was drying off fast in the 80 degree weather (couldn't have asked for a better day for him to arrive), and was already up and wobbling around testing out his legs.His mother, Double Play, has a chronic case of mastitis, which we have tried everything imaginable to remedy but to no avail. This wouldn't be a problem if we were simply pasteurizing and then drinking the milk. However, to make the cultured milk drinks our children require, raw (unpasteurized) milk is necessary. And raw mastitic milk doesn't set up well at all in these cultures; we've tried several times, and ended up feeding it all to chickens.
Fortunately, our other goat (Queen Anne's Lace) has been giving milk that's been excellent for raw cultures. We've decided to keep her, and sell Double Play to a friend who wants to pasteurize her milk for drinking. As soon as they finish building a stall for her, she and her newborn kid will be moving. All part of life on the farm, and a lesson for our children: as much as you might like a particular animal (and the children really do like Double Play a lot), you can't get attached to them or turn them into pets.
2 comments:
What a gorgeous kid! And I'm glad Double Play doesn't seem to be purple any longer.
I'm interested in the fil mjolk. How did you discover that your children would only tolerate this as opposed to regular pasteurized milk? My 3yo daughter after weaning from b/milk refused to drink anything but kefir (similar to fil mjolk, I think) for several years. She now drinks pasteurized milk seemingly without problem. We used to get certified raw milk but one of the dairies in our state (Grace Harbor farms, which has stopped milk production for consumption completely) had an e.coli problem so it scared us off for a while. Obviously, with your own goats, you have more control over it.
Anyway, I'm investigating more into food sensitivities and behaviors, so if you have a previous post on this or time to explain it, I'd be interested.
LeAnn -
My wife can probably give a better explanation of the whole "milk discernment" process than I could; if you can send me an email (theyeomanfarmer@aol.com), I'll have her reply to it with the info. We've tried kefir, and it works for our kids, but it was much harder to make consistently than fil mjolk is. Something about sensitivity to temperature changes during culturing, I think; ours kept turning out badly.
In terms of sources, we've bought raw cow's milk from a community of Benedictine nuns on Shaw Island - not much farther from you than Grace Harbor. Not sure if the nuns are still selling to the public. You might try calling them at 360-468-2321. Even without the milk, visiting their monastery is a very fun excursion.
Their website is:
http://www.rockisland.com/~mhildegard/index.html
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