Why do things have to happen this way? 

I saw Pippin when I did the morning chores and she was her usual curious and cute self. 

This evening when I went to water the pigs and check the critters, Pippin was nowhere to be seen. I found her lying down in the goat barn, feet in the air, a terrible sign. I ran to her and called her name but it was too late. I lost my little girl tonight. She had a distended belly and had the runs sometime during the day. The goats have been getting barley to supplement this year's poor quality of hay and she was used to it, so it could not have been that. The only explanation is that she ate too much of the donkey's and bird's grain, which has wheat in it, a feed that is considered dangerous for goats. I feed the donkey away from the goats, but there is a spot where she might have been able to squeeze her head through or may have to get the grain. I am so so very sad. 

Pippin was my bottle fed baby. She was my baby, a cute little Nygerian Dwarf and Angora kid.  For a while she went to live at another home but she came back to me and I have loved her always. Sure, sometimes she was a bit of a pain, as bottle babies can be, but now that she was mature, a beautiful if not stunning two year old doeling, she was perfect. She was bred and although I do not know it for sure, I think she was carrying twins. 

My heart is broken. Goodbye my dearest little one. I will truly miss you. 

I spend a small fortune on hay nets. They are supposed to do three things: Keep the hay off the backs of the animals thereby keeping the fleece clean, save feed because they take a while to get it out of the net and then do not waste it as they do when they pull a whole mouthful out and it drops, and three, keep the waste down. 

I have not seen the sheep so much as attempt to eat the green feed from their hay net. They do eat the grain heads from green feed and if it is green enough, they will eat some of the grassy part, but mostly they regard it as straw and leave it alone. The goats have discovered that green feed has a little grain in it, not much, but some and they have mastered eating the grain and throwing out the rest. That is contrary to what is supposed to happen. I will try with hay when they devour and waste most of the bale they have. I think perhaps now they have learned to pull out what they want and discard the rest, the theory of no waste will not work. It does one thing and that is help keep the hay off the backs of the other animals, though. For a fibre farm, if that is the result, then it is successful. 

I took a short video of the goats eating the green feed, pulling out the straws and discarding them, then continuing to hunt for the ones that had any kernels on the ends. They do not tend to pick anything up if it falls to the ground though, being browsers. So, the waste is more than ever. 

The cows will likely do the best because they will eat whatever they get out of the net. The cow net has larger spaces and they should be able to learn how to access the feed in the net. It slows down feeding so they eat constantly basically, except when they are chewing their cud or sleeping. This is purportedly healthy for ruminants of all breeds. 

For the goats, hay net feeding green feed does NOT work! Now I know that, on to the next feed. I think alfalfa would still get into the fleece though. We shall see. I have one bale of alfalfa left and when the green feed is gone, I will give it a try. 

Hay nets for goats….the decision is pending.

Celia is the herd boss in the goat yard, not the  biggest by any means, but certainly the one who bosses the rest around. She is a great mother and has had quads every year. I want to keep at least two of her daughters this year, so she is for sale. She is hardy and strong and the best of everything, with the one exception that she is bossy. I think the goat yard will be better without her. 

This year she had a very strange birth. One doeling was still born, and looked like it was about 3 weeks overdue. Then she had the quads and when she expelled the placenta, a fetus of about 3 months was with it, aborted, of course. The smallest of the quads was sold as a bottle baby to ensure that she was going to be fed. The bigger sisters tended to push her away too much. She is well loved in her new home and her owner dotes on her. One of the remaining girls is being pushed away by the two strongest babies. I am thinking of removing her and bottle feeding her or supplementing her and letting her remain with the group. It is easier for me to bring her close, but harder on her. I suppose I will try the supplemental feedings first. That way she can remain with her family, though sometimes the mother will reject the baby if does not smell like her milk. Time will tell. 

There are two left from Daphne's quads and they are growing well and are bouncy and strong. Soon it will be weaning time. I think about milking Daphne but I dont use milk except for soap and occasionally to make cheese. I suppose I could get a supply and make some cheese and freeze some for soap making in the winter. She is not a very cooperative milker though, or at least was not last year. 

There is one other kid from the Angora, 13. The baby is half Nigerian and female and has a smooth coat which is very soft, most like cashmere. I will have to wait and see how it goes. Hand spinners love Nigora fibre for spinning. The Angora goat is an excellent mother, but stays well out of Celia's way, as does Daphne. The young goats, Sofi and Pippin, Tommy and Timmy, avoid  Celia and the bit Nubians do too. The rest of the herd tends to get along fine. Celia would be a great goat with one of her babies for a small family, just on her own. She is a protective mother and also teaches her babies to fend for themselves very well. I will be sorry to see Celia go, but I don't want to add too many new goats and keep the older ones too. So, Celia is for sale. Sorry goatie. Time for greener pastures for you and thank you for all your wonderful babies! 

Last year I bred the Nygerian Dwarf goats to an Angora buck and the result were 19 baby Nygoras. But Nygora goats do have to be shorn, just like Angora goats only if they have a type A fleece, which looks very much like Angora. Types B and C will shed their coats, but if they are shedding, it has been left too long on the goat and is likely too matted to use. That is the case with my goaties, but who knew? The shearer cancelled twice and I am waiting for him to rebook, if that ever happens. In the meantime, the Angora buckling and his mom will still have decent fibre, but the Nigerian cross Angora goats have been left longer than they should be and the fibre is too matted to use. Too bad, but I know now. 

These goats will be bred to a Nigerian buckling this fall and to the Angora buck the year after. That is cross #1 of Angora/Nigerian Dwarf, then cross #2 will be the cross to a Nigerian bringing the goat to 75% Nigerian, then back to an Angora then being 50/50 again. The advantage of doing it this way, though it takes 4 years, is that the off spring should have some colour to them. Angora fibre is usually white, but there are coloured Angoras. Nigerians come in a multitude of colours and patterns, so by the fourth generation, some of the colour hopefully will be in the babies. 

The other way to do it is to breed the crosses and then breed the crosses to each other so long as they are not related. That is harder to do with a small herd because the babies in my herd are all sired by the same dude in a single year. I would have keep two bucks and separate the does in order to do it the other way. That might be a possibility down the road. For example, Sofi is a Nigerian/Angora cross from Daphne last year. Next year when the Angora buckling gets to breed, then a buckling that is cross bred and not Daphne's can breed with Sofi. Then it is Nygora to Nygora. Both arrangement might be possible. I will see how it goes. In the meantime, these little F1 (first generation) hybrid Angora/Nigerian cross goats are shedding their lovely fibre and it is a mess. I wonder what the new fibre will be like for next year. Wait and see!

Pippin was a little bottle fed Nygora kid, goat kid , that is. She was sold to a very great home near by, but came back when her new owner went away to college. Pippin had so much love, care and attention when she was a bottle baby and then at her new home, that she feels she should still always be the centre of attention. She has learned to be a goat, now, but gets herself into all kinds of trouble, like getting her head stuck in the fence. The wind was fierce today and the temparture has dropped to minus twenty and is still on its way down. The north wind is what makes the cold so bad tonight though. All the animals are huddled in their shelters and the sheep are in the barn. They ate and drank and again retreated. One of the goats has not been doing well, not since I got her. As a matter of fact, since the Nubians arrived, I have had sorrow, for most of them have died. The veterinarian was not useful in helping me to determine exactly how to accommodate them and ensure their health, but only to say they required a different wormer as they had developed resistance to white wormers. They have everything now, that I can possibly think of, incluiding copper wire filaments which they get in a capsule form. These filaments lodge in their bellies for up to six months delivering a very small dose of copper, which goats require. In our heavy iron laden water, the molybdenum binds the copper somehow and it is not available. The goats have mineral, mineralized looose salt, alafalfa in small quantities and all the good hay they wish for. Because of the poor health of the Nubian doe, I have taken her out of the shelter and fed her separately and today, I brought two huge fork loads of hay to the shelter so she would not have to brave the cold wind. Still, she is failing and I don't know what else to do. 

Pippin had a large wormload when she was young as well, but it was corrected when she was in her new home and she appears to be well and trhiving, thank goodness. Next year she will be the mother to her own little kids, bred to a pure bred Nigerian Dwarf buck. It is a long process to produce coloured Angora and Nigerian crossbred goats, at least four generations. Pippin is just the first. She is pretty cute though, isn't she?

In an attempt to save hay and keep the sheep's coats free of vegetative matter, I am testing an idea. This is grid wall, the sort of panels that one would find in a store with many things hanging from them on special hooks. The panels are sturdy heavy guage wire, so the sheep and goats will not be able to bend them as they do fence wires. In this trial, I want to see if the critters are able to feed and not spill so much hay. In the current model, they are able to stick their heads in a vertical opening in the fence and select a mouthful. There are several problems inherent with that feeder. 

One is that the sheep and goats choose what they like the best, leaving the rest. 
Two is that they are able to pull a large mouthful from the feeder, despite the slanted slat openings, and in doing so, they drop hay on the ground. Once on the ground, it is not retrieved and becomes waste. 
Three is the waste hay still in the feeder has to be forked out every second day for sure. The sheep and goats feel they have eaten all they like and cry for more feed. In all fairness, they do not digest stems with high lignen content, so the hay left is usually coarse stems, but there is often a lot of good hay amongst the stems. For the goats, I have been removing the hay and using it for bedding in their barn and shelter and also putting it in a large container for them to sift through one more time before it becomes bedding. 
Four. The small size of the goat kids enables them to fit through the stlat openings in the feeder and enter the feeder. Then, of course they can select exactly what they want without competing for it. The problem is that they poop and pee on the hay, plus bring manure on their feet. This spreads worms if the others actually eat the soiled hay, but generally, once it is in such a state, it is totally wasted and not the little ones in the feeder or the big ones outside the feeder will touch it. 

Currently there is about 50% waste with the goats and slightly less with the sheep. Tomorrow I will see how the goats have done judging by how much hay is left in the feeder and how much is on the ground. if they have managed to eat the hay, then the next step is to build feeders. 

The feeders will be only 2 feet of this grid, put on a plywood tray to catch that which falls and the tray will be elevated from the ground about 18 inches. In one previous feeder trial, the problem with an elevated feeder was in the winter, the snow was much higher than the 18 inches and the feeder was frozen to the ground, so it was abandoned. I am not sure yet how to fix that problem. 

There are two groups of goats that have only been together for a week. The Nubians, though much larger than the Nigerian Dwarf does, are easily pushed around. The herd boss, Celia, runs around selecting what she wants and using her horns to move any of the goats out of her way. They now respect her and when they see her coming. they move. The gentle Nubians and the kids from last year do not eat when the other group of Nigerians are at the feeder, so they do not get the best feed. With this new grid system, the Nigerians cannot select morsels that are to their liking as much, and must take what they can get in the mouthful. 

I will try this for a week and monitor the progress. Hopefully it will solve the hay wasting problem, or at least reduce it immensely, especially once the tray is at the bottom to collect the waste. I fully expect kid goats and lambs to use the tray as a play area though and there is not much that can be done about it when the time comes. Besides, they are too cute to get upset with!

The ram lambs were born in May through June of 2014. These seven little boys were weaned in October and were still very small, so they went in with the little goats kids and the two Nubian does for company and warmth. The Nubians and kids have a round granary as their barn and it does keep them totally out of the wind. With the 14 bodies in the barn, the temperature can be twenty degrees warmer than the outside. For night that have been especially cold this winter, the extra warmth provided by the sheep has been good for the goats and the lambs too. 

But goats and sheep do have different nutritional requirements. Goats are browsers and eat from the top down given their choice, whereas sheep are grazers and like short grass the best. They both eat weeds and the goats prefer tree leaves to grass. Good hay for the sheep and goats will have lots of natural weeds in it. But the does benefit from the extra protein and minerals in alfalfa, though for rams, it is too rich and sometimes the extra calcium can cause urinary calcuali, little calcium stones that must pass the urethra, a painful condition. Baking soda helps with that, but prevention is better, so now that the lambs are older, it was necessary to separate them. Goats require greater amounts of copper in their diets, but too much copper is harmful to some breeds of sheep, so the concern for feeding minerals and mineral salts is also there. 

Moving the ram lambs is always a process. They are not tame and friendly, but not wild. They have not been haltered, nor ever fed grain, so leading them with the lure of a grain bucket means nothing to them and haltering one is a process. The term "jumbuck" is a young lamb on a tether, likely originating from the jumping and bucking they do. My poor arm and shoulder muscles will never be the same. I moved the first that way and then my son devised a plan. I had already thought that plan through, but felt I could not execute it on my own. Since he was there to help, we put the ewes in the barn, then opened and closed several gates, and along with the border collie, Robbie, got the rest of the ram lambs into the other goat pen. The goats were then easy to lure out with a bucket of grain, since they all knew what that was and they followed me to the pen where the lambs left from, to be with the rest of the goats. 

Then war broke out. The two herd bosses, Cecelia, the Nygerian doe and Mattie, the Nubian doe, had words. Cecelia has horns and knows how to use them. She won. The herd is still divided and I have been feeding them separately and will continue to do so for the next while until they sort things out between themselves. I noticed the Nygerians were sleeping in the shelter, while the Nubians still had their barn. What I would like to see is all the goats in the barn. The Nygerians are pregnant, but the Nubians are not bred this year. 

And poor Raven, the lone little buck was left with the ram lambs and has gone hoarse crying for his girls. I will move him along with the two little bucklings when the weather warms up somewhat. Oh the fun with the critters never does end!

In the summer I bought two registered purebred Nubian does and one buckling. The buckling did not make the winter, and one of the does is very thin. She was not in great condition even when I purchased her, but I thought I could easily fix that. She is dangerously poor though and does not respond to anything I have tried. These does and the doelings are not being bred this year. Matty is likely strong and well enough to breed, but I will give her a year off to become in prime condition first. Then hopefully, I will have acquired a Nigerian buckling ready to breed and big enough to breed her, or possibly a large red Boer goat and the offspring would be meat goats, not milk goats. The Nubians were bought to milk. The Nygoras arnd the cashmere goats are fibre goats, however, I did have some Angora fibre goats butchered last fall and I must say, goat meat is fantastic. 

The goats are houses with ram lambs to help provide some warmth in the barn. The more bodies the warmer the barn and sheep tend to stay a lot warmer than goats because of their heavy wool coats. They all snuggle together in their round barn for the night. 

Not this year, but the next, the Nygora doelings will be big enough to breed and they should start to produce some goats with coloured fleeces. They will remain small though. Pippin is the largest of the doelings, but Sofi is not far behind her. Tommy and Timmy are tiny bucklings. 

Goats are really intersting creatures, but not the easiest animals to keep healthy. They are highly susceptible to worms and many have started to become resistant to chemcial wormers. They do not like grass, but will eat it if there is nothing else. What they really love are weeds and leaves. They will completely deforest all they can reach if they are allowed in a bush. Last summer, they went into the fenced part of the bush and completely demolished the caragana shrubs that were heavily populated there. I am hoping the other part of the bush will be fenced off for them this year. Would I recommend keeping goats for pets? You bet! Come and visit them sometimes.

Hello. My name is Tommy and I am a baby Nygora. My mother is a Nigerian Dwarf goat, a rather small dairy breed with a hair coat and my father was an Angora. Angora goats are large and their hair is harvested as mohair. When my dad was really young, just a kid, his hair was kid mohair. My mother had four of us, but my brothers were sold to another farm and Sofi and I got to stay. I have little horn buds and will have horns, but I am four months old. I am much smaller than my sister, Sofi, but she is not very big either. Our buddy, Timmy, is a real Angora kid, a little boy, just like me. When I get big and older, my hair is not going to become coarse, but his will. Because I so small, I can fit in places I am not really supposed to go, like inside the feeder. I pooped in it, ha ha. I didn't really do it on purpose. It just sort of happened. Now the farmer has to clean it out so that the other goats and sheep don't eat it, but they wouldn't anyhow, not even accidentally. 

As a Nygora, my hair, or fibre, will have to be cut off twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall and it can be combed, carded and spun into strong, but very soft garments. Wouldn't you love a blanket of something so cuddly? It doesn't hurt me, but I am not fond of being sheared. When I am grown up, I am going to marry some other girls and have kids of my own. Aren't I so adorable?

Nygora goats are crosses between Nigerian Dwarf and Angora goats. They are usually much smaller than Angoras, and have very fine fibre that is extremely soft. Some Nygora goats will have guard hairs, the real goat hair mixed in with the Angora like fibre, but others will have pure less curly than Angoras fibre.