Video Deep-Dive Blog

Hello! This blogpost is dedicated to a very special goat to all of us Vineyard Chicks. Our miracle goat. She was born on February 4th, 2021, as the lone survivor of premature triplets. This is her story.
Trie and I were outside feeding the animals. The previous night had been bitter cold. Trie and I were worried about Pecan and his heat lamp. The cold spell had affected most of our animals. The muscovies weren’t happy going out when the temperature is in the teens.
Anyway, we opened the barn to let the goats out and we looked for goat kids on the ground, as we usually do during kidding season. Then we saw Tauren, a brand-new mama goat, just lying there chewing cud, completely unresponsive to the fact that she had delivered three beautiful babies. As I looked closer at the triplets, I realized something was wrong. Two of them were laying next to each other. While initially adorable, Trie and I soon realized that the babes were already gone. I was heartbroken. As I sat there trying to condole the goat (or really me... I love my goats), I looked over at the third babe, lying on the barn floor. She was still breathing.
As I looked closer, I realized that Tauren had never fed her or even cleaned her. The baby was laying down, still wet from delivery, slowly freezing in the icy weather. I told Trie about the goat, and we both knew that the baby needed colostrum to survive, even though we never exchanged a word about the colostrum. We tried for twenty minutes to get the baby to drink off Tauren, but the goat kid couldn’t stand up or even hold up her own head. Additionally, Tauren wasn’t producing any milk, and continued to be milk-less throughout the day.
The only logical thing left to do was bring the baby inside. Usually, we take a naturalist approach to our animals, often trying to let nature take care of itself, but if we wanted this baby to have even the slightest chance of surviving, bringing her in was our only option.
Trie was awesome. She valiantly sacrificed her sweater to allow the baby to have some sort of wind block during the walk back to the house. Once inside, we realized that we were not prepared for her at all. We miraculously found an unopened package of colostrum that would sustain her for a few days until we got some powdered milk replacer, but we realized that we didn’t have a bottle.
The baby did not look good. Even after we got her to warm up, she couldn’t lift her head or stand up on her own. We all knew the chances of this poor, pre-mature baby goat surviving were slim, but we were determined to try.
After about a half hour of using a straw to siphon colostrum into her mouth with the help of a needle-less syringe, we were able to purchase the nipple for a goat kid bottle. We tested the nipple out on different soft-drink bottle sizes. I was getting worried I would be feeding a goat kid from a 2-liter pop bottle, but the nipple fit just as well on a 20-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew. A little unorthodox, but it worked.
9 hours after we brought the frozen baby inside who was barely clinging to life, we noticed a change. the baby was holding her head up, and she was trying to bleat for the first time. I was elated. The colostrum had worked!
She just kept getting better. She was able to stand by day 2, and was able to walk around by day 3, even though she was a little unbalanced. On day three, we had a goat play date. We brought Pecan and a new goat who had been born 18 hours before, who we called Pippin.
The baby didn’t exactly know what to do with Pecan and Pippin. Despite being older than Pippin, she was still considerably smaller and thinner. Overall, she enjoyed spending time with the others, and she loved being around us.
She’s still inside with us, and now she’s catching up to the other goats’ size, but we’re going to keep her inside until the cold ends. Thank you for reading!

In this video, we performed a cover song of Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’. Bunkie handled the vocals, I did the keyboard line, and Trie tackled her first major song with her drum set and amazed us!
Why did we do ‘My Way’? Well, to explain that, I need to introduce you to a rather special goat of ours, Pika. Pika is our one-eared wonder, as she was attacked by a dog. The dog badly damaged her leg and we weren’t able to salvage her ear, hence the one-eared wonder theme, and that is why she’s a rather special goat to us. She’s the oldest goat on our farm, and we’ve had her the longest, so she’s taken her place as herd queen, as I discussed in a different video (Rotational Pastures). She’s freshened (given birth) twice with us, and her daughters are Kili (a 2019 kid) and Biffur (a 2020 kid).
This isn’t why we need to discuss her, though.
As herd queen, she considers it her job to keep the herd safe. So, she seizes every opportunity she can to instigate the dogs. As in, she stands right next to them and just... stands there. She annoys them, I guess. One never understands the ways of the Pika.
She is also our cleverest goat by far. Every time that the cows get sweet feed, all the other goats rush to eat some with the cows. NOT PIKA. Pika sticks around and sees what else there is to munch on without other goats competing with her. The new hay bale, for example. She is truly a funny goat.
Bunkie performed the vocals, but she did have a hard time not laughing, especially because our camera-girl, Trie, kept making faces at her while we were recording. Oh, well. Bunkie did a great job singing and laughing, and I think this is one of our best music videos yet!
I (Kay-Kay) did the keyboard and audio editing using GarageBand, but the real spotlight of this video belongs to Trie.
Trie performed her first non-vocal part in a music video, playing the drums quite admirably, if I do say so myself. She started taking drum set lessons at the start of this school year, and she has learned a lot. So, great job, Trie!
That’s it for this post! Thank you for reading!

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EP-78: How To Train A Barn Cat

12/29/2020

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Hi everybody! Bunkie recently published a video about our barn cat, Oreo, and i just wanted to go more in-depth at what we did.
When we got our cat from Hidden Acres Rescue Farm (facebook.com/farmgirlsx2/) she warned us that if we didn’t isolate him for a couple of weeks in a dog crate, he would run away. While I initially protested this idea, I have to admit that the advice was legit. About a month after we got him, he is the sweetest cat I’ve ever seen! Oreo is a very affectionate cat, and when we go outside to feed the animals, he follows our sound to the door that we open. He’s always very eager for attention, and loves being rubbed as well as climbing onto a shoulder and hitching a ride through the barnyard.
The barn cat’s purpose was primarily to chase rats away from the barn, which is where our goats sleep. We’ve had many incidents where rats picked off our ducks, and we were fed up with pests, so we got Oreo. So far, we haven’t found evidence of his destruction of the rat population, but his presence seems to scare the rats away, and we are definitely psyched about having Oreo on our farm.
Although he looks a tad bit grumpy on our thumbnail, he is a very energetic and playful kitten who always looks forward to seeing us. We bought toys to keep him occupied, which you’ll see in the video, but we got him an automated cat toy that you turn on to have a toy mouse pop out of different holes. Hilariously, Oreo is terrified of it. Every time he hears the “whir-POP” of the toy, he scampers for shelter.
These are just a few of the infinite reasons and anecdotes of why we appreciate having Oreo on the farm. If you can stand Bunkie’s eyebrows, enjoy the video!

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(EP-64) How To Register Goats with the ADGA

10/8/2020

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Hi! This blog post is about registering goats with the American Dairy Goat Association (ADGA). We personally like this association so much better than the American Goat Society (AGS) because it is so much more thorough, fast, and and user-friendly. We've used both (Pika was registered through the AGS) but we decided what was better for us right away.

Registering the Goat

   To register a goat, you can get the form to print or fill out with Adobe Acrobat here. To do it online (which is the first thing I demonstrated in my video), you will need to become a member first (fill out the form online or manually) and then submit a PIN application.

   Once you have access to the site (approximately a couple of weeks until the results get back with your PIN number and instructions), log in and go to Member Services. Scroll down until you find the Register a Goat box, and click the title. This should bring you to the registration page.
Here are some key things to remember:
*Buck is boy, doe is girl.
*Sire is father, dam is mother
*Tattoo on RIGHT ear/tail web is for your specific ADGA-issued tattoo. (VC19 or 1234)
*Left ear is for that year's letter (L=2019, M=2020, N=2021... G, I, O, Q, and U are not used to prevent confusion) and the kid number (the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. goat of the year.) If you are registering you're 12th goat kid of the year 2020, the tattoo on the left ear would be M12.

   Other than that, the registration process is pretty straight-forward! If you choose to submit your application online, it will check to make sure there are no errors n your work, have you double-check it, and then put it in your cart. When you are ready to pay, enter your credit/debit card information (ADGA is a trusted site) and submit!

Here is the price list for ADGA members:
Does under 30 months old (About 2.5 years)- $9.50-$10.50 (depending on time of year... Cheaper Sept.1 to Mar. 31)
Doe 30 months or older- $13.00-$14.00 (depending on time of year... Cheaper Sept.1 to Mar. 31)
Buck under 24 months (2 years)- $15.50-$16.50 (depending on time of year... Cheaper Sept.1 to Mar. 31)
Buck over 24 months- $28.00-$29.00
AGS/CGS Re-Registration (we did this for Pika) - $11.00-$12.00

Here is the price list for non-ADGA members (in some cases, the price doubles):
Does under 30 months old (About 2.5 years)- $19.00-$21.00 (depending on time of year... Cheaper Sept.1 to Mar. 31)
Doe 30 months or older- $26.00-$28.00 (depending on time of year... Cheaper Sept.1 to Mar. 31)
Buck under 24 months (2 years)- $31.00-$33.00 (depending on time of year... Cheaper Sept.1 to Mar. 31)
Buck over 24 months- $56.00-$58.00
AGS/CGS Re-Registration (we did this for Pika) - $22.00-$24.00

Thank you for reading!

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(EP-63) How to Clip Chicken Wings & Fall Prep: Retiring PVC Tractors til Spring

10/3/2020

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   Hey, y'all! Trie's video is about how she retired her chicken tractor (https://youtu.be/DfzLo_FEKJU) and prepared her chickens for fall.
   The first thing she does is retire her chicken tractor. Off camera, she took off the tarps from the top of the chicken tractors, and she lined them up against a fence, which is where the tractors will stay until spring returns!
   Next, she clips the chicken's wings... in the rain and the hail. We prefer to clip the right wing for uniformity, but we only clip ONE wing. You don't go too low, or you're going to cut the chicken's wing, and it won't be a happy hen.
   Finally, she puts her chickens in the garden. To do this, we harvested all of the tomatoes and other vegetables that we wanted to keep... whether they were ripe or not. Then, we got to put the chickens in the garden. While doing this, she named our Buff x English Black chicks (Lovingly named Chocolate/Butterscotch Orpington chicks) after one of our favorite movie series... Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. We now have Jacob, Tina, Grindelwald, Queenie, and Newt in our garden!
   Thank you for reading and have a great day!

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(EP-55) Raising Goats 101: Caring For New Goats On Your Homestead

8/16/2020

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Hey there! So, I recently published a video about the basics you need to know for raising goats! We recently sold our first baby goats, and there was oh-so-very-much that I wanted to tell the owners! I only got to share some of them in the video, and most of the stuff I didn't mention, I learned from experience and it became part of our lives!

Goats are clever. "Of course those adorable furballs are clever, but not, like, that much, right?" WRONG. Our goats are very smart. If they know that there is something that they like somewhere that they aren't allowed (For example, our neighbor's lawn) they will do ANYTHING in their power to get to that plant. break fences, push gates open... I mean ANYTHING.
Bucks smell. A typical boy (goat) trait, bucks smell terrible to some people. During COVID-19, we've had people buy our male goats for pets, and we've had to persistently warn them that goat bucks smell really bad. They tend to... um... wet themselves intentionally and constantly, so... you can see just how bad they smell.
Over-eating is dangerous. It doesn't just make them adorable and CHUBBY goats, either. Goats have microorganisms in their stomachs that get hurt easily with any change in diet. Overfeeding can lead to disrupting their delicate organisms, which can get them sick.

I will update if I think of any more. Thank you!

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