We chose animals that require little care and are hardy. During winter they get a little grain to bring them into the barn at night away from preditors. It also gives the pregnant girls a little extra energy.

A single goat is enough to give us all the milk we can drink in a year. Getting about 3/4 gallon a day means 1/2 gallon a day gets put into the freezer or collected and made into cheese. We separate the nannies from the kids at night and milk in the morning, then the nannies spend the rest of the day with the kids so they get off to a good start.

The milk is stored in a "sun tea" jar and the butter fat rises then gets skimmed off. There isn't much cream on a goat but what they don't give in cream - they make up for in milk. The milk is a light green hue when they are on pasture since they get so much chlorophyl (means its really healthy milk!). Some goats will give milk for 11 months - though I don't push them when my freezer is full of milk or I make up my mind on a breeding schedule (they get dried off a few months before breeding).

We pasturize our milk but I don't have a problem drinking raw milk when all the precautions for sanitary conditions have been met. When I am in doubt - the chickens get the milk and that makes them very happy.

The biggest problems we've had with raising goats is there is fescue on the property and it made some of our 1st year kids very ill. Most people will say thier biggest problem is that they multiply so fast its hard to keep up but 1/2 of the kids are males so it looks like goat sausage might be an option to look into.

Now that we have several goats milking, we will be making more cheeses. I have to say, the mozorella from goats milk is awesome when the milk is taken early in the season. The later the milking season, the less rich it is.

It can get pretty cold here, sometimes -30 degrees at night. The barn hasn't been below 25 F but that's cold enough to freeze water (which is our biggest winter chore- hauling water. The creek even freezes up a few weeks in January but I don't want to chance the animals breaking through the ice anyway.

Our billy goat is nearly 190 lbs now. He goes in a tractor away from the nannies during the summer. Since goats like companios, he gets a few chickens to hang out with. Last summer he gained a lot of muscle being on green grass & clover and his coat looked thick and healthy. He was harnessed this winter and is learning to pull sleds and carts and maybe we can get him to pull a small garden cultivator. One of his sons looks like he might be as big as he issss so we will raise him to be a double goat team .

We would like to get a "solar" earth barn for the animals made from recycled tires and glass. Something simple for some solar gain and good light. Once we get a good snow on the ground, the sunlight bouncing into buildings can be an enormous spiritual lift and a chance to warm the bones.

The sheep don't seem to have a problem in the cold but the goats get jackets on. In April-May, when we plan on kids & lambs, we put jackets on them to keep the chill off. That only works when you don't have many to dress so when we get more animals, the key is to plan on kids & lambs in late May for best survival numbers.

The chickens get special treatment since we hope to make them the back-bone income of the farm along with alternative fuel sales (if the need ever arises).. They are kept well over winter indoors away from blizzard winds and wet snow. If the winter is hard, preditors will seek them out by January to February. We want to start hatching our own birds so we want the hens well feed and warm watered. We'll post the hatching unit design (heated by wood) when we get one figured out but an electrical powered hatchery would be out of the question on our low power usage. . . .OR we can find a hen to nest and raise them naturally!