Homestead Rescue Update #3 – Goats & Wood House

Drought tolerant goats? I still laugh every time I think about that line in the show, but props to the producers for trying to tie it in somehow. I’m not sure any animal that needs water to survive is drought tolerant, especially an animal in milk, but I totally appreciate the effort to help us produce more of our own food. In this post, I’ll fill you in on why we ended up with goats in the show and how it worked out for us.

Why we got “drought tolerant” goats

True to the spirit of the show, the Raney’s do try to get resources for the homesteaders for free when possible. Prior to filming, the producers asked us about what kinds of livestock additions to the homestead we’d be interested in and any contacts we have that might be willing to donate said animals. Anthony’s employer happens to come from a family who has a long history of raising goats so we had a feeling this might be coming, but really weren’t sure until they announced the goat house build on camera.

As soon as the Raney’s told me they were building a goat house, in the little spare time I had around filming, I picked up a book on goats my mom had bought me a few years prior. I had never owned goats before and knew nothing about taking care of them, let alone milking.

Even when we knew we were going to be getting goats, we didn’t exactly know what they would be. First we were told a breeding pair (one male, one female), then a mom in milk and her baby. We had never seen these goats or had any info on them until they walked onto our property on camera! Turns out shortly before that day, the baby goat died for unknown reasons and as the goats were led in we found out that we were getting a mama goat fully in milk and another female to be her companion.

The day we got the goats

I can probably count on one hand the days in my life that were as stressful as the day we got these goats! It was the final day of filming when there felt like a million projects not yet finished and the producers had a million things they needed us to film to wrap-up the story line. The Raney’s and the crew had a hard stop time that afternoon to catch their plane to the next homestead. Things were already intense, we were exhausted and then the goats walk in, mama goat completely engorged after losing her baby! Misty with her most amazing, knowledgeable self jumped in quickly to start giving me directions on how to get the milking supplies ready, Clint (the Raney’s close friend and behind the scenes helper) threw together a perfect milking stanchion in record time and we got to work.

With the frustration of everybody else on set, Misty and I spent HOURS trying to milk this poor, terrified goat. With only two cameras on set, much of it did not get filmed and what did get filmed didn’t get aired despite Misty’s best efforts to educate viewers on the milking process.

That afternoon, the Raney’s and the crew packed up and here we were with two terrified goats who had just been moved from everything they had ever known…and one of them still wasn’t fully milked. I don’t know how long it had been since this goat had been milked before she came here. All I had was the training Misty gave me and her leaving me with the serious instructions that after hours of our efforts, we still needed to try to get more milk out of that goat that evening for her health and safety. This goat had never been trained for milking and again after hours of chasing this 200 pound goat and trying to restrain her to let us milk her, I had no luck.

The learning curve and water impacts

Those first few days, weeks (maybe months) were rough! I had barely any knowledge of what care and feed goats needed and even less knowledge of what it took to safely milk a goat for home diary. Please, please, never get an animal without properly being prepared for their care. You’ll never know everything, but the basics are a must. I scrambled to the feed store the day after we got the goats to get the supplies needed to at least keep them fed and alive.

Then every day following, Anthony and I had to team up, using all our strength to get this goat restrained in the milking stand while our confused 3 year old at the time screamed and boycotted, confused at why our attention was so suddenly so diverted. Each milking session took at least an hour, many ending with a kicked over bucket of milk and leaving us exhausted.

This was no ordinary goat either, but a super milker that produced a gallon a day! I poured over the internet, books and anything I could get my hands on to better understand how to clean, release, process and store this new milk supply, while still learning how to properly feed and care for goats and adjust to the sudden new time commitments of feeding, milking and stall cleaning on top of being a full time working mom.

Milking is not only a lot of work, but it takes a lot of water to keep the process sanitary if you plan to use the milk for human consumption and even for the health of the animal. There is obviously water the goats need to drink, water to clean the udders and water to clean all of the equipment (even if milking by hand you still have bowls/buckets, rags and jars to sanitize once or twice a day).

It gets easier…

After months of goat wrestling and wasted milk, it finally started to come together! The goat in milk got used to the routine and one miraculous day I was able to get her into the milk stand myself! She eventually got used to me milking her and rarely kicked at the bucket anymore. While it did use a lot of extra water and took a big time commitment each day, I did get a routine down for caring for the goats, processing the milk and equipment and it was quite rewarding having our own milk and cheese for a while. While we were still trying to figure out how we were going to keep up with the extra water demands, the goats really were helping us make a huge leap in being more self sufficient.

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And then it got really hard…

After almost six months of getting into a groove with the dairy goats, I started to get suspicious about their health. The goat in milk started testing positive for mastitis (another thing I learned how to do), but she also seemed old and a little underweight despite heavy feeding.

I tried all the available at-home mastitis cures, but with no luck decided to get a vet out to do an overall health check on the goats. In all my goat studies I had also learned (after getting the goats of course) that there are certain diseases that you always want to have goats tested for before bringing them to your property.

Many hundreds of dollars in vet bills later, I found out that my goats which had now become a loving part of our family and food supply had several of the worst goat diseases they could have! This included a relatively rare bacteria that was causing the mastitis test to read positive in one of the milking goats udders and several other blood diseases. The vet made it sound like a death sentence. Incurable, contagious and highly advised against breeding, we unfortunately decided that we could not afford to keep these goats and keep up the water supply they needed. I cried hard the night I got the news from the vet and had to make the tough decision. These goats were so affectionate once they got to know us, I had worked SO hard to care for them, we had more milk than we knew what to do with and I was really enjoying learning now to process my own dairy into cheese and other goodness to provide for my family. I had put so much effort into learning about these goats it was hard to swallow another failed attempt at homesteading.

While the vet recommended we put the goats down, we ended up giving them back to their prior owners. All signs indicated they had brought the diseases from their prior herd. The prior owners were willing the take the risk of bringing them back where we were not willing to take the risk of keeping them on our property and potentially spreading the diseases if we ever bred them or brought in other goats (both of which would be necessarily to continue our milk supply). We did recently get an update that both goats are alive and well despite all odds and over a year after they walked onto our property, the mama goat continues to give milk off her good udder.

The Goat House

With all of those hard times now behind us, I still miss the goats and the satisfaction of home milking, BUT we do also have the beautiful goat house the Raney’s helped us build from our own milled lumber!

We might not have goats in it currently, but it has been super helpful to have another useful structure! With the landslide making our pasture unusable for goats this year and still lacking water for livestock (see the update about our pond and landslide here), I decided instead to expand our chickens this year.

We raised our first ever meat chickens and with some minor modifications to the goat house, it made the perfect place for brooding chicks! It also came in very handy when I had to isolate a few of our egg laying chickens due to pecking order injuries. It’s a beautiful and useful addition to our homestead. I’m sure we are going to find plenty of uses for it for years to come!

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