Our Goat Keeping Days Part 2

Continued from yesterday more about our goats at the smallholding in Knodishall near the Suffolk coast.

Four of our goats enjoying some fresh grass on the campsite - winter 1998. 

Below are 3 of the girls trimming the new willow hedge around the campsite in 2001. Goats are really browsers rather than grazers although they do eat grass and need hay all the time they'd much prefer a nice hedge or tree!

 That is Molly in the middle - we didn't keep her long she was the nastiest little goat we ever owned. I'd spotted an ad in the newspaper for someone giving away goats and as it was local we went to look. We really should have turned round and headed home as soon as we arrived because the place was a tip. There were goats and rubbish everywhere and a very elderly man hobbling around using 2 muck forks as walking sticks. The goats had obviously been fed and watered but left to run wild and breed any old how but little Molly was a Tog and I'd missed having Toggenbergs since Daisy "left us" due to old age a few years previously, so we took her home. I'm afraid she went off to be put down not long after she'd nearly knocked me over several times.

I think almost the last goats we bought was another Saanen called Rose and her kid Tilly. We travelled up to Norfolk to collect them. Rose had been mated with a Golden Guernsey so little Tilly was a lovely   Golden Guernsey/Saanen cross. 

A very strange coincidence happened  two years later when someone we'd never met - who I'd been writing to as a penfriend for a year - came to stay on the campsite. We'd become penfriends through a small magazine called The Penny Pincher Paper. I knew she'd got a goat but after she looked hard at Tilly and asked where we'd got her it turned out that her goat Milly was Tilly's twin who had already been sold when we collected Rose and Tilly from Norfolk. My penfriend and her family had been up to Norfolk from Essex to collect Milly just a few days before we collected our girls. - Very odd coincidence. 

Below is Tilly with her kid in 2003- we'd used a friends Boer goat billy for this mating because they had room to keep Tilly for 5 days.  Back at the beginning it was easy to move goats for mating - that was before movement books and ear tags and Much Hassle. You could  spot her being in season, load her into a trailer, take her to a billy and a hour or so later take her home again. It gradually got more difficult after foot and mouth disease  as moving an animal on and off the holding on the same day wasn't allowed. 

A few  years later we were able to mate Tilly with a decent male goat and I registered her kid with the British Goat Society  - Noddishall Izzy. Something I'd always wanted to do - just so I could have a herd name and see a goat listed in the BGS yearbook!  We were never interested in showing goats or milk recording so didn't really need to have them registered.

Why did we give up in 2010?

There were several reasons. Around then we were thinking about moving to Wales, our neighbour who milked for us when we were on holiday had started to get arthritis in her hands and with the children moved out we didn't need as much milk. 

Goats are a real tie, it's easy to ask someone to feed chickens and collect eggs but not so simple to find a goat milker. Even a long day out needed someone to come and check them.

We advertised the goats in the Suffolk Smallholders Newsletter but the first person who planned to buy our goats then backed out. We gave up the moving plan when we searched for a house and found that everyone selling was English, moving back to England, had bought when prices were high, and wanted daft amounts for their houses,  and then to cap it all I wasn't well for a while and as Colin had never been able to milk - his thumbs were double jointed and would never bend the right way for milking so I had to carry on milking even when quite poorly. By the time I was better  a new enthusiastic buyer had appeared on the scene. So we went ahead and sold the two girls we still had - an elderly Tilly and the younger Izzy. 

It was a sensible decision but a sad one. They are such lovely animals to keep, loads of character and it was good having fresh milk everyday without needing to go the the shop. For nearly 20 years we rarely bought milk, I taught lots of people how to milk and care for goats and surprised dozens of people when they tasted what fresh clean goats milk should taste like. Happy memories.

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I found this little framed print on line, sorry it won't enlarge enough to see the breeds - I would have loved to have had this when I was goat keeping

Someone asked if they were pets or livestock. On our smallholding everything had to have a purpose so although they were much loved and enjoyed we never had a problem sending them off when they got too old or sending the billy kids for meat. I met lots of smallholders who wouldn't have dreamed of doing either but it was the same for us for our sheep and laying hens and the pigs we raised for meat. They were all looked after properly and had a good life on the holding  and the breeding adults given names but lambs and pigs had a purpose and chickens too old for egg laying were soon dispatched.

I quite expect follow numbers to suddenly drop after saying that! but on a farm things that don't pay their way can't be kept. 

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Our Goat Keeping Days Part 1

 Weeks ago someone said they would love to know more about the years we kept goats at the smallholding.

Keeping goats for milk was something I really wanted to do (Not sure anyone else in the family was as keen as I was!)and moving to the smallholding in 1992 at last gave us the space. I'd been reading books about goat keeping for years so knew a little of the theory - what to feed them, never to keep one on its own, how their feet needed trimming, how they  could give milk for one or two years after kidding and keeping a billy goat or goats with horns was NOT a good idea - lot's of theory without any practical!

We were very lucky when moving to Knodishall as our only neighbour had been keeping goats for several years. She kept Angora goats and had a small business with people knitting up the mohair wool from the goats. She also had a few milking goats and gave us Daisy, who she'd been given and got her in kid to one of her male Angoras, plus an elderly goat Annie to keep her company until Daisy kidded. This gave us the chance to learn about keeping goats  and when Daisy kidded she taught me how to milk her.

There are seven main dairy breeds of goat in the UK: Saanen, British Saanen, Toggenburg, British Toggenburg, British Alpine, Anglo-Nubian and Golden Guernsey. Additionally the British Goat Society (BGS) recognises the British Guernsey and the British goat

 Daisy was a British Toggenburg and they were always my favourite with really cheeky characters. The goats we had for a few years at the beginning were usually being given away or very cheap as we couldn't afford a pedigree milker. We had a loppy eared Anglo Nubian called Shilling for a while but she didn't give much milk, and a rescued small Toggenburg who had been bred too young and had a really bad temper. The only breed we never owned was the British Alpine the biggest of British breeds and usually black with white.

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.At first we kept the goats tethered on a swivel stake and chain which was OK except for when they got tangled or pulled the stake out of the ground and it did mean moving them a couple of times each day and fetching them in if it rained.....goats are not weatherproof like cows are and they hate getting wet.

 Soon Colin put up some post and rail and wire netting fencing just outside the end of the big shed where we had them in pens we made inside. He put doors in the side of the shed so they could go in and out. We fenced another paddock on the field and I used to walk them across to this other paddock every few days for a change of grass.

By the time we needed to mate Daisy for the third time our neighbour had given up goat keeping but there was a man in the next village who kept an odd assortment of goats including a Billy and we took Daisy there.

Daisy and her two kids 1997

The goat below is a Saanen named Heather, I can't remember where she came from but I do know that sadly we lost her just before kidding the next year. Something goats and sheep can get is a deficiency during pregnancy and just like sheep, goats have a "death wish!" They go down hill very quickly and even after a vet visit and injection she became very poorly and I sat with her and had just popped down to the house for something and came back and found her dead. It was our worst loss. Losing a lamb or a kid had happened before but losing a fully grown goat just before kidding was awful.

There's a saying that every farmer with livestock knows " If you have livestock, you'll get deadstock!"

After having a few cheap but useless goats to keep Daisy company we travelled right down to Essex to buy a young goat in kid from a well know breeder but when she kidded I found her teats much too small for me for milking and the breeder agreed to take her back. Had I been more experienced I would have kept her and got her in kid again in the next Autumn when her teats might have been bigger from raising the kids.

Three girls in their paddock

 Continued Tomorrow

Sue

(The things with that very long list of ingredients were doughnuts which I thought were just ordinary jam but turned out to have a revolting chocolate sauce in them. As I said - shouldn't go shopping without breakfast! I ate them- not all at once I hasten to add - as I don't like waste but they were NOT nice!)