Itty Bitty Hooves

New Pictures

I got out today and took a few new shots. Out of about 20 only 4 really worked. Isn’t that always the way it goes when trying to take pictures of animals? And of course, there are always WAY better shots to be had when you DON’T have your camera with you. Like this shot, my favorite type of shot, the ‘out in the field grazing’ shot. It is okay, but this morning I had a way better photo op, but of course, didn’t have my camera in hand.

Then I got a few ‘close ups’. I can’t get too close or they’ll crowd the fence/gate even more than they did here, so getting ‘close’ shots means cropping the part I want out to make it closer, which makes them a bit pixilated.


Still, it’s always fun trying to get that perfect shot

Maybe next time.

Tearfull Goodbyes

Bubba went to his new home yesterday. I miss the little guy. He was the only boy born here this year, and he was just full of himself. All attitude and love. He was one of the most friendly of the new kids, and always wanted attention. He is a real hunk and I’m sure he’ll do great for his new young master in 4-h. It’s always hard to have them leave though, especially the ones that imprint themselves on you by being loving. Now it’s all girls out there. They’re all staying. I have four yearlings for sale on the other side of the farm, but this years kids are a great lot of hunky girls who will be great mom’s next year. I’m still hoping Bowie was bred when I brought her home to the big red buck at her former home. If she is she’ll be due in July. Cross your fingers for a little boy. I really need a buck with different bloodlines. Mickey will never go anywhere, well at least not soon, but he can’t do it all alone. He has too many daughters here now.

Here are a few pictures of Bubba, our little boy who left for a new home. I kicked myself as their truck drove out of the driveway for not remembering to use my camera to get a parting shot of the big guy.

So long big boy, have fun in your new home!

Fainting away

This is a video you just have to see. A friend of mine pointed it out saying I had to watch it for a good laugh. I’ve heard of fainting goats, and know they are popular as a smaller meat breed and great all around pet goat, but I’ve never actually seen one or seen the trait they’re most famous for–fainting. When you startle these interesting goats, they actually go stiff, some just walk stiffly, or hop, but some actually fall to the ground, hence the name ‘fainting’ goat. This is a cool video that shows that aspect of them, as well as hearing a breeder of these goats talk about what makes them such wonderful goats to have around.

I’m going to have to control the urge to get one, or two… or three… or… oh stop me now. My friend said I need one. Sigh, yeah, I need more goats. LOL

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?

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!

Playtime

I’m sorry, I can’t help myself. I have to post some pictures from this morning.

Bubba and Punch playing kind and queen of the old crap pile

Bubba and Punch playing tag with mom

Bubba Punch and Dolly (yes I know it’s a mess there, it’s the junkiest place in the yard and they LOVE IT)

Close up of Dolly

Punch making a flying leap to grab all the hay she can before mom gets there(even though she really doesn’t know what it’s for exactly yet, mom seems to love it, lol)

Thanks for indulging me. Springtime is just too much fun. I don’t know who enjoys playtime more, me or them.

So Beautiful

FINALLY I get to say it is SO beautiful outside. What a joy to go out in just a t-shirt and jeans and feel good. I took my camera around while I was out and about and snapped some pics of the gang as I walked.

Here’s some of the girls over in the big barn just clumping about and enjoying the beautiful day

Polly saw me holding the camera and came over trying to see if it was food

Then Specs decided to see if maybe my shirt was food

Oreo one of last year’s kids, and Specs a spring boer cross brought home last year

Red and Specs, sisters born last year

On the other side of the farm in a run in pen I caught Blondie and Cherry giving me a once over and trying to decide if I was up to anything interesting with that gadget in my hand

And Blondie just by herself

Then of course, no farm ‘tour’ would be complete without a stop by the buck pen to visit the master of the place, Mickey, our Boer buck

And finally, took a little journey out back to see two of the new moms and twin does (the other twins belonging to the second mom were still back at the barn snoozing in the sun.

Sneaky Sneaky Doe!

I’ve been watching my Nupine doe Alex for a few weeks, but just casually until yesterday. Day before she started to really fill out her udder but her ligs were still rock hard pencils. For a few weeks my previously very affectionate girl really didn’t want to be touched much, and seriously didn’t want me looking ‘down there’ (picture me running around the barn yard chasing a doe to look under her tail, lol) then suddenly yesterday, she snapped back to being my affectionate big girl wanting to be petted, and sticking to me like glue, her udder got really full, and her very hard ligs disappeared…. uh huh, I was geared up for serious watching and checked on her every hour on the hour… did she do anything, nope, didn’t look like any kind of serious labor at all. I could tell she was in early labor, but no hard core stuff going on–she was determined to drag it out. By late evening her udder was feeling a little bit warm, so I was like, cool, tonight, please do it before bedtime, don’t you read the books? They say does prefer to deliver in the daytime (that’s certainly been the majority of my experience here now and in the past. I’ve previously only had one doe kid in the middle of the night. One this year did go at 6 am, but that’s sort of skirting the time barrier between night and day, haha).

Anyway, I kept up my checking every hour as the evening turned to night. Eleven oclock I went out, Alex is laying down, but on her chest, munching cud and looking for all the world like she was just as satisfied with herself as can be. No contractions, no goo, nothing to alert me to imminent birth…

Midnight I walked into the barn and…

BOTH DOES.

We are 8 for 9 this year with does, one lonely little buckling in the yard, haha.

Now what I want to know is where did the color go? I expected big color from this one, and I got danged near solid white. One doeling is pretty much completely white, with just a very very minimal shading of red on the head, but not hardly noticable. The other has ‘eyeshadow’ and a couple little color marks on the very top of her head:

I don’t know how such a colored doe threw such colorless kids, haha, but I know one thing, these two does are HUGE. I swear the one is bigger than my two week olds in the other barn, and the other is about the size of the two week olds out there.

I’m just happy there were no problems. Alex delivered those babies and fast, by herself, and is a GREAT mom. She had them clean although was still working on dry, and I dipped their cords and feet, and made sure they were nursing which Alex handled like a champ. She’s very protective, she’s cool with me, but won’t even let the cat in the stall with the babies, haha, poor kitty she likes greeting the new arrivals. Mom says no go though.

Now I am just so befuddled, I have already picked two keepers from previous two kiddings, and wasn’t going to keep either of these since they’re just 50%er’s, but dang, they are beautiful big bodied girls, and I think they’ll follow in momma’s ‘no problem having big babies’ shoes. So, I think I’m gonna keep one of these too… oh lordy, potatoe chips anyone? LOL