The time has come, once again, to ween my goat kids before selling them. There really is nothing quite like the horrible screaming to make me realize how quiet my goats usually are. As the owner of an urban farm I am always very aware of the proximity of my neighbors and do what I can to minimize any loud interruptions. Unfortunately there really isn’t much to be done when weening the vocal toddlers!
This year I bred my lovely Snubian girl, Amelia. Her mom is a full blooded Nubian goat (I call her my Papered Princess) and her papa is one of the many handsome bucks down at South Mountain Dairy, a local goat milk dairy near Albuquerque. Amelia was blessed with airplane ears and is absolutely adorable as a result. See, Nubian goats have pendulous ears that hang down, whereas the Sable Saanen goats, like nearly all the other breeds, have upright ears. The combination of a Nubian dam and a S.Saanen sire resulted in ears that stick straight out, like the wings of an airplane!
I’ve been antsy to have my goat milk supply back, since we’ve been forced to drink organic cow milk now since the beginning of the year. So while I appreciate that the kids may be driving my neighbors bananas, I’m more than willing to make the sacrifice in order to have my raw milk back. I miss the flavor and amazingly I also really feel a difference in my energy level. I realize that goat milk has higher B vitamin concentrations than cow, but I’m always amazed by what a difference it makes in how I feel.
In the past it has always been difficult to find buyers for my kids, and I hate the idea of them going to someone with no experience with goats, or who would be using them for rodeo work, so I struggle with offloading them. If I had 10 acres of pasture I’d just keep them until I was overrun, but given the size of my yard, that really isn’t possible. Luckily this year I have found them the absolute perfect spot. A local college is using goats to manage their landscaping and I was able to get in touch with the man in charge of the project. He will be taking the kids in about a week, once they are fully weened, and they will go on to live only a few blocks away with two other goats where they will be able to roam relatively freely and graze on a variety of plants while maintaining the beautiful campus. It sounds to me like the perfect place and I am so pleased to be able to help out this new project! I love the idea of using goats as landscape labor and I imagine they are pretty happy about it as well.
In either case, I still have to put up with about another week of loud noises until the kids are fully weened and ready to go. Let’s just hope the neighbors are able to tolerate it as well as I!
Real Food Mama 