Milking Margo

The suggested traditional 9 year anniversary gift is willow/wicker or leather. If I got, say, a wicker laundry basket with leather handles, I'd probably smack Keith over the head with such a crappy gift. Instead, I got a combo of the traditional 7th (wool) and 14th (animals) anniversary gifts all wrapped in a sheep named Margo.

An extremely enjoyable wine tasting weekend in Walla Walla was mostly just a ruse to get us mostly to the tiny town of Irrigon. A family there is moving soon and is looking to re-home a number of their farm animals, including a few East Friesian milk sheep. It took awhile to convince Keith that getting a yearling milk sheep was the best idea ever, but finally he came around!

They had 2 yearling sheep (that just means they are in-between 1-2 years old), one was all white and the other (the cuter one) was brown and black. I was leaning towards getting the black one, based solely on looks, but a few things changed my mind. One is that we are kinda giving up on the Snowy having kids this year. Yes, she's fat and acting strange, but we really only have about a week left to be expecting kids and we just don't have the confidence that she is actually pregnant. I was planning on milking 2 animals and producing cheese for what was hopefully a nice amount of milk, but now it seems that we have just Frannie.

Then I got an email from the woman selling the sheep that one of the yearlings was in milk-not giving very much because it's her first freshening-but still! That changed my mind! Having someone else do the work of breeding and milk stand training this animal is priceless. We also didn't have to take her lamb home-thankfully! Her lamb is already 2 1/2 months old and ready to be weaned-but that also means that we don't have much more time to milk her, as milk sheep are only in milk for about 5 months-and that is if we do everything right.

Say hello, Margo!



Nope, she's not the cutest creature, but hey, who's judging! We had to start milking her twice a day as soon as we got her home. She had been milked once a day at her old home, but was also nursing her lamb. Even though Margo is a very tolerant sheep, it is taking both of us to milk her. We have a different milk stand set up and she is just not digging it.

The first time milking her we did get her on the stand, but this is what she did.



So, that didn't work. We ended up working together to hold her on the floor and milk her that way both that night and the next morning. I've been working with her, to get her less skittish and more comfortable around us and the stand and it seems to be working, but it still takes the both of us. Hopefully we figured out a different plan soon!

And I already made some cottage cheese!



I asked the kid on the farm what her name was and she responded that only little kids name animals...I have to disagree! I decided on Margo because Manchego cheese is my favorite sheeps milk cheese and I aspire to make it, but that just didn't fit. I think Margo is a nice, kind of abbreviated version of Manchego. And now I'm hungry for cheese!

Frannie's babies are still the cutest ever. I milked Frannie for the first time this morning and while I only got about a quart and half, I still count it as a success.



If anything changes with Snowy, I'll let you know!

Frannie: First time momma

It has been obvious for a few months now that our little goat Frannie was going to have her kids well before Snowy. While Snowy only looks a little fat, Frannie has been as wide as she is tall for the past month or so.



This past Friday, Frannie was acting a little funny and her udder seemed a LOT bigger than it had been in the past couple weeks, so I'm thinking today could be the day! Of course I have plans I can't cancel. All day I'm quietly freaking out in my head, hoping Frannie will just wait until I get home. And she does.

Saturday she tucked herself in the corner of the barn and spent the whole day there. I would peak in and check on her from every hour or so, hoping this wouldn't last through the night. At 3:30 pm she was just quietly sitting there, by 4:45 she had already had one kid and the other was on it's way out. Both Keith and I had been outside almost that whole time and I swear she didn't make a peep! And thankfully no babies born in the pasture this time!

Frannie had two girls! A clone and a little white and black one. I talked to my friend Kate who I got both Frannie and Snowy from and she said that Frannie comes from a long line of clones, so I guess we can expect more in the future!



Names. Names are so hard. When I first saw these too I immediately thought of the movie Bambi, watching the tiny brown goat kid trying to find her feet, then falling to the ground, just like Bambi-but using that name is just too obvious-so maybe Faline and Flower, that would be cute right? But it just didn't feel completely right.

I was thinking of Kate and when took Frannie and Snowy home and it finally came to me: Ruby. Ruby Peak Farms is the name of Kate's farm! That's perfect!

So meet Ruby!



And her sister Pearl. Little Pearl has wattles. Wattles are just kind of big, hairy skin tags that are common in dairy goats, but that sounds like they're gross. They look more like an extra accessory, maybe even little white pearls.



I've said it before and I'll say it again: Goat kids are superior in cuteness to all other baby animals! Yes, even that pasture full of lambs cannot compete!




I love this shot: Frannie, I'm pretty sure she's yours!



Yesterday was their first day out in the pasture. It started well, but Frannie was not the most attentive mom, to the point where I think she may have forgotten that she even had babies. Thankfully my friend Andie was over and together we put the new little family in back in their own stall, where they spent the rest of the afternoon until this early afternoon. It seems to have done the trick as Frannie has been a calm, but attentive mom all afternoon.

Of course bouncing little goats call for video instead of just pictures! I have been taking way too much video!



As predicted, Snowy will be the last one to have kids. I think we have a few weeks before her kids will be here. There are these great kidding calculators on-line that help you figure out when to expect kids. For Frannie I plugged in the earliest day we put them in with Randy-Thanksgiving. For Snowy, I put in one of the last days of their stretch of time with Randy-Chistmas. I think we should expect kids around May 22-a full 20 days after Frannie had her girls.

The sheep and lambs are doing great. The lambs are growing like weeds and are still super cute!



I feel so lucky that all the births have gone so well this year! I hope I'm not jinxing it with only one left! Now we have a couple weeks to enjoy spring, get to work in the greenhouse and garden before our last round of babies!