Roll Call

I've been thinking about new names for the youngsters we'll be having on the farm this spring.  Sometimes, an animal "speaks" to me and tells me its name.  Sometimes, they're quiet about it.  Sometimes, something just fits.  Most of our animals do have names.  Some of the chickens don't have names, and the white Pekin ducks don't have names because there is really no way to tell them apart.  I refer to them mostly as "Duckle" when I'm interacting with them. 

So, I thought I'd talk about some of our critters' names and how they came by them.

Here are 3 of our 6 goats.  The front goat is Coffee - a mini Nubian.  She came to us already named, with her sister Cookie.  Her sister survived an infection with deer meningeal worm, but it left her with a limp and a weakness in her hind quarters.  She was never entirely the same afterwards and sadly, last fall she died.  She had white ears (like cookies and cream ice cream) and Coffee has brownish ears.  That's what the kids in her former home called her, so we kept it.  Behind Coffee is Puffin.  Puffin came to us from an animal sale in Missouri.  I'm not sure that I would buy animals from that kind of sale again.  I didn't really like the atmosphere of it.  Still, Puffin, Muffin and Stuffin were a trio of goats we bought then, and we named them.  We started with Muffin, and decided the other two should rhyme.  You may remember that Stuffin gave birth to Luna, our first baby goat.  Subsequently, Stuffin, Luna, Muffin and our mini goat wether, Buford, all went to live with one of my coworkers.  Puffin is a Pygmy goat and she's due in April.  Behind those two is Valentino (Val for short) and he is our angora buck.  He came to us named, and we kept it!

Here is Opal, our first Nigerian Dwarf goat, who has been on a few other blog posts before.  She came to us named also, and I really liked her name, so we kept it.

This is the lovely Lotus, who is also a Nigerian Dwarf goat.  She came from Black Cat Creek Farm.  She is very affectionate and sweet natured.  We hope her kid(s) will be also!  She has a very cute beard, doesn't she?!

Our sixth goat is Pebbles, who also came with her name.  She is the elderly lady of the bunch, and she has never been fertile to our knowledge.  She came from a farm that was getting rid of their goats and they said she had always been with a proven buck but had never had kids.  She is also very friendly and sweet, even if she does moan pitifully when she repeatedly gets her head stuck in the cattle panel openings.  Silly Pebbles.

Then there are our 2 miniature donkeys.  They are Sicilian donkeys.  They didn't come with names, so we named them Willow and Springfield.  Willow is so named because she is dainty like willow leaves, but very strong, like an immense willow tree trunk.  Springfield is named after a racehorse from long ago in the UK, with whom my family has a connection.  He is so named because he likes to run at high speed around the pasture, kicking out his heels.  He is a gelded donkey and Willow is his mother.  Willow also gave birth to Onyx after we adopted her, and we don't know who the father was, because it obviously wasn't Springfield.  Onyx now lives with some sheep and another donkey in southern Iowa!  Here are Willow (grey) and Springfield (brown/black) with Onyx behind them.  In this picture, Springfield had just about finished molting his wintery coat, and he was still shaggy on the bottom.  He changes colour entirely when he molts!

Moving on to the llamas, we have five of them.  We have our herd sire, Kahlua, along with his ladies:  Dolly, Hazel and Cabernet.  We also have Cesar, and he's a gelded male who is an excellent sheep guardian.  We named Dolly because her other name was "Black Eyed Pea" and we didn't really like that.  Kahlua, Hazel and Cabernet all came with their names.  Cesar was adopted from the animal rescue league and he was named Smokey Spots, but Kelly decided to call him Cesar, in honour of his new leadership role as a sheep guardian.

Here's Kahlua:

And here's Cesar:

Here, from left to right, are (a chicken), Dolly Llama, Cabernet, and Kahlua (flanked by yet another chicken).

And here's dear Hazel, sort of hiding behind Dolly...Hazel had a skin infection and is re-growing her fleece but she's looking so much better than she was. 

So, next blog post, I'll do the sheep's names, because there are a lot of them. 

Right now, I'm thinking about goat names.  When we choose the names ourselves, we tend to go with non-human types of names.  I think I'll keep that tradition up.  We are expecting kids from Opal, Lotus, Puffin and Coffee this year.  I think I might choose gemstone names for Opal's, flower names or Egyptian style names for Lotus', bird names for Puffin's and perhaps coffee types like Kona or Java or something like that for Coffee's kids.  What do you think?