Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Today we said farewell to Chestnut and Silver Birch (pictured with mum in the first photo), Iroko and Walnut (pictured with mum and Nutmeg in the second photo). It is always sad to see animals leave the smallholding for whatever reason, but selling our stock as pets and watching them go off to a new and hopefully happy, healthy life is one of the best ways to say goodbye. Their new owners arrived this morning all wonderfully prepared to take their new pets away with them (see 18th July for details about their first visit) and once we had sorted out all the paperwork we headed down to the barn to collect the kids. We were prepared for lots of noisy bleating and anxious looks but actually the kids cried just a little bit and their mums (Onion and Thyme) hardly at all.
Over the last week the new owners have been sending photos of the work they have done to get their land ready for the new arrivals: the house they have built looks most impressive and it is set in a large area of land with lots of places for the kids to explore. We are as confident as we can be that these four have gone to a great home.
In many ways when the kids and lambs go, it is actually rather nice having the 'mums' to ourselves again. It gives us the chance to check them over and to make sure that, as they are no longer feeding their kids, they get back to good condition as soon as possible. Having said that Thyme looks great as she is and even Onion, despite all the health problems she has had recently, is not looking too bad at all. The biggest problems can either be weight loss whilst still feeding the kids due to the mums' putting a lot of energy into producing their milk or, once weaning has happened, weight GAIN. Putting on weight can happen if they carry on eating as much as they were but no longer producing the milk.
Pygmy goats are different to dairy goats in that once their kids go, they should just naturally 'dry off' i.e. no longer produce milk because it is no longer being drunk by their kids. Dairy goats however have much bigger udders and it is best for them if a little bit of milk is taken when you want them to dry off, just enough to stop the udder getting really big but not so much that their bodies carry on producing more.
Feeding time this evening was certainly a LOT quieter!!