Friday, February 8, 2019

House Goat

Meet Timmy, a 9 month old cashmere wether kid.  He's now in the house till Spring.  He came in last December, a very under weight bag of bones.  I hadn't been paying too much attention to how thin he was.  His mom is my oldest doe, she had twins this last year, and while they weren't the most robust little guys, they were holding their own, at least that's what I thought.  I had moved Ming (the mom) and her kids, plus a couple of other does and their kids, plus Inky, the bottle baby/kid into a pen of their own so I could feed them more and they wouldn't be jostled around by the rest of the herd.  Everyone but Timmy here improved and were doing fine.  Then we got a real cold snap in December, and I noticed Timmy was pretty weak.  I actually caught him and felt him and he was a bag of bones.  It was hard to see just how skinny he was with all his cashmere.  So, I brought him in the house, warmed him up and have had to keep him in here now, since it's cold and snowy outside and he's all used to the warmth in here. 
I have him pretty much paper trained now.  Good thing Costco has big boxes of the absorbent pads used for puppy training!  That's what I use with Timmy.  He's learned to pee on one of those, then he gets a treat.  Only occasionally does he miss the pad, or go somewhere not even close to the pad.  He still poops where ever, but at least he's not peeing everywhere.  There will be some new flooring this year, after he's back outside with his mom and brother, who are both doing well. 
  Having an older kid in the house is way messier than having a bottle baby.  There is hay involved, which seems to be getting all over the house.  I spend half of every day cleaning up after him.  I do have one of those big wire dog cages set up in the bedroom where I feed him his hay and a little bit of grain.  But the hay gets stuck on his hair and there are pieces of it everywhere.  I will be glad when spring arrives and he's back to being outside!  Although he is cute, and he doesn't chew on things like a puppy does.  It's kinda like having a puppy in here.  It's also kinda like living in a barn with him in here! 
He is gaining weight and getting stronger.  He's not jumping on things yet, but he can get up on his hind legs to check things out on tables and  kitchen counters now. 
The blue eye you see is just from the camera flash, he has normal goat eyes and can see quite well.

February has turned into the month of winter!  We have 20 inches of snow and counting, it's snowing all day today.  It's been cold, too.  Single digits above and below 0.  Luckily we are not getting all the wind that the valley is, just a gentle breeze, so we don't have a big wind chill to deal with, too. 
Guess I'll go out and start digging out before it gets too deep.  have a great weekend! 

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