Twins!

We had two more baby goats join our goat family last week!  Farmer had twins, Bushhog Grass and Weedwhacker Bill.

Bushhog Grass is the white one.  GD gave her the middle name of grass so that everyone would know that she was not named after a statue of a bushhog, but a real working bushhog.  The brown one is Weedwhacker Bill, named after farming legend "Tractor Pa."

Mower

    Last Monday evening GD burst in the door and say, "You HAVE to come out to the goats!  Tractor had her baby!"

    I didn't believe him at first, but he said, "It's absolutely true!"

    So I went out to this little thing prancing around the barn yard:

Tractor had somehow silently and unassisted birthed her during the afternoon, and the baby was all cleaned up and happily skipping around.

The baby of course is very loved.

The boys named her Mower.  They evidently at some point discussed it, picked out names, and decided who would get what baby.  GD gets this baby, and GE gets Farmer's baby who will be named Bushhog.  I'm sure if Tractor has twins, the boys will let KM take the other baby, but right now KM is happy to just let Mower climb all over her. 

 In my mind, this photo session was going to yield a darling photo of them both cuddling in the basket and gazing with wide eyes at the camera that I would turn in to a vintage-looking print to hang on our office wall.  But Mower was looking for her mother.

This is how Farmer feels about still being pregnant.

Expectant Goats

   We kind of know nothing about this whole dairy goat farming thing. Aside from the little G has read online and the vast amounts of goat knowledge GD claims to already have, we're making this up as we go along. Last fall a lady from church who used to raise goats was talking to me about milking goats like I knew everything about it. I just smiled and nodded and directed her to ask my husband if we needed to borrow their stanchion and pretended I knew what a stanchion was.
   The last I wrote we had accepted a candidate for Baby Goat Daddy. Well before he even met our lovely ladies he sent them a Dear Jane letter. I'm sure it said something like , "It's not you, it's me," but we never heard from his owner again. So we had to move on to Bachelor #2.
  We finally introduced Mr. Goat to our females in January. This was much later than originally planned but I didn't mind because I didn't want to share my due date with a couple of goats.  He was very smelly and was with us for about 6 weeks.  Then it was time to just wait to see if anything had happened.
   Supposedly the only way to know if a goat is pregnant is to have a caprine ultrasound done.  Well, that's definitely not in the homestead budget, and we thought we would just have to wait and see if any baby goats showed up this summer.  Every time we went out to see the goats, GE would ask them "Baby in tummy?  Baby in tummy?"
    Hopefully he realizes that it may be fine to ask a goat that, but it is not okay to ask a human female.
   Several weeks ago I began to suspect that we may have one or two pregnant goats.  They seemed fatigued, they were waddling, and they seemed to have developed an almost maternal-like interest in baby KM.  I was pretty sure I could feel baby goat kicks if I pressed my hand up to their bellies long enough.
   Then one day GD went out, looked under them, and loudly proclaimed, "Yep, they're pregnant!  They have udders, so they must be having babies!"
     He just seems to inherently know how this all works.
     Then GD and GE were able to feel the baby goat kicks.
     Which inevitably led to a discussion that added the term "womb" to GD's vocabulary, and a discussion of how only girls have wombs...well, only girl mammals...yes, the girl cat has a womb but no she can't have babies...yes, Mommy has a womb...
     I really don't know why they don't just take middle school health classes out to a barnyard.
     Something I bet you've never stopped to ponder is, "Do pregnant goats have cravings?"
     Well, judging by the amount of times the break out of their fence every day to chow down on the grass in other parts of the yard, I would say yes, they do have cravings.  And they also are very moody.  They go from friendly and wanting attention to head-butting, especially at feeding time.  The one night I sent G out to check on them at 2 in the morning because I heard one of them crying.  The best he could figure out was that Farmer was upset because she saw a deer.
      Goat gestation is around 24 weeks, so we are expectant to have baby goats sometime mid-July to mid-August.

A Sad Day on the Farm

     My brother loved the movie The Fox and the Hound when he was little, and even though I have never seen the whole movie start to finish he watched it enough I have a good idea of the story line.  A poor orphaned baby fox is adopted by an old lady who names him Todd.  He becomes best friends with a neighbor puppy, Copper, who is destined to be a hunting dog.  Todd and Copper grow up, Todd is released back into the wild, and Copper is trained to hunt for foxes.  There is a moment of great suspense when Copper must decide whether to hunt down his childhood best friend or not.  Throughout the whole movie you're made to feel so sorry for this helpless fox that is being hunted down.

   Honestly, I don't remember what Copper decides to do.  I'm guessing he lets Todd go because it's a Disney movie.  But I really wish that Copper would have led the hunter straight to Todd, viciously attacked him, and then attacked all the other foxes in forest.
    Most specifically the fox that got all 12 of our chickens the other night.

     On Friday morning I thought it was odd that I didn't see them running all over the yard, but I figured since it was cold and snowing they were being wimps in the coop.  When we went out to check on them later that morning, we found a massacre.  All 12 chickens were dead.
     All 12 chickens.
     Even Dusty, who was carried around the kitchen in a bucket for much of the first week of her life and is more like the family dog.  And Watermelon, who I had been planning on finally matching up with a fellow this spring to give into her baby fever.  And Mack, the hen with psychological issues with a twitch who is GE's favorite, who doesn't even sleep in the coop with the other girls but insists on sleeping in the garden shed.

    The fact that the fox went over to the garden shed to also attack Mack made this feel more like a cold, calculated mass chicken murder than just part of farming and the circle life. 

      No, foxes definitely aren't the cute fluffy forest creatures pictured on baby's pajamas. 

     And the fox didn't even eat any of the chickens. As GD would say, "That's not very efficient."

      The boys are handling it pretty well. GD is being his practical farmer/engineer self and approaching it like a problem to be solved. His first response was, "We can get some more. The guy at Tractor Supply said they're going to have chicks soon."  And then he started studying the mud around the coop looking for tracks to identify what animal attacked. 

     GE is a little young to completely understand. We didn't let him see coop and GD was a good big brother and very gently broke the news to him. He sat down real close to him and quietly told him, "Our chickens got hurt. And they all died. But it's ok, we'll get new ones.  Tractor Supply will have baby chicks soon."  GE was sad that day, but we've been stuck inside because of the cold and rain so he hasn't had too much of a chance to miss chasing his chickens. 

     I, on the other hand, am 8 months pregnant. I usually handle death pretty well, maybe even too well. Death was a daily part of my job when I worked so I have kind of a bizarre relationship with it. But 12 of my children's beloved pets dying in one day was not something I have the emotional stability for right now. G tried to assure me, "They're livestock. It's part of farming," to which I sobbed, "Most people don't have portraits of their livestock in their living room."  G is now seriously reconsidering whether I can really handle raising broiler chickens and a pig named Christmas Ham this year.

    I even had a hard time using eggs for baking a couple days later. 

    We have plans to get replacement hens in the next few days (and keep them securely locked in the coop). The boys need chickens to chase, and our yard looks cold and lonely without the feathered girls running all over. And the boys will get to raise some chicks again this year. Who knows, they may even get some ducklings or a bunny out of this because I feel so bad about it. 

The New Ottoman

    I have been nesting in full force since I was about 6 weeks pregnant. I've been in a constant de-cluttering and organizing  mode. As a result the storage area and my craft room have been purged several times and the Goodwill near my OB office has seen a spike in donations. And also as a result our coffee table ended up in the burn pile. 

    We have been talking about replacing the coffee table for years. I bought it at a thrift store for $10 before we were married. I thought it was a great deal when I got it, we loved it for a time, and it served it's purpose, but it had to go. We had been looking for something not quite as ugly to take it's place but never found anything we both liked. It was big and dark and covered with cat scratches and a irremovable layer of stickiness that comes from years of toddlers eating breakfast at it. All it did was collect clutter.  So one day I couldn't take it anymore and hauled it outside. 

    The boys instantly loved the extra space it's absence left in the living room and right away got to work plowing, planting, and combining the fresh carpet under where the coffee table stood. The extra space also proved to be great for wrestling, playing "shark" and "T-Rex" and just general rough housing in the living room.  I wished I had gotten rid of the dark, dated, ark-like coffee table months ago. 

    But we still needed something there, so I made an ottoman. Supported with headliner foam and stuffed with about 10 bags of fiber fill, the boys quickly discovered that the new ottoman is a big squishy irresistible pouf of playtime potential.  It was like an indoor playground just for them. For the first couple weeks of being proud ottoman owners we had to hide it from the boys because of the general recklessness it caused. We are now able to keep the new ottoman in the living room, but not without a few new household rules. Like more household rules than I care to admit, this set of rules has evolved over time through the usual course of "unrealistic expectations," to  "I'm going to lose my mind trying to enforce this," to a list of "they're more like guidelines anyway."

    If you visit my house, this will be what you see the ottoman possibly being used for, and the new household rules enacted as a result.

-Rolling the new ottoman all over the house.
New house rule: The ottoman is not a toy boulder.

-Jumping on the ottoman.
New house rule:  The ottoman is not a toy trampoline.

-Sumo wrestling with the ottoman.
New house rule:  The ottoman is not a toy to be used to smoosh your brother no matter how hilarious he thinks it is.

Sprinting across the kitchen, diving through the air, and landing on their stomachs on the ottoman.
New house rule:  Yes, you jumped really high but the ottoman is still not a toy.

Continuing to roll the new ottoman all over the house.
New house rule:  Even though you still think that the ottoman is a toy, it must stay in the living room.

Starting on the couch, jumping off and using the ottoman as a springboard, sprinting across the kitchen, and sliding on their knees into playroom, seeing how close they can come to smashing into the wall without actually hitting it.
New house rule: If you say, "I better go get my bike helmet for this," even though Mommy is proud of you for taking safety precautions, you probably should not be doing what you're doing.  (Unless you're skateboarding, somehow skateboarding in the kitchen was approved by the parental council as long as one is under 4 feet tall and wearing a helmet).

Sprinting across the kitchen and jumping over the ottoman ("See Mommy, I'm not even touching the ottoman now!").
New house rule: Oh, whatever.

Lining up the trampoline, the giant Lego cushions, the ottoman, and the couch to make a "bouncy" room.
New house rule:  If you get hurt using the ottoman as a toy, I will not feel bad for you.

Jumping off the recliner, almost touching the ceiling, and landing on their stomachs on the ottoman.

New house rule: This not allowed. However they were able to get a couple jumps in while I watched wondering how we've managed to never have to take either of them to the ER.

The new ottoman--it's a bit more lopsided now than it started out.

We're Farmers, Not Rednecks

      I like to think that even though we live in the middle of nowhere where barnyard animals roam freely and Walmart and Rural King are upscale shopping experiences, that we're still classy people.  I mean, we may be farmers but we clean up pretty good, we're not hicks right?

At least that's what I tell myself.

Adventures in Dairy Goat Farming: Part 2

    When G and I were dating and eventually planning our life together many, many years ago we discussed everything from where we would live, how many kids we would have, where we would vacation, when we would retire, and how we would decorate our house.  One thing that never ever came up though was any mention of livestock.



    I think maybe once I asked if G liked the name Jamboree for a baby girl, to which he said if we ever got a goat I could name it Jamboree (he has a history of rejecting my off-the-wall baby girl names, and by the way we have three goats and not one of them is named Jamboree).  And I think the idea of having a chicken or two crossed my mind after all my parakeets died.

    But now we have 12 chickens and 3 goats with daily mentions of what farm animals we're going to accumulate next.

    Starting with baby goats.

    When the whole thing started, it was one baby goat we were going to have.  But G has learned to gradually warm me up the idea of more livestock and, somehow, now, we are somehow planning on up to EIGHT baby goats next spring.

   So, how does one go about going from two female goats and a "fixed" male goat to anywhere from five to eleven goats and a couple gallons of milk a day?

    Well, I have learned, you simply put an ad on Craigslist looking for a goat "companion."

    Goat dating ads were never part of the plan I had for my life.  But now almost daily I find myself humming, "Match-maker, match-maker, make me a match..."

    Evidently, at least around where we live, goat "companions" and fellow goat farmers willing to let you borrow their daddy goats or board your female goats are not hard to come by.  Within hours, G had a couple potential suitors for our lady goats and the next evening the three boys went down the road to interview one of them.  (Typical boys though, they didn't even ask the goat what his name was, so for now we just have to call him Mr. Goat).  Well, the neighbor Mr. Goat was accepted for the position and now the boys are making plans to bring him to our house for a couple-week-long playdate.

     The best part of all this though was one evening at supper, GD asked, "When will I be old enough to understand why our girl goats need to visit a boy goat in order to get baby goats?  Will I understand when I'm five?"  To which we just replied, "You'll understand when you're older."  And changed the subject by telling him he could name the goats.  Forget about the birds and the bees.  At my house we'll have the goats and the chickens discussion.