We had an exciting weekend, one of the first really warm few days that we’ve had up here in the mountains.
Our first round of baby goats were born last week! Clarence (brown male) and Heidi (white female). Mama Lilly did awesome and did the entire birth by herself. We came out in the morning to feed them, and the babies were already cleaned off and nursing great! We couldn’t have hoped for a better first experience for breeding and birthing animals. Second Mama Tootsie is due in 2-3 weeks (we estimate) and are currently feeding both moms an absurd amount of hay and grain so they can take care of their babies.
We’re looking forward to the girls milk production being back to “normal” as we let them dry up a few months ago to prepare for the births. Going to start making cheeses and caramels again – hoping to sell some at our local farmer’s market this summer!
Also, our birds finally started laying eggs! The same day that we found the babies, we found about a dozen eggs. Half chicken, half duck. The week after that we found up to 15 each day! Naturally, we decided to have an omelette party to deal with this problem. We’ve since found several regular customers who will help us keep this egg issue under control.
I’ve also since learned about the nutritional value of duck eggs:
- they have more albumen (great for baking)
- more Omega 3 fatty acids
- they are an alkaline producing food (cancer cannot grow)
- six times the amount of vitamin D
- twice the amount of vitamin A
- twice the cholesterol (good or bad depending on the latest research)
- higher in calories
- twice as high in mono unsaturated fat
- Stay fresher, longer because of the thicker shell
Overall, duck eggs have twice the nutritional value of a chicken egg, which is awesome for BOTH of us (Ryan, because of his chicken egg intolerance, and me for extra nutrients & fat during my pregnancy).
Here are some sweet pictures of the kids and their mama during their first week.
Be looking for another post in a few weeks with Baby Goats, Round Two!
