Greetings goat sponsors!
We are now more than half-way through the year and our herd is on cruise control as we sail through the days, weeks and months that constitute our regular milking season. Here is a little play-by-play summary of a day in the life of one of our beloved dairy queens!
Their daily routine currently consists of their morning milking from 7:30-9:00am and an afternoon milking that runs from 4-5:30pm. Their morning milking is followed by breakfast, then pasture time and afternoon naps. During pasture time they are given free access to over 5 acres of rotating pastures where they can snack on the local foliage. They also have 24/7 access to their main pen, where they are free fed a couple hundred pounds of hay every day in order to keep up with their astronomical milk production (each doe produces the equivalent of almost 10% of her body weight in milk every day!).
After their afternoon milking, they head back into their main pen for evening relaxation and bedtime. In the chill of the evening they seem to especially enjoy their huge red barn, which was built in 2020 with help from the Jennifer Bice Artisan Dairy/Cheesemaker Grant Award. Did you know that goats sleep extremely deeply?!? If we ever decide to visit them in the middle of the night (which we do regularly during birthing season), we will find the entire herd completely passed out in their barn and they often will not notice our passage! In fact, if we ever wanted to wake them up, we would have to actively shake them and give them a good couple minutes to compose themselves (almost like a teenager!)!
We love to give our herd the best life we can offer them and try to keep it full of food, friendship and freedom. We believe that happiness and health go hand in hand for our herd, and the health of our herd directly translates into their production of delicious milk! As a sponsor, you are a HUGE part of creating the lifestyle our goats deserve, so we would like to extend to you our deepest gratitude on behalf of the herd and the crew who loves to work with them!
