The Goat Saga Part 4: Meet the Girls

Here are our four newbies...

This is Sargie.  She is alpha female and the most stand-offish of the bunch.  She is large and in charge.  All the names we could think of were super masculine... such as Sarge... so we made it Sargie to make it slightly feminine.  We think it fits her well.

Here is Sargie in the stanchion that John built.  John glanced on some pictures of stanchions online and this is what he came up with.  The little feeding bucket is temporarily McGuivered on with a hanger (temporarily right hun?) They get a scoop of rice, some cut up banana, and the elephant grass pictures whenever we milk them.  We also put salt on their rice for some minerals.  We need to get a proper salt lick for a more complete mineral array but this will do for now.

This is Honey.  Her name says it all.  She is the sweetest goat of the bunch in my opinion and has the best stand manners.  If I could have 10 just like her, I'd be in goat cheese heaven!

This is Honey's pikin that the Courtney kids named Boots.  As you can see in the picture, it looks like she's wearing cute little knee-high black boots.

Mother and pikin together.  Boots is a female by the way. You can ever so faintly see her umbilical cord hanging down.  These goats are about 2 weeks old in these pics.

These next two pics are my lazy attempt to get a picture of Sargie's daughter Lucy.  She sitting in the background on top of the box.

Goat Saga Part 3: The Goat Milking Machine John Built

Right now John is out of town working on a well and I'm huddled under my mosquito net typing away with the light off and only the light from my computer screen glowing.  It is dark outside and the lights inside attract these crazy large flying ants.  I sought this shelter and turned off the lights in the rest of the house so I hopefully don't wake up to a living room and kitchen floor scattered with these flying ants in the morning! One lone ranger ant made it into my mosquito net and occasionally attacks my ear as I spastically swat it away.

Oh Salone!

Ok where we were we? Oh yes, so we were/are having a bit of trouble milking the goats manually.  It just isn't as efficient at getting the milk out, as well as I'm having to do each teat separately due to the skittish nature of these goats. We decided it was worth it to invest in a milking machine.  John did his typical engineering research to see what a milking machine requires.  Basically you need some sort of vacuum, a vacuum tube, a teat suction, a milk tube, and a canister for the milk to go in as well as some fittings here and there.

One trip into town as well as using just some stuff we had around the house and my goat milking machine was complete!

John had the tubing and these little fitting from around the house.  These mason jars I use regularly to ferment stuff or store foods.

The vacuum... My good ole trusty breast pump! lol!

We bought that teat suction at a grocery store here.  It was a nipple to a baby bottle that John fitted on there.

Isn't that quite incredible?  I just have no vision for stuff like that!

The big question on all of your minds is "did it work"??

Sadly no :(  The idea was pure genius! But the pump was just not strong enough and the teat suction was not properly fitted either. 

So we decided to buy one and have it sent with our the family of one of teammates that is coming to visit mid July.  We could have bought this kit. But John decided to outsource the parts and we were able to put one together for cheaper and has a stronger pump and what looks like nicer parts.  I'll let you know how it all goes when it gets here next month!

Goat Saga Part 2

Winnie's milk supply didn't hugely succeed that of Gingersnap... so we did some research and found that... Hey! the kids are stealing all the milk! I knew this was the case but I just figured that they must have extra!

So we put Billy and Charcoal in a separate place at night.  I was getting more milk from Winnie the next morning, maybe just under 1/2 cup in the morning. But at about the same time this happened... Gingersnap would NOT let me milk her! We had come so far in our milking relationship, but Ginger just decided to put her foot down... or her knees... or her hind legs.  If I was going to milk her John would have to hold her bag legs and this was just not sustainable... nor worth it for a 2 Tbs. a day! So after about a week of struggling, we had to do the inevitable... we traded Gingersnap and Charcoal and also bought another mother/kid pair.  So now we have 6 goats in the little goat house!

I will introduce you to them soon and share how we are getting them used to being milked.  I just wanted to share one other thing about Winnie currently... now SHE'S giving me a hard time while being milked.  One of her nipples looks like its got some pimply type stuff going on.  I don't think its mastitis, I think its a topical staph infection.  Regardless, I have abstained from milking that side while it heals and spray it with antibiotic ointment (teat dip) daily.  I hope it improves because currently she's my 'big producer' when I separate Billy at night.

Monday: The Goat Pump John Made Part 3
Tuesday: The Newbies Part 4

Since it is Friday I leave with you some cute pics of Aden for the weekend.  (Note: Babies are HARD to photograph without it being blurry!)

 

Goat Saga Part I (of like 20)

So many of you know that we bought two goats, Gingersnap and Charcoal.  Well we started milking Gingersnap as soon as John built me a stanchion.  It took a few sessions for her to let me milk her but she did.  But at each milking (morning and evening) I barely got a tablespoon!

What??? There is no way I can make milk for Aden, and for cheese, and for kefir and all the other things I want to do with goats milk on an 1/8th cup a day! So we bought another pair...

Meet Awinnabe (we call her Winnie for short and she was also formerly known as Bertha) and her male kid Billy (aka Billy the kid)

When anybody from America (or europe, south america, canada, etc.) comes to Sierra Leone they are called Apoto (or white man) ALL THE TIME! If you drive through the bush all the kids run out from their houses and point and yell "Apoto" until you wave or acknowledge their existence. Well we asked what "black man" is in the Themne language and it is "Awinnabe."  So whenever anybody calls us "Apoto" we point right back at them and say "Awinnabe" The adults usually laugh and the kids are a bit confused.

Ok back to the goats, well John didn't like her former name Bertha (I seriously loved it!) So since she is a black goat we changed her name to Awinnabe (phonetically: A win ah bee). Her kid was a bit younger and we're hoping she hadn't started weaning Billy quite yet and would thus have a larger milk supply. 

Come back tomorrow to find out if she did!

11 month update

Can you believe Aden is 11 months old????  In another month he'll be a year!!!! crazy!

Look at that face! He can't believe it either!

Unfortunately that face is not a face of confusion but one of "I don't feel so good." Yesterday the poor boy had a low-grade fever and I thought it might just be teething, but then today it was back again and got up to about  102.5 :(  We tested for malaria though and it was negative (Thank you Lord!)

Stats

Weight: 20ish lbs?
Height: ??

I don't know why I even put this section.  My faulty scale went kapootz the other day.  Aden doesn't seem to be gaining too much weight but everybody says "he looks bigger" Maybe I just can't tell cause I see him everyday.  
 
Milestones

Teeth: #7 just popped through (and mom/robin... not literally #7, some letter of the alphabet that I can't remember... didn't pay too much attention in pedo class) 

Naps: Aden is down to 2 naps a day usually between an hour and half to two hours each.
 He is very good at going down for naps and sleep, almost never a peep out of him.

Food: Well up until this month he's been down to about 4-6 breastfeedings a day and 3 smallish food meals.  About two weeks ago I took away one of the day time feeds and replaced it with frozen breastmilk (got a huge stash built up!) And Monday I took away the other day time feed so now I am just breastfeeding day and night.  What I didn't take into account was that Aden doesn't really like the taste of frozen breastmilk.  Due to the enzyme lipase, it has a bit of a metallic taste to it once frozen (or at least mine does). He eventually drinks it when he gets thirsty enough but he definitely prefers fresh.  I started fasting (not food, something else) to petition God that Aden would get used to the frozen breastmilk.  I would just cry if I stored up probably 400 oz of breastmilk for nothing! Its also been a little emotional for me with the weaning.  I just feel a certain loss over losing that bonding time I get with Aden.  I'm sure its the hormones :) Aden has been getting a little better at eating table food.  He LOVES tomatoes and likes chicken, avocado, bananas, mangoes, and pineapple.  I have to save the tomatoes for the end of the meal or else he won't eat his protein/fat lol!

*Also, Aden has taken a few little steps here and there but no walking quite yet. 

Here is one last picture, I had to put it in because I think its kind of cute, but you may think its sad.  Here is his "I don't feel good, mom please put down the camera and pick me up" face:

 

Party Rocking

Here is a video of Aden dancing.  He LOVES to dance.  Anytime we put music on... he stops whatever he is doing and crawls as quickly as little legs can take him over to the source of the music.

Not sure why the video quality is so poor (operator error I'm sure!) and turn it up loud if you want to hear the music!

Computer is Brokey

Just a quick note to say the reason I haven't been blogging is because my computer died! We took it in and its the motherboard.  It would cost about as much to replace the motherboard as to buy a new computer so I think we'll be doing that.  For now I will be mooching off John's computer but I still haven't gotten in the groove of blogging with it because I have to download some programs to make picture upload easier.  I will try and get myself in gear for this upcoming week.  Thanks to everybody who let me know they missed it!