Breeding Does

Last weekend, our 4-H club hosted an ultrasound clinic for our goats.  Fifteen presumed pregnant does and their owners showed up at my co-leader’s farm on Saturday morning to determine whether or not they were indeed “with kid”.  Each doe took her turn jumping up on the milk stand where the veterinarian placed a sensor on her belly while we all huddled around a small monitor looking for signs of life.   It was not only educational for the club members but entertaining as well.  And pretty successful, with 13 of the 15 does getting confirmation that they had been successfully bred.

Our family brought 3 of our does – Skittles, Starburst and Lily - and luckily all three turned out to be pregnant.  We would have brought Milky Way, too, but she had just gotten home from the breeder the day before so would not be far enough along for anything to show up on the ultrasound.  My favorite part of the vet’s explanation was when she said of Lily, Molly’s first-time-pregnant Nigerian Dwarf doe, that she could for sure see at least one baby, but that Molly should prepare for four!  In other words, she can tell she’s pregnant but there’s no guarantee how many are in there.   We were especially relieved to get this news for Lily after last year’s disappointment when she spent a month at a breeder’s farm only to come home “not bred”.  Molly’s huge smile at the news that we’d had success this year was evidence of her relief that finally this spring, she’d get to tend to kids.

We were also happy to know that Megan’s doe, Starburst, was pregnant although by the looks of her, there was little doubt.  She is already bulging at the sides and the vet confirmed that at least two very active kids are nestled inside.  So, around April 15^th, if all goes well, we’ll get to meet them!

Now you might be wondering a little about the breeding process for goats so let me enlighten you.  Goats go into heat approximately every three weeks during the breeding season, which varies a bit from breed to breed.  For the big goats like our Nubians, the breeding season usually starts toward the end of summer and ends around January or February.  The smaller breeds like our Nigerian Dwarfs supposedly cycle all year round, making it possible to breed them twice within one year.  Some goats are easy to tell when they’re in heat (like our Skittles who bleats at the top of her lungs for 2 straight days during her time) and some are a little trickier (like our relatively quiet Lily).  When they are ready to be bred, they are said to be in “standing heat” which means they’ll stand still for the buck to breed them.  Any other time they will just run from the buck, or if they’re particularly bold or a little bigger than the boy, they may head butt him and generally avoid anything that resembles cooperation.

We don’t have any bucks of our own, so each year we scout out local breeders that we like the looks of and drive our girls to their farms.  This year, however, Megan chose a breeder for her Nubians that lives in Wyoming and instead of driving to her, she brought her buck to us.  Two of them, in fact.  We decided to take two so they could keep each other company and we planned to breed one to Skittles and the other to Starburst.  The bucks arrived a week or so before Thanksgiving and the arrangement was for us to care and feed for them for a month or two while they “serviced” our does.

We determined which buck we thought possessed the desired traits we were looking for with each doe, and had it all figured out.  We’d breed Starburst to Count Jewelio – the longer bodied of the two, and Skittles to Hobokon – the bigger boned boy.  Now I don’t know how many of you have ever tried to choose your daughter’s friends, or harder yet, boyfriends, but we had about as much say in who our “girls” would date as you might have in such attempts with your girls.   When Starburst appeared to be in heat, we put her in with our chosen mate and of course, the two of them wanted nothing to do with each other.  She ran from him and rather than pursuing her, Count Jewelio came over to us for attention and then just went back to eating.   We gave it a few minutes with no improvement in their attraction to one another and then we switched bucks.  And bingo, love was in the air!  Starburst and Hoboken were a match made in heaven.  So much for our careful selection and planning.  Oh well, the main goal was a pregnant doe, and in that we appear to have succeeded.

Life Lesson:  You can’t force love

Christmas Gifts

Now that another holiday season has come and gone and we are in the middle of the longest part of winter, where the days are too cold and short for me to do much with the farm animals other than taking care of their basic needs, I find I have a little more time for reflection and reminiscing.   All the holiday decorations are put away, the last of the candy from our stockings has been eaten and we’re all on a diet!  We had a good Christmas with lots of yummy food and quality family time, and of course, plenty of gift giving.   As my girls grow up it’s fun to notice how their gift  requests have changed from the earlier, little girl stage.  Megan, for example, at 15 didn’t have much of a wish list this year other than new music to play on her saxophone, i-tune gift cards and money to put toward her savings for a car.  Molly, on the other hand, at 12 still likes a few “toys” although her requests have a slightly higher price tag than when she was little, usually being a very specific model of Breyer horse (which she collects) or money to buy clothes (since I long ago gave up trying to figure out what she would like). 

So, considering the gifts we all gave and received this year made me think back to earlier years, long before the kids and horses and goats were part of the equation.  When my husband and I were dating each other in our twenties, he loved to spoil me with nice gifts like jewelry, flowers, and spa gift certificates.  He was very romantic and thoughtful and seemed to enjoy picking out and giving me these gifts as much as I enjoyed receiving them.  It’s no wonder I married him, wouldn’t you say?

As the years went on, and I accumulated a fair number of pretty necklaces, earrings and pedicures, he started asking for suggestions from me as to what I might want for Christmas or for my birthday, so as not to duplicate something I already had or give me something that wasn’t my taste.  I remember for our 10^th wedding anniversary, I very specifically requested a small gold anniversary band with 10 tiny diamonds, showing him examples of what I had in mind in jewelry store windows at the local mall.  Not surprisingly, that’s exactly what was inside the small jewelry box I opened while we were out to dinner celebrating that year.

Fast forward to current day after twenty two years of marriage.  Funny how time and circumstances change what you really value in life.  I know it’s normal for the “romantic” factor in gift giving to wane after a couple has been together for a long time, and quite honestly, my current lifestyle as a farm girl, 4-H leader, cheesemaker and mom just doesn’t seem to make jewelry and fancy clothes very high on my wish list.  In fact, in recent years I’ve specifically requested that Brian not give me jewelry as a gift since I rarely wear the majority of what I already have (except that pretty little anniversary ring).  No, these days I’m much more likely to ask for cheese or soap molds, new gloves, or a set of cooking pots and pans.  One year I actually asked for, and received, a new kitchen sink!

But this year I think I really outdid myself with my request.  It might not sound romantic to you, but it’s what I really wanted and I love the fact that my husband listens so well to my truest wishes and doesn’t get caught up in the commercial hype of what a woman should really want.   Yes, I was pretty delighted this Christmas morning to find a bright red ribbon adorning my beautiful, shiny new purple manure fork leaning up against the decorated tree!

Life Lesson:   Feeling truly known is the greatest gift of all.

New Year, New Book!

Happy New Year from the kids and critters at Briar Gate Farm!


If you're wondering why I haven't been writing any new entries for awhile, it's because I have been busy, among other things, compiling the stories from this past year of blogging and putting them into a professionally bound book!

Life Lessons from the Barnyard

By Kate Johnson

105 pages of humorous and heartfelt stories about the lessons I learn from raising critters and kids here at Briar Gate Farm.

You can order it for $10 from lulu.com or if you're nearby, 
I have copies here at the farm.

I plan to start writing more stories very soon so stay tuned! 

Silence is Golden

One of the things we look forward to on the farm every spring is getting our new batch of spring chicks.  Since hens only lay well for a few years, we find that getting a handful of new chicks each year ensures us of having an ongoing supply of farm-fresh eggs.  Plus, those fluffy little peeps are just too cute to pass up when they arrive at the local farm stores at the end of winter! 

Two years ago, my oldest daughter, Megan, decided to enter a few birds at the county fair along with her goats just to see what it would be like.  Turned out to be a good compliment to the goat showing as the poultry barn is attached to the goat barn, making it easy to care for both species during fair week, and the chicken show is the day before the goat show, so there’s no time conflict there.  We also learned that the poultry-showing kids can make a fair amount of money selling their birds to the public on the last day of the fair.  So, this past year, we once again looked forward to selecting our spring babies with the plan to get more than we needed to keep our flock going so that we could sell a few at the fair.

My younger daughter, Molly, and her friend, Holly, decided they’d like to get in on the “chick action”, too.  Holly lives in town but boards a goat at our farm, and she asked if I’d be willing to board a few chickens, too.  I figured a few more chicks would hardly be noticed, but I did tell her that no roosters could stay.  They get too aggressive and noisy and tend to beat up on the girls, so that was my deal.  Unfortunately, when it comes to getting baby chicks, there is no guarantee that you’ll get all girls!  Holly agreed to this condition and said that her uncle was also getting spring chicks and had agreed to take any roosters she might end up with. 

In the past, we’ve always been able to go over to our local ranch supply and feed stores during “chick days” and have plenty of spring babies to choose from between late February and early April.  But this year was a little different.  You see, the backyard hen craze has swept through our town making it legal for in-town residents to keep up to four hens in backyard coops for egg production.  This trend is growing all over the country, which is a great thing in my opinion, but the problem is, the hatcheries don’t seem to be able to keep up with demand.  We “special ordered” chicks for Megan early in the season and they came in just fine.  But Molly and Holly wanted to hand select their birds and each time they went to the store to look, they were either sold out or the order that was supposed to come in hadn’t arrived.  Finally, after several tries and adjustments to their breed preferences, they finally had their babies.  Molly got one each of three different standard breeds, and Holly selected two little black Silkies, a bantam breed (bantam chickens are about half the size of a standard chicken). 

Holly started off with her chicks in a small cage in her mother’s apartment where she was able to care for and bond with them before they outgrew that set-up.  When they got too big for the small cage, she moved them over to our farm where we took care of them during the week, and she came on weekends to do her share of goat and chicken chores.  Now the thing with bantams is that they are too small to identify their gender when they are first hatched, so you can only buy bantams that are “straight run”, which means you don’t know if you’re getting boys of girls. As the chicks began to grown, Holly noticed that one was quite a bit bigger than the other, and she guessed it was probably a cockerel (that’s official poultry jargon for “young rooster”).  She was just hoping she’d get at least one hen and when it came time to put leg bands on them as identification for the fair, she selected a pink band for the one she was hoping was a girl.

Not too surprisingly, around mid-July we began to hear the first attempts at a cock-a-doodle-doo out of one of her birds, although it wasn’t from the bigger one – it was coming from the one wearing a pink band!  So, we quickly changed leg bands, being convinced that surely the other one would end up being a girl.  But as luck would have it, about 3 days before the fair, I heard the now pink-banded bird begin the all-too-familiar beginner’s crow.  Darn, two for two.

When it came to the poultry sale day, Holly did her best to market her young lads and tried to convince anyone she came in contact with that they really needed a little Silkie bantam rooster!  But at the end of the fair, all the hens were sold and we came back to the farm with two little black, fluffy-headed cockerels.

Now, remember that plan for the uncle to take the roosters?  Well, turns out he ended up with 6 of his own from his young flock of 12, so he took back his offer.  We thought one of our 4-H families might take one, but they decided not to.  I found two other potential takers but they, too, eventually backed out.  As the weeks passed by, the little roosters got louder and louder and the sound of that cock-a-doodle-doo started wearing on my nerves.  Normally, I love that sound, but now every time I heard it, it reminded me that those two boys who were supposed to be long gone, were still here!

Finally, out of desperation, I posted an ad on Craig’s List – FREE, cute and friendly bantam-sized Silkie roosters!  MUST go this weekend!

You can imagine my joy and relief when the e-mail came in saying, “if you’ve still got ‘em, I’ll take ‘em”.  BINGO!  I felt like I’d hit the jackpot.  When the couple and their three kids showed up to get the boys, I met them at the driveway with the roosters ready to go.  I didn’t want to waste any time transferring them to the cage they had brought just in case they might change their mind at the last minute.  The exchange took approximately 2 minutes, and they were on their way.

Later that afternoon, as my husband and I sat on our deck sipping a glass of wine while looking out at our beautiful foothills view, I noticed with great pleasure how still and quiet it was, quiet being the operative word.  It was sheer bliss.

As for next year?  Well, let’s just say I’ve told Holly she can get chicks again, but this time they have to be Golden Sex-linked pullets.  If they’re yellow, they’re girls!

Life Lesson:  Be careful what you agree to

Goat Road Trips

This summer, my teenage daughter and I took three of her Nubian goats to several out of town goat shows.  We went to Torrington, WY, Douglass, WY and Pueblo, CO, in addition to several local shows.   For the first big drive, we took our truck and trailer but after spending $120 to fill my diesel pick-up truck with gas, I got to thinking maybe those 3 goats could all fit in my more economical minivan!  It certainly would be a quieter and more comfortable ride for us, be easier to navigate in parking lots and at drive-through restaurants, and the goats could enjoy the comfort of air conditioning while listening to music.  Sure enough, by taking all the back seats out and packing carefully, we were able to fit three large dog crates, a milking stand, a bale of hay, a bag of pine shavings, buckets, hay bags, grooming equipment and our suitcases.  We even had room for two folding chairs and a cooler!

Now I wasn’t originally planning on going to all these “away” shows this year, but I figured that with my daughter being so passionate about showing her goats and the fact that she actually wanted to spend time with me at the very peer-influenced age of 15, I'd better make time for these getaways with her while I still could.  It’s hard for me to fathom, but I really only have her home for 3 more summers before she’s off to college.

The great thing about these road trips is that they’re sort of boring.  What I mean by that is there is plenty of time to chat.  Any of you who have teenage kids know that opportunities to really connect with them seem to get more and more fleeting as they grow up.  Friends, homework, sports, cell phones, computers... these all compete with parents for attention during the high school years.  But sitting next to each other on a long, boring stretch of I-85 through Wyoming with no other distractions allows for some pretty good conversation time.  We talked about college and career choices, God and religion, goat breeding, driving laws, healthy eating, and lots of fun fantasy conversations about future houses and farm set-ups.  It was great.

The goat showing was pretty fun and successful, too.  When we started out with goats three years ago, we bought a small little Nubian doe named Skittles.  She was spotted, cute and compact.  Well, turns out “compact” is not highly desired in the dairy goat show world where terms like body capacity, height, strength and stature are frequently used to describe the winning does.  Once Megan began to get serious about showing beyond 4-H, I offered to buy her a show-quality doe, but she insisted that the only truly admirable and respectable way to get a better show goat was to breed your way there.  So, she selected a local breeder whose goats had the traits she was looking for and began to improve her line.  Imagine her thrill when Skittles’ third doeling took Reserve Champion Junior Doe at the Colorado State Fair this year.  Talk about a mother’s pride – mine and Megan’s (and maybe Skittles’, too!).

The only real downside to our summer goat road trips was the smell that was left in my mini van as a reminder of our journey.  In spite of laying tarps down under the crates that housed the girls, the distinct smell of goat still permeates our family car.  The vanilla scented car air freshener helps but now it just smells like we’ve been baking cupcakes in the barn.  A suburban friend of mine was recently lamenting the fact that her minivan was such a mess, with candy wrappers, Happy Meal toys and miscellaneous drink cups everywhere.  “Oh yeah?,” I said, “I bet you don’t have goat poop in your van!"   Do you think Toyota would want to make a commercial about that?

Life Lesson:  Look for unconventional opportunities to connect with those you love

Moovin' Cows

Last weekend, my girls and I took our horses to a nearby cow clinic.  If you’re wondering what that means, it’s where a small group of horses and riders learn how to do one of the most basic things that horses were meant to do, and that’s moving cows.  Most of us who own horses for pleasure never get to experience the task that a rancher and a ranch horse do every day, and often the inner cowboy or cowgirl in us just wants to come out and give it a try!

So, we signed up to take Chummie, Amigo and even good old Belle to work some cows.  Along with six other cowgirl wannabes (interesting that it was all women), we spent 3 ½ hours moving a group of 7 cows up and down and all around a two- acre patch of pasture. 

Now I can imagine the image that comes to mind for you is a bunch of whoopin’ and hollerin’ and rope throwin’, but quite the contrary.  You see, the art of moving a group of cows that are going to be marketed for beef is to stress them as little as possible.  That means that to get them from point A to point B, you want them to move as slowly as possible so that they don’t lose any weight in the process.  If you’re going to take a cow to market and sell its meat by the pound, you don’t want it to be running around losing weight before it goes!

The other factor to consider is that not all horses are familiar or comfortable with being around cows.  Most of the horses at a clinic like this are being used for lessons, trail rides or even showing, but none of them lives and works with cows on a regular basis.  So by taking it slowly and cautiously, we’re able to give our horses a chance to get up close and personal with an animal they may have never seen before, or at best, only from a distance.

To start out, the cows were in a little huddle in the middle of the pasture, and we fanned out in a big circle around them with each horse facing the cows.  Then we turned and circled the group at a walk and a trot before stopping, reversing and doing the same thing in the other direction.  This gave each horse a chance to see the cows from a distance and out of each eye, an important thing to do when introducing a horse to a new thing due to how their brain is wired.

Next, we each took turns riding right up to the little huddle and circling them closer before picking a spot to ride through the group.  By doing this, we got a chance to see how our horse would react to seeing a cow up close and out of each eye simultaneously.  Most horses take to this pretty naturally, but for some, it can be a little scary and intimidating.  Our three horses seemed to love it, arching their necks and pricking their ears forward as they sized up the cows.  I couldn’t help but think they looked like kids in a candy store!  It was especially gratifying to me to see my big old retired dressage horse, Chummie, acting like this was the most fun he’d had in years.  A nice change for him after his years of intense schooling and showing.  Equally fun was seeing my two girls and their trusty mounts taking to it so naturally.

Once each horse had a chance to move through the group, we each had to go back and cut one cow out of the herd, move it outside the circle of horses, go half way around the circle and then move it back in to the center.  Again, the idea is to do it slowly and with as little stress to the cow as possible.

Eventually, after we each had a successful turn at moving one cow, we started to work together in groups of 4 or 5 horses and riders, and then groups of 2 or 3, to move the whole herd of cows wherever we wanted them to go.  We moved them from one end of the pasture to the other, to a watering trough, through a row of barrels, over a small wooden bridge, and through a round pen with gates at each end. 

The final task of the day was to load the cows into a big stock trailer so the rancher who brought them to the clinic could take them back to his ranch.  Our instructor opened the door to the trailer and gave us a few basic tips and reminders, and then we all slowly moved the cows up toward the trailer, being conscious of what our individual role within the group was.  When we got the cows to the opening of the trailer, it was important to keep just enough pressure on them so they’d take the first step up into the trailer, without putting so much pressure on that they’d get scared and break from the group.  We never moved more than at a slow walk and there was no wild whoopin’ or hollerin’, so to the casual observer it probably didn’t look like much.  But by working as a team and taking our time, we had all those cows loaded up and ready to go home within five minutes.

It’s hard to describe the sense of satisfaction and just pure fun that came from our morning of moving cows.  From the feeling of teamwork to the companionship with our horses and the enjoyment of being outdoors in a beautiful location, it was an awesome mother-daughter outing!

Life Lesson:  Sometimes taking it slowly gets you there the fastest.

The Fair

When you have kids involved in 4-H, you find that the whole world seems to revolve around the week of the county fair, which for us is the first week of August.  It’s the culmination of a year’s worth of hard work and lots of practicing and preparing their projects to be judged.  Our local county fair also provides a chance for my kids to hang out with other kids who are interested in similar things, eat more sweets and junk food than I normally allow, and show off their critters and creations to the general public.  To say our family loves fair week would be an understatement! 

This year, in addition to bringing their goats and chickens to the fair, they also entered artwork, jams, cheeses, flowers and an artistic gardener creation.  I can’t participate in the youth shows, of course, but I do enter some of the open shows for baked goods, jams, cheeses and gardening, so I get to have some fun competing that week, too.

This was our third year of showing at the fair, and by now I’ve learned to clear the entire week prior to the actual fair to adequately prepare and get all the last minute things done.  We spend the week clipping and bathing goats, bathing and dusting chickens, baking, making jams and cheeses, and doing last-minute practices for showing the animals.  It’s amazing how much goes into getting ready for our week-long virtual live-in at the fairgrounds.

All the preparations were going along smoothly this summer and the anticipation and excitement were building as we got toward the end of the week before the big event.  Our 4-H club did a volunteer shift at the 4-H snack bar (aka the Dairy Bar) during a pre-fair event, we marched with our goats in the County Fair Parade, and we even managed to host a final poultry showmanship clinic at our farm to help prepare the kids and their birds.  It was the night before we were to start taking the first set of animals over to the fairgrounds and we were almost ready.

Then I got a phone call that threw a wrench in my careful planning and organization.  It was from the mother of a large family in our 4-H club calling with shocking, terrifying news.  Her 15 year old son, who we’d just spent much of the day before with, had had a freak, unexpected health crisis and was in a coma at the Denver Children’s hospital.  Understandably she was in a panic about her child’s physical condition and prognosis, but she was also concerned for her other children who were planning to enter their chickens at the fair for the first time and were in a tizzy about how they would be able to proceed.  As I helplessly listened to her tearful explanations about her son’s condition and tried to offer whatever support I could, I realized that the one thing I could do to help would be to make sure the other kids were able to participate in the fair as much as possible.  And even though her son was not going to be able to be at the fair, there was no reason why his hen and rooster couldn’t be there.   I assured her that we’d get the chickens ready and checked-in at the fairgrounds, and if needed we’d transport the other kids to and from the fair on show day.

So, the next morning my 4-H co-leader and I drove over to their farm, rounded up their 5 hens and the rooster, put them in cages and drove them back to my place.  My daughter and I then gave each of the chickens a bath and got them ready for check-in, before turning our attention to our own 12 hens that also needed to be prepped.  While I was matching the leg band numbers for their chickens to the paperwork showing which chickens had been entered, I realized that the boy’s rooster had not been properly registered.  I knew he had really been looking forward to showing off this fine bird, so I had to figure out a way to get him to the fair!  I called the poultry superintendent and after explaining the situation and the oversight, we finagled a “late entry” and the rooster was good to go.  Two trips to the fairgrounds with cages loaded with poultry, and all of our chickens as well as theirs were checked in.

Every day that week while we enjoyed our fair experience, showed our goats, and ate our ice cream and cotton candy, there was a part of each of us that felt the heaviness of the situation with our fellow 4-H family and their son.  Fortunately, we got a little more good news on the boy’s condition every day, and we were able to help his sisters get to the fairgrounds as much as possible so they could participate in the shows and fun.

My kids had many wins and got plenty of ribbons and awards that week, from Reserve Champion Senior Doe for Skittles, to Champion Dwarf Doe for Milky Way and Reserve Champion Best of Show for one of our hens.  We also got blue ribbons in jams, cheeses and even flowers.  But the happiest moment for all of us – the one that caused the most cheers of celebration - was when we watched the poultry judge award a Champion ribbon and trophy to our 4-H friend’s prized rooster!  Hooray!

This was topped only by the news a few days later that the boy was home from the hospital and recovering well.

Life Lesson:  Celebrate what matters most