Goats n' such

 As per usual, when there's a lot to blog about, there's little time to do so.  Nothing says spring like baby goats, and we now have three of them.  Farra's goat, April (Dessy's first), had her first baby the day before the Thompson's wedding in TN.  We knew she was close and Farra camped out in the barn, but nothing happened.  Later that Sabbath, after lunch, I think, I looked out the window and saw April standing there nursing her new baby.  Man, we missed it!  Maybe next time.  Anyway, she had a little doe kid which Farra named Ahava, which she tells me is Hebrew for beloved.   We are now locking Ahava up at night and milking in the morning.  The first milk always seems to taste off (even past the colostrum stage), but there's plenty of it.  Ahh... wonderful raw milk!

         A week or more before this blessed event, however, we adopted two bottle-fed kids.  A friend called on behalf of a friend of theirs whose Kikos (meat goats) are having triplets that they can't support - would we like to adopt a day old buckling?  Well, of course we would!  So what if I'm flat on my back in pain and we're paying $6.50 a gallon for fresh goat milk that is barely enough for our family while we wait for our does to freshen...   We called our milk lady who graciously sold us extra milk for the little guy and since we were keen on bottle feeding offered us a three week old LaMancha buckling.  Well, why not?

          So, the Kiko is Siegfried and follows us around everywhere, as he's sure he's a human and not one of those other things in the pasture.  We plan to keep him to breed our does to in the future.  His owner says Kiko bucks don't stink as much as diary bucks, and besides, our neighbor sold their buck, which we usually use.  With the cow due in June, we'll have plenty of milk and won't be increasing our goat herd for milk, just for meat, so they might as well be meatier kids.
           The LaMancha is Oscar and will probably be on our table in the fall, unless someone offers us money for him.  He's a sweetie, huge for his age, but sure is goofy looking with no ears!
            Now we're waiting on Dessy to freshen... any day now!  I'm hoping for something other than WHITE babies, which the other three are, because I find white goats incredibly boring.  =)
           

Now, the only goat I haven't mentioned is Dessy's doe kid from last year, named Daisy.  She's Atira's goat.  A few weeks ago, while we were working on the barn addition (maybe we'll finish tomorrow?), we witnessed something I have personally never seen or heard of... which isn't saying a lot, but my Mom hadn't either, and she's been around animals off and on her whole life.  Our 1yr old tom cat, Sunny, and this 1yr old doe were playing together.  Really playing together.  They ran up and down and all around this fallen tree, teasing and chasing each other.  We were in stitches.  We watched for about ten minutes before Atira fetched the camera.  Sunny was plum worn out by that time, but the following video is still something special...

Here's a shot of Siegfried (yes, from All Creatures Great And Small) the afternoon we got him

Here he is yesterday, I think

We intended to disbud him, but our neighbors couldn't find their disbudding tool and by the time I ordered one at the feed store and received it, it was too late.  I'd rather have natural horns than scurs (messed up, partial horns) and so it is.

Guess we haven't got any of Oscar, yet...