Rhubarb Almond Coffee Cake

With my rhubarb plant growing like crazy after the rain and sun, and this beautiful weather that has been keeping me in the garden, I had to make a rhubarby treat. Try this!

Rhubarb Almond Coffee Cake Cake
• 1-1/2 cups packed brown sugar
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
• 2-1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup goat milk
• 1-1/2 cups chopped rhubarb
• 1/2 cup sliced almonds

Topping
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1-1/2 tablespoon melted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/3 cup sliced almonds

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease two 9 inch baking pans.
2. In a large bowl, beat brown sugar, oil, egg and vanilla together until smooth. Combine flour, salt and baking soda: add to sugar mixture alternately with milk. Beat until smooth. Stir in rhubarb and almonds. Pour into prepared pans.
3. In a small bowl, combine white sugar and butter or margarine. Stir in almonds. Sprinkle topping over batter.
4. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until done.

Now sit down, make yourself a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy!

Homemade Electrolytes

If you have a goat kid that is dehydrated or needs to have a temporary alternative to milk due to scours, or an adult doe with ketosis, but have no commercial electrolyte powder available, try this homemade electrolyte solution:

1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp Lite Salt
1 tsp baking soda
4 oz corn syrup

Add warm water to make 4 pints and mix all ingredients well. Give a standard-sized dairy goat one pint, a mini dairy goat 1/2 to 3/4 pint, and a nigerian dwarf or pygmy 1/2 to 1 cup of the solution 3 or 4 times a day (every 6 hours). Have the goat drink this mixture or use a feeding tube, if necessary.

Intentional Community: Goats and People with Developmental Disabilities

I found an article today about an intentional community in Israel that includes two of my favorite kinds of beings: goats and people with developmental disabilities:

People born with mental deficiencies, or those afflicted later in life, are usually handed the short end of the stick. Facilities to accommodate needs and to help one cope in society are improving, but they fail to give those in need the advantages that “normal” people just take for granted. But not at Kishorit, a new village built on the ruins of a decaying kibbutz, in Israel.

A new model for treating the mentally disabled based on the Israeli commune idea has emerged over the last decade from the ruins of a crumbling kibbutz.

Called Kishorit, the village in northern Israel has become a utopia for about 150 people with varying degrees of mental handicap, who have all found a home for life.

Some have autism, Asperger’s, or schizophrenia, but as much as they can, they are all steering their own careers, social time, family life, and destiny. They don’t focus on what disability they have, but on what they can do.

Members run and operate a TV station, and create films, they’ve built the largest organic goat farm in Israel, possibly the entire Middle East....

To read more about it, see Kishorit.

Goat Predators: Men

I used to believe that the worst predators against goats were packs of dogs. I am starting to question that, as I read the news about goats every day. Reading the news has led me to believe that the worst goat predators are actually teenage boys and young men. Nearly every week I read about another goat being strangled, decapitated, shot, tortured, sexually assaulted (yes, that’s right) or killed in some other way. This appears to happen about 10 times as often as a dog attack on a goat.

Here is a small sample from the past month:

• Grade school boy shoots goat with arrow in Georgia
• 20-year-old man admits beheading goats
• Young men throw goat off bridge

No dog attacks on goats were reported during this time.

This is how budding serial killers get their start: with defenseless animals. After they have mastered that they move on to children and then adults.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at this violence directed toward goats, since the US military is using LIVE goats as stand-ins for prisoners, maiming and then killing them. Great role models.

The Straight Poop: Goat Feces as an Indicator of Health

One of the simplest ways to evaluate the health of a goat is to observe its feces. This can give clues to whether the goat has a digestive upset or perhaps a parasite problem.

Newborn goats’ first feces are called meconium. They are dark-colored and sticky. During a difficult birth they may be expelled inside the amniotic sac, but normally you will see them after the first feeding with colostrum and for up to a day or so after birth.

Once the kid starts drinking milk, the feces become yellow. This is normal. They will stay that color until the kid starts eating hay or grain. The kids feces should be formed, but may be slightly soft.

When a kid begins to eat hay and grain, you will start to see a change in the color of the feces to brown. As the rumen develops you will begin to see small pellets, like those of adult goats and rabbits.

Adult goat feces should be firm “berries” that are brown-colored. They may be a greenish color if the goat has a diet high in alfalfa. Goats that eat a lot of grain, such as those that are milking, can have feces that are more clumped than usual. This is not a problem.

Diarrhea, in goats, is often referred to as “scours.” Scours can be caused by a sudden change in diet—for example, lush green pasture or adding grain. They also can be caused by parasites, such as various worms or coccidia (a protozoa); bacteria, overeating, or enterotoxemia (an overgrowth of clostridium perfringens in the gut.

The first step to take when a goat develops mild diarrhea is to give it kaolin pectin or pepto bismol, or slippery elm powder (to soothe the gut) and probiotics (to ensure that it has enough good bacteria to counterbalance the bad). If that doesn’t work, take the goat’s temperature and look for other symptoms.

In kids, coccidiosis is a very common condition. It can be easily treated with Di-methox or another drug aimed at these virulent critters. An overload of coccidia can be determined by looking at the feces under a microscope to determine whether a large number of eggs are being released. The same is true for other intestinal parasites; although tapeworms can be detected by looking at the poop—they appear as white segments, much like grains of rice. These and other parasites can be treated with one of the many dewormers on the market.

Besides color and form, another indicator of sickness in a goat is blood in the feces. Old blood causes black feces and is caused by bleeding higher in the digestive tract. Bright red blood is caused by bleeding in the intestine. Blood in the feces is an indicator to call a veterinarian.

This kind of observation is one that should be done on a daily basis; like other indicators, evaluating a goat’s poop can go a long way in ensuring that a goat is healthy.

You can read more about coccidiosis and enterotoxemia in Goat Health Care.

Deworming Goats

I am a volunteer expert on the subject of goats on a question website. A few days ago a goat owner asked: “Can you tell me when to worm and what to use for does who have been bred and those who have already kidded?”

My answer: Ideally, you would collect the goat berries and send them to a lab for fecal testing to see whether they even have parasites to the degree that they need to be dewormed.

If you can't do that, you can deworm the day after they kid or if they show signs of parasites. The wormer depends on your area, what there is resistance to, what the goats have gotten in the past, etc.

I often use Safeguard, which is safe for pregnant moms, inexpensive and they don't mind the taste. All wormers except Moxidectin should be given orally, even when they say injectable.

Valbazen should not be given during the first 3 months of pregnancy because it can cause birth defects. If you are using the milk you also need to be aware of the milk withdrawal times for each, too. (My book has all that info) If you decide on a dewormer and need to know about milk withdrawal, let me know and I can give you that info (my italics; note that I offered to give her the info from my book).

Sorry, this is so much information and it may be hard to decide what to give. I bought a microscope so I could do my own fecal exams, and I tend to deworm less than a lot of other people. I hope this helps!

The reader’s response: This is not much of an answer and feel it is more an ad for your book. Thanks anyway, I look further on the net.
*************
I think that the real issue the questioner had was that I suggested she only treat goats that actually have worms! What a concept. Much like the resistance to antibiotics that we are seeing today (70% of all antibiotics are used in food animals), widespread resistance to dewormers has become a real problem.

So what’s stopping people from appropriately treating their goats—is it time? Or is it cost? Or is it laziness? I think that the time spent collecting poop (you don’t even have to catch the goat), mixing solution and doing the lab work is probably a trade-off with the time spent catching goats and giving them medication.

If the issue is money, consider this: A good microscope for this work costs as little as $84; supplies may run up to $20 more. You can make solution from sugar or Epsom salts, both inexpensive and available. OR, the cost to send samples to WADDL (veterinary lab) is only about $33 for one sample and $12 (in Washington) or $18 (out of state) for additional. If you are treating all animals for parasites anyway, a group test (berries from various goats in thee herd) would cost only $33. And how much does dewormer cost?

Actual costs will vary by dewormer. For example, fenbendazole, which kills stomach, intestinal and lung-worms is about $10 for 10 doses. The hidden cost is increasing resistance by giving it repeatedly. Rather expensive Dectomax, 100 ml, is broad-spectrum and $85 or more. It is safe in pregnant animals but has a long milk withholding time. One bottle is equivalent to the cost of a microscope, and microscopes don’t have a expiration dates.

Ivomec injectable, 50 ml, should be given orally and has about 25 doses per $38 bottle, or more than the cost of a group test. Safe-Guard liquid dewormer, which many will not use due to resistance, is inexpensive at about $21 per bottle, has from 40 to 100 doses, depending on the size of the goat.

Anyone who is serious about goats should make the investment in their health: If you are concerned that they may have an overload of parasites, get them tested and treat those with problems. And remember, goats should have some parasites in a healthy digestive system. Only when they get out of control is there a problem. Trying to keep all of the worms dead all of the time is asking for trouble.

Finally, while a person could choose to drink milk from or eat a goat with a drug residue, it is a violation of federal law to sell a goat with drug residues in it, when you know that it may be food, or to sell milk that has residues. So be aware of withdrawal times.

More News on Cottonseed in Animal Feed

Goat Health Care covers feeding goats to keep them healthy and includes a section entitled "Say No to Cottonseed in Goat Feed." The major reason given is that it can kill livestock guardian dogs that may happen to eat it. There are also concerns about negative effects on young goats. Now a new study shows further problems with cottonseed fed to young calves.

Dairy Herd Management magazine reports:

A University of California-Davis study recently found that feeding gossypol, a derivative of the cottonseed plant, can negatively impact embryo development in virgin heifers.The study randomly assigned 50 postpubertal heifers to one of three diets which differed in dietary free gossypol (FG) content:

Control diet: 0 mg of FG/kg of BW

Moderate diet: 17.8 mg of FG/kg of BW

High diet: 36.8 mg of FG/kg of BW

Heifers were fed treatment diets for 70 days before superovulation and embryo collection. Heifers were flushed five days after induction of ovulation.

Researchers found that the higher gossypol concentrations increased the number of low-quality embryos produced. Embryos collected from heifers in the high diet had the fewest number of live cells and had cells of smaller diameter. Higher dietary gossypol compromised in vitro development and increased the number of degenerated embryos

.
Cottonseed meal may seem like a cheap way to feed goats in these hard economic times, but if the above holds true for goats, it may actually cost more in the long run. So just say no!