Tuesday, May 10, 2011

She's Growing up Fast!

Today Daffodil is two and a half weeks old.  At birth, she weighed eight pounds and could hardly stand, climb or jump.  Now she is fifteen pounds and climbs on everything (including her mom) and sprints back and forth the length of the backyard.  She is healthy and happy and both our vet and a friend with lots of goat experience were impressed by her hearty size and demeanor.

The nights were cold the first week of Daffodil's life.  We
we happy that she prefectly fit in one of Arthur's coats!





So far, she gets along very well with the other animals.  She has only met Bea, Gretel and the little goats through the fence and all seem very intrested in having more of a face to face introduction.  We have decided to wait a few more weeks until they are all housed together so that Daffodil will be big enough to be safe.  Arthur and Betty both enjoy playing with Daffy and they all chase eachother around the yard.  Won't they be surprised in a few months when Daffodil towers over them!



We have also had a real life crash course in goat milking in the last few weeks.  Luckily, Brian is a natural and is able to complete the whole process in only a few minutes.  It takes me far longer because my milking hand gets tired.  I have been assured that after a few months of milking I will have stronger hands than I could ever have imagined!



Brian built a stanchion prefectly measured for Wendy.
She hops on it twice a day with great anticipation of eating her grain.




We are thrilled to have fresh goat milk every day and we can now begin to experiment with the cheese making process!  We made our first batch of chevre the other day.  It was certainly edible but we will have to practice a few more times before we start to share with friends and family.  Brian's next big project is turning the basement into a dairy.  The cheesemaking dream is starting to turn into reality!


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