Another week another.....

Little Jheri, only an hour or two old with momma Fatty

Yep.  You got it.  Exactly 10 days after the first kids were born, I was graced with another baby buckling.  This experience was quite different, and much more enjoyable.  I'm pretty darn proud of how I handled it all in all,  no hysterics, just joy!

Look at those glossy black waves!!!!!

The cool thing is that I pretty much knew it was going to happen.  I noticed in the morning that Fatty Patty's udders had grown pretty much overnight, and after sending several graphic goat booty pictures to a goat friend of mine, she confirmed that the arrival was eminent!  This farmer is learning, slowly, but learning all the same!  The bummer part was I missed the birth...again.  I had been checking on her pretty regularly, but ended up dealing with various clerical and family issues on the phone for 2 hours....and the next time I checked, there was that little black lump. I am pretty proud of momma Fatty, too.  She has been a great mom, on the overprotective side, but what first time mom isn't!!  I'm just grateful that the delivery went on without a problem and that she only had one babe.

Jheri hiding while his momma calls frantically for him

This boy will challenge me a bit more with my farmer/animal husbandry prowess.  Being a pygora goat, I have the option of having him disbudded so that he doesn't grow horns.  Most goats will naturally have horns, but the practice of disbudding young kids is commonplace for many goat keepers.  It is safer for goat and person, there is no chance of getting gored, or having other goats injured when goats are just being goats.  Since these are not domesticated animals they don't need horns for protection, and being kept in a fenced area provides lots of opportunity for horns to get stuck in fencing.   Goats used in 4H or the show ring can't have horns for safely reasons.  The previous kids, being full angora goats, need to keep their horns as a cooling mechanism.  They grow thick fleece rather quickly and the horns provide an area for blood to circulate and cool their furry body.  The disbudding process is nasty, though, and I am very much NOT looking forward to holding this sweet week old 5 pounder while his little horn buds are cauterized.  I'm also not looking forward to removing him from his overprotective and slightly neurotic mother for an hour.  She just might have a coronary.

Hercules on my lap, he is so much bigger and fuzzier now!

So, in a matter of 3 months I went from 4 goats to 7.  I have the added pressure of deciding who I am going to keep and who I am going to try and sell.  I had anticipated this problem, but thought I had many months yet to get a plan together.  Now the time crunch is forced due to the fact that all 3 babies are boys.  To keep peace in the herd, I only want one buck and Chupacabra (Chupie) is the man.  By about 8-10 weeks I will either need to have the babies castrated or have a  buyer/plan in place to sell them intact as a breeding buck in which there is less demand.  Argh!!  The choices of farmers!!!  To remove the horns or not, to remove the testes or not!!  My brain is quite challenged at the moment with such things, very foreign thought processes for me.

Chupie as a young buck, cutie-pie!

Creating wethers (castrated males) is very common with livestock, in fact, I would bet most male horses, cattle, sheep and goats you see are castrated.  From my research I have found that the added bonus of a wether is that his fiber stays finer, longer, so many of those who have what we call in the biz  "spinners herds" have wethers.  But once castrated, their sales value drops about 10 fold.  Another brain bending fact to consider.

That's it for now, I have been a little energizer bunny lately, so soon I will be actually be able to show you some shearing, fiber dying and ohmygosh maybe even knitting???  Isn't this in part what this path is all about???

Til then, enjoy the pictures!!  I have no idea why I like this picture.  This is little Billy trying clover for the first time, one of his first solid meals at 2 weeks old!

Bluebell, Billy and Chupie eating fresh clover

Now, I have officially done it....

Welp, where do I begin.  The past week+ had been wild around here.  We have suffered through the fluey/cold that is going around.  I think I went 14 days straight with sick kids at home only to then come down with it myself the very day they were both back in school.  I love my kids, but holy crap, I don't deal that well with having no peace and quiet for days on end.  I couldn't even shovel poop without someone whining at me from the house, wrapped in blankets wanting more tea and honey or  just to whine or dribble on about Mineraft.  Who would have thought that the sheer desire to shovel 4 kinds of crap uninterrupted would be the stuff of daydreams.

As a celebratory move, once we were all healthy, I decided to treat myself to some new hens.  The 7 chicks are Ameracaunas and Cream Legbars, which once they start laying (in June!), will help create my rainbow egg basket by adding shades of blue and green eggs.  Here's a cute pic of the buggers.

Cream legbar girls

I was thinking this would be a good warm up for some baby love.  All this examining of goat rear ends I previously mentioned,  lead me to believe that my goats are most likely pregnant and in a couple of months, I'll have some cute kids to dote on.  And so, Monday last, my earnest research on goat pregnancy, supplies, immunizations, gestation times etc began.

Well, that research was started weeks too late.  Tuesday, on my mid-morning rounds I noticed a rather large wet spot in the goat area.  I believe I was muttering "oh no, oh no" under my breath as I approached, knowing it meant something was going wrong with someone and worried at what I might find.   I was so intent on trying to figure out what might cause a large wet spot like that, I failed to notice, right to the left of the large wet spot was Bluebell, my angora doe, and on either side of her were two white, wet moving lumps. Then they mewed the sweetest little high pitched sound you have EVER heard!  Upon the registration that my goat just had TWINS without me knowing or supervising or knowing for sure she was even pregnant, my response was as you might imagine.  I started jumping up and down screaming "Oh my God, Oh my God, What do I do, Holy Sh+t".  Repeatedly.  For minutes.  Many minutes. To no one, except the goats and chickens. Until my brain started to function again and I decided the next best course of action was to interrupt my good friend in the middle of her hair appointment only to start yelling the same obsenities into her ear. She told me what to do (um, breathe?) and assured me that this happens everyday and everyone was fine and to see if I just had girls or boys!!!  Luckily, I was meeting this friend for lunch a few hours later and she promised to help me with supplies, come check out the little blobs and to ply me with margaritas.  I did say she was a good friend.

Left baby has yet to try and stand, probably 30 minutes old or less.

Two days old

Now, looking back, this seems kind of funny, and a natural process that happens everyday, yes, that is true.  But few things in my recent past have traumatized me so much.  Seriously.  I'm still not sure I'm over the drama almost a week later.  I have been in agriculture for 23 years, but there is little guilt and certainly not the same level of concern when you are tending plants.  Even when you have found a one of a kind flower that you are responsible for tending and bringing to market, there is pressure and stress, yes, but not like this. Chosing to bring life into this world and having the responsibility of supporting a small family with which you cannot communicate and know little about is kind of freaking me out.   I haven't fully digested my thoughts on all of this yet, I'm sure that will be the subject of a future blog post.  But in basic terms, this birth is symbolic of the trajectory of a dream.  Every other decsion along this path had secondary reasons that were more important and certainly more justifiable than following my hairbrained, halfcocked dream.  There is nothing BAD about moving your kids to acreage, a better school, and surrounding them with the natural environment.  There is nothing BAD about exposing them to where their food comes from, how to care for different types of animals and teaching them responsibility through animal care and farm work.  A good friend of mine kind of nailed it.  She is also a plant farmer and when she told her boys who are similar in age to my kids, their response was to BEG her for animals that they don't fix so they can have babies around.  There you have it, this is my first animal birthing experience and now I am responsible for deciding the lifes path of these two cute little angora bucklings. Gulp.

Introducing, Hercules and Billy McLarney of Ourstillunnamed Farm.  Date of birth, February 12, 2013.

Billy's on the left with the one black curl