Friday, July 27, 2012

The Rime of the Ancient Dairy-er

Milk, milk every where,
And all that was stored did shrink;
Milk, milk, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

Pickles was four weeks old yesterday.  She's in with the rest of our itty-bitty herd all day and night now.....except when she squeezes out of the cattle panel fencing. Which is a bit annoying.  And will be even more annoying, if not outright infuriating (and requiring some drastic measures) if she figures out that she can jump on the vehicles.  But mainly she just ventures out of the pen to munch on what green grass or weeds she can find just beyond the goat yard.

But back to the lack of milk.  Or should I say, the lack of milk that we are getting to drink.  Between the hungry little goat and the two gallons a week I sell, there isn't much left for us.

Pickles is tipping back the milk like it's going out of style.  I guess I never noticed the amount of milk the kids drank before as I've never had to bottle feed any of them.  I've got to the point now where I can give her one last feeding between 11 pm and Midnight and then get to sleep a full six hours until I feed her again at 5 or 6 in the morning.  During the day I'll feed her every three or so hours.

Since I am ever curious, yesterday I measured out how much milk she drank in a 24 hour period.  She sucked down eighty-nine ounces; that's just over 5 1/2 pounds of milk!  And I weighed her in at eighteen and a half pounds this morning before her first feeding.  She's drinking almost a third of her body weight in milk. Wow.  Can you imagine if you (assuming one weighed 150 lbs.) drank that much? You'd have to drink SIX gallons of milk a day.  I'm getting bloated just thinking about it.

7 comments:

  1. hmmm time to cut back on the bottles and get her eating more hay, or maybe water down her milk a bit during the day.

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  2. Yep, those kids suck that milk down like crazy. Our last buckling is being weaned off, so it means more milk for us. We can't sell our milk here.

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  3. I've never had a bottle baby either...when do they start to decrease? We are low in milk now too....our doe was having quite a time keeping her weight up and being picky (not eating enough of her grain) and I am going to dry her up now to let her get good and healthy. I miss the milk already

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  4. I can't even imagine drinking six gallons of anything a day. Although, by Friday afternoon, I COULD contemplate finishing off a six gallon barrel of wine. She must be a little chunk by now. Do we get pictures or do we use our imaginations...just askin'.

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  5. Yes! We want new pics of Pickles!!!

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  6. WOW that's a lot of milk LOL! I would love to have known exactly how much my (human) kids were consuming when I was nursing haha, no wonder they grow like weeds :)

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