As part of my preparation for the eventual farm, I’ve started a work-for-learning trade with Boulder Creek Goat Farm. I had contacted several local farms via email and phone about a chance to work in return for some basic goat care lessons, but this was the only one that responded. You can read more about them on their website. This is the story of my first day of “school”.
I woke up on this fine Saturday morning at 4:30am. A shower, morning chores and breakfast, then a 60-plus miles to Boulder Creek to meet up at 7:30am with Sarah, one of the farm owners. She raises Sable Saanens. Most Saanens are white, but there is a recessive gene that makes them come in a variety of colors. Saanens are known as one of the top dairy goat breeds and average around 150lbs. They grow till about 4 years of age; the does on this farm are a couple years old and about 125lbs. The farm is on a hillside in the middle of the Santa Cruz Mountains, about 2 minutes on Bear Creek Road from the town of Boulder Creek. After introductions, we went straight to work. My first task was cleaning out Cleopatra the emu’s poop from her pen while Sarah fed her and freshened her water. This went into a small fenced area to compost.
After emu care, Sarah gave me an overview of the barn. The barn is roughly 100 feet long. A hallway runs the length of the barn; the 7 stalls and milking station are lined up along the other side of the barn. Each doe and her pre-weaned kids have their own stall. This makes sure that every goat gets enough to eat. Feed is a grain mixture served into a tray attached to the stall wall. Each stall has a door leading outside to individual sunning decks and fenced pens. The goats are free to go in and out as they please. Another door at the far end of the barn opens to a pen where the two bucks live. Sarah gave me a two foot piece of wood to prod them out of the way when we visited them. Given that the bucks way more than I do the stick keeps them from crowding in when we brought them food.
Onward to milking! We milked two does this morning. The milk stand was first cleaned with a baby wipe, then a doe was brought over. Even though they’d been feeding their kids, they knew the routine and eagerly trotted over to the stand. This is likely because they get extra feed during the milking. The milking stand is a platform about a foot off the ground with a single vertical wall on the narrow end. There’s a slot in this wall that the doe puts her head through (and a bowl of treats on the other side). You then slide a bar over so she can’t retract her head. This isn’t such a big deal while milking, but the stand is also used when trimming hooves (more on that later) and other goat care.
Milking was way easier than I expected, though I still have a lot to learn. First we washed our hands with homemade goat milk soap, then cleaned the udder with more baby wipes, brushing the loose hair off. Cleaning before and after milking helps prevent mastitis–an infection that contaminates the milk and is painful for the goat. My first few tries, I barely got any milk out. Sarah corrected me several times and finally I started getting the hang of it. The key seems to be to grab a bit of udderabove the teat, otherwise you don’t get enough milk in the teat to squirt out. You should be able to feel the milk move through the teat in a strong surge, forcefully squirting into the container. By the end of milking two goats (each of us on one teat per goat), I was able to maintain a rhythm and getting big squirts of milk into the container. We milked into clean plastic juice containers, which surprised me at first but made sense after seeing the post-milking care. To ensure freshness, the milk containers are immediately capped and go into a chest fridge to quickly cool. Sarah said this, along with diet and breed, is important to keep milk from tasting goaty.
When both does were milked, all the goats were led out to play and forage on the hillside while we cleaned the stalls. Each stall’s floor is about 3/4 covered with alfalfa hay. Sarah explained that though it’s more expensive than straw (she pays $14/bale rather than $9), she likes it for two reasons: it’s way more nutritious if the goats choose to eat it and it’s not as slippery so the kids have better traction. Daily cleaning involved sweeping the loose alfalfa under the sunning deck where it would compost, covering the poop/pee in the stall with fresh alfalfa, and adding a fresh flake (portion of a bale) of alfalfa to each sunning deck to supplement the feed and forage.
Stall cleaning done for the moment, we went outside to play with the goats. Sarah explained that socialization is very important for the goats. Her farm is a 4-H Club teaching farm that, besides selling milk/cheese, shows goats so they have to be acclimated to being held and around strangers. The goats were nowhere to be seen when we exited the barn, but as soon as we started walking up the hill, they came chasing after us. We sat on a rock, goats surrounding us. Sarah pulled one of the more skittish kids on her lap to get her used to being held while the rest of the goats sniffed at and nibbled gently at us. Some of the rambunctious kids even jumped on us!
Playtime was over. We herded the goats back to the barn. Oops, I accidentally left one of the stall doors open so all the goats went in (and then out the other side to the stall’s pasture)! Sorting out the goats into their respective stalls was both fun and frustrating. They really can be stubborn… I learned how to pick up a kid (just grab it from underneath and support the body with both arms) and never to leave a door open unless I want the goats to go through it.
More chores! Charlotte needed her hoofs trimmed. Sarah does this roughly every 3 months, though each goat grows their hooves at a different rate and may require trimming more often. The doe was put on the milking stand and given a bit of feed to distract her while Sarah trimmed the excess hoof with a pair of special shears. Just like clipping a cat’s claws, hoof trims don’t hurt the goats but that doesn’t mean they enjoy the process. This is also the time to clean out caked dirt from the hoof using the point of the shears. Sarah mentioned that she noticed her goats seem to always dislike the right rear roof being trimmed and will often kick. By sitting on the milking stand platform and leaning against the goat so it can’t move as much, this keeps them (mostly) from kicking. Always brush iodine onto freshly trimmed hooves to prevent infection. After the trimming, Sarah gave the goat a quick inspection, looking for scabs, ticks on the udder and signs of worms.
Parasites are, unfortunately, part of a goat’s existence. Worms make a goat anemic so the way to check for them is to look at the membrane on the inside of the lower eyelid and the gums. Both should be a healthy pink, not pale white. Each goat is different so it’s important to compare only to the goat’s previous coloring, not to other goats. Worming medication is given with a needless syringe. Dosage is determined by the weight of the goat. To administer the medication, the head is held firmly and the syringe is stuck in the side of the mouth along the cheek. This triggers the cud chewing and swallowing reflex so the medication will go down the esophagus when squirted in. If you squirt anything directly into the goat’s mouth, they may breathe it in rather than swallow it. Charlotte didn’t like her medication much, but a small scoop of feed kept her from sulking too long.
We then did a deep clean of one of the empty stalls. Normally the deep clean happens every two weeks but this one had been left for a month because of the weather. Over time, the alfalfa bedding mats together into a solid sheet from the weight of the goat as well as the moisture from the urine. Sarah said we’d do it in stages, not realizing that I’m actually in pretty good shape. I used a hoe to break up the bedding and pushed it out the door, where Sarah used a broom to sweep it into the pen’s compost pile. When the stall was scraped clean of the last bits of bedding, she sprinkled some baking soda onto the floor. This helps prevent lice and odor. Sarah was so impressed by my hard work that she gave me a tall glass of cold goat’s milk to drink while I rested. I don’t like the taste of plain milk, but that glass of fresh raw goat’s milk was incredibly yummy, with no taste/scent of goat at all!
I finished up by sweeping the barn hallway while Sarah organized the milking area. She showed me her small koi pond as we walked back to my car. We agreed I’d come back the next day. I returned home, covered in alfalfa bits and slightly more knowledgeable than I was this morning. I feel confident that within a few months I’ll be able to handle the daily routine without any help. I had a lot of fun and am looking forward to going back tomorrow. The more I learn now, the more I’ll be able to give my goats the best care when I have my own farm.