I was a bit dubious of our vet's diagnosis that Aurora was merely suffering from internal parasites. After all, would she be fine one day and then nearly comatose the next in that case? But now I'm thinking he was right. Because ever since being flushed out with a vast array of pharmaceuticals, our doeling has been growing faster and plumper every day.

Her mama, on the other hand, is starting to drop below the perfect 3.0 body-condition score. That's perfectly normal with heavy milkers, but I'm still going to try to plump her up with some extracurricular grazing in hopes we can keep her fat enough to milk through the winter.

It's a long shot for a first freshener to milk through, but it sure would be nice not to have to worry about the hassle of breeding and kidding this fall and next spring. August and early September will be the deciding time because I'd like to breed around Halloween if we're going to have to dry Artemesia off and give her time to recover before turning her back into a milk jug once again.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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