Disbudding

Today I taught John Leap of Papa John's Farm how to disbud his Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats. I'd been doing his disbudding for quite some time and John decided it was time to learn to do it himself. It's not a job for the timid, but the more you do the easier it gets. John was a quick study and learned to do it quite professionally. He had a set of triplets to do today. John also brought over his hand milker for me to try out on my Nubian doe, Macey. Macey has small teats and is hard to milk by hand. I'm not sold yet on the hand milker idea. I really like doing it the "old fashioned" way. After the disbudding training session, we brought out our leftovers that we were having for supper and shared them with John and Liz. It was quite a busy day with lawn mowing at the farm, our rent house and at our son's house. Andy's wife, Erin, has been at Forsyth Hospital since Monday afternoon having contractions. Their first baby is due in August so we are quite concerned about the baby. We've been feeding Andy's sheep and llama and doing some yard and garden work to help out. We also disked the hay feeding spots in our pasture and sewed grass seed in them since rain is suppose to be on the way later this week.