KIDS! Finally!
For weeks I've been saying any day now, any day now and when does she have kids?? When I'm in the shower!
The past couple days Cupid has been acting strange-which is a actual sign of a goat going into labor. When Keith said she seemed even weirder first thing this morning, I was hoping today was the day! I ran out and checked her before I took a shower and she was just hanging out in the shade, as usual, no big deal. BUT when I got out of the shower I heard a goat bleating sound like no animal usually makes here at our house. I was positive that it was a sign of Cupid being in labor! I threw some clothes on, grabbed some towels and headed to the barn. This is what I was greeted with!
Could these two kids be any more freaking adorable!! I flew into action. I got Frannie and Snowy into a separate stall, even though they were being sweet to the kids, I wanted them out the way. Them ran on got our Labor and Delivery (or post Labor and Delivery!) stall ready. I put down more bedding, filled up the hay bag, brought in some goat chow, and filled up Mama's water with warm molasses water. I got them all into the stall the only way I could think to-I grabbed the kids and Cupid followed-boom, they're in their own private stall!
They seem content to hang out together, so I run inside to get my real camera, enough of this blurry iPhone picture crap! As soon as I'm back in the stall I hear Frannie and Snowy going crazy bleating outside and a tiny little bleating....what!?! Where is that coming from!
Damn! Cupid must have had her first kid out in the pasture and left it there!!! Sweet Frannie and Snowy were licking him and I ran out and grabbed him and brought him in with all of them. He is so much littler and was wet and covered with dirt! But none of that stopped him. He saw his Mama, found her teats, and got down to business! He is my favorite!
Obviously, every time I go out to the barn, the kids are cuter. They're finding their feet a little more, a little more curious. I forgot to tell you! It's two girls and a boy. The white ones are the girls and the black one is the boy. The girls names are Phoebe and Selene-although I haven't decided which is which yet! And the boy...I'm just not sure yet. I'm sure something will come to be-he seems really sweet so far!
I will now proceed to get nothing done today, but hang out with this new little family! Tons more pics to follow!!
Monday, July 28, 2014
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Randy the Billy
While still Cupid hasn't had kids yet (we still have about 2 weeks until kids!), but we do have new animal additions. Three this week-so far!
This morning I had to go out and run an errand. It was something I thought about waiting for Keith to help me with, but it's going to be such a hot day today and I just wanted to get this taken care. So I hopped in the pickup and drove to Lostine to pick up our billy goat, Randy.
Randy wasn't his first name and it probably won't be his last. When Kate and I picked him up near Tollgate around Christmas, his name was Gunner. We quickly decided that name did not suit him at all. So we changed it to Fabian. How could we not! Look at those curls! He was Fabian for a while, pretty much until he got unleashed around the ladies. That's where his one track mind became very obvious, so for now he's Randy.
Randy is sharing his space with our other bachelors, Sam the Ram and Little Sam. Little Sam isn't a bachelor as much as a lamb that accidentally didn't get castrated and we had to get him away from his sisters before any other accidents happened. While both Sam and Randy are pretty chill on the scale of aggressive males, Sam has to show Randy whose the boss of the bachelor pad. Cue Sam the Ram ramming Randy (with Little Sam staying the hell away!).
It's barely been an hour since they were introduced and they have calmed down a lot. I expect some posturing from them pretty much forever, but I think the worst of it is over. And what handsome fellas we have here! All that manly beard and chest hair, our ewes and does (sheep and goats) are very lucky ladies!
I knew at some point I was going to have to bring Sam to our place, it was part of why we had the pens built into our new fence. But of course unexpected things happen and we have more animals, in this case chicks.
See, I thought this hen was sick. In my experience, when a hen sick she tends to quarantine herself. All the books say to quarantine the sick hen completely from the other hens, but she had put herself in the far corner of what is usually the goat stall, but there aren't even goats in there right now, so I just didn't worry about it. Yes, there was a chance she was being broody, and checked for eggs under her for the first week and there were no eggs. I repeat NO eggs! In my mind she was just not well and would either get better (they usually do) or die, one or the other. And I was completely wrong! And no, I didn't check for eggs under her again-oops.
We have only hatched two chicks so far, but she's sitting on about 15 eggs, again-oops. One is with it's fierce mama, hopping around, being all adorable. The other was abandoned by the mama hen-I have no idea why. I was out in the barn looking for more chicks and I found another one, about a foot away the hen, freezing cold. I tried to put this tiny chick back under mama's wing and she attacked it. She flung it to the side and when it wasn't far enough away tried to violently peck at it.
That was it. I took it away and now it's upstairs in the closet with a heat lamp and a cocker spaniel for a mother hen.
And now we have more than one mother hen. These two hens have somehow worked out this co-parenting situation. I really have no clue what's going to happen when/if more chicks are hatched. These two keep wrestling over whose eggs are whose, so how their going to work out chicks I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see.
Since tomorrow is the 4th of July, I have to give a corn update! It is almostweed knee high by the 4th of July! About half of the corn plants are actually knee high and they are only going to grow to about four feet tall anyway, so we are off to a great start!
The greenhouse is doing great! The winter squash is almost all taller than me-yay! Most of the tomato plants are with full of tiny tomatoes or loads of flowers and some of the peppers are already starting to ripen!
Hope you all have a wonderful 4th o'July!
This morning I had to go out and run an errand. It was something I thought about waiting for Keith to help me with, but it's going to be such a hot day today and I just wanted to get this taken care. So I hopped in the pickup and drove to Lostine to pick up our billy goat, Randy.
Randy wasn't his first name and it probably won't be his last. When Kate and I picked him up near Tollgate around Christmas, his name was Gunner. We quickly decided that name did not suit him at all. So we changed it to Fabian. How could we not! Look at those curls! He was Fabian for a while, pretty much until he got unleashed around the ladies. That's where his one track mind became very obvious, so for now he's Randy.
Randy is sharing his space with our other bachelors, Sam the Ram and Little Sam. Little Sam isn't a bachelor as much as a lamb that accidentally didn't get castrated and we had to get him away from his sisters before any other accidents happened. While both Sam and Randy are pretty chill on the scale of aggressive males, Sam has to show Randy whose the boss of the bachelor pad. Cue Sam the Ram ramming Randy (with Little Sam staying the hell away!).
It's barely been an hour since they were introduced and they have calmed down a lot. I expect some posturing from them pretty much forever, but I think the worst of it is over. And what handsome fellas we have here! All that manly beard and chest hair, our ewes and does (sheep and goats) are very lucky ladies!
I knew at some point I was going to have to bring Sam to our place, it was part of why we had the pens built into our new fence. But of course unexpected things happen and we have more animals, in this case chicks.
See, I thought this hen was sick. In my experience, when a hen sick she tends to quarantine herself. All the books say to quarantine the sick hen completely from the other hens, but she had put herself in the far corner of what is usually the goat stall, but there aren't even goats in there right now, so I just didn't worry about it. Yes, there was a chance she was being broody, and checked for eggs under her for the first week and there were no eggs. I repeat NO eggs! In my mind she was just not well and would either get better (they usually do) or die, one or the other. And I was completely wrong! And no, I didn't check for eggs under her again-oops.
We have only hatched two chicks so far, but she's sitting on about 15 eggs, again-oops. One is with it's fierce mama, hopping around, being all adorable. The other was abandoned by the mama hen-I have no idea why. I was out in the barn looking for more chicks and I found another one, about a foot away the hen, freezing cold. I tried to put this tiny chick back under mama's wing and she attacked it. She flung it to the side and when it wasn't far enough away tried to violently peck at it.
That was it. I took it away and now it's upstairs in the closet with a heat lamp and a cocker spaniel for a mother hen.
And now we have more than one mother hen. These two hens have somehow worked out this co-parenting situation. I really have no clue what's going to happen when/if more chicks are hatched. These two keep wrestling over whose eggs are whose, so how their going to work out chicks I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see.
Since tomorrow is the 4th of July, I have to give a corn update! It is almost
The greenhouse is doing great! The winter squash is almost all taller than me-yay! Most of the tomato plants are with full of tiny tomatoes or loads of flowers and some of the peppers are already starting to ripen!
Hope you all have a wonderful 4th o'July!
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