For several years, we’ve had plenty of milk to make our soap and feed our kids (both human and goat). This year, however, we find ourselves chronically short on milk.  Baby goats can drink a lot of milk. Right now, we’re bottle feeding 12 goat kids aged 1-6 weeks. Combined, they’re drinking over 6 gallons of milk a day.

So we’ve decided to drive to Idaho to get five more milking goats. (I say “we” loosely. I decided I wanted 5 milking goats from a herd I admire in Idaho, and Jim agreed to drive out there to get them for me).

With 21 goats on the homestead, many people think we’re inundated with milk. And since a lot of people don’t really understand when goats give milk, I wrote an article, Do All Goats Give Milk? – to help clarify things.

Colter and Emery are very excited about the arrival of the new goats. They’re already plotting who is going to milk which goat. Since each goat gives a different amount, their goal is to have the total weight from their milkings be equal between the two of them. I think what they’re most excited about, is the fact that we will once again have an even number of goats. Right now, we have seven, so Ivy is the “odd” goat. Colter milks her in the morning and Emery milks her in the evening. They don’t like this arrangement and are very pleased at the prospect of each of them milking six goats.

We’ll be sure to post pictures (and maybe even a video) of the new goats once they’re settled in.