Fezzik and Lucky Nickel come home

Today was the big day - Fezzik and Lucky Nickel, my goats, finally came home again to live with me.  It has been 2 years and 8 months that my goats have been in long-term boarding, and I have missed them so very much.  I brought the sheep home first, and today the goats came home.  My woolly family is now back together again.

The first thing I had to do was trim their hooves, since it had been a while since I'd done it, and I wanted to check them over in general before putting them into the fenced area.  You would think that they had checked in to Goat Spa Central, because they just chilled out in the deck chair and had a wee snooze while I worked on them.

"I am relaxing.  Where is my pina colada?"

"My hooves will be beautiful."

Fezzik, because he is well-behaved and not a runner, was allowed to sample the greenery.

Yum, raspberry leaves!

More yum!  Maple leaves!

Marc made some adjustments to the gate on the fenced area while I did the hoof trims.

Fezzik reunited with Twilight first (and there were some head bumps)!

Then it was Lucky Nickel's turn for a pedicure....I mean, hooficure.

Cabana boy....bring me my parasol!

"Why do these pallets have to be here?  They ruin my view."

"I do not care that you are 'all done' with my hooves.  I am not ready to move yet."

As usual, Lucky Nickel asserted her dominance.

Fezzik, smart goat that he is, stayed out of the way when Lucky Nickel was discussing her dominance with the sheep.

 Is she done yet?  Is it safe to approach?

Fezzik then discovered the massage tree.

Goat and sheep sharing a massage.

Marc seemed to enjoy their antics, too!

Fezzik looks like a big white teddy bear with horns.  He's as adorable as ever.

"I am a big fierce goat and I will show you by rubbing my head on this tree!"

Izzy came around to visit with the goats.  She used to spend all her time with them.  I wonder if she actually remembers them. She got a fuss from Marc on the way.

Both goats quickly discovered the spruce trees on the menu.

They seemed to take a few moments to consider their new surroundings, but overall, they just fit right in to their new home.

I think Fezzik is pretty happy to be home.

And Lucky Nickel, as long as she is the centre of attention, is also happy to be home.

And me....I may be the happiest one of all.  These goats saved my life one day, in the long-distant past.  I am blessed to have them back with me again after such a long time.

Sharing with Camera Critters and Saturday's Critters!

Goats! Trees! And an Impending Project!

The goats have been very happy for the past couple of days because they were given a special treat!  Or should I say treet?

The road on which I live had a large machine go by a few weeks ago that did some pretty major trimming along the side of the road.   Unfortunately, this trimming involved a lot of trees with pretty wide trunks, including a lovely old apple tree.  I don't know why the county felt a need to get quite so vigourous with their brush cutting, but the outcome was a massive mess of branches and lots of young spruce trees that were cut off at the base.

I gathered quite a few of these felled trees and dragged them up to the barn, because the goats love spruce, so it was a free food source that was pre-cut for me to haul up to the hungry herd!  As you can see, they are very pleased.

Oh wait, no, I guess you can't see.  Word to the wise.  When you're trying to take pictures in a cold barn, you can't breathe out at the time time you snap the picture, otherwise all you take a picture of is a plume of breath that is making a little cloud in front of the lens!

Here we go - wee Westley to the left and Fezzik to the right, along with the sheep in the background, all having a good gnawing on a spruce!

Wee Fezzik has been doing well with his winter turtleneck-coat on and seems to be at least maintaining his weight despite the cold, which was what I had hoped for.  He still gets his special molasses oats treat every day to keep the weight on him as much as I can without giving him a case of the runs!

Moving on, you may recall, if you are a regular reader, that a while ago we bought cabinets to re-do the kitchen here.  We're not quite ready to do that project yet, but when we bought those cabinets, we bought a few extra units so that we could install some in my upstairs "studio" area, giving me places to store yarn, spinning fibre, dye materials, and other goodies.  It is with much excitement that I can tell you that the project to install these cabinets is set for Sunday!  Woohoo!!

Here are the cabinets that we have moved upstairs in preparation for the project!  There are two like the cabinet facing the camera on the left.  Nice big drawer and cupboard.  Then there is a smaller one (narrower) that is the same height.

 This is the sink cabinet unit.  Eventually we will get a nicer sink but one thing at a time!

Here is where they'll be installed (the chaos zone). We'll get rid of this grungy old half-baked plywood counter and put in the cabinets and a nice piece of second hand countertop (which already had a sink hole!) that we were able to get.  It is a nice dark greenish looking laminate.  Easy to clean.

All those bottles under the sink are my fibre dyes and detergents, etc.  The microwave is for dyeing also.  All our bathroom stuff is also there because our bathroom doesn't have a sink yet, so we have to use this one for that too.  Anyway, I can't wait to do the project and get things put away in their proper, organized places.  I'll be sure to show some pictures after our work!

The goat learning curve

This post is about a learning experience I had with Greta, one of our new goats. She's a bit skittish, as are her two offspring, Ptera and Buford. We had put Ptera and Buford with Pebbles, the friendly goat, to try to teach them that humans were not big scary monsters. We put Greta with Opal, our Nigerian Dwarf, to help her acclimate to us also. Opal is our lap-sitter goat.

I'm still new to goats, so I look at ours often to keep an eye out for things that don't look right. Last week, Greta's udder was looking really swollen on one side. We decided we had to corner her and catch her in order to check it out, and sure enough, it was very warm to the touch, swollen, and reddish coloured.

The first thought we had was "Oh my goodness, she's pregnant" but after consulting with her former owner, we determined this was impossible due to the fixing date of her son, and due to gestation length in goats (she would have been about a month overdue). So, the next concern was mastitis. It's a bacterial infection in the udder, quite common in cows and other milking animals. After some consultation on a goat discussion forum, including some pictures I won't include here, I determined that it must be mastitis, and took myself off to the farm store to buy needles and penicillin G, the recommended treatment.

Mentally, I was steeling myself for the road ahead. Learning how to give a goat an injection in the hind quarters is something I seemed to have missed out on in school. I must have been sick that day. Further consultations with the goat discussion forum folks made me feel that yes, I can actually do this.

After catching Greta, I knelt beside her in an effort to calm her. I talked softly and tried to say goat-calming things. She had a wild look in her eye. Eventually I got around to checking her udder and looking for any discharge or other nastiness. In my checking, I squeezed, in a milking sort of way, and BAM, out came a squirt of milk so fast I had to duck. We grabbed a bucket and sure enough, she didn't have mastitis, nor was she pregnant - she was just STILL lactating a year after her last kid had been born!

Turns out that Buford, Ptera, or both were still nursing enough to keep her lactating a little. Since we separated them, the milk had accumulated over about a week to the point that she was fit to burst. Poor Greta. It took my very unskilled hands about half an hour to milk her and then Kelly had a try for another 15 minutes or so. We ended up with about 6 cups of milk. Because we hadn't really planned for this, we ended up giving the milk to the chickens, who loved it, and the young goats. We had milked into a bucket that hadn't been sanitized and had hay residue in it.

She isn't producing normal milk loads - just a bit. We are going to give it a try again tomorrow. And this time, we will give it a try ourselves!

In the meantime, Muffin the pygmy goat has taken up residence in the hen house at night. She seems to enjoy their company, and they seem to like her as a pillow. Seems that we weren't the only ones to benefit from some learning about goats this week!

Opals aren't just gemstones anymore

I think Craig's List is just about the best thing since sliced bread. Not sure what's so great about sliced bread really, so perhaps it's better than sliced bread. I prefer it to eBay because it's local, and there's such an interesting assortment of items on it. We've purchased (or obtained free) a lot of chicken and goat structure building materials from it. Today, I purchased a second set of trolley lights for my plants in the spring when I start seeds indoors. Kelly also found fresh grass/clover/alfalfa bales on it today for $2.75 a bale! Wow!! He rushed out and bought all 21 bales that they had left for the goats for winter. What a great price.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I was looking at Craig's List last week and saw a listing for a "lonely goat" who was a miniature goat with no companions. She was at a farm with 10 horses, but as you can well imagine, horses and miniature goats are on different levels, in so many ways. I thought about it for a couple of days. The ad didn't disappear. I talked to Kelly about it. He said we already had 7 goats. I knew this. But this goat was lonely. Maybe she needed us. He read the ad. He said maybe we should go have a look. So I wrote to the poster and said that we wanted to see the goat, and could she give us any more information.

She said the goat's name was Opal, and she was born in March to the Nigerian Dwarf goats that are in the petting zoo at our local city zoo. She was very affectionate, but lonely as an only goat. Goats need companionship, and this one was not getting the attention she needed. Clearly, a visit was in order.

We visited Opal on Sunday. One look, and that was all it took. Opal came home with us that very day. She is, in 2 words, a lap goat. She likes to sit on my lap and get head and ear rubs, and she thrives on affection. We introduced her to our nubians. She seemed to enjoy playing with them, but then, she discovered that she fit through the grid of the cattle panels that serve as our goat fencing. Oops. Little did we know she was an escape artist. So, little Opal now lives (temporarily) in a 12 by 7 foot dog run, next to the nubians. We think she will get a little bigger, and may be unable to fit through the cattle panel grids. If not, she will need her own little area. And, she's a bit lonely this way, so it may be that she needs a goat companion her own size. And for that, there's always Craig's List...