The snow is melting! yippee!! ☺ The only drawback to that is now there is water everywhere. The poor goats don't have very many dry spots, except in their houses, and some of those have water in them. I am so glad we built a raised platform in the main pen years ago. I think all this snow will be gone by next week-end, then we will have a dry spring, then a rainy summer. We'll see...
I am now finally combing the goats. I'm going out there at noon and combing until chore time. Depending on how thick the fleece, I get anywhere from 3 to 5 done a day. I have a nice little blister forming in the palm of my left hand. :-)
Yesterday I combed Oreo and Astrid. Oreo first. She looks so totally different after she's combed. Astrid decided she didn't like that, so she proceeded to attack Oreo and try to break her leg with her horns. Came pretty darn close, too! Now I have Astrid in with the wethers to chill out for a few days. Hopefully both her and Oreo will forget about their argument and live peacefully after a couple of days. Poor Cupid and Christie, Astrid's kids from last year, are missing their mom. They are used to being with her all the time, and sleeping next to her. Tonight they will be by themselves. At least they can see their mom, they just can't be near her. They are a year old, so they will be fine. They weaned themselves a long time ago, they just all stick close together. All the family groups out there do.
It will be interesting to see what Arianna and Luna do this year. They are a mother daughter pair and both are pregnant. Last year Luna had kids, but Arianna didn't. She was a good grandma. Daisy and Cleo, Luna's kids, kept going through the fence into the misfit pen to eat, then one day they grew too much and couldn't fit back through, so they stayed in the misfit pen and weaned themselves a couple months earlier than the other kids. Did not seem to hurt them one bit.
Well, I think I'll go out and do my "bedtime" check of the goats and make sure everybody is where they are supposed to be and all are safe. I hear the dogs barking at something, probably a deer coming in to eat the hay that the goats are wasting in the dairy barn area. The deer don't go in the barn, but they eat on the compost pile of hay and manure out of the barn.
Every once in a while one gets their back leg caught in the fence. They manage to get out, but they sure bend up the panel doing it! I wonder if they dislocate a hip or anything. The last time wasn't too long ago, there was snow on the ground. It totally bent the panel all to heck, but the tracks leading away looked fine. No drag marks and all four feet were walking on the ground leaving normal tracks. A lucky deer, that one was.
I have to remember to set the clocks ahead tonight, too. This year is going by too fast already! I was going to have the thinning all done by now, the goats mostly all combed and once again,that has not happened. I'm almost done thinning, one more good day and it will be done. The weather has not been cooperating for the combing most days, so I'm behind again. Oh well, it will all get done when it gets done and not a minute before. ☺
