× Looking for minerals and goat supplies? Head over to our shop at GoatCare.com! I like to dream about what the future holds for our little farm and the most important livestock we raise on it, the goats. I love all of my animals, but goats are my special pals. In terms of sustainability, they have the potential to give life to not only their kids and mine, but also to the chickens, pigs and dogs. If we can successfully provide their needs here on what we can raise, we can use their outputs to create sustainable food for the other animals that call Little Avalon “home.” While I thought it would be fun to share this with you, I think it’s equally important for Read More
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When Your Neighbor Hates Your Livestock Guardian Dogs
× Looking for minerals and goat supplies? Head over to our shop at GoatCare.com! Nearly two years ago, we packed up everything we owned, including 17 goats and their 2 livestock guardian dogs, and moved to our new home, a beautiful paradise you see in all the photos on this website. It’s the place of dreams, a place I wake up every day and thank God for allowing us to buy. Here, at last, we could fulfill our dream of becoming a sustainable farm, able to withstand life’s financial and social storms. We were so eager to begin that we worked until midnight the day of closing to get our beds moved and sleep in our new home. We’d lived in the house we moved Read More
Walk-in Rabbit Tractor on Wheels Design
× Looking for minerals and goat supplies? Head over to our shop at GoatCare.com! We built this tractor back in 2011. I’ve since gone through multiple variations and unique tractors and this remains one of the best designs we’ve used. I originally published this on a Blogger blog but am collecting all of it into one post here on my website. This part first published 3/28/11 and the rest followed over the next couple of weeks, current notes in italics: It’s been a long-time goal of mine to raise meat rabbits on pasture. Working out the details has taken forever! There are so many things to consider with pastured rabbits because they’re so adept at escape. After hours and hours of looking at hundreds of Read More
Building a Zero Cost, Post-Free Pallet Fence
× Looking for minerals and goat supplies? Head over to our shop at GoatCare.com! Pallets are hands-down one of the most versatile and important no-cost homesteader supplies. Even if you don’t think you’ll ever use them, if you happen upon a stash of them at a store for free, you owe it to all of your soon-to-be jealous fellow homesteaders across the world to bring those pallets home. From instant patches in existing fences to building entire lines with only pallets and elbow grease, pallets make the easiest and quickest fence to put up. My husband lived and worked out of state for a year and a half while I had three (now four) small children and a small farm to take care of alone. I Read More
Physical Traits of an Easy Hand Milking Goat
× Looking for minerals and goat supplies? Head over to our shop at GoatCare.com! In the world of dairy goats, you’ll hear such descriptive terms as “butter soft udder texture,” “plump teats” and “open orifices” to describe a hand milking udder. In an online world where words must sufficiently explain such a complex experience as milking, we often fall short of really telling readers what the udder is like. This article attempts to break down the individual traits that come together to make a doe an “easy milker” versus a doe you might want to keep as a pet instead. I remember my first purebred Nigerian doe. I bought her as a 3 day old bottle baby and fell head over heels in love with Read More
How Much Does It Cost to Produce Goat Milk at Home?
× Looking for minerals and goat supplies? Head over to our shop at GoatCare.com! Among the many reasons for raising your own milk at home is the expected cost savings. I see remarks in various goat groups about how much more home raised goat milk is costing people, so this article is an attempt to break down the costs of raising your own goat milk to see where the money goes, which allows us all to make educated decisions on how to better manage our goats from a cost perspective. I wrote an in-depth breakdown of our personal costs to raise goats. The end result is that we need to sell about $480 worth of kids per doe per year to break even. This includes total Read More