Pleasant Valley Acres

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Madeline at Pleasant Valley Acres.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead. The podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Chelsea Green Publishing. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Madeline at Pleasant Valley Acres. Good afternoon, Madeline, how are you? Good, how are you? I'm good, you're in Oregon, right?

00:27
Yeah, we are in Sweet Home, Oregon, in the Willamette Valley area. What a great name for a town. Yeah. I love that. Okay, so tell me all about yourself and what you do. Oh well, we have been doing just a little bit by a little bit over the last couple of years. I got married to my husband about four years ago. And

00:54
He is not necessarily an animal freak, but I am. So what turned into just a few chickens is now turned into a herd of, I think, eight goats and we raise them for dairy and show and just good milk quality. We raised registered mini limachas. OK, so.

01:17
I have talked to many people about many different kinds of goats, but I haven't talked to anybody about Lamanches and I didn't know there were mini Lamanches. So tell me about your particular color or spice of goat. Tell me about the Lamanches. Well, the Lamanches, the mini Lamanches come from a standard breed of goat called the Lamancha goat. These are just essentially a smaller scale, more economically friendly breed.

01:47
They are small in stature, which means they need less feed, they need less room. Um, but you're getting that small stature of a standard size or a small stature of mini goats with the production of a standard size goat. So for us, it's kind of the best of both worlds. I'm not feeding tons and tons of hay, but I'm getting lots and lots of milk. So, um, they're an earless breed of goat. So.

02:15
People tend to look at them a little weird at first. But we like their characteristics. They're very mellow and easy to work with. Okay, so how big is a standard lemonsha versus a mini lemonsha? It varies because the mini lemonsha go in different generations. So you have your first generation cross, which would be an Iberian dwarf goat and lemonsha.

02:44
I've seen those first generation minis range in size a lot. The farther you get, so the more generations of that mini La Mancha, I'd say that they don't usually get more. Like the doughs stay around 100 pounds maybe. Bucks getting closer to 125. Your standards are, I think the doughs are about 150.

03:13
125 to 150 pounds for your standard La Mancha does. And your bucks are pushing close to 200. And I could be wrong, but they're depending on the lines of that standard size goat, they are pretty big. I've seen some of the La Mancha bucks be huge.

03:34
Okay. It's really funny. I feel like my podcast varies from psychology to philosophy to science to chemistry to genetics on whatever day I'm talking to whoever I'm talking to. I just talked to a lady the other day and we're talking about genetics and I can't remember what it was about right now, but got a full genetics lesson from her and

04:02
I thanked her and I wasn't being a smart ass. I actually was really excited to hear about how that particular thing worked. With the Lamanches, what they're talking about, genetics play a huge part. I'm going to relate sort of the same story I related to her to you. Our dog is a mini Australian Shepherd and she weighs about 35 pounds.

04:31
standard Australian Shepherd and supposedly smaller breed dogs, but I have to look into that because I'm not sure and Our dog looks exactly like a black tri Australian Shepherd except that she is 35 pounds now Technically because I've been doing some research. She might actually just be a small standard Australian Shepherd because she's tall and she's right at the weight

05:02
edge of not being a mini. However, her mama was only about 25 pounds and her dad was probably 40 to 45 pounds. So it's all crazy to me how genetics are bred into animals to get what you want. And even then sometimes it doesn't quite work out that way. Yes. Yeah. And that's kind of the...

05:27
you know, the toss up with breeding, you try to pair your best genetic quality to get a better kid than their mom is. But sometimes it doesn't work out that way and you still get like a little curve ball here and there. And you know, that's okay. You can work with the curve balls most of the time. But yeah.

05:53
you would assume that she is just an Australian shepherd because the perspective and the perception is makes her look bigger than she is. And then she walks up to you and you're like, oh, you're only up to my knee. Yeah. Okay. You're not as big as you look. So it's really fun when the looks of the animal turn out exactly correct, but the size of the animal might not be exactly what you were going for. Yes.

06:23
Yes, and that's a good, that's kind of how the Manila Machos are. You're aiming for that standard size goat quality, but in a smaller package. So you want these goats to look like those standard animals, but a good couple inches shorter and a couple pounds lighter.

06:46
So I have a question about the ears because you said Lamancha's don't have ears, but I know the many Nigerians do. So have you ended up with many Lamancha goats with ears? Um, I have not yet. So the gopher ear, which is like what's on Lamancha's, is a dominant trait. So most of the time this year I had one Nigerian doe that was bred to my mini Lamancha buck.

07:14
and I was wondering like, man, you know, her kids get to have ears. Well, when she had them, they all had what is called elf ears. So they're just about one inch, maybe an inch and a half of ear that kind of comes out. But it's not like a full year. It's just a little little skin tab kind of. I bet they were adorable. Oh, they were precious. They all had blue eyes and they were just the cutest darn things. But so I haven't personally had it, but I have seen.

07:43
registered mini lemonges that do have that Nigerian dwarf ear. It's not a, uh, it's not a flaw to my understanding for the breed standard, but it's, it's a little frowned upon, you know, you don't want it to carry on for generations and generations type of thing. Yep. Okay. So do you do other things besides the goats? Um, we do.

08:10
Well, like I said, chickens kind of got me all started on this. We started with a few, a handful of chickens. I hatch chicks for people during the spring and summer and sell hatching eggs and stuff to people locally. Um, so we, we do a lot of that. We've done meat chickens in the past. This year we took a break because it's just a lot of work. Um, and we do our own personal little garden.

08:40
type of things, but the predominantly is we do the dairy goats. Okay. And do you sell the milk? Do you sell the goats for meat? Do you just raise them to show them? How does this all work? We do a little bit of everything. We at least, you know, learning to try to do a little bit of everything. This year I've sold milk to people for either animals.

09:08
goat milk is really good alternative, pretty much to all bottle formulas for dogs, cats, I have a gal that actually buys the milk for piglets. She has a couple bottle piglets and they drink the goat milk. We have sold it for drinking. We have a couple like family friends that will buy it for drinking. And then we actually attended our first show this past weekend. Yeah, on Saturday.

09:38
We did our first bit of showing, so that was fun. Did you did you win anything or is that not how it works? Yeah, no, I only brought two of my does because it was my first time and I thought I better start small. And we had one that placed first in her class and then overall one Grand Champion in that breed group. Congratulations because that's super fast on getting to that point.

10:06
Yes, thank you. I was pretty excited that when they gave her the first place ribbon, I was just like, oh my word. And then we went all the breed group went out together and then they put her grand champion ribbon on. I was just like, I was shocked. I was so excited though. So she must have exhausted her though. We brought her back to the pen and she collapsed and just fell asleep by the hay feeder for a couple hours. Like, oh, I'm done.

10:33
It was the adrenaline rush from winning. It made her sleepy. Yeah, maybe. So yeah, we did some show, that show this year, and we, you know, gives you confidence to try to do more next year. So that's the goal next year is to do more shows. And then we do try to breed. I try to keep my kids and the stock I have on the wider side of things. So when we get bucklings born that aren't breeding quality,

11:02
We weather them and we either sell them as pets, ideally pets if I can, but at the end of the day, if they can't go as pets, we send them either to auction yard or to a meat buyer. So they're still getting, they still have a purpose here and I don't have any extra mouths to feed. Uh huh. And that's a good way to do it. So did you want to be doing this from the time you were little or did this just become something you wanted to do later?

11:32
I remember for a long time really enjoying goats as a kid. You know, they're funny and they make a lot of noise and whatnot. Um, I, so my family actually moved from Indiana to Oregon when I was 11. And when I was probably close to 13, 12 or 13, we got our first goat on the farm that we'd moved to and it was a standard La Mancha and I just fell in love with her. It kind of became my project. And.

12:02
I knew it I had like I don't know quite a few standard Lamanches or Lamontra crosses that I would milk and breed and sell kids and sell the milk and whatnot. And then when I started a full time job the goats kind of went to the wayside I sold them all and then when I got married a couple years back it kind of revived itself and I started going more serious with it in the last couple years as I've been when I was younger. So they've

12:30
I've been around them for a while and I've just always enjoyed them. They're just something about them. When they're behaving, they're great. Okay. Anyone who's listened to the podcast since it started last end of August knows that I love goats and that I don't have any. I love baby goats most of all. The older ones are fine, but the baby ones are special. So

12:58
I have never met a goat, whether it was a baby or a grown up goat, that wasn't friendly. Are goats inherently friendly or is it just the fact that if you handle them from when they're little, they love people? I think they're inherently curious. And they're piggies. They love grain. They love treats. So I would say they are always a curious creature. I think.

13:27
Friendliness definitely comes with hand raising. I've done both. I've bottle raised my babies and I have just dam raised to them. And you can have friendly, you know, dam raised kids but it takes a lot more handling. And I've learned that they really don't team down until they learn what the grain bucket is. And then they just associate you with the grain and they're friendly because you have food. The bottle babies.

13:55
they want to cuddle and just be with you all the time, which is nice, but it is also annoying when you're trying to work. So there's kind of a side to each of that. It's like, well.

14:08
Yeah. So I know that goats are really intelligent animals. And I always liken them to a dog, because they're built kind of like a dog, they're friendly like a dog, they like to be petted like a dog. Can you train a goat to do tricks? You know, I've never tried training them to do tricks. I will say they are smart. I'm learning.

14:37
more and more as time goes on that they are smarter and smarter than I give them credit for. This year I had a bottle baby and we call it we ended up calling her Tinkerbell and I just thought you know I'm gonna see if like I could teach teach her her name and I can pretty confidently say at this point you know she's off the bottle. If I go out there and I yell Tinkerbell she comes tearing across the field. None of the other goats really come that quick but she comes running because she knows hey mom's here.

15:05
You know, I'm coming, don't worry. And my other girls, if I say, Hey girls, come on, then the rest of the herd will come. Um, yeah, I have learned that they are incredibly smart, but I haven't tried tricks. So they're probably the same kind of intelligence as a dog. That's what I think. I would say close to it. I mean, there are certain breeds of dogs that are probably smarter, like your, you know, Australian shepherds, your border collies, but they are.

15:34
They've got like the intelligent, I'd say, you know, like a golden retriever or a lab. So, so kind of dorky, but smart. Yes. Yep. Okay. Yeah. I always, I always wondered about that because my, my friend growing up, her parents raised goats and they had the long eared goats, they had the short eared goats, they had goats and, and her dad, God love him, taught one of them how to smoke a cigarette.

16:02
I'm not kidding you, I saw it done, yes. Oh, that's hilarious. And he said, watch this, Mary. And I'm like, what? Because I was out on the barn. And he smoked. And he lit a cigarette. And he put it in the goat's lips. And she put her lips around that cigarette and inhaled and blew it out her nose. I was like, number one, that's terrible. Number two, how in the world did you get her to learn how to do that? Oh, that's funny.

16:30
And he said, I don't know how she learned to do it. He said, I was just being silly one time. She tried to grab out of my hand. I let her take it. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. Oh, I said, I said, you really shouldn't be doing that. That's not good. And he's, he's just laughing. I'm like, okay, it's your goat. It's your goat. Exactly. Funniest thing I've ever seen in my life and most terrible thing with an animal I've ever seen in my life.

16:58
And if that is the case, then that's good, because it's probably not as bad as I think it is. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not like you smoke in a pack a day. So hopefully not. Yeah, you just see her out there with the with his whole pack of cigarettes. It was a very funny party trick is what it was. I laughed so hard and then I felt bad about it. So but anyway, I've told that story.

17:27
once, I think, in the last year on the podcast. And you actually laughed harder than the other person did. Oh, I think it's great. I know my husband, man, he'd get a kick out of that. If I could teach a goat to smoke a cigarette or one of his cigars, he would think that was the best thing ever. He'd be like, you can keep all the goats you want if they can do that. Uh-huh. I wish I had video of it. But back then...

17:53
You know, I'm 54, we didn't have cell phones with video cameras in them. So, yeah. Okay. So, um, what is the hardest thing about having the goats?

18:09
Oh, I don't know. You know, it's a season by season thing sometimes. You know, one minute I'm like, man, I can't do this anymore. And other times like, man, this is so fun. I love having them. It's hard. We have two little kids. It's hard balancing it with the kids at times. I've got my oldest is two and a half and my youngest turns one in two weeks. So we do a lot of pushing around in the stroller with goats behind and

18:39
They've learned to be very patient with me while we're taking care of this or taking care of that. The summertime is hard with them here. We get really dry ground and we have very steep terrain. So we run all the electric fence. Well, when the ground gets really dry, they don't ground. The goats don't ground well. So they tend to flip through the electric fence a lot more. So I spend a lot of August and September either tethering goats.

19:08
which means moving around constantly, watering constantly, making sure no one's tangled, or catching goats and putting them back in their pen. So I would say summer, you know, summer is when I'm like, oh, I'm done. End of summer, we've got milking still going on, goats are getting out. No cute babies frolicking about to keep you happy. Yeah. Yeah.

19:35
Is it, okay, I don't need specific numbers. I'm trying really hard not to ask a rude question, but I have a question. Is it expensive to have them, to have the goats? I think it depends on how you manage them. I've seen people drop, you know, they'll feed their goats only 100% alfalfa hay and that's costly. At least where we live, it's costly. And I know it varies much by, you know, what region of the United States you're in and whatnot. It's not too bad for us.

20:04
We rotate great, we rotate our pastures as frequently as we can. So they're getting fresh brush almost year round. Um, that cuts our feed bill down enormously. We do our own hay. So we're not paying outside of obviously the cost to do the hay. We're not outsourcing our hay. So they get local by local, like a quarter mile away, grass hay. Um, that's local. Yeah.

20:33
local grass hay and I think they they kind of want to build more once again in the summer with milking they're eating a lot more grain up on the milk stand. If the pasture starts to get a little bit thin I'm giving them a little more grain with their grass hay that's just you know free choice for them. So like I said I think it depends you know if you're if you and your goats on a dry lot and I know a few people that do yeah you're going to run off quite a hay bill.

21:01
but if you've got the space for them, they're pretty low maintenance compared to more most animals. I think my chickens honestly probably cost more than my goats. Okay, so that leads me to my next question. Do you do your own vetting for them or do you have someone that can take care of them if they get sick? Um we thank goodness, knock on one. Um

21:26
I haven't had too many issues when we've had the vet come out. I have a couple really good friends that are more experienced than I am with goats and they've been able to guide me like, hey, you know, try doing this. I bet you this is what she has. So most of the time I do my own vetting where I can. And we haven't had a situation where we've needed a vet. We do have one that's about 20 minutes away. And they work like...

21:55
days a week. So, hopefully if the stars align and we needed him and he was happy to be working that day, we do have a vet that we could consult with. So, that's been nice. Okay. I know the veterinary costs right now are crazy. We took our dog for her yearly checkup last August. We had to get her on the books again now.

22:24
I think it came to over $150 just for a wellness checkup. And I was just like, you've got to be kidding me. You gave her like one shot and weighed her and checked her out. 150 bucks. I love our vet. The vet that we have seen the last two times has been fantastic. Maggie does not necessarily appreciate the vets.

22:54
who the vet is versus who the techs are. Oh. Maggie adores the technicians, the people that help the veterinarian. The minute the veterinarian walks in the door of the room, Maggie backs up towards us and just growls. Oh, dear. She doesn't growl at anybody. She'll bark, but she doesn't growl.

23:16
And the first time she did it, I was like, oh no, no, no, no, this is a good person who's going to help you. And Maggie looked at me like, I don't know about this. Yeah. But worth every penny of that $150 because they take really good care of her. Yeah. But any owning of animals right now is not inexpensive. And if you have ways to cut the costs, which it sounds like you do, that's great. Yeah.

23:46
Part of the reason we don't have livestock is because we would have to buy all the feed because we don't have room enough for them to graze. Yeah, and sometimes it depends on the breed. Another reason we have the mini lemontias, they just don't eat a ton. We had Nigerian dwarfs before them as well. We weren't flying through hay. In a few years from now when my kids are older and we've expanded our pasture space, we would like to get standards as well. And I'll be curious to see.

24:16
the price difference or how much just feed they consume. But yes, I am thankful we have not had to have too many vet visits because like you said, they are really expensive and livestock vets are like triple vet costs and taking your dog in. I had one that came up with some astitis this year and I called and I said, Hey, just a rough estimate. How much is it going to be to have you come out?

24:43
so I could get a prescription for like, I knew what medication we needed, I just needed the prescription for it. Yeah. And they're like, well, if you can bring her in, oh, I don't know, it was probably gonna be like 300 bucks for them to look at her. And then it was good, he's like, or we can come out to you and it'll be 600. And I was like, oh, I was like, oh, you know, I'm good. And I ended up just doing antibiotics for a longer period of time. Just, uh-huh.

25:11
But it worked, but man, I was just like, man, that's expensive. Yeah, that's a lot of money. Yeah. So the other question I had, and I keep meaning to ask people this and I keep forgetting because I get busy thinking about all the other things I want to ask you. When people, OK, if someone wants to get a goat, like for their home, for their homestead.

25:37
Number one, I keep being told that goats need to have friends. They need, you need to get more than one goat. And number two, do you, can you get like young goats, not quite six months old? And is it less expensive to buy them when they're young versus when they're already of age as it were? Well, to answer the first question, I do think goats thrive with a buddy. It doesn't necessarily need to be.

26:06
It's odd enough, I think they do better in, what would be, even numbers. So two do great together. If you do three, someone's getting picked on. And if you do four, everyone's good. You do five, someone's getting picked on. It just seems to be how it falls. You're like children. Yes. Yeah. They're best in pairs. Um, I've had goats though, that do fine by themselves, especially, especially my bucks, I've noticed. Bucks don't necessarily need the companionship. Um.

26:35
I've had bucks just by themselves and then somebody else's pasture or just tethered around the property and they could care less. The doughs tend to like buddies. And then the other question, I sell my kids typically around 8 to 12 weeks depending on how they're growing and whatnot. And from my experience and like when I priced my stock, I think kids, I always priced my kids cheaper than an adult dough or a yearling.

27:05
Yearlings, I think, usually are pretty expensive. And then so are your seasoned doughs. They've got proof in the pudding per se on those doughs. You know what you're looking at as far as their production, their udders, their body structure. Kids, you should still be getting what you see as far as what you look at the parents. Then you should know what that kid should be like as well. But I would say typically, you know, your kids are a little bit cheaper.

27:35
which I think they probably should be. You know, you've got a lot of care and a lot of money and feed and hopefully no vet bills, but possible vet bills, you know, until you get to that breeding age. So. Okay. So if you, if you typically sell them between eight and 12 weeks, are they still nursing or are they able to just eat hay and grain? Yeah, typically at that point they're eating hay and grain. They might go in for a snack once or twice a day, but usually moms are done.

28:04
I don't know much. I have one or two does that will nurse their kids as long as you let them. So I had one last year that nursed hers until she was six or seven months old. Wow. But mom's condition went really downhill. It was really hard to keep the weight on her because she was nursing this kid who did not really need it. So really just save the mom's body condition.

28:32
I try to pull them at 8 to 12 weeks if I can. And I've never had a problem with the kids not growing well or keeping up with their peers. I do like to keep them on mom if I can. If mom's holding the weight and everyone's doing good and growing well, I'll let them just nurse on if I don't need the milk. But 8 to 12 weeks we seem to, seems to be a good sweet spot for everybody.

29:00
Okay, so does mom wean them or do you just take them away from her? Um, I found, I will usually leave the kids on until the buyer picks them up around eight to 12 weeks. And then they just go right with the buyer. And I've never had anyone complain to me about, oh, he's just screaming and crying because they're going right into a new situation. And most of the time they're, they're too busy with that new situation that there's not a lot of whining. Yeah.

29:29
I have let doe kids or kids I keep back, I'll let their mom wean them. Typically when that mom gets re-bred in the fall, she will just wean them. Like nope, I'm done, I'm pregnant, no more. I've had situations though where they don't and then you've got a year old kid nursing off a mom who just had babies and that's not a situation you want to be in. So I try to separate if I can.

29:59
Okay, so the reason I ask is we have a mama cat and one of her kittens that we're keeping. All the other kittens found homes. Like two weeks ago, and the kitten's almost four and a half months old now, I think, he was trying to nurse and she growled at him and moved away and he came back and tried to nurse again and she growled louder and walked further away. He came up to her the third time and she,

30:28
thumped him with her paw. I heard her hit him with her paw, like thunk. And then she rolled him, you know, like jumped on him like she's a kitten too and rolled him over and batted him a couple more times and then ran into our treeline to get away from him. And I was like, if that's how mama cats tell their kittens know, I wonder how goats and cows and horses do it. Because I can't imagine getting kicked in the head with a cloven hoof. It's a lot of fun.

30:57
No, no, there's usually I had one that her kids were about three four months old and I was letting her just nurse him handle it on her own because I didn't need her milk and I didn't mind the baby's nurse and she reached the point where she was like I am done and it's pretty much any time they went in she would kind of jump and scoot away and kind of try to kick with her with her back leg and

31:23
there was one that wouldn't quite get the hint and they will actually reach over and kind of bite their butt like no and Then they usually get the hint and like okay, I'll stop but Headbutting involved the milk bar is closed children. We're done. Yes. Yep That's how that's how flu was with her kitten, too So it was it was so funny to see her roll him over. I just like wow Yeah, okay

31:53
Yeah, she means business. Oh, she was mad. This is the most aggressively friendly barn cat you will ever meet. To see her angry was so funny. Oh. But anyway, alright, so in sharing that story and making you laugh, I think we're good. We've got 31 minutes, well almost 32 minutes.

32:17
Recorded and I try to keep these to half an hour. So I really appreciate you taking time to talk to me today, Madeline Yeah, well, thanks for reaching out and I enjoyed this thoroughly. So yeah, I hope you have a good rest of your day and Yeah, thanks for chatting with me Absolutely, I need all the stories I can get thank you so much Of course. All right. Bye. Bye