Let it Snow

It is snowing. Actually, it was snowing. But it is no longer snowing. It is cloudy and there are about four inches of snow outside. I am going to feed the animals. I wonder how they feel about the snow.

The chickens took one look out of the pop-hole and then went back to their cozy corners in the coop. The goats didn't care for the snow. Roxy didn't want to go outside at all. Phoebe and Maia ran around the goat yard once and then went right back into their warm, straw-filled barn. We closed the doors to the barn. The animals won't want to go outside today anyway. It's better if their heat stays in the barn and helps to keep it warm through the night. Everyone has extra straw.

It is snowing. Actually, it was snowing. But it is no longer snowing. It is cloudy and there are about four inches of snow outside. I went to feed the animals. They all preferred their warm shelters to the snow.

A long overdue post

Yes, I know that I haven't posted in a long time. And yes, I know that you have been waiting. I have been very busy… But I’m back and writing another post, so let’s get to the point!

First, I have several updates:

1.  I sold Aphrodite. Hay prices were up and we had 8 goats on the farm (this includes Carina’s goats) – it was time to downsize a bit. She found a very good home and will be a pet for the rest of her days… Happy Aphrodite.
2.  Roxy had her babies! Good news: on June 1^st, she delivered all girls! Nice Rah…  Bad news: one of the three doelings was a stillborn, approximately 2 weeks dead. This made the birth complicated and a former goat-leader from my 4-H group had to come over and help her out. More good news: Roxy made it out alive and recovered quickly!
3. Carina moved! Her family and their goats moved to a nice property with a big barn. We miss them but are happy for their good luck in buying such an awesome place!
4. I’m breeding Roxy again, this time to a Nigerian Dwarf buck. LaMancha ones are scarce when you don’t want to drive over an hour, and I think that the tiny babies that she’ll have with the Nigerian will be easier for her to deliver… I don’t want to risk losing her again.
5. And last, and probably least, I have changed the look of my blog. Take a look around! Tell me how you like it.

I hope that I can make several posts during this last month of the year and that they will somehow make up for the lack of posts in the last six months. So long... for now!

Roxy's Delivery - Part One

I admit it, a little fuller is an understatement

On Saturday June 1st, at 8:15 am, I was feeding the goats. I was, at the moment, feeding Roxy and she had just finished her grain. I was reaching for her collar to take her out of the milking stall, and thinking to myself about Roxy and what was going on inside of her.

Roxy was due June 4, but lots of goats had been kidding 4-7 days late this year - for some unknown reason. On the other hand, LaManchas are known for often kidding 3 days early. Taking those two facts into account, Roxy would probably kid on her due date. I'd already emailed Brittney (last year's 4-H goat leader) and asked if, in case of a difficult delivery, she could come over and "go into" Roxy and help out a bit. She'd said sure. My kidding kit was in the milking stall already - just in case she had the kids before the 4th, but so far she was showing none of the kidding signs. Or was she? Hadn't her udder looked a little fuller this morning? Hadn't her ligaments felt just a little softer? I bent down to check her udder.

Look at that giant belly!

Suddenly, she stopped pulling toward the grain bins, away from my grasp. She paused her breathing and gasped a little. Then she started going for the bins again. My heart jumped. Had that been contraction? I pulled her out of the stall and bent down to check her udder again. Definitely beginning to fill up.

After feeding the goats their hay, I walked back to the house to get a proper breakfast for myself, and I thought about everything. I do a lot of thinking. When Carina's dad came to milk Dicey and feed her babies, I thought, I would coolly tell him what I suspected. We'd then move Dicey's babies out of the kidding/baby pen, where they had been moved to from Carina's house a week ago, and put Roxy in. Then I would come back to the house and text Brittney, the 4-H  goat leader, Cassie, the owner of the buck Rah that Roxy was bred to, and call Carina, who was out of state visiting relatives and wouldn't be back until late Sunday night. Then I'd check on Roxy every hour or so and try to find more signs.

I finished my eggs and wondered about Roxy's babies. How many would she have? I thought three, as her belly was 17 inches wide, but she might have only two. Was today the day, really? Would the kids be boys or girls? Rah had sired mostly girls and, though I wanted girls, I didn't want to make the boys (if there were any) feel unwanted. Yes, even boys would be nice. Would the babies be white like their dad or be mostly black like Roxy? How about the ears? Would they be big or tiny like Roxy's?

Then I thought about You, reader. By the time you read the post I would write, those babies would be out and running around...

To be continued!

Dicey's babies are here!

Babies!

Yesterday at about 7:20 AM Dicey had twin girls! We almost missed it but, fortunately, Carina's dad came to check on Dicey at exactly the right time. I arrived at the barn just as Dicey was starting to push out her first baby; a beautiful black, brown and white girl with splendidly long ears!

Just Out

Hardly had we dried off Dicey's first baby when another one started to come. Within minutes, we were drying off a second girl with even flashier coloring then her sister! We let Dicey clean her and then we dried her and wrapped her in a towel to keep her warm.

The second baby is immediately wrapped in a towel

After delivering two babies, Dicey looked, and felt, really thin. She started delivering two placentas and we gave her molasses water, peanuts, and let her clean her babies.

Dicey is cleaning off her babies - with our help.

After we dipped the babies umbilical cords in iodine to prevent infection, Carina milked Dicey and fed the babies. Baby #1 had some trouble figuring out the bottle, but baby #2 caught on really quickly.

First Meal

While Carina's dad cleaned up the messy straw from the kidding pen and fed the goats, - who had been temporarily forgotten in the excitement of new babies - we got to hold the babies.

Nap time! Being born is tiring.

Soon after, Carina brought the babies home. They will stay there for almost two weeks and then the kidding pen will be converted into a baby pen so that they can live in the barn without the risk of being trampled on by the older goats.
I went over to get more acquainted with the little girls a few hours later; and guess what! They were already up and wobbling on those little legs!

Kids learn to walk just hours after birth

As you can see, Carina is keeping was keeping them in a laundry basket; but as soon as they learn to climb out they will have to be moved.

All cozy and ready for another nap

A Big Hail Storm

The thunder rumbled. I was on my way home in Carina's car with Aphrodite on June 6, 2012 coming home from goat work-out. A goat work-out is where practice showing goats. I would have to milk Roxy as soon as I got home; I usually milk her at 6:30 PM, and now it was already 7:30. It couldn't rain now, it just couldn't. I looked up at the sky. Sure enough, there were dark, black, clouds overhead. As though they were making fun of my surety that it couldn't rain, three raindrops splattered through the open window onto my face. I anxiously looked into the back of the car where Aphrodite was. Goats hate to get wet so I would have to carrying her under my jacket all the way to the goat shed, and I wasn't looking forward to it. It started raining harder. Carina's mom closed the car windows. By now, the rain was coming down in torrents.

We drove up to my house and I hopped out of the car. I tried to look casual as I tucked Aphie under my coat and bolted to the shed. When I got there I was out of breath. I put Aphrodite down and looked outside. If anything, the rain was getting worse. My milk pail was inside so I made a bolt for the house again. Just as I got inside, hailstones started rattling down. I grabbed the pail and Aphie's bottle and, holding my pail lid over my head as a helmet I ran back to the goat shed.

In the goat shed, the hailstones were rattling on the roof. The noise wasn't very loud. Not yet. It was only so loud that you had to shout to be heard. I held Aphrodite's bottle and she sucked it greedily. She didn't seem to notice the noise. Aphie finished her bottle and I closed the door to the goat shed. All the goats were inside and I didn't want the hail to come in. I opened the gate to the milking area and Roxy jumped onto the milk-stand. I sat down and started milking her. Ever so faintly I could hear the sound of the milk squirting into the pail in spite of the storm. "Well," I thought, "This is one sound the storm can't drown out entirely!" That's when the real hailstorm started. Golf ball sized hailstones bounced to the ground. The noise of hailstones on the roof went from very loud to deafening.

That's when I noticed the puddle. Yes, that's true; when I first came in the ground beneath the milk-stand was kind of muddy. But that isn't what I mean by puddle.  I mean puddle. The puddle beneath the milk-stand was 2 inches deep. "That's funny," I thought. "I didn't spill any water." Then I realized what had happened.

The floor of our goat shed is dirt and the goat shed is also on slightly sloping ground. the water from the rain must have run down the hill, hit the goat shed, and gone under the wall, gone through the goats bedding and under the milk-stand.

I quickly finished milking Roxy. Then I let her out of the milk-stand. I went over to the wall. Slowly but surely water was seeping under it. And all the bedding was wet. All that is, except one corner just big enough for the goats to sleep in. I stuffed as much straw as possible into the crack between the wall and floor. I would have to replace all the bedding in the morning.

Suddenly a terrible thought came over me. What about my baby chicks? What if somehow the power had gone out and their heat lamp in the chicken coop had gone off? The hail had calmed a little so I held an empty bucket over my head and ran to the chicken coop.

My heart stopped. The heat lamp was off! Then my heart started beating again. the heat lamp was unplugged from the extension cord. I could fix that. I plugged it back in. My heart stopped again. The heat lamp didn't go on!

I rushed to the house and shouted for my dad.  I told him that the heat lamp wouldn't go on. He took it very calmly, I couldn't believe that he wasn't panicking like me. He simply said, "Maybe the connection is under water." It takes two extension cords to reach the chicken coop from the house and it was the connection between the two extension cords that he was talking about. "Of course it's under water. Everything is. But what does that have to do with it?" was my stupid answer. Patiently my dad explained to me that when an electric cord gets submerged it shuts off. Otherwise things could get very dangerous.

After my dad turned off the electricity, I went and unplugged the cord from the house, followed the cord until I got to the connection, unplugged the cords from each other, carefully wiped them off, plugged them together again and set the connection on top of our green-turtle sandbox to keep them out of the water. By now I was soaked in spite of my rain jacket. After I plugged the cord into the house and my dad turned on the electricity, the chicks, who had been huddling in the corner, got up and looked around. When they started running around as normal I decided that they were safe and went back to the house.

I had forgotten to collect the eggs from our chickens, and I had left the milk behind. I would get those when the rain stopped, but tomorrow I would sure have a mess to clean in the goat shed!

Buying my first goat, Aphrodite

I decided to get goats in September 2011, and we started planning a goat shed in which to keep our future goats. I started watching Craigslist for goats for sale near the beginning of March 2012 and I spotted some nice looking doelings sometime around the third week of March.

The woman selling the goats that I saw on Craigslist bought her baby goats from a goat Dairy farm for $50 or so a head.  In her turn she sold them for $80 a piece to young 4-Hers. Does have to have babies to start milking but the babies drink a lot of milk so the dairy farmers like to get rid of the kids and sell the milk. Anyway, I went over to see if I wanted any. She had a 15 baby goats. Some had their horns beginning to grow, some were disbudded, and two were polled. After looking for an hour I finally decided that I liked one Saanen better than any other babies. She was a cute little thing who seemed to really like to be around humans, and she was 6 weeks old. I loved her from first sight!  I had decided to get a Saanen anyway because they are nicknamed "The Dairy Queens" because they produce so much milk.

Our goat shed was not done, so we asked the people selling the goats if they could hold the little goat for us for a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, I was running to the library almost every day to get one goat book or another to read.

After I decided to get the Saanen I had to face the problem of naming her. I thought up lots of names before I decided on naming her Aphrodite. I thought "Why don't I name her something German? Saanens originally came from the Swiss alps didn't they?". But I can't speak German. So I gave up that idea.   One day I was trying to come up with a name when I suddenly saw a book about the Greek myths. I really like the Greek names. I think they are really pretty. My favorites are Aphrodite, Persephone, and Andromeda. "Why don't I name her Aphrodite?" I thought. So I did.

We finally arranged to pick Aphrodite up on a Wednesday sometime in April.  We put a dog cage thing in the back of the car and started on our way. My heart was beating really fast. Could I really be finally getting a goat? I couldn't wait till we got there! What if something stopped us?

I was really relieved when we finally got there and I snapped a collar on her, and put her in the car. We got home without mishap, though I have to admit Aphrodite was in my lap, not the cage, when we arrived home.

Like I said, the goat shed wasn't done so Aphrodite got to live with the chickens. I kept her hay in a mini wheelbarrow and her water in a flat-back bucket from Murdoch's Ranch and Home Supply.

She seemed to prefer the chicken feed to her hay, which really stressed me out. A book on goats that I had read said NEVER to feed chicken feed to goats or "They will get bloated and will have to be taken to the vet" which, of course, is nonsense as Aphrodite neither got bloated nor was taken to the vet. Maybe the author had poisonous chicken feed.

When the goat shed was done we moved Aphrodite in. My friend Carina also brought her goats over (see "Meet our Goats!") and Aphrodite (who had been starting to think she was a chicken) soon settled into her new home with her new friends.