Today, my youngest daughter and I made some Ginger biscuits. I must say that one of my favourite cooking books is one of our oldest, the Common-sense Cookery Book. Both my wife and I have different editions of this book and it is a really good and reliable source of recipes.
Anyway, yum … Ginger Biscuits
Yeah, right.
Today, I had the goats out in the garden having a browse. Normally, the goats are well behaved and leave most of the trees alone. Of course, it is in the nature of goats, that they will see a tree and try it. If they like it, they will eat it.
There are some trees that you don’t want your goats to eat. Take my lovely wife’s hakea for example. We have been nurturing this along for a while and they usually take a while to establish and for them to flower. At the moment, the hakea is about 2 meters tall and has had one inflorescence.
The goats decided that it was at the perfect height to have a go at (tee hee) so they did.
My lovely wife was a little put out by their antics, so I had to come up with a solution.
I had a couple of 8 foot star posts, some fencing wire and some 1.5m rose-wood stakes. MacGyver time!
I drove the posts into the ground about 1.3m apart and then tied 4 stakes across the bottom of the star-posts making a box. Then I tied another 4 stakes at about 1.5m above the lower stakes.
Then I tied 5 rose-wood stakes between the cross pieces making a series of “palings” from the stakes. This gives me a 4 sided cage around the hakea that the goats can still get their noses in (some browsing of the hakea is still good). This will encourage the hakea to bush up without the goats pushing the plant over, break the main stems, strip the bark … all of the things that goats like to do when they find a young plant that they like the taste of.
There is no such thing as a goat proof fence … if you really want one of these, consider a concrete bunker.
Oh well, I needed 80% to pass the exam, but I only got 70%. Still, not bad since I’ve only been working with goats for a short time and I have yet to see a goat show. I’ll be going along to some of the major shows so that I can get more experience and learn more about goats and goat judging. The downfall of the newbie.
We have the Royal Hobart show coming in October and a number of other shows around the state in the coming months, so there should be plenty of time for us to get more experience at goat judging.
My goals have still been achieved, I wanted to do the Goat Judging course to learn more about breeding goats and what it is that makes a good goat. I have learned an enormous amount while studying for the exam and there is still loads that I can learn. I just have to keep my mind and ears open.
The path to a better herd of goats is still a long one and stretched out in front of me. My goat mentor took 10 years to get her herd to a level where she was consistently breeding such high quality goats.
Like anything that is worth doing, it is worth learning as thoroughly as you can and with as much energy as you can devote to it. Besides, learning with my goats is such a pleasant experience, they are lovely, active, energetic and just plain funny animals. On top of that, it is an activity that 3/4 of my family is participating in.
Now I am planning my breeding program with a view to correcting some of the faults in my goats and improving their quality. I can only do that if I know what those faults are, so … win!
We trimmed the goats hooves today. Not such a huge job because there are only four goats. Two 2 year olds and two 8 month old goats.
The older goats hooves were in a bit of a state, lots of wet weather and not a lot of rough hard surface to wear their hooves down naturally. I think that they are missing some calcium in their diet because their hooves are delaminating a bit. Dirt and crud is getting in between the white hoof material (sole) and the fibrous horny outer shell of the hoof. This is also because of the wet weather.
We just got some kelp to improve their diet a bit, so that should help somewhat (kelp helps to improve their coat and hooves as well as improving their gut flora.
The kids hooves were much easier, the hooves are a lot smaller and softer. Cutting Darius was a bit of a problem, though. I cut a little too much off a rear toe and he bled a little bit. I immediately cleaned the hoof with methylated spirits and then ran in and got some iodine to apply to the bleed.
The blood vessels that run through the hoof are not very big and it is difficult to transfer any bacteria into the hoof through such a small vessel (particularly because after they are cut, when the goat puts pressure on the sole, the sole flexes and closes the vessels). Nevertheless, better to be safe than sorry, so the iodine helps to clean the wound. The bleed lasted for about 5 minutes and then it was all clean again. Still, I’m keeping the goats in the back yard for a couple of hours before they go back into their field (less chance of faecal material being in contact with the hoof before it is better healed).
I need to research the delamination problem and see what I can do to prevent or reduce it.
This weekends hoof trimming was only a light trim. I will need to do some more trimming and rasping in the coming weeks to get them into better shape.
Getting the hooves into better shape reduces the pressure on the goats pastern and so improves their gait and, longer term, improves the goats back health.
I could not have done the hoof trimming without the help of my lovely wife.
We have a couple of fish tanks. Two of the tanks have Cichlids, Red Jewel cichlids and a bunch of Lake Malawi cichlids. The Red Jewels are fairly aggressive animals so we have kept the young Lake Malawi cichlids separate in a smaller tank while they grow up a bit.
When we were first setting up the large tank, we populated it with a school of 30 odd Neon Tetra. When the Red Jewels were put into the tank, the population of Neon Tetras plummeted to zero in just 4 days.
We’ve put a larger Chinese Algae Eater into the large tank (about 8cm) and it has survived pretty well. A new addition to the large tank is a pair of Clown loaches, they have been having the best time in there.
The small tank, however, is a different kettle of … fish. The cichlids are very nervous. Whenever we go anywhere near the tank, they hide. It looks very much like they are trying to hide something behind their tank furniture. I think that the fish have set up a meth-lab in the tank and they are worried that we are going to put them in to the police.
They are still very young, and I hope that they grow out of their awkward hideaway tendencies.
It’s time for trimming the goats hooves. After a fairly wet and cold mid-winter, the goats hooves are starting to look a bit messy. Inspecting the kids hooves shows that the horn has got a bit long.
 image and detail from The Kebun website |
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The above shows a well trimmed goats hoof.
In the past, I have put the goats up on the milking stand and given them light trims. Mostly I have given them a light trim because the goats tend to wriggle around and I don’t like them having their neck in the stanchion while they can fall off and potentially injure themselves quite badly.
This time, I am going to put a lead on the goats collar and attach the collar to the fence while I get a helper (my lovely wife) to help control the goat while I trim.
The first thing to do is to clean the crud out of the hoof base, usually the frog (Caudal Aspect of the Sole) has grown over, the hoof wall (White Line) has started to separate from the sole (Anterior Aspect of the Sole) and some muck has pushed into the void created.
Cleaning off the hoof is necessary so that I can see what needs to be done, there is less material that will blunt the hoof trimming shears and the build-up that is pushing the hoof wall away from the sole is removed.
Next, I trim the tips of the hoof wall down to the sole and start trimming the hoof wall in between the two toes, moving around to the outside of the toe.
At this stage you can get an idea of the overgrowth of the pad when you look at the hoof overall. Because my goats don’t have much hard surface to wear their feet on, the pad will be a little overgrown too.
Usually, this is taking a clean line from the heel to the toe keeping the cut almost parallel with the top of the toe (slight angle … about 8o). I’ll smooth off any rough bits with the hoof rasp as well.
When doing this, make many shallow cuts rather than one big cut. Blood vessels can be ruptured in their toes if you take off too much. When the pad starts showing pink, it’s deep enough … any more and the goat’s foot will bleed and be a possible site for infection.
Keeping the goats hooves trimmed properly is important because a badly trimmed or untrimmed hoof puts pressure on their pastern's, this in turn puts pressure on their knees and hocks, then shoulders and hips and finally their spine. It’s not about making the goat look pretty, it is simply good husbandry.
When the goat’s hooves are trimmed, watch them move around, they should look like they are walking on tip-toes (because they are).
If your goats hooves have got out of hand (like over winter) plan to trim their hooves a couple of times rather that just going in and doing it all at once. This will give their feet time to adjust to the change in their hooves and will have a better outcome. Use an iodine solution (1/8th solution) on any blood-spots to help to prevent infection if they happen (and pay careful attention to the goat afterwards!).
Today we did our cadet judge exams. First we had a written examination. That was a lot of questions and lots of “oh damn … I knew the answer to that”. We had to achieve a score of 80% on the written exam, so we’ll have to wait to see how we went.
Next we went on to practical judging. Most of us brought goats and some other people in the dairy goat society kindly brought some more goats along for us to give us a wide range of animals to get out hands on.
It was all about chins, chines, lines and loins, girth and thurls, hips and other goat parts. I think that, overall, we all did very well with the help and mentorship of the senior judges that ran the course.
Now all we need to do is to get some practical experience with judging in the show ring. Hopefully, we will get some good help and knowledge from actual hands on.
This coming weekend is the final weekend of the goat judging course. Last weekend we covered a lot of the theoretical side of goats and judging. My youngest went very well and stayed pretty focussed for the whole time (mostly) with the aid of chocolate and biscuits. I’ve got to say, that my focus was also “enhanced” with the use of performance enhancers (chocolate, coffee and biscuits).
The three instructors were very helpful and we had loads of good discussion about goats and goat judging.
The agenda for next weekend is to finish the theory work and then sit an examination and a practical … so we are going to be bringing some goats along for the practical exam.
We will finish the course with a bar-be-queue lunch (not goat) so that should be nice. Hopefully, the three of us will do OK on the exams.
