Posts tagged goats

amongflora-and-fauna:

Farming for three days in a row, going on four. It’s like summer, or something. 

Gotta keep this up, spent 8 hours wrestling sheep today and my back is in a ginat knot but I feel great. 

Wrestling small ungulates is always my favorite way to start the day. I love the smell of mud stain in the morning!

The little Lily goat STILL hasn’t kidded. I took her to the vet today for an exam to see what the heck her deal is and to have her scur horn trimmed. I was planning to have her horn trimmed after she kidded because last time they anesthetized her. But she still hasn’t popped and her horn is now poking her in the eyebrow.

I took her in knowing that she would be the last animal seen, both because she is a goat being seen by a horse and cow doctor, and because we didn’t have an appointment. There are no goat or sheep vets in town that I know of and this guy, though he is not my first choice, is the only one I know that will see them. So, I dropped her off and left. They said dr would call when she was ready. At 4:30 I went to check on her and they said she wouldn’t be ready till tomorrow. Huh. Either he just never got to her or he maybe induced her? I’m hoping for the second one.

The receptionist chick was no help. She didn’t know dick. She even scowled when I came in saying I was the one with the goat.

Who’s a surprised girl today? I am!

Ok, yesterday night Michael was kept awake by one of the goats pawing on the wood floor of their shed. Thinking it might be Lily about to kid, I went and checked. Nope, it was Butter, her mom. She does that sometimes, so I just ignored it and went back to bed.

Yesterday morning, I checked: Lily still preggers.

After work, still preggers.

At pm feeding time: Lily looks skinnier, dry baby boy, no mess. I thought it was odd, but maybe Lily is just an extraordinary first time mom. Since the big girls were all eating I didn’t think it strange that Lily was ignoring the baby.

This morning I go out to check and pet the baby after I feed. He’s cold, so I pick him up and try to take him to Lily. But Butter comes up and licks on him, he starts wagging his tail and starts nursing. Wtf? So I check tail ends and what do you know? It’s Butter’s baby!! I didn’t even know she was pregnant! She hardly has an udder and never really got any bigger than normal. We did try breeding her, but the dwarf we used couldn’t reach her junk.

So I get more babies probably today. Lily is showing all the signs still including being skinnier as the baby moves into position.

So tomorrow our state senate is deciding whether small scale dairies can sell raw milk and also not be held to as strict of infrastructure laws as long as quarterly milk quality test are good… **breathe**… Do you know what this means? We may actually get to do the milk thing and the cheese thing!!! We looked into it about a year ago and decided it was just too cost prohibitive for set up. But now, maybe not.

Don’t fuck this up, Helena!

There was a link to our newspaper article but it was broken.

I did have a nice cuddle with every animal in my house today. Goats, dogs, cat (just Marvin because Pickle is an arrogant ass). And I whistled with Maestro. So that’s something.

On a related note: I realized today that Lily, the yearling is now top doe. She’s the only one with a horn and she doesn’t mind bossing the other ladies around with it!

It’s my birthday so of course I wanted to breed my does today. Isn’t that what you did on your birthday?

Our neighbors have a mini LaMancha buck so we brought our 2 LaMancha does over. One is pretty big and her daughter who is about half her size. I had never seen her boy up close so I didn’t realize how TINY he is. He is about a foot tall at the shoulders!
Dude was so small he couldn’t reach mama goat’s business, but he kept on trying. He was going at it and she was standing there patiently. It was taking so long that Butter got pissed and eventually butted him so hard she launched him into the fence.

So his owner made a blockade with hay bales to pen her in and put mason blocks behind her for the buck to stand on. I sat on one of the bales and held her collar. But Butter was not about to be forced and put her tail down and eventually just laid down and was over it. We will try again tomorrow.

Lily, the daughter was a breeze. The two of them were French kissing through the fence. They were a match made in heaven. She was just small enough for him to reach her junk, and he went at it for about 2 full minutes.

He was a friendly enough guy, but dear lord, he smelled like ass. I had to decontaminate myself when I got home.

Now, cake.