Even with our small herd it’s difficult to remember all the identification and medical records for each goat. To keep track and stay organized I created a few worksheets to help me manage our goat family.

I am offering these sheets as free downloads that you print at home. You will need the latest version of Adobe Reader to view the PDF’s. It can be downloaded for free from Adobe.

identification & medical records

This 3 Page PDF is ideal for identification and medical records. There is also room to add other information such as where you purchased the goat and any awards she may have earned.

breeding record

1 page for recording breeding and kidding information.

milk production record

2 pages to record milk production for the entire year.

Please enjoy these printables! However, do not sell or share the file as your own. Also, do not post the PDF on your social media page, please link back to this original post. For more about the Terms of Use, click here.

The sheets are letter size and would work in a 3 ring binder.

However, I prefer Staples Arc system for my planners and record keeping. It is not the cheapest option, but I like the versatility of the system. I actually have 3 planners/record books. I use one for my everyday planning, one is for my Ridgetop Digital Shop business, and one is for all our farm and garden records.

Enjoy!
And, have fun staying organized!

Looking for more organizational printables? Check out my other site, Ridgetop Digital Shop.

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Last week we had our first kidding on our little farm! Thankfully Willow is an experienced mother and everything went perfectly.

Since this was my first kidding experience, I did a lot of research on the subject. The #1 thing I continued to read was be there for the birth just in case the mother needs assistance.

I purposely didn’t plan extra things for about a week before her due date and a week after, just to be sure we would be home. However… with three of my own children it’s nearly impossible to stay home 24/7. Farmer John was not home, so in the afternoon I ran the kids to an orthodontist appointment then to taekwondo. I peeked at Willow before we left and she didn’t appear to be behaving any differently. The only odd-for-her behavior I noticed was the night before when I came to see her at the fence she didn’t get up to greet me. I tried numerous times to feel if the ligaments at her tail had loosened, as that can be a clue that birthing is near. But she didn’t like me messing around back there, so I never did get a very good feel.

Long story, short, we totally missed Willow birthing the babies. We literally got home as she was pushing out her 4th and final kid.

The good news is all 4 babies looked great and we were there in time to dry them off.

Willow did such a great job tending to her four little ones.

Not long after they were born, I dipped their umbilical cords in triodine-7. I’m still not sure if I should have tied the cords with dental floss and cut them shorter before dipping them. They didn’t seem obnoxiously long and a week later it doesn’t seem like there is a problem. But, it is something I should learn more about for next time.

Almost 2 hours later, Willow got real serious and in a zone. She was pushing out the placenta. When it was all out, she devoured it. She seemed to really enjoy it.

One mistake I made was misjudging the weather. Farmer John built Willow a covered kidding stall outside. It’s kind of enclosed, but not well. I wasn’t too concerned because I knew she was kidding during the summer. When we got home, though, to her giving birth it was a tad windy and I was cold. I thought if I was cold, it couldn’t be great for the damp babies. So I quickly cleaned out Georgia and Willow’s house, moved Georgia out and Willow and the babies inside. Farmer John moved the ceiling mount heater we have for the chicks into the goat house. This was a life saver for the first few chilly nights. You can just barely see the heater in the top of this photo above Willow’s head.

The next morning, everyone looked pretty well dried off, but not quite ready to bounce around much.

I know it won’t always be this easy, but I’m so happy things went so well for our first time. Willow is a pro.

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This first hatch batch of 2017 was in preparation for the Spring Poultry Homesteading Faire.

In the past, many people at the Faire have shown interest in Marans. Currently, we do not have a Marans rooster. So, instead I focused on Olive Eggers. I also hatched White Leghorns and Delaware chicks.

Love this! Farm Girl asked if instead of reading to me she could read to the eggs. “Yes! Yes, of course you can!”

THE EGGS IN LOCKDOWN

WHITE LEGHORN

DELAWARE

I banded the Delaware’s to identify them from the White Leghorns. A word of caution if you use bands: watch them carefully and remove them before they get too tight on the chicken.

OLIVE EGGERS

Many of our Olive Eggers hatch looking quite similar to our Black Copper Marans – makes sense since many are crossed with Marans hens.

The egg tooth is easy to see on this dark friend.

I adore this fluffy little fella. He/she even has feathered shanks. Most of our chicks that have feathered shanks are black, so this one is unique.

This hatch many chicks do not have feathered shanks.

But, some do.

Another successful hatch of cutie patooties.

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Marans are a heavy, dual purpose bird. They are generally raised for their dark brown egg, but also make a good meat bird.

Marans are named after a port town in France. Over the centuries local birds were bred with birds brought from seaman coming to port. The modern Marans breed began development in the 1800’s and was adopted into the French standard in 1931. Black Copper Marans were accepted into the American Poultry Association standard in 2011.

The French standard has nine recognized color varieties:
Silver Cuckoo
Golden Cuckoo
Black
Black Copper
Birchen
Wheaten
Black-tailed Buff
White
Columbian

As of 2017, The American Poultry Association has 3 recognized color:
Black Copper
Wheaten
White

Of these recognized varieties, we have had two. Plus two varieties not in the standards. The information on this page is based on my knowledge of the varieties we have raised.

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White leghorns are another of my favorite birds to have on our farm. They are a basic, no nonsense bird. They rarely cause any trouble. They eat. They lay eggs.

They are on the flighty side, so aren’t the best choice for a pet chicken. But, as part of our barnyard flock they are perfect.

Our birds are not American Poultry Association show quality birds. They are, however, fabulous backyard birds for egg laying & meat purposes.

Chicks

White leghorns are the super cute, pale yellow, fluffy chicks that you can’t resist at the feed store.

Coloring

Comb, face, & wattles: bright red
Eyes: reddish bay
Ear lobes: white
Beak: yellow
Shanks & toes: yellow

Hens

These two are enjoying a refreshing summer drink from our pond.

White leghorns are good foragers.

Of course, they also like kitchen scraps.

Roosters

We have pretty good luck with well behaved roosters on our farm. This guy, however, is on my shit list. He has attacked me.

Outside of his bad attitude, I think he’s quite a handsome fella.

Eggs

The #1 reason to have White Leghorns in your flock is their large, white egg. They are great egg layers, producing 4 or 5 eggs each week. They are such great layers that they are the breed commercial egg producers use for a typical carton of eggs sold to grocery stores.

White Leghorn Bonus

On a personal note – an added bonus the white leghorn has going for it is that it originated from Tuscany, Italy. Swoon! I love to travel. I have made it to Italy once… but not to the Tuscany area. It is a part of the world that is on my must-see bucket list. Maybe I need to go there to do chicken research…

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This week’s update isn’t an update on the week, but an update on our to do list. I like lists. Well, it’s not so much the list itself I like, but the crossing things off the list. So gratifying.

Since the photo template I use for our weekly updates has nine spaces, I’ll list only nine things that need done. There are, of course, about a hundred more items that could be added. But, we’ll start with nine.

1. BUILD BRIDGE
   When we added a pond to our bird village the overflow goes right through the walking path. The intention was to build a bridge over this area. We need to do that.
2. CLEAN UP PATIO EDGE
   This fall we poured a stamped concrete patio. I love it. However, surrounding the patio doesn’t look too good. We gotta fix that.
3. FIND USE FOR WINE BARRELS *In process
   We have 3 wine barrels that I love. But, I’ve never found a good home for them. It’s time to figure that out.
4. CLEAN SIGNS
   I have made a number of signs. Most of them have been around a couple years and could use a good cleaning – like the one in our bird village that has many bird droppings on it.
5. TACKLE THE BACK YARD
   Making anything of our backyard was on the back burner for a few years because the first major step was putting in a patio – and, that kept not getting done. So, I didn’t spend much time on it. We now have a patio. Woop! Woop! It’s time to get the back yard lookin’ good – without spending a fortune.
6. FINISH CEMENT PATH  DONE! To see it check out this post.
   One of the first things I did when we moved here was put in a cement path using a walk maker form. Farm Girl was just a baby and all summer during her nap I would mix cement and pour two mold’s each day. Eventually I got the path done – well, as done as it could be at the time. Now that the patio is in, I can finish the path.
7. CLEAN UP MEADOW  DONE!
   Last year’s perennials need trimmed in our little meadow. Also, the meadow has never looked the way I was hoping it would. I need to look into ways to remedy this.
8. BUILD PATH IN FRONT OF COOPS  *In process
   We had extra concrete when we had our patio poured. So, we quickly through together a form and poured the extra in front of one of the chicken huts. It doesn’t look fabulous, but I love that it’s not muddy in front of the coop. I’d like to add a mosaic of concrete in front of the other chicken hut and chicken tractors.
9. ADD FILTER & PUMP TO POND
   When we put in the pond in our front yard it was a last minute thing, quickly thrown together. We had a pump, filter and water wheel – but, no electricity. We now have electricity near the pond, so we need to get all those things moving.

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2015 has officially ended. Let’s look back at how our farm and gardening endeavors played out this past year. We had a fairly steady year with good food being grown and plenty of animals to keep us busy.

CHICKENS

We dabble in a variety of things related to farming and gardening, but chickens will always be a main stay for us. That being said, this year we did take a slight step back. We didn’t incubate eggs, we didn’t attend any shows or swaps, and Farm Kid2 decided not to continue with poultry in 4H. But, that doesn’t mean we’re short on chickens.

We chose not to incubate eggs this year. We did, though, have 3 broody hens hatch small clutches. Click here to read about the first hatch and click here to read about the second.

The majority of our birds are Rhode Island Reds and Easter Eggers. But, we still have two golden polish hens that are nearly 4 years old. They lay a fairly small egg and are such a great looking bird.

Mo, our Easter Egger rooster, has been demoted. For a number of years he was our top rooster. However, some young, cocky boys have moved up and taken his spot in the pecking order.

Three of our handsome fellas.

We were given this Old English Game bantam. I think he’s beautiful. He’s meant to be a show bird, but at the moment nobody in our family is showing poultry.

This wasn’t an outstanding egg year. One day, though, Farm Girl decided to count how many eggs we had.

We raised 10 birds for meat. Usually we roast the whole chicken, but one night Farmer John made chicken strips. They were delicious!

Four white leghorns, one buff orpington, one barred rock and one black australorp were added to our laying flock this year.

DUCKS

The ducks have given us a bit of excitement by each hen hatching eggs this year. That’s a first for us.

Our two Welsh Harlequin ducks.

Sally, our male Muscovy. The left photos are from January and February of this year. The right was taken in September. His looks changed significantly.

Both ladies sat on eggs this year, which was a fun experience for us. To read about the first hatch click here. And click here to read about the second hatch.

I’ve enjoyed watching how the Welsh Harlequin/Muscovy cross ducklings change as they mature.

Unfortunately, we lost Sally and one of the Welsh Harlequins to predators in the fall.

GOATS

The goats are cute as can be doing goat type things. You can read more about them here.

PIGS

We’ve had two sets of hogs this year. The first round Farm Kid1 raised 2 and sold them to earn money for a computer.

The second round was to fill our freezer, as well as to sell. The pigs were a Hampshire/Berkshire cross.

OLIVER & LOIS

A couple weeks ago we acquired a pot bellied pig named Oliver, and his friend Lois, a pygmy goat. My hope was we could be their forever home and they would live happily ever after with Sven and Olaf. Unfortunately, things aren’t working out as well as I had hoped. So, we are in the process of finding them a new home.

FLOWER BEDS

There wasn’t a lot of action this year in our flower beds. But, the same ol’ trusty trees, shrubs and perennials put on a pretty show mainly in the spring and summer months.

The ducks, unfortunately, are not great for the plants. They step on them. They sleep on them. They poop on them.

The deer also make flower gardening a challenge. Apparently some of our plants are quite tasty.

The only new additions to our flower beds were 10 lavender ‘grosso’ plants. They’re in an area that I’ve struggled with for years. I finally decided lavender was the thing to spruce it up.

PONDS

We have two small ponds that I love. Our farm critters as well as wild critters love them, too.

GARDENING FOR FOOD

Another thing we didn’t spend as much time on as in years past, was the garden. It is incredibly time consuming keeping up with the weeds and by the end of summer it had gotten a bit out of hand. We did harvest some produce, though. We got onions, potatoes, a few eggplant and squash, cherry tomatoes & herbs.

We tried the three sisters method in one area of the garden. Corn, beans and squash all growing together. It worked kind of . Everything grew. But, we tend to have trouble with corn and it didn’t grow fast enough before the beans grew tall. The squash (pumpkins & gourds) grew well, though.

Many of our seeds didn’t germinate this year. I think the birds got to them. Darn it. I should have had a fabulous showing of tall sunflowers mixed with viney cucumbers growing underneath. What I got was one sunflower. One.

This was not a great year for tomatoes. We only picked a handful of big, juicy red ones. It was so hot this summer, I actually think we didn’t water them enough. We did, however, get renegade yellow cherry tomatoes. They reseeded from last year and were a pleasant surprise.

Fruit. My favorite items to pick from the garden is the fruit. Our grape vines are finally producing well, we got a couple apples, lots of plums and lots of raspberries.

NEW PATIO

Our only big project of the year was pouring a much needed back patio. We decided to do stamped concrete, which was a lot of work. But, I’m so happy to finally have a patio. The ducks, too, are quite happy with the patio. It is one of their favorite places to hang out and poop.

AQUAPONICS

This was our first full year experimenting with aquaponics. We have three grow beds, one fish tank and a sump tank.

A good sized pump cycles the water and aquarium heaters keep it warm. Depending on the time of year we keep the water between 70 and 80 degrees.

We have a fan for circulation in the greenhouse.

Grown in the garden beds were/are peppers, Mexican sour gherkins, tomatoes, eggplant, mixed greens and okra. This growing method works very well.

I also started nasturtiums right in the garden bed and overwintered geraniums that loved the greenhouse.

We grow tilapia in the fish tank part of the aquaponics system. The fish aren’t growing as quickly as we thought they would. But, at the beginning of December we did finally catch a couple fish and have them for dinner. I was hoping they’d be good, and they were.

Whew! There were no major plant or animal changes this year. But, just keeping up kept us plenty busy. It’s so much work living this way, but so rewarding. I can’t wait to see what 2016 will bring.

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It’s been awhile since I’ve mentioned anything about our two Nigerian Dwarf Goats, Sven & Olaf. So, here’s a quick post about what they’ve been doing.

PLAYING

They don’t play a lot. But, they’re super cute when they jump and kick around. They are great buddies.

HOOF TRIMMING

They don’t enjoy getting their hooves trimmed. And, I don’t really enjoy doing it. But it needs done, so we get it done. We don’t use anything other than hoof trimmers. Farm Girl usually feeds them grain to keep them entertained while I trim.

EATING

Our goats get a little orchard grass and grain once a day. Other than that they graze in the field.

RUBBING

I really need to set up something for them to rub against. For now they rub against the fence – which, I know is not ideal. Thankfully, they are light enough it doesn’t seem to cause a problem.

OUTSIDE THE FENCE

We do occasionally let them out of their fenced area. Sometimes we let them wander freely and sometimes we chain them. Either way, they’re only out for a couple hours while we’re outside working on other projects.

Unfortunately, Olaf did eat all the bark off an apple tree. I’m not too sure the tree will survive.

I JUST LOVE THEM

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At my request, Farmer John brought home a truck bed & trailer full of pallets & crates! I had been oogling over all the fabulous ideas crafty people had been creating out of recycled wood. I even made a pinterest board dedicated to pallet projects.

DISASSEMBLING THE PALLETS

CREATIONS

SIGNS
My favorite way to use the pallet wood is painting signs.

POTATO &ONION STORAGE BINS
John built a couple bins to hold potatoes & onions from our garden.

KIDS PLAY HOUSE
The bottom of our play structure is open, so we are going to enclose it to create a play house area. One out of 4 walls is complete so far. It’s not much of a play house, yet. But, the one wall makes a great backdrop for photos.

MORE SIGNAGE
A couple other signs I’ve made are a sign to take with me when I go to chicken swaps & shows, and also garden bed labels. They are actually made from repurposed bender board. But, they could just as easily be made from pallet wood.

Except for the pieces saved for the play house, we have used up nearly all of the wood. One day I would like to get another load of pallets to make more signs & also build an outdoor kitchen.

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MAMA HEN #1

This mama we knew was sitting on eggs. We don’t always let our broody’s stay broody, but this one was out of the way, in a secluded area behind rakes, brooms & shovels in Farmer John’s Man Shack, so we let her continue. I’d check on her occasionally and she was always sitting super still without making a sound and sure enough eventually her eggs hatched. Thirteen chicks total. She was such a good mama. I wish all broodies would be such good mothers.

MAMA HEN #2

The next day – Surprise, another mama & 11 more chicks wandering around. Complete shock. I still have no idea where she was hiding and sitting on her eggs.

MAMA HEN #3

Often in our main coop a hen will go broody. Usually we end up taking her out, so she doesn’t disturb the laying process of the other hens since they all seem to lay eggs in the same nest box, which also happens to be the nest box they tend to sit in when they go broody. Well, we weren’t so diligent about it the last month or so. And, the day after spying Mama #2 & her chicks, I saw our Welsummer hen with one baby in the main coop.

MAMA HEN #4

One more mama to be. I found her behind the goat fence in the brush, under a tree. This is probably not the safest place for her or her eggs, but I’m going to hope for the best & not disturb them. I’m not sure how long she’s been sitting here, but she’s got quite a collection of eggs.

And, I thought we were done with chicks until next spring. Ha! Now that the weather is turning colder & wetter, though, we’ll move everybody back to the enclosed coop and have a better handle on babies in the making.

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