Does your goat still have babies on her? They eat a lot as they get older. Also if you have pulled them off of her she could be depressed. You could feed her shredded beet pulp that has been soaked in warm water. That will boost milk production. Start off slowly though, and give her a handful to start. I buy it at the feed store. I does come pelleted as well, but you have to soak it longer. It MUST be soaked first. You could try to add some sunflower seeds in the shell to her grain which might help. Is she eating all of her grain? I give a large scoop full (3 or 4 cups) at each milking. You could also try giving her warm water or putting some powered lemonade mix into warm water to get her to drink more so she will subsequently make more milk with more liquid intake. It is odd that she has cut in half what she was milking. You could try milking three times a day to boost her production as well. The more you milk the more she should produce. Also, has the milk changed in texture or flavor? She could have mastitis. But, unless her udder is hot to touch and hard on either side, and the milk would be clumpy. Does she have a temperature or does she act like she doesn't feel well? Maybe check her temp and make sure she isn't sick. Good luck, let me know if she improves. Bonnie

depends on if you are doing melt & pour glycerin soap or if you are making cold proccess soap. If it's melt & pour, (M&P) it's easier to buy it already made into goatsmilk base....or you can ge plain & add your own goatsmilk powder to it. Then either fragrance/essential oil. This you can use immediately. If it's cold process you want to do, look on the web for recipies....it would involve palm, coconut, olive or vegetable oils (or a combination), lye, goatsmilk or goatsmilk poweder & fragrance/essential oil. THis has to age 4-6 weeks before using it. If you want to do cold process (CP) soap, it might be easier to start with a plain recpe first, then move to the more complicated ones. Good luck....both are fun to do. I'm just to impatient for the CP, so I went to the M&P. Plus the colors are brighter, & the scents can be made stronger in M&P...it's much more forgiving than CP. Hazel

Here's the M&P information from the link above. Melt and Pour Soap: Technically, all hand made soap is "Glycerin Soap." In many commercial soaps, all the extra glycerin (formed naturally by the cold process soapmaking method) is harvested out. Thus, all handmade soap is glycerin rich (since hand made soapmakers donÂt harvest out glycerin in their soap). In todayÂs market, the term "Glycerin Soap" is commonly used to refer to clear soap. Generally, the clear soap has extra glycerin added to it to produce a very nourishing, moisturizing bar. Glycerin is a "humectant." It draws moisture to itself; the theory is that if you wash with glycerin soap, a thin layer of glycerin will remain, drawing moisture to your skin. Clear soap can be purchased in large blocks to be melted down, colored and fragranced, and placed into molds (or used to make loaves of soap to be sliced). This type of soap is called "Melt and Pour" and the artistry of melt and pour is called "Soap Casting." Melt and Pour is gaining in popularity because of its ease of use. There are no significant safety measures (other than basic common sense  donÂt put your hand in the hot soap, donÂt cut your finger off with the knife etcÂ) needed for soapcasting. Children can do it. ItÂs a great outlet for creative types. You can also make clear soap from scratch. This method involves all the aspects of cold process soapmaking, but takes it a few steps further by adding alcohol for clarity and a glycerin and sugar mix to suspend and enhance the clarity. It is a dangerous process because of the alcohol vapors. If you wish to make clear soap (which will not melt down like melt and pour  itÂs one pour only soap), please read "Transparent Soapmaking" by Catherine Failor. This is an excellent resource for anyone wishing to make clear soap from scratch. So to answer your question, yes and no.... I refuse to make CP soap in my home, because I'd have to LOCK up the chemicals. I have very busy inquisitive boys. And once they learned that I had "cool" stuff..they'd wanna try it too. If I wanted to make my "own" soaps, I'd much prefer to buy M&P in blocks and enhance it, or buy soap to rebatch by taking CP soap someone else made, grating and adding more liquids and cooking it down to make a "new" soap. But I don't need to, because I have wonderful friends who make it and send it to me to "test". LOL

You need real milk kefir grains to make REAL kefir at home, OR, the not-so-real powdered kefir starter which has little to do with real kefir grains - the powdered starters contain only a few of the good bacteria that makes kefir. Only real grains can be used over and over. These grains (which look like little gelatinous cauliflowers) will grow, and you divide them when they get about the size of a quarter, so you should have a never-ending source of them for life. Mine are about 15-years old and still going strong. The commercial product you purchased from the store isn't going to work because it probably has a sweetener and/or other ingredients. Homemade kefir is plain, not sweetened and flavored like the stuff from the store. You can add sweeteners and flavors after it's fermented, but not while the grains are in the milk. As an alternative to making kefir, you can use plain yogurt (I'd suggest Stonyfield Farm Yogurt because it not only contains the 2 strains of bacteria in most yogurt products, Stonyfield has 6 varieties of live, active cultures) and make goat yogurt. Keep in mind, yogurt and kefir are worlds apart. Kefir (made with real kefir grains) is actually much better for you than yogurt. Kefir has a smaller curd than yogurt, so it's easier to digest, especially for children. Yogurt is more difficult to make than kefir, when it comes to scalding the milk, the temperature window for adding the starter/culture, and the temperature for incubation. When making kefir I add 2 to 2-1/2 cups of milk (from a number of sources, including goat milk, but I mostly use powdered milk and coconut milk - also powdered and rehydrated) to a quart jar (usually cold from the refrigerator)and add kefir grains. Place a plastic lid on the jar and allow to ferment for 12-24 hours (the ambient temperature will determine how long - warmer temperatures ferment faster). That's it! After it's fermented, I remove the grains and either start another batch or rest them in 1-cup of milk in the refrigerator in a pint jar with a lid on tight until needed. I use kefir as a substitute for buttermilk, sour cream, cream cheese, and plain yogurt. I can drain the whey from the curd and make "cheese" like making yogurt cheese. Just drain it to the consistency you need. Once you have shaken or stirred the kefir curd, it will quickly become a liquid and you will have to use it as a liquid. It won't get thick again. The curd is more delicate than yogurt, plus, most commercial yogurt products, and some homemade recipes, include thickeners. Try to find some kefir grains from a person who already has them in use. If you can't find them, purchase them through Cultures for Health (http://www.culturesforhealth.com/). You will also find a wealth of information on the subject at the web site. Last point..... If you decide to purchase powdered kefir starter (which is how I first made kefir before locating real grains), you can save back 1/4-1/2 cup of the batch of kefir to culture another quart of milk. But since it's not real kefir grains, you can only do that for 2-3 quarts, but at least you get more bang-for-your-buck if using the powdered starter.