Our big project this week was catching Molly and milking her. Yep. Even though she’s never had any kids, she gave two pounds of milk.
This phenomenon - giving milk when you’ve never even been pregnant - is called having a precocious udder. Molly’s grandmother, Triscuit, also had a precocious udder. I wonder if this is something that happens because breeders have bred goats to have more and more kids. That’s a side effect of making them produce large quantities of milk - which is really the breeding goal. Most of our goats had twins this spring, and the ones who didn’t have twins had triplets. Many goats have quadruplets. Goats only have two teats, so goats who have more than two kids generally short the girls. This past spring we had to get Delta to feed Rain’s two girls, because Rain only wanted to feed her boy, Roger.
Molly is not easy to catch. Some of you may remember that when I first moved here Molly had been in the pen with Jordan, attempting to get bred. She did not get pregnant, but one of the first things I had to do when I arrived was to help get Molly back out of Jordan’s pen and home to the milkers’ pen where she had been living.
I wrapped her leash around my hand several times, and was completely unprepared for her to bolt. She dragged me all over the place before I was able to free myself.
I’m not that easy to drag now! First of all, I learned on balloon crew that you never wrap a rope, leash, or line around your hand. (On balloon crew, you could die). Second, I’m prepared for the goats to bolt. So, this week, when we got the leash hooked onto Molly’s collar (through sheer trickery that involved animal crackers) and she bolted, I sat down on the ground and held on. I was too heavy for her to pull that way. She stopped, turned around, and gave me the stink eye. And then we moved her into the barn and onto the milking stand.
Where, like I said, she gave two pounds of milk. We injected mastitis medicine into her teats, and hopefully she’ll be healthy going forward. She’s a great goat. She functions like an auntie to all the does who were born last spring. They love her and she loves them. This is Molly:
Oh, a sad thing that happened this week was that Big Red died.
She passed away quietly Tuesday evening. Tuesday was the first day that she didn’t seem to enjoy her life. All the days leading up to that, even though she couldn’t use her legs, even though we had to prop her up on a brick so that she could see the sky and the trees and the other chickens, she seemed enthusiastic. She loved eating scratch, she loved watching the chicken yard. But, on Tuesday, she seemed ready to move on. I put her in her nesting box and had a long talk with her about what a good chicken she had been, and how she shouldn’t be frightened that her life as a chicken was coming to an end. She died early in the evening - after we shut everyone in for the night. I was amazed at how sad I was over her passing. Journey well, Big Red. You have left a chicken-shaped hole in my heart.
Coco continues to enjoy visiting all the other animals on the farm every day. We have a regular route. First, we check out all the chickens. Coco drinks their milk - if there is any left. Some of the chickens are even willing to drink out of the milk bowl at the same time as Coco.
Then, we go see the goats. In the milkers’ pen, no one cares much about Coco. But, in the back pen, Sugar is a big puppy fan. Whenever we come to visit, Sugar runs up to the fence to greet Coco.
Sugar even lets Coco lick her nose.
OH! I wanted to remember to write about a study (done in August of 2019) that I just read. It proved that goats prefer smiling faces to frowning faces. I want to say, “DUH!” But, apparently not everyone realizes that animals can read our faces. In any case, researchers spent time showing photos of people smiling and photos of people frowning to a bunch of goats (they all made a beeline for the smiling faces). Then they had live people smile or frown at the goats. It was conclusive. Both the BBC and Smithsonian Magazine reported on it. So, if you come to visit me after the pandemic is over, be prepared to smile at the goats!
Kat was here this week, working for Serena Soaps. We made a special order batch for a woman who is allergic to both Palm Oil and Coconut Oil. It was fun to figure out how to make a good soap that had neither of those ingredients. We also really enjoyed making a custom soap. Here's how our initial batch came out:
It will need to cure for a month, and then she'll test it, and we'll also test it. If she likes it, we'll just make batches for her whenever she needs them. If she doesn't, we'll keep trying till we get it right. We can actually make custom batches for the same price as the rest of our soap - unless they need really expensive, unusual ingredients.
In any case, if you want some soap, go to SerenaSoaps.com