Itty Bitty Hooves

Bubba Got Banded

Poor little guy. Bubba is three and a half weeks old and he got banded yesterday. Banding is the way many young goats are castrated. He’s fine now, but he sure was walking funny for a little while yesterday. He’s still giving me the evil eye though. The reason he got ‘done’ yesterday is that he was sold!!! He won’t be leaving us, (or more importantly, his momma) for another 8 weeks, but he’s been spoken for by a lovely family in Wilmington for their son’s 4-h wether! What a noble job for such a noble little character. He’ll do a great job for them, I’m sure, and I can’t wait to see pictures of him finished off and proud in the hands of his 10-year-old handler at the fair. Julie, you have to send me pictures of that, you hear?

Keeping Our Options Open

Every now and then, especially when the work load gets heavy around the farm, we talk about ditching it all, and moving to a nice little suburb somewhere. We’ve even looked at Branson condos. If we were going to do it, that might be the way to go. Kind of the best of both worlds. Still rural, in fact beautiful with it’s Ozark backdrops, and yet a condo without any of the land hassles, daily chores, and difficulties of farm life.

We talk about it, but it’s probably something we won’t do in the very near future, but… we keep our options open. It might be where we’re headed when it’s time to slow down and not work so hard.

The Untouchable Subject

When we were remodeling the bathroom we looked at all kinds of sinks and cabinets. Now we’re about to attempt a remodel on our kitchen. Everything from new cabinetry and handles, to linoleum (although there’s still some argument there because I want ceramic tile, hubby wants linolieum). We’ve looked at some Franke sinks and are having some ‘discussions’ on that as well. Mostly regarding style. I love remodeling. Yes that was sarcastic. While we usually have the same taste on things, there are times that remodeling can cause arguments like no other subject between married folks. Luckily we agree on the color scheme or we might be headed to divorce court.

Creature Comforts

Around here, the creatures sometimes get special housing before we even think about our own. I’ve always dreamed of having a big screen tv, and comfy plush seating to watch tv when I’m done with the day’s chores. With our family shrunk to just two and the family room being used for exercise equipment, I’ve begun to look at home theater sconces. It would be wonderful to kick back and watch a movie in such comfort. I don’t watch much television as far as network tv, but I do love to put in a good movie and unwind, this would be the ultimate experience. The prices aren’t too bad either, when you consider the average prices of furniture anyway, and you can really go all the way and get a popcorn maker, and lighting. We already have surround sound in the living room and that is fantastic, I’d definately want something like that in the family room (oops, theater room) too. Time for us to have a little ‘creature comfort’.

Get a Jolt

Being a woman, and living in the middle of nowhere alone for the most part, I think a lot about self defense products. A stun gun would be a really handy thing, although I do own a regular gun, I don’t think I could ever aim it at a human being. Actually for two reasons, one is I dont know that I could kill another person, and two, I’d be afraid that somehow the attacker would get control of the gun and kill me with it. A stun gun would put down an attacker, but if they got ahold of it, at least not kill you. I’ve actually considered using one of the lighter voltage stun guns when I go into the buck pens, it would beat shooting them when the get aggressive, and I’m pretty sure even one of those silly bucks would think twice about charging once they’ve gotten jolted a time or two.

New Addition

I went to check out a lovely doe I’d seen online and I really liked her, so home she came. Her name is ‘Boudica’ but I didn’t care for that, and I don’t think she did either. She was pretty much uncatchable and untouchable (although we did catch her, and I did make her let me check her out all over) where we got her, and when we got home she practically dragged us down the aisle, but when I got her in the isolation stall, and talked to her, she listened, and I told her I wasn’t fond of the name, I was going to call her Bowie, I swear she let me walk up to her and scratch her back. To see if it was a fluke I walked away and took the two pictures, she watched the whole time, and then I walked back and she let me scratch her again. We’ll see if that holds out until tomorrow, haha, But I like Bowie better than Boudica anyway.

Sorry the second pic is blurry, I dind’t move and she didn’t move, I have no idea why it was like that except the light was getting dim in the barn. The first pic turned out better. She’s a 2-year-old fullblood Boer doe with a pretty cool pedigree as well. But best of all, I really like her in general, and I think — at least I hope–she’ll be happy here too.

New Pics of Blanche, and Bertha - 5 days old

Since the only pics I had of these two were from right at birth, and even though I tried putting them out with the group in that barn yesterday it didn’t work. Alex is so protective she kept getting into fights with the ‘new’ herd queen Polly (who replaced Savy as boss biddy of the barn) and the others took advantage of Alex’s not paying attention to get pushy with the babies so I put them back in their kidding stall. Today I decided they just had to get out for a bit, so I put the other goats in a big stall for hte morning and let Alex and the kids have the run of the barn. Boy did they take advantage of their newfound freedom. The door on the stall the others was in is just a gate with wire over it, so they could see each other, and stick their heads out in one place and sniff each other. Hoping that in a day or two I can actually have peace in there between them all and the kids and Alex can stay out. But since they were out playing I took a moment to take a few pics of them all up and about now. They are so big, lol, I swear they looked like 2 week olds the day they were born.

This is the two of them with mom

This is Blanche

This is Bertha who decided she was just old enough to figure out ways to make a mess. Since the garbage cans themselves didn’t provide fun (yet), a lid was a perfect playtoy


I had a great shot of the two of the kids playing, but Alex decided I should take a picture of her instead… um, a bit too closely

Polly (in the stall) looking like she wanted to plead that she’d be good if I just let her out.

One final shot, of course they moved right when I snapped, it WAS a cute shot.

Savy Walked The Green Mile

I’ve begun to call the walk to the butcher area ‘the Green Mile’ after one of my favorite movies.

Not too long ago. I got some goat meat from a friend of mine, a leg and some ribs. I slow cooked the leg roast and my son and I had it for dinner one night. Some of it was good–gave a hint as to what goat meat should taste like, very tender, sweet meat–but some was REAL gamey tasting. I had just read the thread on the homestead forum about how different kill methods, stress, illness, etc can do that so I had already primed myself not to judge goat meat by that particular instance, and it was bad enough that if I had I wouldn’t have wanted any more. LOL But I know that lady and although she’s a friend, she really doesn’t have good handling practices or killing skills much less clean butchering skills. And I also know that buckling died of ’something’. So anyway, long story short…

Savvy–the doe who killed her triplets last weekend–entered our freezer this morning…boy that was a chore, she was a BIG goat. LOL However, it wasn’t all that bad either, the worst part was how heavy she was to lift up and hang. We shot her, and we put her legs through the tpost and still had a struggle to hoist her up. haha, but Emily’s post on how to do the job (posted on the http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/ forum) was excellent. I had done plenty of other animals, but never a goat, and never a full-sized adult like that, plus never an animal with an udder before, just like Emily said, it cut right off, I was shocked at how easy it was.

Now, for the final result… Savvy hambugers this afternoon were DELICIOUS. Even past the ’son’ test. (Bobby is really cool about eating our animals and such, but he’s very honest about the taste, and that last goat he said was like licking our big buck’s butt, lol, ewww) but he said this was really good.

The last leg of goat that I got from my friend I put in the slow cooker, and you could even smell the ‘goatiness’ while it was cooking. I have a leg roast in there now from Savvy and it smells delicious. We had it for dinner and it was wonderful. Sweet beef taste.

As of now I say…. anyone who hasn’t tried goat yet–you have got to try goat!

Beemer Says Farewell

Well, Beemer went to his new home today. I got a call about him 2 weeks ago, and then the gentleman called back last week saying he’d be down here today. I wasn’t sure it would happen. As happens often with buyers, they call and then never show up, or even call to say they’re not coming. But this man did come. I loved his little trailer too, it was one of those specially designed miniature horse trailers. I always wanted one of those. So much easier to pull than the big horse trailer we have. So Beemer (TenLs Black Moon Rising) went to his new home up in Northern Illinois today. He gets to make lots of babies for next spring. I’m sure that will make him happy. He was getting frustrated here since I wasn’t going to breed horses anymore.

Brand Imprinting

No, I don’t mean brands like branding irons, I mean brand imprinting like brand names. I learned as an author the importance of ‘branding’ and getting my name out there so that readers knew what to look for, and knew what my ’style’ was. Brands are a part of our everyday lives. Watches have Patek Calatrava, Tissue has ‘Kleenex’, and goats… yes even goats have their ‘brand imprints’.

Boer goats have big name sires such as Pipeline, Collateral Damage, etc… when you see those names you go ‘oh, that’s great bloodlines’ and you take a second, or closer look at the goats available with those names in their pedigrees. Are they better overall? Sometimes. But the main thing is their owners have marketed those names and show wins so that you KNOW what goat they’re talking about the minute you hear that name.

That’s branding.

That’s important.

It’s true in any breed of animal, and it’s true in any type of marketing anywhere anyplace.