Toddlers Learning About Goaty Birds & Bees

It's been a while since I've posted a blog. There are a few reasons for this. One is that I have been freakishly busy with all my new goat responsibilities. You would not believe how much longer my chores take me now that I have bottle babies! It went from taking 10 minutes in the mornings before work to feed and water the goats to 45 minutes to an hour by the time I wash all my milking stuff and get it around (heaven forbid I should do this before hand), gather all the feed dishes, segregate Harmony and her babies in one stall, Tierra's girls in the other, and lock Tierra in the main part of the barn while I feed the other lunatics and then go in and milk Tierra, pour the milk directly into bottles, then go feed the warm milk to her babies. Because Tierra does many things, but nursing her own children is not one of them. As we all know. Then of course I still have to feed and water the chickens and let them out for the day. So now I'm setting my alarm for 6 a.m. so I can have the privilege of getting my chores done before I have to run off to work. And then I get to do it all over again just before I go to bed and am tired and just want to curl up in bed with a good book. Am I complaining? Maybe a little. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I were swimming in goat milk and able to get a little cheese action going on up in this place. But as it is, not only are the babies drinking it all but I'm having to supplement with milk replacer because she's only giving me enough for 2 and I have 3 hungry mouths to feed. The time has come that I could start separating Harmony's babies from her at night and milking her once a day in the mornings, but honestly... I cannot bear to sign up for one more responsibility right now that might further lengthen my chores.

I said I haven't posted lately for a few reasons, didn't I? Well, I received an email recently from somebody I know saying that they would like me to remove them from the blog update because they "cannot keep up" and to have a nice life. !!! So then of course I was left wondering if I'm driving people nuts with my blogging and have felt a little weird about posting since then. But honestly, if she didn't want to read them she could have done many things, including a) not read them or b) block the update emails and nobody would have ever been the wiser. Oh, well.

On a happier note, all the babies are doing fabulously and I've been letting them spend as much supervised time outside as possible. I'm not comfortable letting them come and go as they please yet for fear a hawk will try to snatch them. Here are some pictures of all my little ones (Ayden included) running amok outside.
Yes, Tierra is indeed wearing a blue rubber boot on her left leg. She's got a nasty spot on one of her hooves and I've trimmed it back and medicated it with Hoof n' Heel and she was still marinating when this picture was taken. She was not at ALL happy about the arrangement, but I'm tired of seeing her limp about. We'll see if that clears it up. Her belly is still rather low and floppy, but at least her teats are swinging clear of the ground now, which makes milking much less interesting. This other picture is a pretty typical attempt at getting a decent picture of Poe and Mumble. They are so bloody fast that I could fill and entire web page with blurry action shots that don't turn out because they're moving at warp speed. In this one you can see Poe has just gone airborne.

Some exciting stuff has happened recently. For one, I have decided to go into the egg business in a big way. I've been selling my eggs for $3/dozen and have had more people wanting to buy them than I've been able to provide for. We've been getting anywhere from 10-13 eggs per day, and thats from only 14 hens so I've been very happy with their production. Today I found the type of chicks I'm going to order to get started producing mass amounts of free range brown eggs. Here is a link to what our new chickens will be, Red Star Sex Link. I'm thinking of getting about 50 to start out with. They're called sex link because when they hatch the boys are yellow and the girls red so you can easily sex them. I also bought an incubator today to hatch out some chicks from my current chickens so I can continue the blue and green eggs also. It should be interesting as to what those will look like because I have both a Silver Laced Wyandotte rooster and an Ameracauna, so the eggs will produce either purebred Wyandottes, purebred Ameracaunas, or a funky hybrid of the two. Maybe the eggs from that hybrid will be brown and green swirled. ;) We're going to start our first batch of eggs to incubate this Sunday so that they will hatch on a Saturday three weeks from then so all three of us can be home to witness it. I'm going to try to time the arrival of my Red Star chicks with the hatching so I can house all the babies together. Unfortunately, any way you slice it these baby chicks will not be producing any eggs for 5 months, though. *sigh*

Today I took baby goats to Ayden's preschool, and you can imagine the hit that was. I took Mumble and Poe because I thought they'd be fun to watch bounce around, and Gypsy so they could see the size difference and those adorable floppy ears. Hindsight being 20/20, next time I will only take bottle babies if I have the choice. When I let Mumble and Poe out, they ran off to the side and cried for their mother the whole time. Gypsy, on the other hand, came stumbling out of the box and ambled directly over to the 40 some-odd toddlers lined up in anticipation. She was like, "Oh! People! I LOVE people!" The above picture was taken about 5 seconds after I opened the door to the carrier (You can see Ayden on the far right). I was able to catch Poe who was then more than happy to let little hands fondle her and stroke her, but Mumble protested and hollered for the duration, even after one of the teachers scooped him up for his rounds of merry-making.

I think the kids' favorite part was when Poe decided to show them her latest trick, mounting her brother. I guess she got tired of him doing it to her all the time and she's decided to give him a piece of his own medicine. Yes, he's been humping his sister since they were about 24 hours old. Crazy goats. Here's a picture of Poe doing her impersonation of Mumble. She doesn't care that she doesn't have the correct equipment.