It's our middle son's birthday today. Eight years old - a good age. He was lucky enough to have our first baby goat born on his birthday. It's a baby buck ... so they are both lucky! If this little buck wasn't born on our son's birthday he would have made his way in to our food chain in the fall. But since he's a lucky birthday goat my son has named him Lucky and he is now a family pet.Lucky, you don't know how lucky you really are!
Unfortunately we needed to pull Lucky from his mom at birth. Lucky is in the house tonight and will be moving out to the barn tomorrow. He'll get three bottles a day for the next week or so. My wife and I milked his mom tonight to get the colostrum. I'm heat treating it now and will feed it to Lucky when it cools.
It was fun milking a goat for the first time. I said to my wife "Imagine, I'll hate doing this one day in the future" but right then I liked it alot. It flowed well and was rich and creamy. It looked incredible!
So even though I have milked a goat much earlier than I expected I will not be starting my journey just yet. I'll have the opportunity to stock our freezer and fridge with fine milk products while I learn a few cheese recipes. For the next few weeks however all the milk might go to the kids after I pasturize it.
This will be fun!
This may be a silly question, but why did you have to heat treat colostrum to give to the kid? Wouldn't that kill the beneficial enzymes?
ReplyDeleteI have to tell you, I'm enjoying reading your posts.
Hi Ginny - Lucky's mom had an illness (CL) that can be passed along via nursing so it is a precautionary step to heat treat the colostrum. You may lose some of the beneficial enzymes but it is more important to protect against te CL infection if possible.
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