Goat Wrangling

We usually spend our "holidays" doing an interesting project rather than just mundane chores, and this Memorial Day was no different - we had a goat roundup this morning, with 3 student helpers.  It wasn't as big as our usual fall one - only mamas and babies - but it was multi-purpose, which adds time to the whole process.  One goal was to nip all the little boys' bits, so we can keep running a single goat herd without unexpected pregnancies this winter.  I think that's pretty self-explanatory so I won't dwell on their loss :)

Secondly, we needed to eartag all the little girls, and write down which tag number/kid goes to which mother, so we can track families.  Third, we check everyone's eyelids and rate the pinkness of it between 1 (white) and 5 (dark pink/red).  

This is called a Famacha score, and indicates the level of anemia, which in turn indicates the intestinal worm load that goat is probably carrying.  If the number is a 1 or 2, we treat them with a chemical wormer, and if it's 3 or higher we don't need to do anything.  Spring is a bad time for this - since worms thrive in warm and wet conditions, most of them scored a 2 this time.  In the fall, when they've just finished a hot, dry summer, their scores should be much better.  

We track this number in our records to see if any goats in particular show a trend of low or high numbers, and we can use this to influence whether we keep or cull a goat.  Obnoxiously, I noticed this time that the higher-scoring does seem to be the wilder ones.  Spots, that I fruitlessly chased in labor, scored quite well :)  I'd like to breed for docility, but - at least on paper - it looks like that might be breeding for parasite susceptibility for some (or possibly no) reason.  

We realized, yet again, that we really need to eartag the doelings as soon after they're born as possible - by the time they are a month old or so they are independent enough that they often aren't right next to their mother, and 45 babies from the same father only come in so many colors (basically 3).  We always end up with a handful that we just don't know who their mother is, and have to try to remember to go out after dark and catch them snuggled up together.  I try to write a description of each one when it's born, but so many of them are "light tan" or "medium brown" with no distinctive markings.  If I was smart at kidding time, I can pair up the "w/ star" or "front sock" with the matching tagged kid and figure some of them out, but there's always some detective work and process-of-elimination to do afterwards.

The rest of the afternoon Caleb and a student finished stretching the fence on the last section that was just posts, waiting for fence.  We now have our entire western boundary fenced, and we've turned the corner and are across the northern boundary as far as our driveway, not quite halfway.  This was good timing, as the livestock are only a few pasture passes away from needing that fence.  We won't be doing anymore for another year or two, I think the new house addition this summer will use up both our extra time and money.  

We are starting a variation on our mob-grazing with the cows and goats.  In the past, we've run them (and the alpacas) in one herd, moving them each day to a new paddock.  We always separate the goats out in the spring before kidding - it's totally adorable to see a huge cow sniffing noses with a day-old goat baby - until he hooks it with a horn and flings it 20 feet!  This year, instead of combining them again after the kids are all born and big enough to hold their own with the cows, we decided to keep them separate.  We're moving the goats a paddock ahead of the cows - they get to graze first, taking the seeds especially, and grazing whatever else they'd like.  This should give them the better forage, which they seem to need more than the cows, and is hopefully going to also help with intestinal worms.  Goats are naturally browsers rather than grazers - they prefer to eat at shoulder height and up, rather than off the ground.  Worms only live at about 4" up the grass and lower, so this should decrease the goats need to eat shorter grass.

The cows move in the next day, and just mow through the paddock eating everything they want and trampling the rest down, helping to build the soil and churning the remaining seeds in to sprout later.  They are also a dead-end host to the worms, since most of those are host-specific and the goat ones can't live in the cows.  Having them vacuum the field after the goats should also be beneficial.

We're moving the alpacas with the goats, and another advantage of the separate herds is that we now have a fairly wild cow herd (not great, but not really a problem) and - the real benefit -  a more handle-able group of the livestock that we want to keep calmer and acclimated to us.  Previously, we really couldn't go just wander among or sit with the herd, because the cows are just not tame enough.  That meant all the goats and alpacas were also pretty wild, which makes roundups and shearings much more traumatic and difficult than they need to be.  

We're excited to see if the changes will result in measurable differences, but just the ability to work with the smaller animals more may be worth it.  I'll let ya'll know this fall if, and why we think things are better this way.