Replies

>>>Chickens drink milk? That’s a new one on me!<<<

Oh yeah - they love it. When they are growing as well as when they are laying. I froze extra milk in gallon zip-lock bags and when it is really hot, just put a gallon of frozen in a tray and they will go crazy eating it.

The laying hens benefit from not only the nutrients but the calcium is essential (along with oyster shell) for them to have good shells on the eggs.

>>>How do goats fare with cold weather?<<<

They handle cold weather better than you would think. What they do need is a place that is out of the wind or drafts to bed down. Same with chickens and rabbits - drafts in their sleeping quarters are what get them down.

>>>I didn’t know goats give that much milk<<<

Depends on the breed. Of course pygmy goats don’t give that much milk, but Toggenburgs, Saanans, Nubians and some others are very good milk producers. Personally I prefer the richer Nubian milk - LOL but if you are the type who buys skim milk, they are not for you. We had one milking for quite a while, and she kept 4 of us in all the milk we could drink, made ice cream almost every day and enough to make cheese too.

>>>Or were so loving<<<

They very definitely have personalities. Each one is different, but they almost all love human attention. If you ever bottle feed an orphan goat, you will have a shadow for life... They will do whatever they have to do to be right with you all the time - and if you fence them in, they will spend hours bleating and walking along the fence looking for you.

>>>we get 5 or more feet of snowpack<<<

They will probably venture out and frolic in the snow, but won’t spend a lot of time outside with that much snow.

In another post there are comments on their health needs -

They are extremely robust and healthy animals. Some routine things to keep them that way are:

Clean dry bedding.

Draft free area to bed down in.

Hoof trim about every 4 months.

Mix a little Diatomaceous Earth (go to a pool supply- they use it in pool polishers and filters - cheaper and bigger bags) in their feed every 3 months (better than some of the worming medicines and does not affect the milk - also works in garden for many insects without having to use poisons).

Clip their udder about 3 times a year.

Wash the udder well before milking.

Strip a couple of squirts of first milk from each teat into a strainer - to check for thick stringy substance which could indicate mastitis or infection. (seldom a problem if they are well cared for.)

Be gentle when milking.

Dip teats in a good antiseptic sealer when done milking.

Treat them like the friends they try to be.

Since they are gregarious animals, more than one is advisable (Unless you are willing to be their pal full time)

Wow - hope I covered it all - you sure can ask a lot of questions in a really short post... But that’s good - you cover all the bases. LOL

The laying hens benefit from not only the nutrients but the calcium is essential (along with oyster shell) for them to have good shells on the eggs.<<<

While I am thinking of it, when you have day old chicks, quail, guinea fowl and any poultry.

The first drink should be water, 6 or 8 hours for the chicks and then switch to buttermilk and you will have the strongest poultry and for quail and guinea keets, it will give the protein they are missing from bugs.

Just take a carton of regular cultured buttermilk and pour it about half and half milk, even powdered milk works or goat and set it in a warm spot for 24 hours, shake and replace the water in the water dishes with the buttermilk.

Refill with your 50 - 50 mix and let it work.

Big poultry will drink it too, I never worried about sour milk for the animals.

Mary and Jay had a big metal tank, about a foot high and 4 or 5 foot long, that they set under the mesquite tree, the leaves and seed pods dropped in the tank and they poured extra or old milk in it.

In the desert heat [Yuma area], they would get a black dry crumbly substance that was very rich for the poultry and hogs.

your goat report is excellent, thank you.

I didn’t milk through a strainer as such, I stretched cheese cloth over the bucket, held with a big rubber band and if there was mastitus, it would show there and I also tested first with the mastitus test strips...

The cheese cloth has kept many a foot out of the bucket.

In the house, I used the standard milk filter and strained it into the jars, always making sure that there were no strange things in the strainer.

I took a bucket of warm water and hand towels with me, to clean the udder with, that is what Dr. Comer, the crazy chiropractor that I went to in Yuma told me to do.

I have a wonderful postcard collection from Dr. Comer, he would trade treatments or part treatments, for milk, cheese and eggs.

Each month a card showed up, about the time to go to Yuma, with what he needed.

Now, for a treatment that he used and it works, as I said, he was known as Crazy Dr. Comer and he was apt to do anything to you and had been out of medical school for 50 years, so he earned his name.

One day, I was gone , tired sore, nothing working and extreme pain, I stripped and got on the table and he disappeared for 20 minutes, while I relaxed.

Then I heard a machine start up and felt him doing strange things to my back....This was about 1974.

I thought, “My God he is using a vacuum cleaner on me and yes he was and it works.

He said, that the nerve endings are at the surface of the skin, so he decided that he needed to make those nerves wake up and do the job they were intended to do, plus get those blood vessels to moving blood again.

The trick is to not leave it in one spot long enough to make a blister, let it suck up the skin and then move to another spot..

Since then, I have found the treatment in writing and talked to Bill’s Barber about it, as he gave me a haircut and used the vacuum on my head.

He told me that one of his old customers had had a stroke and when he could get out again, he would come to Bob and Bob would vacuum his shoulder and arm, when there were no clients in the shop and that the man recovered from his stroke, and his arm was normal.

About 1974 Mary’s brother came to visit, he/they were both in their 80’s and he had taken care of his wife for years, as she was in a wheel chair.

Brother had also had a stroke, and lost the use of his arm, and me being me, I wanted to take him to Dr. Comer, for his arm / shoulder was as hard as a rock.

No, he had never been to a chiropractor and would not hear of it, as 2 of his sons were top doctors back east and one was a specialist in what had happened to Brother.

I tried to convince him that he had a pinched nerve, for all the folks with a stroke go flabby, not rock hard......now you know why Bill called me a witch doctor, no license and a big mouth.

Sure enough, a year or two went by and all of a sudden the Brother’s shoulder relaxed, was no longer hard as a rock and there was nothing much wrong with it.

So when you get those grandpa aches, allow your wife to give you a good vacuuming.

It sure works for headaches.

[LOL, yes, I knew the Brothers name all along, but 2 Bill’s in the same story was one too many.]