Five For Dinner

It's coming up on Thanksgiving, so I wanted to say how thankful I am for my goat Jezebel, or as we call her, Jelly. While she's always been a great goatie, this was the year she really stepped up.

Last year about this time we took Jelly and her sister Betty to a friend's nearby farm to be bred. We thought it was unusual they should be in season on the same day, but it turned out to be a good thing. And then five months later, since they were bred at the same time, they had babies on the same day.

Jelly went first at her usual 2am, surprising us with 4 kids. Sadly we lost one because we didn't get out to the barn in time to help, but two does and this cute little buck with hearts survived. Betty went later in the day, giving us two kids, a buck and doe.

Sadly we lost Betty two days later to milk fever. This is where Jelly stepped up. Luckily for everyone, she is a great producer, over 2 gallons per day at the peak, and she was able to feed all five of the baby goats herself.

Of course all this made Jelly very hungry!

Jezebel, The Fridge Buster

One of the interesting parts of owning dairy goats is to measure how much milk they give. We signed up with a group called Dairy Herd Improvement, who keeps records of our goats' production. We send milk samples and the weight of the milk from each goat per month to their lab in Salem, Oregon. They measure the butterfat and protein content, and bacteria count, then send the results on to the USDA's database in Provo, Utah.

Our best volume producer by far is our Toggenburg, Jezebel. I sat all afternoon yesterday with a calculator adding up the total weight for all of 2009. Wow! Jezebel gave a whopping 2300.8 pounds of milk. That's over a ton! And, that was even with her baby sneaking quarts in the afternoon when she thought no one was looking. What a good goatie!

One of Jezebel's nick-names is the 'fridge-buster', because she gives so much milk. But, it's also because three heavy glass half-gallon jars full of Jelly's milk cracked the plastic shelf on the refrigerator door, sending them all crashing to the floor. She truly busted the fridge!

The Sensational Jezebel

Jezebel, although we sometimes call her Jelly-bel, is one of my Toggenburg dairy goats.The Toggenburg breed comes from Toggenburg Valley in Switzerland. They have been bred for over a hundred years just for cheese because their milk has a unique flavor.

Jelly gives us the most milk of all our goats. Her record last year was over two gallons in one day! She takes the longest to milk because she gives us so much. And, yes, her cheese is yummy!

We call Jelly our herd queen because she is always first at the gate for treats and is quick to tell the other goats who's boss. Secretly, though, she is very sweet and loves a good shoulder scratch.

First Baby Goats Of 2010

My Toggenburg dairy goat Jezebel was first to have her babies this Spring. There are three more goats expecting. She started at 11:30 P.M. The veterinarian came at 12:30 A.M. Everyone was finally finished and very, tired by 1:00 A.M.

Her babies were two little boys. One was dark brown and white, and the other was a rare solid white with blue eyes! We named them Tony Stark and Rhodey, after characters in Ironman.

The next goat to have babies is my favorite goat Flopsy. I'm sure they will be beautiful like her, and I'm excited to have Flopsy's milk for cocoa in the morning again.