Hokey pete, that's a lot of milk.

Penelope, dear Penelope, she just won't give us enough milk. After feeding her like a queen she was still only giving 2 lbs(1 qrt) every morning. So I get this bright idea...let's get another milk goat! I tend to do these harebrained things, forgetting things like, oh, I have seven children, one is a very fussy little boy right now, I can't keep up with the work I have already...you'd think I'd learn. You should see our place right now, there are chicken tractors everywhere filled with bunnies or chicks or chickens, puppies galore and now four goats. Yes, four. I was warned going into this goat thing that it might become addictive. Well, I may need an intervention soon.



We all piled in the van Sunday afternoon and drove for two hours to Timbuktu, picked up another milker and a doeling the lady threw in to sweeten the deal. We coaxed them into the back of our van(o.k. a little grain and a lot of grunting and oomfing on our part) - right behind the children(my van was well protected from what goats do best) and back to Lynden we traveled. Seven children, two adults, two goats. I'd looked back every now and then to see Daniel sitting in the back seat and a large goats head resting on his shoulder reading his book with him. My, what the people on I-5 must have thought as they saw the goats staring at them from the back window.

Juniper, our new goat, is comparatively HUGE. She has a beard, but a womanly type of beard. It looks good on her. The night we got her home, we milked her for the first time. It was like trading in your 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit for a 2009 Cadillac. Much larger teats, twice as much milk and milking taking half the time. Though Juniper is needy. She thinks SHE is married to my husband as she calls to him across the yard. When he goes in the pen with her all she does is love on him. She is quite affectionate, though she obviously has a crush on my husband.

Something happened to Penelope after we got Juniper home. It's like she knows she is being replaced. She has started giving more milk, miraculously, seriously. Yesterday, between them both, we got over 11 lbs of milk(8lbs=1gallon). Compared to our usual 2.2lbs, that was paydirt. Our new little doeling is still bottle fed so that is a heavenly experience for the children!! And me! We just filled one of Gracie's bottles and wallah, the doeling sucked 8oz of milk down in about 30 sec.

It is so much easier when you have a partner. Juniper is 1yr old and she just freshened two weeks ago. Hopefully, we have many years ahead together.

As for Penelope, she will move on. She was a great beginner goat. We learned more than we wanted to learn, no really. (Mindy, you know what I am talk'n about, like what ORF stands for)

Goats are cool. The education has been awesome. I know how to pick out quality vs cruddy hay/alfalfa, I can trim hooves, clip my version of a *dairy cut*, take a goats temp, know what cashmere is, wrestle a goat , in a skirt, and get wormer crammed in it's mouth, their stomachs can hold 3-4 gallons of water and plant matter(WOW), and much, much more.

Everyone needs a goat.