Is that a word? Anyway, no pictures today, just rambling. Little Jan is doing great, even if she is by herself with nobody to play with except mom. Two months old now. Seems totally normal. Cute little girl with her mouse ears. Next doe due to kid isn't until around April 5th, give or take a day or two. There are only 4 cashmere does pregnant out there this year. Toffee, the dairy doe is due the end of April. Iris, one of the pregnant cashmere girls is due close to my birthday, so I've been talking to her about having her kids on my birthday. :-) I'm hoping she has a boy and a girl. If she does have a boy, I'm keeping him a buck, if he looks good. She has excellent fleece, and she's also the only badger colored doe I've ever had. So a badger colored buck would be pretty cool.
Things totally off topic of the farm. This time change thing needs to be done away with. It doesn't change the amount of daylight hours in a 24 hour period. The animals don't go by a clock, so this throws them off a bit, too. Animals are very much creatures of habit, more so than humans even. They don't really enjoy having their schedules messed with. They adapt to changes, but it takes a bit. Especially the dairy goats. I went out a half hour earlier this morning (according to our clocks) and didn't get quite as much milk as normal. It was nice on the cashmere side, they weren't all standing around waiting to be fed since I was early, so it was easier to start throwing hay out for them. Of course when they saw the hay, they came a running, but at least the first minute or two was easier. :-)
Skippy ate something he shouldn't have and did not feel good yesterday. I fasted him all day, and this morning John took him for a hike around the upper half of our place. He had some serious diarrhea but felt much better. Back to his normal bouncy self. Hopefully he passes whatever it was that was clogging him up. He gets into everything out there. When the snow melts I am going to have quite a mess to clean up in the yard. I got spoiled having Rocky and Cloud in with the goats all the time for 9 years. No destruction of the place. Skippy is everywhere but in the goat pens, except at feeding times, or when I go in there for something. He has a game he plays with three of the does, it's kind of like watching a cutting horse work the cows. They chase him and he dodges them. He also runs the gauntlet going out the hay door and through the herd waiting for their hay. He's getting pretty good at dodging the horns as he runs through. After he gets out into the pen, then he just goes around following his nose to see what all is out there. He does have to watch out for the three goats that go after him. He's been nailed a few times.
He is the quietest dog we've had. He doesn't yelp at all, even when getting nailed by the goats. The only time he barks is when the neighbor dogs are barking at something. He doesn't bark when someone comes here, though. I do hope that changes as he gets older! He's 8 months old now. He's a big boy. It will be interesting to see how big he ends up being.
I have a "Christmas" cactus that is still blooming. It started around Thanksgiving and is blooming on all the holidays till Easter it looks like. It covers all the holidays. After being repotted it has taken off, tripling in size. It's outgrowing the window it's in. It likes its new pot!
Yesterday it got all the way up to 50 degrees, with sunshine. The warmest day of the year so far. Melted some of the snow. Today is cloudy and cooler with a breeze and a few snowflakes, so the snow isn't melting as fast. I'm in the middle of combing the goats. Deciding who I'm going to keep and who gets to go to a new home or off to freezer camp. Some of them will be easy. I'm to the age where if I can't handle them easily, I don't want to deal with them anymore. There are two for sure that will be in the freezer. They are hard to impossible to catch, and once caught are hard to handle. I don't want to get hurt, so off they go. It's just not worth it anymore. I want to downsize so I can spend more time spinning and weaving.
I hope everyone is having/had a good day! Things are getting more interesting by the day out in the big world. I'm glad I live where I do! Well, that's it for now...
