[Sondra]

Re: record forms

wonder if kefir would help prevent milk carried diseases between mother and kids?

possible but sure not proven believe only way that might be at all possible is to pull the kids and bottle feed. also pasturizing the milk given to kids is what alot of us do for prevention of disease like CAE /Listosis passed thru milk. However would certainly help with any rumen or gut problems in either adults or kids.
As for your little guy that is off any chg in feed will upset them so give him some baking soda or better yet probios of any kind. When you are looking for a buck for these does try and find one that would be throwing small kids.

 

[NubianSoaps.com]

Re: record forms

Other than comfrey and lepiseda that I add to the seeds I over seed in my pastures, I think living in the national forest is the reason we do have such natural worming tools already in the pasture...but alot of this comes with time. Learning to fecal was key for me.

I love keifer, not only for myself (I put about 1/4 cup a day into a fruit smoothy for myself) but for our animals. Dogs and goats. I use it instead of probiotics which we found out has no benefits other than lactobacillicus in the rumen, it's all bacteria for intestines...which would be fine if you are dealing with cocci. But for true building the rumen tool, kefir has alot more benefical bacteria in it for the rumen, and hundreds more than yogurt etc. It also populates the gut and isn't pooped out each day (human info, likely not true in goats). Plus it grows so darn fast, one small caulifolower floret piece will grow babies in 2 weeks that can be shared. Tastes a little like beer milk With most immunity in the intestines, makes sense to deal with all things with something like kefir first or along with other remedies. I have some...would be happy to send it to you, I will even pay the shipping.

You just add it to milk, ferment and drink the milk off, keep adding fresh milk. I am using coconut milk in one of my jars right now. Vicki

 

[rojen]

more of a 911.

I will give the little guy some baking soda. I also think I will try some yakult, which is a little drink with some lacto bacteria I believe.

I also am very interested if the goats would take to powdered milk for humans. We have a number of varieties of those here. Some for kids, baby formula, growing kids formula, older adults, senior formula. They are expensive for the poor, but something worth trying for the little guy (named Van). He is further off today. Not eating, stands alone and moves very little.

On formula's I will look for ones that high light vitamin C, B complex, and copper.

I have a neighbor just down the road who has a commercial meat operation. It is very primitive by us standards, but maybe he has idea. He does deworm. He has native and lets them run all over. He has a security company, whenever his guards are working with adjacent fields near by they do double duty.

But now I think unless something helps van soon, he will soon be gone.

What have you used *on hand stuff* to bottle feeding. I was going to use old juice bottles and baby bottles, but I believe that may help for today, but those nipples are not the strongest.

I have plans for making a nipple / bottle from an old juice bottle and a discarded injection syringe.

I so much appreciate you gals/guys

Ron

 

[rojen]

Re: record forms

I talked with Tony my local goat expert. He said, he tried bear brand powdered milk, but the goats always died. I went to the store and looked at every label. Bear brand had little B complex and little C - no copper, no priobotics. His outlook was more on letting nature take its course.

Bonna infant formula had the highest B's, C, and copper. I bought that and chamyto by nestle. It is a lacobacillus with zinc drink. I plan on mixing the two and serving it warm to van.

Tony also confirmed that the feed/ag stores here carry no goat supplies at all. He said the only thing he could recommend is hand milking another goat. He thought the goat was probably sick due to all the rain lately. But the goat is not coughing at all. I have no thermometer yet.

The stool of one of them (which is unknown), has little paint chips in it. At least it looks like paint or plastic chips. I looked around to see what could have been eaten. Almost nothing is painted. Most of our stuff is cement or bamboo or wire - or native plants; maybe a bag, but it really looked more like paint chips than plastic.

Ron

 

[Sondra]

Re: record forms

Ron most important would be to see that he is getting fluids right now.kefir, yogurt or acidolpholis pills or any probios type stuff. to sooth the rumen.
Sounds like maybe they did get hold of plastic of some sort and if it was plastic bags could block them up. Dry milk products usually don't have enough fat in them for long term use but could be used as a supplement. A regular baby bottle and nipple will do or as what will probably be the case for you, is that the baby won't suck because of being on the mom. so use something like a turkey baster and get the milk into him that way.
Do you have any type of sulfa drugs there you could give him for ecoli or cocci?
How old are these kids??

 

[rojen]

Okay got some fluids in him. Baby is one month old. I got to examine his stool, formed by wet. Not diarhhea, but not like the others. No signs of anything like plastic. He does not seem bloated or in pain. Just listless and off food. If Mom had more milk I would probably let it be. AMom being a little short and he being less active, brother gets both if not stopped. He wants to feed from Mom, but does not forage like his brother anymore. Still pretty listless and quiet. Tho he got noisy when I fed him. His brother loved the milk supplement. He fought it. I ended up wearing half. I was going to tube him and my wife stopped that. She said she would help and we could just get him to bottle feed.

The salt bottles here seem perfectly designed for bottle feeding goats.

O yeah I gave him maybe 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda on a popsicle stick. He really hated that. Went off by himself and made funny noises for 10 minutes. I picked him up after that rubbed his stomach gently and he fell asleep in my lap. Don't know that it bonded him to me, but it sure did me to him.

Here he is:

[attachment deleted by admin]

 

[Sondra]

Oh how cute. Take baby brother away from mom and let this baby suck first

thought you might be interested in reading this on forage if you haven't already.
http://www.fao.org/ag/agP/agpc/doc/Newpub/PhilippineProceedings/asis.pdf

 

[Ashley]

Are you able to grow garlic there?

Horseradish? Ginger? Habanero Peppers? Onions?

You said you had vinegar, what kind?

Cute picture by the way Look at all that GREEN behind you!!

 

[MysticHollowGoats]

The stool of one of them (which is unknown), has little paint chips in it. At least it looks like paint or plastic chips. I looked around to see what could have been eaten. Almost nothing is painted. Most of our stuff is cement or bamboo or wire - or native plants; maybe a bag, but it really looked more like paint chips than plastic.

Ron

Looking like paint chips hmmm If I saw that I would be thinking possibly tapeworms.

 

[Sondra]

or undigested bamboo in this young of a goat

 

[rojen]

Ashley,

I can grow all that here. That lush green behind van and I is the result of being near the rainforest and having a year round growing season. There are advantages to living here too. Another venture we are interested in helping others start is herb gardens. Health benefits, plus restaurants currently import herbs - marketed by the ounce.

I keep taking baby bro away from mom, but ... Mom has them on some sorta South Beach diet. Milk by the trickles. So I gotta be fast. (or keep him away for awhile.) No change in Van.

Sondra, Thanks for the article. Fortunately the price per Kilogram has doubled since that survey. Goat meat seems to have a limited popularity. It is used by a few as a holiday food. Like our goose in the US. It is used a lot by Muslim who do not take pork. (Pork is what everyone eats most, besides fish.) Muslims in my area are about 2% of the population. There is a smaller ethnic group of Hindus from India and they like it a lot too. But since so few raise it, there seems to be a sellers market. My neighbor with the 150 animal herd says he can sell every single animal. The fodder pretty matches what I am working on, except I have a larger variety. (Tho a lot of them are not well planted yet.)

Nobody seems to use sileage, which I grew up with (cow dairy). I see this as having a large potential. Collect during rainy season. Keeps for years. No worries about worms. Can be enhanced with EM or bokashi to make more palatable.

I have a question I have not found the answer to anywhere. How long do the various worms live inside the goats. If their life span is a year or less and the goats can bear the burden, I should be able to be worm free with careful management even if I have no meds. If I can get the stock to this level, and start the other farmers out with worm free stock. As long as they are isolated, they should stay worm free right? Especially since goat herders tend to be fairly spread out here.

I know goats share with sheep, but sheep are even fewer. I have seen only 3 total sheep in the area I work in. I have seen maybe 200-250 goats spread over those same miles.

Here's momma (Jasmine) with Van and my daughter Kayla the day we got them. Note the tether rope. This is how we got them. Kayla wants to be a vet - my perfect goat partner. Her size (19.5 inches at the shoulder) can easily be seen here.

[attachment deleted by admin]

 

[Katarina]

Oh yeah, ginger and peppers will be easily grown there--you shoudl have seen the peppers we grew in Jakarta! :lol

Remember that you will never be worm-FREE, the challenge is to keep them to a level that doesnt harm the goats.

 

[Guest]

Ron; I'm surely imppressed with what you are taking on over there. I can assume that your are you are a part of a mission team or church from the USA. How easy is it for you to receive mail or packages, and does it get lost or gone through before you get it.? You know, I bet those old native goats are tough as nails over there, and would think that modern medicines would be very effective on them if you could just get some. They should have no resistance to wormers or antibiotics ....... Hope you stay in touch as many of us will be watching and praying for your success.

Whim

 

[Sondra]

Whim and anyone interested I have all the mailing info and instructions and also He used to live here in Azle and the 1st Babtist Church here is sending someone down in Feb for ministry I have yet to get ahold of her but will be doing so shortly. Sending by boat seems to be the best way and he gets the stuff over even Fedex or UPS nobody steals it but takes 45 days. so refrig stuff is out of question. if anyone wants the address contact me .

 

[Sondra]

Ron see if somehow you can up the calcium content in the does diet either with people supplements or something so she will produce more milk.

 

[rojen]

Sondra,

Changing her feed to help increase the milk is exactly what I was thinking. I did not know that calcium helped, makes sense tho. In the US with cow dairies I've seen heavier sileage mixes and also feeding spent malt from the breweries used to increase production. Made the whole dairy smell like beer and the cows would literally chase the malt truck down the lane mooing like crazy.

Now days with a more holistic outlook I wonder at the wisdom of spent malt, lol. Made the cows very happy tho, and huge increases in milk.

I thought she would increase milk just having free standing water always available, but I have yet to see her drink it. When I dipped her nose in it, she wiped it off very completely on my wall, without licking any off. The whole while giving me the *evil eye.* She definitely has personality.

No real update on van.

Ron

 

[Guest]

Ron....I'm gonna be very curious to see how well your goats do, or even eat the silage. I'm thinking pretty much just the opposite I guess.....I was thinking more in line with cutting this folage and curing it out in the sun, much like hay. High humidity might not allow dry goods like hay to be stored up in dry storage without molding.
I have some friends in American Samoa. When I get the chance, I will ask them how they go about feed for their animals. There is a goat herder not far from my brothers land over there, but my brother won't be visiting with them again until late next spring.

 

[Ashley]

You can make an excellent "antibiotic" and antiviral (and possibly even antiparasite I'm finding out) with those ingredients and vinegar. You simply finely chop equal parts habanero, ginger, horseradish, onion (white and hotter the better) and garlic, put them in vinegar (you want enough of the ingredients so that once you put all this in a glass jar, they come up about 70 percent of the way, so that about 30 percent at the top is just vinegar. Keep in a glass jar, stir or shake daily if possible. Leave for 28 days before straining. I have found the animals will often eat what you strain out, and its good to. This will keep for a very long time just at room temperature and it's very effective. It's great for people, horses and goats, that's what I've used it for. It is good for most sickness, I've used to for pink eye twice on my goats and it worked well (with one I also put eyebright in the eye, the other I only used the "supertonic" as we call it and it was very effective). I think it even kills tape worms, since my goat started passing tons of dead segments since I gave it, but can't be sure. It's something to try.

If they are sick, I'd give probably 1/2 to 1 teaspoon 2-3 times per day, you can give up to more like 2-3 teaspoons if you find the need, or are trying to see if it will help with worms. I plan to experiment with herbal worming next summer with my few goats.

We always use apple cider vinegar, unfiltered, I don't know if other vinegars will work as well. But it is great stuff for the flu, colds etc.

 

[Ashley]

Oh, and if you use the supertonic, you have to continue to give it until the sickness is completely gone, if you slack off because they are improving, it usually comes back worse.

 

[rojen]

THanks Ashley,

I'll cook some up. We have apple cider vinegar, but its a bit expensive being imported. The other ingredients sound similar to my insecticide spray, lol. Maybe if the eat and drink it, the bugs with fall off. Goats don't sweat do they? We have all kinds of others, cane, white, coconut. I think there is another too. Think I'll try coconut. I can make that myself., have about 15 fully producing trees. Coconut milk is a regular drink with me.

Now for the good news. Van is shaking and not real active, but he is eating some again.

I also learned Momma will do about anything for hi-calcium snacks. No stand-offish now, are you. I need to find a healthier way to supplement her calcium I think tho. People food is so unhealthy.

Okay next Newbie question. Momma is pregnant and looks a bit lopsided. Her right side bulges up under the ribs and her left down in the belly. She can't be very far along since Van and Choco were born Oct 29.

Ron