Goat antics

Goats can be the silliest creatures sometimes.  Walter got all tangled in a feed bag, how I'm not sure, but he had a nice head dress on.  Scared the livin' daylights out of the rest of the wethers who were all running away from Walter, who was trying to keep up with them.  It was the funniest thing to watch, I about fell over I was laughing so hard.  Luckily I was over in the main pen taking pictures of the kids when all of this happened, so I had my camera with me.  Although I didn't get a good picture of them all running away in a tight bunch, snorting and blowing.  Silly goats. :-)  They are more entertaining than TV by a long ways. 

Then there is BB on the door of the dairy barn.  She gets on the bench, jumps up on the upper door and walks across to the lower door.  That door is only as wide as a 2x4 on it's edge.  Good balance!  Speckles is laying there with her triplets climbing all over her.

  I'm still working on the cashmere, in fact I'm washing two fleeces as I write this, and then will spend the afternoon dehairing some.  I'm so far behind I think I'm ahead of things right now.   My big plan of having the cashmere all done and ready to go by June isn't going to happen.  One order will be ready, but the rest won't be ready till July.   I underestimated how much other work there was to do around here back in January when I said I'd have it done by June.  Funny how I forgot all about all the clean-up and gardening there is to do in the Spring! After all, there are only so many daylight hours in a 24 hour period.
  Luckily I have had some helpers once in a while.  Without them, I wouldn't be able get much of anything done.  The HelpX  website is a good thing!

  The three bottle babies are doing well.  Bart is almost old enough to be weaned now.  The twins are three weeks behind him.   They live in the dog pen at night and are running all over the place during the day.  I do have them closed out of the inner yard so they don't eat all the flowers and gardens.   Today I'm going to let the main pen of goats out into the outer yard and driveway to eat that down and get used to fresh greens again, after only having the hay all winter and up till now.  I have been throwing them the grass and weeds I'm pulling out of the gardens, but they haven't been out of their pens yet this year.

  We had 2 1/2 inches of snow on Thursday morning!  I'm really glad it melted by that afternoon and that it didn't kill all my flowers that were blooming and the apple blossoms that are starting to open.   The tulips and daffodils got flattened, but they are perking back up again now.  It didn't break any branches on the trees, either.  Now I hope we are going to have warmer weather for the rest of Spring and into Summer, with a little rain each week to keep things green and the fire danger low.  In an ideal world.....

  Well, that's it for now.  Have a good Memorial week-end!    

All Done

     Here are some of the cashmere kids sunning themselves after a very cold late April snowstorm/blizzard we had.  Luckily the snow melted by the next day!

 Here is Mariah with her very first kid born today at 12:30pm.  It was a nice warm sunny day today.  A good day to come into the world.  She's a nice healthy girl I named Mimi.  Mariah wasn't going to be a good mom at first, she didn't want anything to do with her.  But, I held her and got the kid cleaned up and up to her to drink, and after about an hour and a few times of nursing, she accepted the kid completely and all is well.

 Here are Poppy and Lupine, two of the three bottle babies I have this year.  I had to put down two does this year, both from a congested udder that I could not get uncongested, no matter what I did.  Both does were the only two that didn't drink their warm molasses water after kidding, and they were the only two that had any problems.

Here's Whiteout, he was born in the blizzard we had last week, hence the name. ☺  He's got one little brown spot on his cheek.  Other than that, he's all white.  

All together there are 22 kids out there, and 76 goats total!  I haven't had this many for quite a few years.  14 girls and 8 boys.  I've decided this year I'm not keeping any of the boys as bucks, they are all going to get "wetherized".  There are a couple that might make good bucks, but I don't need any more now, and I don't know of anyone who is really wanting one, so they will all be wethers and used for their fiber.

  We are enjoying a spell of sunny warm weather now.  We've even had a couple of thunder storms this week that dumped a decent amount of rain.  I really need to get out there and mow and weed-eat now.  The garden is deer-proofed now, so I should have a good harvest this year.  I ate my first helping of asparagus out of the garden last night. YUM!

  I hiked up to the Rocks the other day and cleared a good trail that anyone should be able to follow now.  The ticks are out.  I had one on me that I discovered in the middle of the night when I woke up and felt something crawling on my neck.  Ick!  Glad it didn't attach itself to me!  I think I will wait awhile to go up there again.  I'll wait till the ticks go away again.  In the Spring when one goes up to the Rocks and stands still, you can look down and see the ticks crawling up your legs.  It's enough to freak a person out!

  I'm slowly getting the fleeces dehaired.  I'm getting behind on my self-imposed schedule.  There are just too many things that need done around here this time of year to spend all day in the dehairing room.  So I do one fleece a day in the afternoon and try to get all the other things done in the mornings and then after I'm done with the dehairing for the day.  So to all my customers, I'm sorry, but I don't think I'll have the cashmere ready to ship when I said I would.  It won't be a whole lot longer, but it won't be right when I said it would.  I hope you understand.

Well, it's 10:30 at night and I haven't had dinner yet, it's almost ready now, so I think I'll go eat and then hit the sack and start over again tomorrow....