July 3, 2013

Guest Posting on Lovely Greens


I have been honored with a request to guest post on Lovely Greens! This is part of Tanya's six week series on DIY homesteading (see the list of articles and links in my sidebar on the right). My topic? Goats! You can read the post by clicking the link below....


I've you've just come from Lovely Greens, welcome and thank you for visiting! I am happy to try and answer any questions you might have. Also, I thought you might be interested in some of my other blog posts about goats. Here is a link list of goat posts that folks have found helpful or interesting:

Feeding our goats:
Food Self-Sufficency And Animals
More Thoughts On Growing Animal Feeds
DIY Vitamins & Minerals For Goats - from homegrown herbs & veggies
Pea Pickin' - growing cowpeas for protein
Them Ain't Weeds, Them's Forage - one man's weed is a goat's delight
Homestead Haying - what we've learned
Kudzu For Hay - utilizing an invasive weed for hay

Breeding (Adventures In)
How To Make A Buck Rag - one way to detect if your does are in heat
Love Is In The Air - a buck assist for mismatched goats
Breeding Plans, Awry Again - a buck and fence problem

Goat products I make:
Ziggy Milk, Ziggy Butter, Ziggy Mozz - a gallery of goat dairy products
Goat's Milk Butter For Two - how to get cream and make butter
Homestead Whipped Cream (From Goats!) - another cream product
Goats Milk Mozzarella - tips on making
Cheese #11, The Recipe - one of my hard cheese recipes
Cheese #15 - Another Keeper of a Recipe - a washed curd cheese
Rendering Goat Fat - a how to
Goatherd's Pie - a recipe for chevon

Problems we've had with our goats:
Goat Buster - how to keep little goats out of the chicken yard
Has Finally Grown Into His Knees - contracted tendons in newborns
It Was Time For Elvis To Go - dealing with a difficult buck
Milk Goiter - in nursing kids
Make Do Baby Goat Coat - for kidding during cold weather
Ziggy and Company - retained placenta
Some Not So Good News About Jasmine - weeping sores on her udder
Stillborn - the story of Jasmine's stillbirth
Poor Jasmine. Again.  - a broken shoulder tops continual problems
Goat Updates - what happened to Jasmine in the end
To Bud Or To Disbud, That Is The Question

A series on pasture establishment and improvement:
Pasture Improvement Phase 1
New Book For The Homestead Library - answers to soil deficiencies
Two Soil Tests, A Comparison - different services = different results
Pasture Improvement Phase 2: Remineralizing Our Soil
1st Peek At The New Pasture
Hello Pasture - when & how to introduce goats to new pasture
Soil Remineralization Year 2

A few miscellaneous goat posts
Book Review: Pat's Coleby's Natural Goat Care - a favorite
Immunities & Milk (Another of My Theories) - poison ivy eating goats

For fun:
Um. Is This Something I Should Be Concerned About?
Psst. Have You Heard The Latest?
Most Annoying Goat Award
Ziggy Report - A very pregnant goat

And, of course, posts to show off this year's kids:
More Alphie - this season's first born
The Age of Exploration (Being Two Days Old) - Lily's twins
Ziggy's Surprises - Ziggy's quads triplets
Coming Soon ... Baby Goat Updates - just a bunch of pics
Kids From A To Z: Our 2013 Kids In Review - and how they've grown

Coming Saturday, July 6 - "Barn Brainstorming" - how we hope a new barn will address some of the things goats have taught us.

14 comments:

Unknown said...

OOH! Great list of links Leigh :D

Mama Pea said...

Leigh, you are SO organized! You set the standard pretty high for the rest of us! Great article.

Leigh said...

Tanya, thank you!

Mama Pea, only in print. ;)

Cat Eye Cottage said...

Wow, looks like the makings for your own book!

Frank and Fern said...

Leigh - Thank you for sharing your knowledge of goats and how you came to raise the particular breeds have. I can always learn from the way someone else does things, especially if their choices are different than mine. We raise Nubians and right now I am swimming in milk, so we have cut down to milking only once a day. Great article, well put together, easy to understand and humble. Great attributes. Take care - Fern

Leigh said...

Candace, maybe someday on goats. I'm trying to finish up one on our first four years of homesteading!

Fern, thank you!

Willow said...

Great list. I am off to read a few right now.

Ron said...

Nice work as usual Leigh. I linked to you AND your article in my next post about moving to the country.

elaine said...

What a great post about goats. I used to keep a dairy herd of Saanens and a couple of pygmies. I adored them and really miss them now we no longer are able to keep them. There is certainly a lot to learn about goatkeeping - I only wish I had a good blog like yours to read in those days - it would have been so helpful - instead I had to learn everything by trial and error.

Leigh said...

Willow, thanks! I hope something us helpful to you.

OJD, thanks! And what an honor to be linked to!

Elaine, thank you! Seems like almost everything with goats is trial and error! I'm thinking, though, that it's you who should have been blogging when you had goats, so the rest of us could have been learning right along with you. :)

Dani said...

Lots of lovely info, thanks Leigh.

I've asked RMan if he wouodn't like a couple of goats, just for their milk, but he says that he feels they're too destructive - and would strip our smallish piece of land bare in no time.

Sadly, he's adamant, so it looks like I wont be having goats in my future, even though their milk kept me alive as a baby when it was discovered that I was allergic to cows milk.

Thanks - you provided a whole plethora of info, not only on your guest posting, but also in you post above :)

Frank and Fern said...

Leigh,
Thank you for all of the information on raising feed for goats and chickens. We have wanted to get away from commercial feed for some time but have not made that switch yet.
Hope your corn is growing well.
Fern

Leigh said...

Dani, RMan is right, goats can be very destructive. Not all of them, but there's no predicting! Good fencing is a must.

Fern, I appreciate that. I hope the information is helpful. It's an ongoing process, and I still buy grain and alfalfa pellets from the feed store.

My corn is doing great for now, but we've had 3.5 inches of rain in the past three days with more on the way. I'm not sure how much rain it can take!

ElizabethRose said...

Goats really are lovely creatures and funny as well. My daughter and I just visited our local 4H fair and pet quite a few! We live in an apartment at the moment but hope to have a homestead one day. Your blog is a revelation!
Liz, Dearborn Painter Pros