Goats in the News: Kidding Season Edition 2010

Well, our weather has turned to the decidedly Spring-y. Time to start cleaning out barns, coops, and nooks and crannies where rodents have nested over-winter.

1. How the CAE (Caprine Encephalitis) Virus Infects and Affects Dairy Goats - A Dairy Goat Journal written by the author of "Goat Biology" (which is fantastic). This is very important this time of year because CAE+ does are out there. And they can spread CAE to their kids if they nurse or get unpasteurized milk. One of our goat friends brought home a beatiful buckling from a historically CAE- herd, but a herd that never tested for CAE. And of course, after being in the new herd and being tested, it was discovered that the buckling was CAE+ and the breeder was incredulous. The damage to the breeder's reputation and our friend's CAE- herd was done. Caveat emptor!
2. Australian Meat Goat Prices Rise 30% in 1 Year - apparently the rising price of mutton is pulling along its less common cousin. Imagine what that could do in the US if beef prices rose. Kiko and Boer prices would skyrocket. It is important to remember that in Australia almost all livestock is grass-fed already - little CAFO or confinement.
3. Oscar Nominee Farmiga May Thank Her Goats - A NY Post article about Vera Farmiga who is in the hunt for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Her main life is being a farm-wife in Ulster County, NY - moving the firewood and knitting the goat cashmere from her goats.
4. Radical Homemakers Live the Good Life on Less (review) - this is a book review of this same title by the editor of Grit Magazine. Doing more with less on a farm is hard, no denying that, but the cost of not doing it are... higher. Life is more, even with less. Trust us :D
5. Goat Fans in the Urban/Suburban Area - USA Today article about the growing group of urban goat enthusiasts and their planning regulation issues. To quote from the article, "'If you can have a 250-pound dog in town, why not a miniature goat that can produce milk?'she says. 'It's just common sense.' The Planning Commission hasn't made a recommendation yet."

Cleaning Your Water Supply

I don't know what you use as your water source for you and your animals - I did a quick Google Search and found nothing on giving livestock filtered water. In the words of Cypher in "The Matrix": "Nuh-thing."

Now, you can find lots of info on why you should drink filtered water in urban, suburban, and rural areas (especially when rural areas have animal-source E. coli in the groundwater). And a recent study in Alberta found that 70% of rural residents were drinking filtered water in the house.

In rural areas, the risk of the E. coli exposure is the greatest since most folks out here use shallow and deep wells for their water supply. We have been here 8 years (as of the end of the month) and haven't chlorinated the well since the home inspection (they did it for us for free, awesome guys).

Here's the general outline on what you are doing (please read the links carefully, I only paraphrase and your well setup will vary (especially note the chlorine needed for different size well casings, depth of water column, indoor water tank, etc).

Links:

• Chlorination of Drinking Water - from Cornell Coop Extension (good stuff starts on page 3)
• Disinfecting a Domestic Water Supply - from NMSU
• Shock Disinfection with Chlorination - from Wilkes University, nice table of non-bleach chlorine sources and dosage calculations.

1. Set aside time to do this - make sure you have water already set out for the livestock and humans for 12-24 hrs. Ahead of time!
2. Open well head and pour in bleach/water solution - you want lots of water to rinse the bleach down in so that you don't lose most of it to the walls (chlorine is wicked reactive and will start reacting with the walls (iron and chlorine hate each other). Rinsing gets the chlorine down where it should go.
3. Chlorinate the whole water system - here you are pushing the chlorine through the system until you get enough at the outlets. This includes the water heater, the indoor tank, toilets, and all faucets (indoor and outdoor). Basically you let them all run until you smell chlorine (mine took about 25 minutes to get a strong smell). Cornell suggests a cute trick - cut the chlorine needed by using a hose to drain some of the chlorine from outside faucets back into the well casing. You can't skip this because if there is bacteria in your well casing, it is also throughout your indoor pipes.
4. Re-chlorinate the well casing - with the same amount of bleach a second time. Let this stand for 12-24 hrs to give the chlorine outside and inside time to do its work.
5. Finally, drain the chlorine from the system - after the 12-24 hrs run a hose outside to drain some place special where a little chlorinated water won't hurt or erode too much. Can't run this down the drain to a septic tank! The chlorine will nuke your bacteria and slow decomp in the tank immediately.

It is important to do this more often than we did :D It certainly doesn't kill us to drink coliform bacteria - it may actually be important to maintain our diverse intestinal ecosystem.

But a yearly water test (we used a LaMotte E. coli test that was $13 at Ben Meadows) will go a long way towards making sure you chlorinate when you need to and minimize exposure to drinking coliform bacteria.