I have been messing with the look of the site and I will most likely go back to the original theme until I can find a better one. there are just a few things about the themes I am finding that I don’t quite like or just don’t work for me.
So for the past week I have been just letting the kids continue to nurse because my system for milking the goats is really dependent on the weather being good. I have been taking the big goats out to graze in the morning and letting the kids socialise and then in the evening I will block the kids out of the shelter, enticing them with some grain, and bring in the big girls one at a time and milk them then let them go back to the kids for the night. I don’t have a shelter out in the yard for the kids to use in bad weather and I will not leave the big girls OR the kids out in bad weather, especially if there is lightning or the possibility of hail. I have seen what a hard hail does to goats that have no shelter to go to and I won’t let that happen to mine.
So with the past week or so being thunder showers most of the day I have not been able to milk for lack of better facilities. I thought it would work out today since it was very nice all day. we were just about to bring the first goat in and I heard a severe weather warning, relayed by my wife, so we hurried to put potted plant starts back in out of danger and then started to bring in the goats. I just got about halfway through milking the first one when the wind really picked up. I didn’t finish milking. We just turned her loose with the kids and brought the other one back under the shelter. Like I said, I will not chance them being left out in severe weather.
Fortunately there was no hail. That would have shredded the new plants we had just put in the ground. It did not even rain that hard, though the goats would not have been happy getting wet, they were in no danger.
Speaking of goats, I bought a new doe from the farm down the road where we purchased Connie and Rosie, She is the daughter of one of Rosie’s babies, I think. Very good looking Nubian doe and quite shy. Her Momma kept her away from any contact with humans and it has taken a few days to get her to come to me to get grain out of my hand. Today she even let me pet her and talk to her while she had her morning grain. I let my FaceBook friends suggest names and I will call her Loretta Lynn GTO (goat). It kind of goes with the other baby girl in the herd, Her name is June Carter Goat I will put pictures on their respective pages.
OK, here is the new girl:
A real cutie, isn’t she?
The Boy goats have been wethered and will hopefully be sold as I cannot afford to continue feeding goats that can’t reproduce. I may keep one to use for a pack goat or to pull a cart. I have to buy or build a cart first.
Back to the need for better facilities. I have a plan to build a new goat barn with the required space for a milking parlor and feed storage, and shelter right on the edge of a bigger pasture, but money is a BIG factor in this. I might have some income when/if the trailer sells, but I have to be very selective in how I spend it, I also need fencing for that bigger pasture, and it isn’t cheap. Neither is the building for that matter.
Oh yeah! we finished the brick patio and pergola! Look!
Beats sitting behind a desk for ten + hours/day!