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Feed Your Goats Naturally- Momma Mixture
Hello Everybody!
I thought I would share with you this week how we feed our goats. We like to feed them with natural foods.
We dry a lot of our own fruits, herbs and veggies. I just love to go out to the garden and pick fresh food and the prepare it for our animals or save it for a later date.
My momma made our own grain recipe and a “Momma mixture” that we give to the goats after they have kidded.
This is the Momma Mixture recipe that we came up with.
Momma Mixture
One part Chamomile flowers
One part Tyme
One part Peppermint
Two part Red Raspberry leaves
You just take each of these ingredients, dry, and mix them together in a coffee can, cocoa can or a glass jar. We normally mix it in a hot cocoa can because then we can put it out in the barn and we don’t have to worry about a glass jar braking or anything like that. You can mix this with their grain or feed it to them plain. We give them 1Tbs morning and night (two Tbs daily) for about two weeks before they kid and two weeks after the kid.
If any of you try this out please let me know how it worked for you! 🙂
Until the whole world hears,
Beth Joy Wood
Our Herb Cabinet
Last year we gathered nettles, dried them and then fed to our goats. Nettles help the doe produce more milk.
This is a photo of one of our bucks last year, Cookie.
Bottle feeding kids
Hello again everybody!
I so enjoy bottle feeding our Kinder kids!
We once had one kid that was raised on her mother. She is now a sweetie but then she was a little wild.
She would get all the goats worked up and running around the pen just because she felt like it, she would never let us touch her and didn’t even come when we had a bottle.
I remind myself of having to go through training her when I had to stay up most of the night to feed the kids. I enjoy feeding our kids much more now that they sleep through the night and drink less milk.
If you havn’t bottle fed your kids before here are some basic tips.
- Hold the baby the first few time you try to bottle feed. This way the baby can’t move around when you and the baby are first trying this.
- Hold the kid’s neck up and as straight as possible.
- Make sure the milk is not all dripping out of its mouth or it won’t get good nutrition.
And have LOTS of fun!!! 🙂
I hope you have a blessed evening.
Until the whole world hears,
Beth Joy Wood
Building pens
(Elisha working on the birthing pens)
Hello everyone!
My papa and brothers Elisha, Josiah, and Zeke all have been working on remodeling our barn.
Elisha is in charge of making sure everything gets done right while my papa is at work. Elisha is the ranch foreman and I am the ranch manager. Elisha and I really enjoy working together and thinking of better ways to manage the ranch. Josiah takes Elisha’s place of overseeing all the jobs when Elisha is gone working with papa on something else.
The first thing the boys built this year were the birthing pens for the does. They made a special place above the birthing pens for all the alfalfa to be stored. They really did a awesome job!
This is a picture of the boys hard work!
April Greetings!
Hi!
My name is Bethany however, everyone calls me Beth or Beth-Joy! I thought for my frst post I would just tell you all a little bit about me, my family and our farm, Covenant Ranch.
I am one out of eleven children. I have seven brothers and three sisters. The oldest in my family is 21 and the youngest is yet to be born. 🙂 I am fifteen in June. My little sister, Sarah-Grace, and I both share our birthday. I have a horse named Miracle. I enjoy helping my brothers and sisters with their animals. Besides our lovely little herd of Kinder goats, we have two milks cows, two meat cows, one busy beehive, one Arabian horse, one Quarter horse, our sweet little herd of hair sheep, an assortment of chickens, chicks, ducks, and one goose that thinks she is the queen of the barn. We also have a very fluffy little puppy and two cats!
Sarah-Grace, Elisha (one of my older brothers), Timothy (one of my younger brothers) and I all take care of the goats together. Elisha and Sarah do most of the milking, Timothy does a lot of the feeding, with Elisha’s help, and Sarah and I take care of the kids. I am also in charge of selling the milk to our customers who come to our farm, giving farm tours and keeping track of all the paperwork and farm activity.
These are some pictures of our farm.
Our property flooded so the boys all went fishing with pitch forks. They caught three fish. =)
This is our bee hive. Timothy takes care of all the bee hives for our family. He is only 10 but he loves bees!
This is my youngest brother Matthew. He is very athletic. Matthew, Elisha, Bekah (my oldest sister), and I all go running together. Matthew and I ran in the Dover race last year. =)
This is our Jersey milk cow. She really loves my little brother Josiah. Josiah takes care of all the cows.
These are our chickens. They love to sit on our front pourch!
This is Liberty, one of our Kinder Kids that was born in the Spring of 2009. Matthew nick-named her Libby. She is one of our sweetest does’s. She was bred just last month. I can’t wait to see the kids that she gives us.
I’m excited to share with you all the activity at my house this month. I hope you all enjoyed the pictures!
For the love of goats,
Miss Beth Joy Wood
The End
Well, the last weekend of March was beautiful. A little rain, but balanced with some sun and warmer temperatures. Saturday, thanks to family, we got our hay barn finished.
Next thing I need to do is order some gravel to place inside of the barn, just a few minor checks and adjustments and it is ready to put hay in, however, our tractor is currently residing inside the barn. 
Sunday, I took my Working goat project group for a short hike. It’s the first hike for this year, so we all have lots of conditioning to do with our goats. Three of the kids have kinder wethers for their pack animal and the fourth (my son Tyler) has a 1/2 Kinder and 1/2 cashmere wether which was our first bottle baby. The three black ones are from a set of quads I raised last year on a bottle, the fourth I sold for a breeding buck. 
This is the start of our hiking and packing season, for the rest of the summer, we have adopted a trail from the Missouri Conservation Dept. which we will check and maintain monthly. May and possibly September the pack group will have an over night campout there.
This is the start of our hiking and packing season, for the rest of the summer, we have adopted a trail from the Missouri Conservation Dept. which we will check and maintain monthly. May and possibly September the pack group will have an over night campout there.Last year was my first campout with goats, roughing
it”, in a tent, with no bathrooms or running water. It was an experience for all, I read a lot on North American Packgoat Assoc. website, then I had to convince the other goat people goats could be tethered safely on a picket line or on individual stakes. One person offered to bring their trailer to put the goats in over night, but I did point out that most would have their mode of transporting their own goat there and could use that if needed. All goats were staked out overnight with no problems or anything close to a problem. I had mine staked as close to my tent door as I could without them stepping on the tent or chewing on the tent, or soiling tent in some manner. They talked to me until quiet late that night but eventually we all got some rest. As much as you can in a sleeping bag on hard packed dirt, in a tent with two young boys and a tent full of young girls next door.
it”, in a tent, with no bathrooms or running water. It was an experience for all, I read a lot on North American Packgoat Assoc. website, then I had to convince the other goat people goats could be tethered safely on a picket line or on individual stakes. One person offered to bring their trailer to put the goats in over night, but I did point out that most would have their mode of transporting their own goat there and could use that if needed. All goats were staked out overnight with no problems or anything close to a problem. I had mine staked as close to my tent door as I could without them stepping on the tent or chewing on the tent, or soiling tent in some manner. They talked to me until quiet late that night but eventually we all got some rest. As much as you can in a sleeping bag on hard packed dirt, in a tent with two young boys and a tent full of young girls next door.Since the doeling who arrived a week ago Sunday, there have been four more babies this week, two sets of twins both sets of boy/girl and both out of my young buck THF Snickerdoodle. I decided on the name, Tiramisu, for my first doeling, the next buckling looked just like his daddy so I have named him Caboodle, he is with his mom but mom misplaced his sister and being a first time mom didn’t realize she had two babies to care for, so Ginger Snap is in the living room when my husband isn’t cuddling with her on the couch or feeding her a bottle. 
Here’s a picture of the proud new daddy, THF Snickerdoodle.
This Saturday, April 3, will be opening day at the Boone County Farmer’s Market. I have to be there to set up by 7:00 a.m. No sleeping in this weekend either. I will get to celebrate Easter with my husband and my in-laws and then Monday, April 5 my hubby leaves for the armory in Lebanon, MO to get ready to mobilize to Iran for approximately 12 months sometime in the next few weeks. Looks like it will be a very busy summer. Happy kidding all, and look me up at the Kinder Shows this year. Montgomery County Fair in June and MO State Fair in August.
Making Goat Milk Soap
Well it was perfect weather for staying in and working on my soap this weekend. I made several batches in January and February preparing for this summer when I hope to have a booth at a local farmers market. I let my soap cure a minimum of six weeks before using it. This allows the lye to reach a safe Ph. level and the bar to harden. Now I have approximate 12 batches that have cured and it is time to trim and wrap to get ready to sell. I am experimenting with different molds to find something that will give me a nice 4 ounce bar everytime. Here are my latest ones, they are made from a food grade plastic which the soap doesn’t harm while in saponification (this step gets really ho
t) and I don’t have to put a liner in the mold to remove the soap fro
m the mold. With the wooden molds I use either plastic trash bags or freezer paper to line but both have drawbacks. The plastic trash bags leave wrinkles in the corners and the freezer paper is more expensive and more time consuming.
t) and I don’t have to put a liner in the mold to remove the soap fro
m the mold. With the wooden molds I use either plastic trash bags or freezer paper to line but both have drawbacks. The plastic trash bags leave wrinkles in the corners and the freezer paper is more expensive and more time consuming.I have been making soap for about four years. I gotbought my first kinders in 2005 and started making soap in 2006. I was very hesitant to make it because the first thing I read on every book or article telling “How to” make soap, was the warnings and cautions of the dangers of working with lye. Finally after reading, Anne Watson’s book “Smart Soapmaking” I jumped in and gave it a try. Once I began using my home made soap, with the milk from my own goats I have not used anything else. It is fun trying different oils and fragrences for different benefits. Olive oil makes your soap harder, coconut oil provides a nice lather, and of course different essential oils offer their own benefits. There are many websites with recipes and directions on how to make soap so if you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. It doesn’t require a lot of goat milk and the finished product feels wonderful and your friends and family will enjoy receiving it as gifts.
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