Sustainable Animal Husbandry and Small Scale Goat Dairying

Description

In the first of this seven-class series you’ll learn about polycultures and diversifying with animals, knowing your land and choosing suitable animals, how to choose housing, fencing, and equipment. You’ll learn about breeding, birthing, and milking and how to process milk, make cheeses, soaps, and lotions from your animal products. Lastly, you will also learn holistic nutrition and health strategies that will keep your animals in optimal well-being.

Class One – Introduction: Polyculture and Diversifying with Animals

– Here we start from the ground up…An introduction into integrated agriculture, where many interrelated activities work with livestock production and animal rearing to ensure preservation and regeneration of our natural ecosystems. What does the farm organism mean? How do we create sustainable productivity utilizing all the farm resources? Let’s explore why animals are key to small-scale, self reliant systems – creating fertility, sequestering carbon and enhancing the land’s individuality.

Class Two – Know Your Land, Choose Your Animals + Know your Housing, Fencing and Equipment

– Raising small livestock means making good choices on the best farm livestock to raise for your particular farm or homestead. If you’re just starting out, it’s good to hear objective pluses and minuses and gain a collection of the most relevant information on raising different animal breeds as well as what they need in terms of housing, food, fencing and attention.

Class Three – Breeding, Birthing and Milking

– The exciting part! Whether raising goats for milk, meat or land clearing, there will most likely come a time to breed which leads to a time to birth which can lead to a time to milk….This class will take us through the steps of breeding for quality characteristics and how best to handle this time. We will then dive deep into all that the kidding phase brings, from the normal to the abnormal scenarios, what to have on hand, kid care and then on into the pleasure of milking and how to work with the doe.

Class Four – Holistic Nutrition and Health Strategies

– This class will cover the basics of domestic animal nutrition from the fundamentals to feeds and feeding, to the diagnosis and evaluation of ill-health symptoms to the herbal and natural livestock care given consciously to promote vibrant health and support a strong immune system. From farmer to animal to the stress or calm to the response and then the final effect.

Class Five – Pastures, Forbes and Browse + Closing the Nutrient Cycle: Manures, Compost and Soil Fertility

– Nature Functions in Wholes. Understanding the environment you manage can lead to improved land health. The first part of this class will focus on some key principles and insights related to holistic planned grazing, best plant foods for your animals and how to keep nutrition for both land and animal at it’s optimum. During the second part of this class, we will look at the role of animals in achieving vibrant soil fertility and how to best handle the gifts of the manures.

Class Six – Small Scale Milk Processing and Cheese Making – From Milk to Table

– This milk processing and cheese making class will take us into the world of providing for our own protein source. We will go from how to handle the milk to ensure maximum quality, the basics of cheese making and the tools needed to do so, as well as learning about other fermented dairy products. We will also discuss the nitty-gritty pertaining to appropriate scale, regulations, selling and more.

Class Seven – Goat Milk Soap and Lotion Making Class

– Learn to make soap and lotion! This class will focus on making all natural goat milk and honey soaps and goat milk and coconut oil based lotions. We’ll infuse with herbs and fragrant essential oils for some incredible products to take home!