Step One: Pregnant Goats. We breed our goats once a year, in the fall. Goats gestate for five months.
Betty not pregnant- svelte!
Betty pregnant - less svelte!
Step Two: Baby Goats! The kids are generally born between March and May. Each doe can have one to five kids.
The kids are moved to the nursery and bottle fed their mother’s milk. The baby goats will stay on goat milk for twelve weeks. This is why our milk customers take a seasonal break from mid-winter (when we stop milking the pregnant goats so they can use all their energy on making healthy kids) until the end of spring (when the kids stop hogging all the milk!).
Like bottle-feeding baby goats? Come volunteer with us and this could be you!
Step Three: Goats are milked for human consumption (fiiiinally!) in a clean milking parlor with safe food handling practices. The milk is carefully chilled and stored in the refrigerator for pick-up once per week.
Don’t forget to return your jars!
In the meantime we rake the goats- er, the pens, and keep the hay shed stocked.
Spring and summer the milk flows. By the fall it's time to breed the does again to handsome fellas like this guy, Elbert.
By fall the goat kids are getting big and very helpful.
Goat kid.
Goat, kids.
By winter the does are pregnant and the milk supply will taper off. This is generally when your milk will be decreased and then paused entirely until the spring...
but it’s worth it for the lattes!
Quiet winter hive and quiet(ish) winter farm.
...when the whole thing starts all over again!