Sunday past (Feb 22), we slaughtered another goat and packaged it, then stuck it in the freezer. We've done this before (there are photos in a previous post), but this time, I wanted to save the hide so that I could learn how to 'process' it. I should say, MIKE killed it, skinned it and butchered it.

It is currently soaking in wood ash and water after waiting the twenty-four hours in a pure water bath. I opted to tan it, versus making something with hair on it. The goat wasn't that purty and I just wanted to practice tanning a hide. No, I'm not pissing on it or using goat brains to tan it.

The process begins with the four or five day soak in the ash-water (produces lye) to get the skin off the hide. Then I will scrape the fat membrane and any remaining meat off the back of it, turn it over and then scrape the hair off of the hide, as well. The lye process softens the hide and allows me to take the fur off with a scraper.

The things that we need to do next time:

• Have two sharp knives, not just one.
• Make sure the goat is high enough to work on without breaking Mike's back.
• Figure out a hanging method that works. We used a branch of the tree in the backyard, but I was afraid it would break with the weight of a hundred-lb goat on it and us tugging the skin off and pulling it down in doing so.
• Make sure we always do this in colder weather.
  
• Keep hay on hand to cover the wheelbarrow underneath the goat so that when the guts are freed and tumble into the wheelbarrow, that they can be covered up with hay to keep the flies away.
• Keep the dog out of the backyard. She was a nuisance while we were working on the carcass.

Oh what fun we have! Last night, we put everything back into the tackroom after Mike sealed off most of the rat entryways. I suspect it's going to be a bit of a battle to keep them out of our feed.

In the last three days, we've lost two goats -- one for unknown reasons... wait, make that three.

Yesterday evening, I was 'watering the geese' which means turning on a faucet near where we are going to plant grapes this year, and heard a most distressing goat yell. I looked toward the sound and saw a kid lying on the dirt and ran to it. Mike was in the barn, familiarizing the new kids by picking them up.

The wounded kid, whose parentage we'll have to discover this evening, seemed to have a broken neck. It was leaning its head back as far as it could and at first, of course, I thought it was dying.

I yelled for Mike and he came, picked the kid up and brought it into the house (standard operating goat procedure). It had been raining a bit and the kid was filthy with sand. We washed it off in the sink and dried it, put it on some towels and gave it some aspirin with some milk. This year, we purchased a kid-saver -- a handy device that has a long tube that we can snake down into a kid's stomach to give it food. We did this twice in the evening. It didn't save it.

Mike said that the kid gave a final yell and squirmed a lot around1am in the morning, and that was the end of it.

But now comes the question.. HOW did it get into such bad shape? We are, at the moment suspecting our livestock guardian dog, Brisket. The only reason for this is that he has been known to chase the kid goats around unmercifully and yesterday, Mike saved an armadillo that Brisket had in his mouth and was shaking the poor creature as hard as he could.

So we think that Brisket was full of himself and had shaken this kid until the kid's neck was broken. The sounds from the kid were not of the kind of distress sounds from a goat with stomach problems. These were pain sounds, uncomfortable pain.

But there are other options. The kid could have been thrown by one of the adult goats for simply being in the way or trying to drink milk from the wrong mom. We don't know.

But then again, we think Brisket did this to a chicken this past year... playing with it and slobbering all over it before the chicken just died (probably a heart attack).

Hard to tell, but if this is the case, we're going to have to put the dog down. He won't make a good livestock guardian and he is definitely not suitable as a pet.

This was not a good day.

We now have:
52 goats (of which, only one is a milk goat)
6 geese
9 guineas
60 chickens
2 cats
2 dogs

Kidding Season is almost over...

Just about a half hour ago (about 9pm), 205 kidded. Beautiful twins. One with a dark tail. That's three with dark tails this year and that's odd, since we've never had any... at all.

And so, over the last two weeks, we've had 23 kids, four of them died, and 19 survived. We're lousy with kids, now.

Yawwwwnnnn... We're both tired.

Good night.

And another

Friday (the 30th), 216 kidded... but we weren't there (out picking up feed and other stuff) and one of the twins she bore died... it was born with the pileus still around its body and probably suffocated in it. Mike and I are very sad when these things happen to our goats... we weren't there but should have been to remove the caul and let the kid breathe. But we can't always be home.

But the other one, the one that survived is doing well.

Yesterday, we cleaned the barn's walls (filled with nasty, dusty cobweb-like things and just plain dirt) and did maintenance to the stalls like attaching new wire on some of them. Mike also fixed and affixed the four feeders we bought last month and installed them on the doors of the stalls. I put wire on the outside of them so that goats couldn't get to the feeders from the outside. They all can eat side-by-side, now. I hope.

But in the process of doing a lot of work in the barn, Mike left the stall door open (not latched) and early this morning, apparently, when he went to unstick yet another kid that got stuck in the hay feeder, many goats were milling about 216's stall, probably eating all her hay and feed, as well. Her release date wasn't until Monday (three days to allow moms to recover and to bond with their kid(s) is the norm).

This morning, all the goats seemed to take their kids out and around to the dogleg -- you could see the newly-born ones jumping and running around like crazy. It's a great time of year for us.