The finished product
Why would someone who raises Cashmere goats need a milking stand? To give shots for one thing. 🙂 The little dears need to be groomed and to have their hooves trimmed occasionally and since Cashmere goats usually don’t have their horns removed those can be daunting tasks without a tool to immobilize the goat.
We found the plans on Fias Co Farm’s website, went to Lowe’s, purchased about $60 worth of materials and got to work. We finished in about 9 hours but I’m sure that someone with experience working with wood could knock it out in much less time. We also did all the sanding by hand.
-
- Getting ready to cut the pieces
-
- The frame for the base
-
- Juliana filing wood with a Siamese cat stuffed into her jacket. Probably not the preferred technique.
-
- The finished product
-
- Front view
Here’s a problem we never had in our little city home. Other people’s goats. Not long after we moved in, my son rode his bike up the road past our neighbors with the goats and much to his dismay, they followed him home. He tried several times to get them to go to their own home but to no avail. He finally came home, goats in tow, clearly frustrated that he couldn’t get them to stay on their own property. By then he was smelly because the two bucks had rubbed up against them. I cannot describe the smell of intact male goats. When you are downwind from them you can’t finish inhaling. It is a different odor than skunk but it affects me the same way. It’s also easier to get off the smell of buck than of skunk but its BAD.
My husband came to my poor son’s rescue having, as most fathers do, the solution to my poor son’s goat problem. He then proceeded to lead the goats home. A few times. He finally gave up and came back, stinky and with goats in tow and suggested I follow in the van and pick him up when we had the goats near their own property. Voila! Problem solved!
I had Thomas (my son) take this picture with his cell phone and there are a couple of things to notice. The small 4 legged animal next to Jon (my husband) is Cocoa, our lab-border collie cross. Cocoa is not a small dog. She weighs about 45 lbs. The three animals following them are the goats: two bucks and a doe. They are HUGE. I am not sure what our neighbor keeps them for but we never see any kids and two of them are no good for dairy purposes. They are either there to keep the grass down, feed the coyotes or for meat.
When I told our neighbor we were having problems with the goats showing up at our place and that I feared for my future garden, he offered us this solution.
Cattle prod
I had never seen one before, but by the time our neighbor showed up, I had studied up on cattle prods on Google. I knew where to buy them, both online and locally. Now there’s something I never dreamed I’d know anything about! Next time those goats come around, we’ll be armed and ready. I’m still planning to electrify the fence around my garden when the time comes.
The City Girl Farmer 