Baby Goats

It's a busy time on the farm so I am behind with my blog posts. It is hard to keep up. The weather has warmed and the grass and weeds are growing like mad. I'm weeding and mowing and preparing the raised beds and hardening off and planting the greenhouse seedlings, while Johnny gets the haying equipment ready and repairs everything that needs repairing, which is always a lot of stuff.

All the bred does have now kidded but I am still cleaning kidding pens daily. Soon the last two mamas will be turned into the herd with their kids and barn chores will slow down a little. I have not had time to take proper photos of the kids but here's what I have as of now:

The two born on Sunday April 26:

                                  this colorful buck...

 and his black and white sister, shown with their mom, Bonnie Belle...

A week earlier, Golden Day had these two boys... 

The kids born earlier in the month are out with the herd, seeing how much trouble they can get into in the field.

Most fun is playing king of the manure pile...

We ended up with 8 bucklings and 2 doelings, but that's okay because I keep all the does and I don't need any more goats. I had intended to breed only one dry doe but the young buck I bought turned out to be an escape artist... and very fertile.

I gave up keeping him in and sold him to join a fire control herd. He was horned and the goats that go out to eat brush for the forest service must have horns to protect themselves. So I'm not disbudding the bucklings I sell this year. All but two will be wethered (neutered) and sold.

Two I'm keeping for my own future use. Hopefully, they will grow up believing our buck pens are unclimbable. They never had been climbable before Prince, the escape artist, arrived.

The Colors of Spring on our Farm

This post is for my friend Martha, who wanted one with flowers and birds, with the birds identified. So I hiked around the farm on Wed., April 15, and took photos of flowers and a few birds that crossed my path and held still for a photo. Plus a few other colorful characters...

Common Mergansers (female hard to see behind male. Her head blends in with the creek)

California Quail and one White-crowned Sparrow (in front of farthest left quail)

Oregon Junco

Mister McCoy, goat guardian

Shirley "Puppy", 15 years old

Red-breasted Sapsucker

Happy colorful spring!

The Chocolate Lily is Blooming!

For years, lily looking leaves have popped up in one place in the woods but always get eaten off before I can figure out what they are going to be... if they survive. This year I put a cage on the little just emerging plant... and then smelly dog hair that I know deer don't like. And it seems to be working! Every few days I go down and check. It survived long enough to form a bud. And today, April 5, 2020, the bud had opened! The first ever Fritillaria lanceolata, Chocolate Lily, to have survived deer and slugs and bloomed in our woods! The thanks goes, apparently, to the smelly dog hair I draped around it.

 Another lily is begining to send up buds: False Lily of the Valley... There are lots of those, apparently not as delectable to critters as Chocolate Lilies.

The Sessile Trillium are beginning to think about opening...

While the Western Trillium are still going strong...

 The Bleeding Hearts are in bloom...

Cardamine never stop blooming, it seems, although the varieties take turns. This one has lots of basal leaves that look nothing like the flowering stem leaves. I call it Duck Foot Cardamine.

 Not blooming, but decorative: Licorice Ferns

 Bushes along the  creek beginning to bud... And from somewhere across the creek, I heard a Barred owl calling: "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?"

 I also walked through the horse pasture, from where I recently removed the horses to let it grow back. Horses don't like lawn daisies so they are thick...

Happily, horses don't like wild strawberries, either, and there will be lots...

The Oregon Grape, also not touched by horses, is blooming now...

Relegated to mowing the grass around the goat barn, Nightingale takes a drink from the rain barrel.

It was a fine day for a walk through the property between goat chores. I brought up mint from by the creek that Johnny made into delicious mint tea. It was a good day, highlighted by that Chocolate Lily, Fritillaria lanceolata, in bloom.

Although I did not take photos again of the other lilies I'm hoping to see bloom this year, the Tiger Lilies, Lilium columbianum, they are popping up near each other under their protective dog hair. Today I counted twelve of them!

Happy spring!

Pride Goeth Before a Fall

"Pride goeth before a fall" was one of my mom's favorite sayings. She was right. I have been feeling very smug about living on a farm,where life doesn't change much because of "sheltering at home" during a pandemic. I have animals to tend, plants to tend and/or gather and eat, hiking trails for recreation. All good and all true. But...

On Monday, March 30, Jessie Anne colicked. Horses are prone to colic but she never has before and I have no idea why she did. All I can guess is she ate something that gave her gas as it was apparently a gas colic. When I went out that evening, she did not come for her supper, was grinding her teeth, and was pawing to lie down... all signs of colic. So I put a halter on her and walked her. Horses have incredibly long intestines which are prone to getting stopped up. They need to keep moving to get things inside them moving again, but when their guts hurt, they want to lie down and roll, which can make things worse. So we walked for a very long time. I periodically stopped and listened to her insides... They were gurgling some, a good sign. After a longer time, she stopped grinding her teeth and trying to lie down. And, finally, she passed a copious amount of gas. My panic subsided.

The next morning she was hungry and feeling fine. I was exhausted. That was March 31. I have not put her back on the suspect pasture since. Instead, all three horses either get to go out for several hours on the grass in the orchard and by the barn, if it's not muddy, or they get lunch served in their paddock. (They always have breakfast and supper served in their respective parts of the paddock/barn.)

The next day, April 1st, a goat, Cindy Lou, had twin bucklings. She had no trouble having them and I thought I was home free. But I wasn't. She had a congested udder. So I spent much time massaging her udder. The kids got their necessary colostrum and appeared to get enough out of the udder to satisfy them... barely.

A few hours later, another goat, Starry Night, kidded with a doe and a buck. And a congested udder. So I have spent every day since massaging udders periodically throughout the day, rubbing salve on them, and watching the kids carefully to see if they are doing okay. Fortunately, they are and they work at nursing often enough that both udders are beginning to soften. I have no clue why these two does had congested udders. I have not had such problems for many, many years. Was it something I'm feeding differently? Who knows. I just hope the third doe due to kid (due the 2nd, actually, but still not acting ready...) does not have problems. Her udder feels soft so far. One can only hope...

So much for my idyllic life on the farm... I suffered a fall and pride fled.

But the kids are fine. Here is each set of twins a short time after birth... before I knew their moms had congested udders.