Heat Treating Colostrum

We feed pasteurized milk and heat treated colostrum to our goat kids. It makes it easier to sell excess kids when you test for CAE annually and practice prevention this way. Now, when you heat treat colostrum, you have to hold the temperature above 135 degrees F, but below 140 degrees F. This temperature is held for 30 minutes once reached. If you heat colostrum at a higher temperature, it turns into pudding.

The easiest way we've found to do this is with this little guy--a small, cheap deep fryer. We fill it to the max line with water, use small glass jars in the basket, and played with the dial until we found the spot to keep our temps within that range. We made a notch to mark this temperature spot on the dial, and now we can just put the dial there for heat treating colostrum in the future. It beats standing over a stove and moving a pan off and on the heat source as to not end up with too low of a heat or colostrum pudding.

And we wait...

My big brick house mama goat is due on Tuesday. I have been checking on her throughout the day, and she seems happy and content. I am so ready for another round of bottle babies. I'll keep my ear out for any hints of impending labor via the barn/baby monitor. Come on babies!

Completed! Well mostly completed.

The barn is done!

A little blurry, but those are skylights on the side. We couldn't put them on the roof due to vapor barrier.

There is quite a gap at the bottom of the barn. Because we've had a muddy, wet winter, we are have to wait until spring to bring in fill dirt. Instead of them building on a pad, we will backfill and add gravel in the spring.

I am hoping that we can pour a small concrete pad in the barn to use as a milking area. We plan on running electric and water to this barn. Hot water and bucket heaters? Sounds like heaven to me!

Almost finished!

Fast Progress!

At the right end, you'll see past the slider door track some clear panels. We had skylight panels added to this side and the back side to help with natural light (no electric to this barn). We had to put the panels on the side, as we have barrier, insulation on the inside roof of the barn. This prevents condensation from falling onto hay bales we will store in this barn. Of course, it keeps the goats dry too.

It's coming along nicely. Due to the weather, we had to wait to lay the pad in. Once the weather permit, we will borrow our friend's skid steer to back fill the barn to be sure the animals stay dry.

Not much longer!

The new goat barn is coming along beautifully!

I heard excited whispering amongst the goats. Also, I'm pretty sure there were several high hooves (goat high fives) between them.

Coming Soon

Coming soon, to a Hoosier Homestead near you--A NEW BARN!!!

We finally saved up enough money to build a bigger barn for hay and goats. We will still use the smaller barn for kidding, but this gives us more space for all of our other homestead equipment. Tentatively, we should have this barn up by the end of the month. We are also working on building a bigger buck pen utilizing an old car port we got for a steal off of Craigslist. I will post pictures of that soon!

White Christmas

After much discussion and thought, we have moved to a Saanen-only herd. We couldn't resist. Their easy going personalities and gentle nature fit perfectly with our own. We are expecting the first round of kidding to begin in roughly two weeks. We'll be sure to share plenty of baby goat photos.

Hopefully, blog updates will pick up soon. I seem to be doing better in terms of morning sickness, so that should help out some. ;)