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Zucchini Casserole
1 1/2 lbs. zucchini
1 1/2 lbs. ground chevon
1 medium onion
1/2 lb. cheddar cheese, shredded
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup goat milk
salt and pepper
Trim and slice zucchini (do not peel); cook in small amount of boiling water until just crispy tender; drain. Cook chevon in skillet until lightly brown, add chopped onion, cover, and cook over low heat until onion is barely tender. Season to taste.
In a lightly buttered two-quart casserole, arrange layers of zucchini, meat ,and cheese; repeat, ending with cheese. Combine mushroom soup and milk; pour over all. Sprinkle top with cheese. Bake in moderate oven (350 degrees) about 35 minutes, or until bubbly.
Nice served with a side of slice tomatoes and crusty bread.
Butter Pecan Ice Cream
1 cup chopped pecans
1/3 cup of sugar
2 T. butter
Since Kinder milk is so rich I just used all milk in the recipe.(no half and half and whipping cream) A total of 6 cups of milk.
2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
4 egg yolks
Pinch of salt
2 T. butter (use goat butter if you have it)
2 cups half and half
2 cups whipping cream
2 t. vanilla
In a heavy skillet over medium heat, combine sugar, butter and pecans, stirring constantly for about 6 minutes or until sugar has melted and browned. Remove from heat;spread nuts on foil. Once nuts have cooled, break into bit-size pieces and reserve.
In a medium saucepan, whisk together milk, brown sugar, egg yolks, and salt. Place pan over medium-high heat until mixture reaches a simmer. Lower heat to medium and whisk mixture for 5 minutes or until it begins to thicken. Strain mixture into a large bowl and whisk in butter until combined; then incorporate half and half and cream and vanilla. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled, about 2 hours.
Pour mixture into ice-cream maker; process as directed. When the ice cream is made stir in the reserved pecans.
Enjoy!
Orange Sherbet
1 (3oz.) pkg. orange jell-o
1 pkg. orange Kool-Aid
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1 cup of water
1 qt. goat milk
Combine Jello, Kool-Aid, sugar and water in saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature. Stir in cold goat milk and freeze in ice cream maker. Taste just like store bought. You can substitute any flavors of Kool-Aid and Jello.
Meningeal worm
Meningeal worm
Brain Worm – Deer Worm
Paralaphostrongylus tenius
What is it?
The meningeal worm is an internal parasite (Paralaphostrongylus tenius) of the white-tailed deer that usually completes its life cycle in the deer without causing significant problems. However, when unnatural hosts, such as sheep and goats, become infested with meningeal worm, the parasite moves into the brain and/or spinal cord and causes neurological problems that can be fatal. Llamas and alpacas are even more susceptible to meningeal worm infection than sheep or goats. Cattle are not known to be affected. Meningeal worm is not a health concern to humans.
The life cycle of the meningeal worm requires terrestrial snails or slugs as intermediate hosts. White-tailed deer become infested with P. tenius by eating snails or slugs that contain the infective stage of the larvae. The larvae migrate through the deer’s gut and eventually move into the central nervous system where they mature into adults, produce eggs, and the life cycle begins again. However, when P. tenius-infected snails and slugs are ingested by aberrant hosts, the larvae migrate into the brain and/or spinal cord.
The larvae do not mature into adults, but rather wander through the central nervous system causing inflammation and swelling which damages sensitive nervous tissue producing a variety of neurologic symptoms. Experimental evidence suggests that it takes 10 to 14 days for the parasite to reach the brain and/or spinal cord after the animal eats the infected snail or slug.
Symptoms
The neurologic signs observed in infected sheep and goats depend upon the number of larvae present in the nervous tissue and the portion of the brain or spinal cord that has been affected.
A mild infection may produce a slight limp or weakness in one or more legs, while a more severe infection may cause an animal to be partially or completely paralyzed. When larvae migrate to the brain, they may cause blindness, a head tilt, circling, disinterest in or inability to eat, or other signs that mimic brain diseases.
Affected animals may get progressively worse, remain static, or in some cases improve without therapeutic involvement. In most cases, infected animals remain alert and continue to eat and drink normally.
Diagnosis
Meningeal worm infection cannot be diagnosed in the live animal. A fecal examination is not useful since sheep and goats are “dead end” hosts for the parasite and the larvae do not produce eggs or pass larvae into the feces. The parasites cannot be detected by blood testing. The only way to confirm diagnosis is to find the parasite in the nervous system, which requires a necropsy examination. Testing the cerebrospinal fluid, which requires the animal to be tranquilized or anesthetized for extraction, may help to support suspicions of brain worm infection.
Thus, diagnosis of meningeal worm in the live animal is based on symptoms and clinical history. Usually animals have been grazing for at least two months and there is a history of deer in the area. Diseases which look similar to meningeal worm infection include: listeriosis, CAE, scrapie, rabies, trauma, copper deficiency, vitamin E/selenium deficiency, spinal cord or brain abscesses, or polioencephalomalacia.
Treatment
Treatment regimes usually involve high, repetitive doses of anthelmintics, along with steroids, and other supportive therapies. Many different anthelmintics (levamisol, ivermectin, albendazole, fenbendazole, thiabendazole) have been used to treat meningeal worm infection. It is believed that some anthelmintics can kill the larvae before it enters the central nervous system, while others may be able to cross the blood-brain barrier and kill the larvae regardless of its location in the body.
However, it is important to note that no controlled studies have confirmed or refuted the efficacy of different treatment regimes. Nor does treatment repair damaged nervous tissue. Producers who suspect meningeal worm should contact their veterinarian for treament recommendations.
Prevention
As with other disease conditions, prevention is usually more satisfying than treatment. Unfortunately, the meningeal worm is a hard one to prevent. Reducing deer populations is usually impractical. A single deer can shed thousands of eggs per gram of feces, and the larvae are highly resistant to environmental forces. However if feasible, sheep and goats should not be pastured in areas which receive high deer utilization or removed from these pastures before the weather turns wet and cool. It may be helpful to limit sheep and goat pasturing to fields without contiguous woodlands and to pastures that are on high ground and well-drained.
Controlling the intermediate hosts may be a more effective means of prevention. Sheep and goats can be fenced away from likely snail and slug habitats: ponds, swamps, wetlands, low-lying, poorly-drained fields, and woodlands. Some veterinarians advocate strategic deworming as a means of preventing infection. However, it is important to realize that regular use of anthelmintics (e.g. monthly treatments) rapidly leads to anthelmintic resistance, so while regular treatments may help to control the meningeal worm, eventually those drugs will lose their efficacy against ordinary stomach worms, which may be an even greater problem on most sheep and goat farms.
References: P. tenuis – The White-tailed Deer Parasite, Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine and Goat Medicine (1994) by Smith and Sherman.
Copyright © 2004.
Summer came to the Rogue Valley on June 21st. That was the first nice day that we have had all year. Last week we still had the risk of frost so my garden starts have been sitting in their pots waiting for the ground to dry up and warm up. I finally got them all in and hope they get to growing.
Our Kinder kids have really started growing too. The boys are all banded and I put two sets of twin bucklings into the weaning pen. Finally I get that great Kinder milk for myself. I have two large freezers that I put the one quart plastic bags of milk in for my soapmakaing. The rest is for cheese.
I love to make a soft spreadable cheese for toast. Heat one gallon of milk to 170 degrees and add 3/4 cup of lemon juice let sit for a few minutes until a fine curd forms. Pour the curds into a cheesecloth lined colander to drain. Tie the four corners of the cheesecloth into a knot and hang the bag to drain for a couple of hours. The cheese can then be salted a little or have herbs added. My favorite is to leave the salt out and use one of the Ms. Dash seasonings like the chipotle, herb and garlic, or spicy hot.
As you increase the temperature up from 170 toward 180 the curd will become a bit tougher and larger and you can actually press it into a log shape and slice it. If you heat it to 180 and use 1/4 cup of vinegar in place of the lemon juice you will get queso blanco . This cheese can be cut and used in salads, soups and stir-fries.
There are a lot of great cheese and meat recipes in the book “Goats Produce too! The Udder Real Thing Volume 2 by Mary Jane Toth. It is well worth the $13 price tag.
One of my favorite recipes is for Cajeta which is Mexican caramel candy.
3 qts goat milk
3 C sugar
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp baking soda.
dissolve the corn starch and baking soda in 1 cup of the milk to get out all the lumps then add it to the milk and sugar in the pot. I use a very heavy large pot for this as it will foam up and boil over in a small pot. Cook the mixture until it is thick and creamy like caramel sauce. It can be poured into jars and refrigerated. It is great on ice cream. If cooked to a soft caramel stage it is delicious on graham crackers.
Jean Jajan
Gray J Ranch
What to do with all that milk?
That was the question in my mind when the milk started building up. How can I make money from the milk without selling milk directly. I had heard about goat milk soap and searched for a recipe on the internet. I was a crafter and loved to cook so what better than cooking up a batch of soap. I found a fragrance oil supplier near me and bought a few small bottles of fragrance. I remember the first batch was oatmeal, milk and honey fragrance and it had oatmeal, goat milk and honey in it. It was a hit with family and friends. I added a few new scents and started making it up in decorative molds as gifts.
Over the winter I worked on my recipe until I had a really rich creamy bar of soap with great lather. I decided to try to get into the local farmers market as a vendor. I attended the state agriculture department seminar on small farm marketing where I met our local market manager and learned the most valuable information of all. I was not a crafter. I was a value added agricultural product because I raised the goats, milked them, and a high percentage of the soap was goat milk. While crafters were limited in the market, with a value added product I was move to space availability right after the growers and did not have to wait in line for a crafting space to become available. Wild River Soaps was born
The first year I made up small batches and sold them my self at the local growers market on Saturdays. That first year I actually made a profit. It was enough to pay for all the feed for the goats and all the ranch supplies. That winter my husband was laid off and my son moved out of our 600 sq ft guest house which had a full kitchen so we decided to make soap making our living. We got into two other growers markets that were held on different days and my husband became the salesman and I did the production.
Actually soap making is easy to learn and just plain old clean fun. Here is what you need to get started.
Equipment
1. Mixing containers such as enamel or stainless steel pots to melt the oils in and plastic bowl to weight the ingredients in NOTE: NEVER, NEVER USE ALUMINUM, it reacts with the lye
2. A heatproof container for your lye mixture such as a large plastic or glass bowl or pitcher.
3. Stainless steel slotted spoon or plastic heat proof spoon or heat proof rubber spatula. Do not use wood.
4. A stick blender, good for 3 lbs. or larger batches. The stick blender enables you to get a faster trace. Use only for a minute at a time and stir in between. This is optional if you don’t mind stirring.
5. Use eye protections. Eyeglasses are not enough. You can get some that will fit over your glasses. A splash of raw soap in the eyes can be very painful and damage the eyes.
6. Latex or Chemical gloves. Use this to keep any possible splashes off arms and hands and when stirring the lye water, to keep the steam off the arms.
7. Scale to weight the oils and lye. A digital scale is the best
8. Soap molds. You can use rubbermade drawer liners or any plastic container you have around. Vinyl down spouts, PVC pipes, cut in about 12″ lengths. Jello Molds or even cookie cutters for animal shapes and toy shapes, for the kiddies. Be sure it is not aluminum.
9. Thermometer. I prefer the quick read digital one. You can wipe it clean between testing the oil or lye mixtures and it gives you an instant readings.
Creamy Goat Milk Soap
8 oz olive oil
5 oz coconut oil
3 oz palm oil
2.3 oz lye
7 oz frozen goat milk
Melt the coconut and palm oil in an enameled pan on low heat. Place the frozen goat milk in a glass bowl and slowly add lye while stirring with a plastic spoon. Stir until lye is dissolved and all milk is thawed. When the oils are warm to the touch (105 degrees) pour in the olive oil. Pour the goat milk & lye mixture into the oil mixture while stirring. Keep stirring until you get trace. Trace is when it thickens to the point where you can drop some of the mix back into itself and it leaves a trail. At this point use any herb, scent, or coloring and stir and pour into molds. Place plastic wrap on top of soap. Let sit for 24 hours. Unmold, cut into bars, and place on a rack to cure for 3-4 weeks.
Disclaimer: The opinions, views, and thoughts expressed by newsletter and blog contributors do not necessarily reflect those of the Kinder® Goat Breeders Association. Goat husbandry advice found in the newsletter and blog is not meant to substitute a valid veterinary relationship. Please request permission to share or reprint newsletter and blog posts.