The last four posts are kind of plain, just text copied and pasted from the to do list journal entries. I will try to edit them in the near future and put some pictures/videos in there. No promises though I am kind of busy.
Since the end of the last post John and his wife came out on 6/29 and loaded up the boys and took them to their new home. I should call and make sure everything is going well for both the goats and the people. I just haven’t done that yet.
Without the boys to feed both Connie and Rosie have lots of milk now. I milk twice/day and am getting close to 3 quarts per day. I have the girls “trained” to get onto the stanchion now. All I need to do is say “Loretta, UP!” and she climbs up and puts her head through the bars and gets her treat. When I have milked her out I un-lock her, give her another small treat and tell her she is done. She gets down and I call the next one and off we go!. It is working somewhat smoothly now. It took a few tries to get them to accept the milking order.
The treats I use are either salted peanuts in the shell, or raisins. Of course Abby seems to think that she gets a treat every time the other girls get one. I think she wants me to milk her, but that can’t happen just yet. Loretta and JuneCarter are still nursing one kid each so I’m not getting much out of them just yet. I have to get those girls weaned by August.
A couple weeks back Marky and I were in town and on our way back to the farm stopped at the local pet store. This store has a petting zoo, and a big part of that is their herd of nigerian and pygmy goats. They had quite a few kids this year and when I asked if they had any intact bucklings for sale, they told me that in a week or two the owner was going to castrate all that were not sold. Clever marketing eh?
So we had one of the employees point out all of the males so we could make a choice. With out further ado:
Number 33
Yes “we” bought another goat . Right now I’m looking for a name that is not CW artist related. My wife likes the name Rascal (Flats), and that may be what we end up calling him, but I hope to find something better.
He is only about 1 month old, so we will be waiting until he is weaned to bring him home. Which means I need to figure out where he will live here at StoneFace. when he hits breeding capability age (3-4 months), I can’t have him in with the girls, and he might be too small to run with the boys. At this point he is small enough to simply walk through any fence I have up. I know he will get bigger, but how fast?
The other thing I have been considering is if I want to breed Rosie to #33. I know..I know, after her near fatal kidding this year I swore I would never breed her again. HOWEVER, to breed her to a nigerian dwarf buck would result in smaller babies and they would be what I read about as a “Mini” breed. It is a possibility, one that may be worth looking into. I’ll let you know when I come to a decision.
What else?….. since the mink creek fire and due to the extreme dryness around here the cities of Pocatello, Chubbuck, Fort Hall, and the entire county of Bannock have declared a ban on fireworks and open fires. They even limited fireworks on 7/4 to “safe and sane” and that only between noon and midnight on the 4th. It was VERY VERY quiet around here this holiday.
Oh yes, we bought a small refrigerator to stock up the eggs and milk so that we have room in the kitchen refrigerator. I bought some gopher traps just like the ones I found pieces of in the shop and have been learning to set them. So far there are 4 fewer gophers at StoneFace. After 2 family celebrations on the 4th and the 7th we are looking forward to a more relaxed weekend.
That is all for now.