Recipe for Bottle fed goat kids

When  we have our goat kid babies there comes a time when we will have to bottle feed one or more.  There are many products on the market that you can use to replace the mommas milk.  One is to buy a product called "milk Replacer".  I am not impressed by this product, we have lost many a kid on this.  It is expensive and we never use all of it.  So, we have found that you can use regular Vit D milk also.  But , we have a new recipe that seems to be the BEST, it is as follows: 1 Gallon of Vit D Milk, 1-12oz can of Evaporated Milk, 1-Cup of ButterMilk.  Mix that up and feed away.  Let me know how that works for you. We have had great results so far.

Cold Process Soap Making : Using Goat Milk Soap

Thought I would add a little bit more about our soap adventure.  We have been using the same recipe (which I will post below) more or less and it amazes me how little things can change it so.

So we made two batches and the one batch we split in half and the other batch we split into fourths.  Our trace came very quickly tonight and I think it's because our oils weren't too hot, they were only about 100 degrees and the milk/lye mixture wasn't too hot either.  Because we only blended with the stick blender about 5 mins or so instead of 20 or more, so that was a great discovery.

The flavors we made tonight were, well we don't eat it so technically it's not flavors it would be scents using essential oils, the EO's we used were; country vanilla/lavender, peppermint, cucumber melon, sage/citrus/orange, stress relief/litsea/few drops of lavender and then one with no eo but just raw honey and oatmeal.  It should take about 4 weeks to harden or longer.  The longer you let it cure the harder the bar of soap is.

I used a new mold tonight that says "goat milk soap" on it.  Too cute!!  The colors that the EO's change the soap too is also fun to discover.  The sage/citrus and orange mixture came out a tan-ish color and the peppermint is snowy white, the honey/oatmeal looks golden like honey, the vanilla/lavender had redish streaks in it and the stress relief/litsea is an off white creamy color.  We thought that the difference in the color after adding the EO's was partly due to the batch of soap, but this proves that wrong, because we split one batch into batches.

Will post some pictures of the soap in their containers.  Tomorrow I will take out of the containers and cut into bars and then let them cure on racks from which I was using for my cakes (but not anymore).  Love the smell in my room, the different scents waft through at different times, maybe for what I would be needing at that time.

close  up of the Oatmeal/Honey

This is the "goat milk soap" 8 bar mold

This is the Peppermint batch, we just use different plastic containers 

Country Vanilla/Lavender

The little cups are the Cucumber Melon and they came from juice drinks  given
at a school lunch.  The long mold is the Sage/Citrus/Orange.  I made this mold
and it works great.  You line it with wax paper and it lifts right out

This is the Oatmeal/Honey.  It's in a big Tupperware container

The recipe used for the soap is called the "walmart" soap
We use the 64oz of Lard
15.75 oz Coconut Oil
15.75 oz Olive Oil (pure)
16.50 oz of Sunflower Oil
the recipe says 28-34 oz of liquid and we use 30oz of Goats Milk
16 0z of Lye
for a whole batch you could use from 3oz - 7oz of Essential Oil
we usually use about 3-4 oz, it seems to be enough.
That's all for now.

Making soap

Along with the raising of meat goats, we also have several Dairy Goats.  From that came more goats milk than we could drink, so another adventure began. Making Soap from the goats milk.  It's called a cold process soap making.  I was very scared to do the first batch because of the lye, but if your careful, it's so easy and so much fun and we have cool soap to use that is so good to your skin.