Bohemian Antiks Continue

A Magic Goat

Did you know that you don't need to produce a kid for a goat to start making milk?  We call our Goat magic, but really, it's the dairy industry that needs to be a lot more creative.  

Goat was free.  When we went to look at our Merino Sheep, the farmer said that there were two lambs that we could take immediately.  They were being bottle fed so did not need to be weaned.  At the time that sounded like a good idea, saving us a long journey back to the other end of the country.  Now I know better. That if a mother rejects a lamb, the lamb will grow up to be a mother that rejects her lamb.  Ah well.  That was a level of herd management we had no idea about.  Anyway, so we went to see the two bottle-fed lambs and they were in a pen in a barn with a kid goat.  I realised that taking the two lambs without the baby goat would be impossible.  Herd animals tend to die if they are left alone like that. 

The farmer said.  Oh - just put it on the barbecue in a couple of months if you don't want to keep her.  That was it. We were taking her.  We stayed overnight at a near by guest house and set off the next morning to pick up our first ever livestock.  The farmer bound their legs together and popped them in the boot of our little red volvo.  I don't know what I was expecting, but it was not that.  With some basic instructions, we were on our way back to South  Bohemia, with bleating, baaing and head bobbing coming from the boot.  

We began to wonder about the legality of transporting livestock in a domestic vehicle... at the point where there was a police car following us on the motorway and Foulden had escaped her bounds and was making rather a fuss.  Luckily we were not the sheep wranglers they were looking for. 

My Eight year old friend today reminded me of one of the many reasons that our goat is special.  One time last year our naughty sheep was in rambunctious mood.  What she really wanted more than anything else was a good game of bumpy heads.  This is a fine game to play if you are a sheep or goat.  Less fine if you're an Alpaca Llama or Human.  And she's strong.  If you get rammed you know about it. 

Bumpy heads is why you should never pet a sheep on the top of the head.  Just about anywhere else is fine, but the top of the head just means one thing to a sheep - an exciting game of bumpy heads is about to commence.  All very well and good if you're an adult.  The worst you'd come out with would be wet clothing (from being pushed into the pond) or a big old bruise on the thigh.

Usually you can tell if Naughty Sheep wants to play, and you can grab a safety stick to defend yourself - if she approaches you too violently with her head.

That day my seven, or even six year old friend, did not have the stick of safety.  But Dijon goat spotted the potential danger and put herself between the child and Naughty Sheep. Which we have now noticed that she does habitually, keeping the others in line like an older sister with a rabble of small siblings. 

Goat is a smart animal. Since she was a kid it has been an ongoing arms race between her and any shrubs on the property.  The carefully braided willow fence didn't stand a chance.  And pretty much any tree has now had to have a barrier of steel placed around it.  Ringing trees is a favourite winter pastime for a goat. So, as she got larger, so did the fences.   Now we have lovely fence from the local forresters.  It's a specific local style of metre high vertical bars topped with three horizontal bars above it, in 2.5 metre panels.  High enough that a deer won't clear it, and strong enough that a wild boar won't casually push it down. The fence is temporary - fixed into the ground by stakes driven into the ground at diagonals, so it can be moved about pretty easily. But that's now.  Back then we made our own fences with the wood from the collapsed barns.

One day, after we'd been working on the fences - precisely to stop incursions, we discovered Goat in the garden, happily eating the vegetables in the spiral.  I mean, we had just been out and reinforced all the fences, so the new route was mysterious.  I walked the boundaries and the only thing I could find was a chair that had been left by the fence up by the pond.  I moved it away from the fence and thought the problem solved.  The next day we looked out of the window and there was Goat, eating the kale.  After her swift removal and a telling-off - but what really is the point.  Is there really so much competition between a cross human and delicious brassica?  I went and walked the fence line again.  Goat had pushed the chair back into position by the fence so that she could climb over and get into the veggie spiral again.  Such a clever girl. 

We were quite content to have Goat as a pet, rather than a working member of the team.  Everyone else on the farm had a job, after all.  But, I didn't want to keep making her pregnant so we could have milk, and then have to kill her baby, or just have more and more and more goats.  I'd already seen how destructive one single goat could be,  another would be just double trouble.  But then, I came across a curious story on the internet about a man who had been on a mission to lactate.  I realised that if a male could do it, then surely a female goat could. 

Goat was three by the time I figured out that I could bring her into milk production.  At some point in the spring her udders would always kind of get bigger.  At that point I started to milk her, and we very much learned the process together.  I fed her some fenugreek seeds as that's supposed to help, and we worked out a system where she was comfortably positioned up on the millstone with some tasty thing to eat - wheat grain  - which is like crack for farm animals.  There was very little milk at first, and it felt distinctly weird to actually consume it, but after just a couple of weeks we were in full flow.  

So these days I milk Goat through the summer season, then her production naturally tails off in the autumn. We don't milk her at all in the winter - when they have to eat hay and the grass does not grow. And we start again when it seems like the right time in the spring. 

We produce enough milk to meet our needs and then some besides.  It's not hugely goaty in flavour because we don't have a stinky intact male goat around to make everything smell.  But these days I do find that cow milk tastes awfully... cowwy.  We have plenty of milk to make yoghurt and soft cheese, and more than enough to give away as well.

In the winter I switch to vegan milk alternatives because the dairy cows in the Czech Republic are not free range.  They are kept in barns their entire lives, like units of production rather than sentient beings.  If you've ever met a cow living happily in a field, you'll know what a sad state of affairs this is.  So buy New Zealand milk products, which come from happy, free-range cows!!!

Milk products do not have to be a by-product of meat production. They are because humans arrange it so.  There is absolutely no reason a cow must have a calf in order to produce milk.  Unfortunately,  this happy-middle-ground of animal welfare and dairy production is ignored by both vegans and ethical meat eaters alike.  But if you are interested to meet our magic Goat, you are very welcome to visit and see for yourself.