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.