Spring 2011 Goat School Day 2

First of all HAPPY MOTHER"S DAY.
Day 2 started out at 9am with coffee, and a delicious goat sausage breakfast casserole. It was a gorgeous morning. A bit nippy but that ended around noon with a beautiful blue sky. There are so many aspects of taking care of goats we felt that it would be beneficial to attend Goat School for a second time. Most learn by trial and error, internet, books and magazines. We are willing to try anything we can do to improve our skills. We chose to attend Goat School in Maine so we would be instructed on issues pertinent in our area. Our country is so different. Each region has it's own issues. What works in our cold weather state of Maine will not work in Florida. We are cold enough that much of our worm load does kill off in the winter. Some wormers are still effective in Maine, and do not work in Florida. I feel the more knowledge we can accumulate the better off our animals will be. I have no problem learning from others. It is best to learn from others errors and not have to repeat them ourselves. Saying that we will probably make different mistakes.
We covered so many topics. Disbudding was covered in detail. What to look for, how long to hold the iron in place and post care was explained.
This kid was used in the demonstration but was not actually disbudded. Oh, and always give a nice warm bottle or return to mom for comforting after the procedure. Disbudding is done mostly in the US. In Ken's Anatomy of a Horn class we learned that goats don't pant or sweat to cool their bodies. It is done through blood circulating in their horns. Maybe we need to rethink the disbudding practice. Not such a problem in cool Maine, but what about Florida?

You can see the tissue in these old horns that had come off.

Lunch break and out come the kids to play. Nothing is sacred. They will climb on anything or..

..... anyone!

Kids go back into the pen so we can continue. Oh, I wanted to take a couple of these little girls home with us. Ted looked at me as though I had lost my mind. Hmmm.....

Janice spoke in detail about de worming. Medications,vaccination dosages, explanation and demonstration of giving goats injections. She even let a few give injections. If you haven't done it before it can be very intimidating. We then dove into hoof trimming. If done correctly it leads to healthy goat hooves. If done incorrectly it can cause your goat to become lame. To me this is the intimidating part. I have trimmed our goat's hooves and try to do a good job. It always helps to see how trimming is accomplished.

Nice and flat. Good base to stand on.

Trimming young kids hooves.

Close up view of a goats front teeth. They don't have top teeth on the front. Velocity tolerated this well.

Finally everyone got a pair of gloves, a hoof trimmer and a cadaver hoof to trim. Great experience. No goats go lame from too aggressive students.

Once again the day came to an end. I know that everyone went away with more questions than they came with. After they get goats they will have even more questions. That is just the nature of things. If you attend Goat School the Spauldings are available as a resource. A treasured resource. Thank you once again for holding this class. I only covered a small bit of the information shared. I hope I get this right. There will be a streaming video available in the future through the University of Maine for Goat School. Everyone will be able to attend. Just sorry that you won't be able to taste Janices food. Or you could pick up the Goat School: A Master Class in Caprine Care and Cooking. Then you could have the food too.

After class we came home and took our goats for a walk. Yep, the girls love to taste new grass, tender leaf buds and the ever popular dandelion greens. Yum.

I hope everyone had a peaceful day.

Much Love and Prayers from Mainely Ewes Farm.