Our herd of LaMancha goats is very loved and very spoiled! In addition to a healthy diet of grains, hay and alfalfa, they also get herb-infused goat cookies, remedies and rubs.
"We use all sorts of herbal remedies for our ladies," said Michelle Rudolph, Stepladder Creamery co-owner and pro goat handler. "From tinctures, to rubs, to herb cookies, we make our own potions but source a lot of these from firmeadowllc.com. This website has different Herbal blends for all sorts of treatments. We have followed her recipe from her Blog and have fine tuned based on each herbal blend throughout the years."
Michelle adds that these herbs and treats help the overall health and wellness of the goats. They tend to not fall sick as often and if they do the herbs have them feeling better quickly and powerfully.
What's also nice is if we administer some medication such as antibiotics we have what's called a withhold period where their milk is tossed, as it cannot be used in food production, and with the herbs there is no withold period. Another added bonus is the goats LOVE it and helps keep the bond between animal and handler strong.
People have asked for our goat cookie recipe, so we wanted to share this fun time-lapse video of our herd assistant, Shanti, making cookies at home.
Stepladder Goat Cookie Recipe
- 4oz herb blend
- 2oz flour
- 6-7oz molasses (depending on herb blend)
This adds up to a 12-13oz batch and 3-3.25oz quarters
- After mixing together with a stiff thin-edged mixing spoon to a crumbly consistency, finish combining with a little palmful of olive oil (more as needed).
- Then make a nice big ball, with a bit of shine to it from the olive oil, cut into equal halves (we've been using the scale for this too) and then into equal quarters.
- Each quarter is then rolled out into a long even snake. This snake is ultimately cut into 18 pieces. We like doing this by measuring my cutting board and marking the middle with a pencil so that when we roll my quarter batch out into a snake we know where to cut it to get as close to halves as possible.
- Then we double the two half snakes up (put them side by side so we can cut the two at the same time) and cut both into thirds (now we have 6 equal parts), then each of those thirds into thirds again (18 equal parts).
- This adds up to 72 cookies/doses per 4 oz of herb blend.
