Dear family and friends,
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope you are enjoying this holiday season and remembering our Saviors birth. I can’t believe that life gets so busy that I can’t keep in touch with all of you the way I’d like to. I wish I had the time to sit down and personally write a letter to each of you. I think of you often and thought I’d give you a brief up date on the Shippa family.
The Lord continues to bless us and provide for our needs. We were blessed to be able to build a barn this summer. It has been put to great use these past couple of weeks. We currently have about 50 goat babies, so if you are in the area stop by to see them, they are all so cute. We continue to farm as a family and enjoy our goats. We sent our first cow to slaughter and our freezer is filled with beef, pork, and goat off of the Shippa farm. We bought some dairy goats this summer and are enjoying drinking the milk. The goats are Swiss Oberhasli and their milk tastes very similar to cows milk.
Steve enjoys farming and wishes he could do it full time. He continues to run his own company, Witopia, which manages to meet our needs and he plays the role of our home school principal.
I continue to home school our kids. It’s a full time and challenging job but also rewarding. Ashley especially makes it a little extra challenging this year. We participate in two home school programs which both meet one day a week. Greg and Lauren’s favorite classes are Latin.
Greg is in the 4th grade and will turn 10 on January 21st. Wow, the double digits. He enjoys sports and played baseball in the spring, swam on the swim team for the summer, played football this fall, and is currently wrestling and getting ready for snowboarding this winter. He plays the piano and participates in 4-H. He showed a pig and 3 goats in our county fair this summer and caught another pig in the pig scramble.
Lauren turned 7 in November and is in the first grade. She played t-ball in the spring, swam on the swim team for her first summer, and played soccer this fall. She also plays the piano and sings in the kids choir at church. She decided to follow in her brothers footsteps and caught a pig in the pig scramble this summer too.
Ben is 5 and is in kindergarten. He is always anxious to do his math papers. He enjoyed his first season playing soccer. He really loved it and was great on the soccer field. Ben showed his bunny in the fair and was so very proud of Oreo’s blue ribbon. No pig catching for Ben yet, he wasn’t old enough, but we’ll see if he can keep up the family tradition this summer.
Ashley is 18 months and keeps us on our toes. She likes to get in to everything as most 18 month olds do. She is a really delightful baby and a joy to our family. All the kids are such great brothers and sister to her. Her biggest adventure this year was when she fell out our neighbors window on the 4th of July. It was rather a big scare, but the Lord had his hand upon her and angels were there to catch her at the bottom. She was absolutely fine and a reminder of why I daily pray for protection for my children.
I pray that you would grow in the grace and knowledge of our Savior this coming year. I truly miss you all dearly and hope I can see you or at least talk to you in the coming year. May Gods blessing fall upon you.
My love and prayers, and Merry Christmas, Jody, for the Shippa family.
This summer we were finally in a position to build a barn, and boy, did it come in handy during kidding. After doing some research off and on during the last few years, I finally decided on going with a 30×40 pole barn with a 12 foot wide covered “porch” where I park my tractor and round baler. Here are a few pictures during the building process.
Here is a picture right after it was finished:
Here it is finished, fenced, and with goats ready to kid:
Not much new to write about today, the last few days have been pretty uneventful. We have given away one baby that turned out to be a bottle baby…he just couldn’t figure out how to nurse from his mom. We lost the 4th and last kid from the set of quads, they were all very small and weak…he held on for 3 or 4 days, but I guess wasn’t strong enough to survive.
Yesterday we moved the 2 commercial does who haven’t kidded yet back into the larger pen as they are showing no signs of kidding anytime soon-there’s a chance they aren’t even bred. We had 5 other young commercial does we were breeding and put them back with the herd too. All of the full blood does and their kids were moved back to the pasture to join their herd. The few remaining full blood does were left in the small pasture next to the barn.
While moving the full blood herd yesterday, we found a large hole in the fence that I’ll need to patch today. I’m thinking a deer might have run into it during the night because it is a very large hole. I’m actually quite surprised the dogs didn’t get out.
I know I promised some pictures to those of you reading this blog, so I’ll try to take some today and upload them later.
Current count:
# of does kidded —— # bucks ——-# does
——- 35 ———————– 26 ———— 23 –> 48 live babies
I can see the headline now: ”Teenage Goat Pregnancy at the Shippa’s.” When I put #10 in to breed last summer, there was a period of a week or two when my 4 – 5 month old kids were in the pen with him until I had a free pen to move them to, to be weaned. Well, apparently, one of his five month old daughters came into heat and he bred her. She’s not quite 10 months old and had a little doe yesterday. Both mom and baby are doing great. We had another set of twins yesterday and lost the weak doe kid from the set of quads. The fourth remaining kid (from the quads), a buck, is doing well. All told, 34 does have kidded, we have 50 live babies and 5 more does left to kid. So far, today has been quiet.
Ok, we’ve got one baby goat in the commercial herd that likes to follow its mother far out into the pasture, however, when it gets tired, it goes and lays down somewhere (usually near a tree) and then mom goes on grazing and forgets where she left him. She heads back to the shelter and can’t find him and starts running around making all sorts of noises looking for her baby. Needless to say, last night, this morning, then again tonight, I had to walk the pasture looking for baby. Each time I’ve found him in about the same spot…hopefully this won’t go on much longer.
——– # of Does kidded –-—- # Bucks —-—- #Does
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Totals –——— 32 –——————— 25 –———— 23 => 48 kids
The one goat that had babies this morning actually had quadruplets, however two of them didn’t make it, they were really small. We still ended up with a buck and doe. The doe was very cold and pretty close to death when I found her. I quickly milked out about 36 cc’s of colostrum, fed the baby, then brought her into the house and warmed her up with an old heating pad. After about an hour or so, she had warmed and I was able to bring her back to the barn. I milked the mom again and fed her and her brother from a bottle to make sure they were eating, then did it again this evening. The brother was actually nursing by himself, but the doe still hadn’t figured it out. Hopefully overnight, she’ll figure it out too. We’re down to 6 does left to kid. One look liked she was going to go tonight or tomorrow morning, the others its hard to tell. Hopefully we’ll be done by Christmas.
Just a quick update, we continue to be busy, 31 does have kidded so far, leaving 7 to go. Hopefully we’ll finish up this week. In the count below, we now have 2 sets of triplets. One set is all does, the other set is all bucks. We’ve had a total of 3 still borns, and I hate to say it, but we’ve lost 4 other babies, one I mentioned below and three others that were really weak. If you add them into the total, we’re at 53 kids.
——– # of Does kidded –-—- # Bucks —-—- #Does
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Totals –——— 31 –——————— 24 –———— 22 => 46 kids
Today, we tagged all of the new kids, then we moved all but 3 of the commercial herd does back to the main pasture. One of the three just had a kid today and the other two haven’t kidded yet. We’ll keep them together until the last two have kidded. The full blood herd will remain by the barn for a few more days as there are still 5 more yet to kid.
I feel horrible, the surviving doe who’s sibling was a stillborn died today. While I saw it nursing throughout the day yesterday, it apparently wasn’t getting any milk (new note to self, check to make sure every goat is producing milk). Upon finding it weak this morning, I caught her mom and couldn’t get any milk. I quickly brought her to the barn, milked out a goat that had singled and fed her 60 cc’s of milk (knowing she probably wasn’t going to make it). When we got home from church she was dead.
Date — # of Does kidded –—- # Bucks ——- #Does
12/11 –———- 1 –———————- 1 –————- 1
12/12 –———- 2 –———————- 2 –————- 2
12/14 –———- 3 –———————- 3 –————- 2
12/15 –———- 9 –———————- 6 –————- 9
12/16 –———- 5 –———————- 1 –————- 8
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Totals –——— 14 –——————— 13 –———— 22
-1
Totals –——— 20 –——————— 13 –———— 21
We’ve officially passed the half-way mark. Hopefully the rest will go smoothly.
Today has been a long day. I was looking forward to having a relaxing day, but that didn’t happen. I was hoping to take care of a few chores around the house and maybe have a few goats kids. Well, someone else had other plans. Here’s an updated total of goats born so far this season
Date — # kidded —- # Bucks —– #Does
12/11 1 1 1
12/12 2 2 2
12/14 3 3 2
12/15 8 5 9
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Totals 14 11 14
Today we had our first set of triplets (all does) and they are doing great. We also had a still born goat this morning (not counted in the above numbers). We still have 25 or 26 does left to kid. I took some kidding pictures today and will try to upload them soon
Almost two weeks ago we moved the goats out of the larger pastures and into the holding pens in preparation for kidding. Wouldn’t you know it, we didn’t have our first kids until Tuesday afternoon. Last year, all of the goats kidded early and caught us completely unprepared, most had their kids in the freezing cold out in the middle of the pasture somewhere. This year, they are looking at us wondering why they have been moved into the smaller holding pens.
About our goats: We have both a commercial meat herd (high percentage boer) and a registered herd of Boer goats. Most of them were bred during July and August. We are expecting 20 commercial does and 20 fullblood does to kid between now and the end of January.
So far, 3 of the commercial does have kidded. Here’s what we’ve had so far:
Date — # kidded —- # Bucks —– #Does
12/11 1 1 1
12/12 2 2 2
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Totals 3 3 3
I’ll try to update this and post some pictures every few days to keep everyone up to date on the kiddings.
