Big news: we got the pregnancy tests back. Rain is definitely pregnant. Yay! But, Lezlie and Molly are not pregnant. This is not a catastrophe for Lezlie, who will get bred again next year. She’s only two. But, for Molly, it is. She’s three. This year was her last safe chance to have kids. I’m worried that she’s going to end up in the freezer. But, in the meanwhile, we’re moving them to the back pen.
This is a photo of Lezlie eating peanuts out of Jan’s hand. Look! She has wattles!
The back pen is my favorite place. It’s more diverse than the other pens. We have a pen for the milkers, and three different pens for bucks and their wether companions. But the back pen has kids from last spring - who are half grown. It has goats who are retired from breeding, and it has does who are taking the year off from having kids.
Two of the residents of the back pen are Sugar and Ray. They are goats who spent the beginning of their lives as Goat Yoga goats. A friend of Jan’s loaned some of her kids out to Goat Yoga without realizing what would happen to those goats.
Goats can only do Goat Yoga from about 2 weeks to about 9 weeks old. Then they get too big. They are encouraged to jump on people. As far as I can tell, Goat Yoga has got very little to do with Yoga, and a whole lot to do with being jumped on by baby goats. Which is cute, and delightful, and their little voices are so charming. But, once they’ve been socialized to jump on humans, and they stop being tiny, five-pound cuties, it’s not so good. An adult Kinder doe weighs 110-124 pounds. And they have hooves.
So, in our back pen, we have two really cute goats, (Sugar and Ray), who are getting big, and they love jumping on humans. We’re working on re-training them, but I’m worried that they’re going to end up in the freezer, despite our best efforts. Which is pretty much what happens to Goat Yoga goats.
Here’s a photo of Sugar:
I wasn’t even giving her a peanut or anything, she just likes to be petted, and nuzzles us at any opportunity.
She has another really endearing habit. Every time we open the gate to that back pen, she runs to the outer pen. There are two trees in the outer pen that kept their dead leaves on their branches all winter. Crisp, tasty, dead leaves float down whenever the wind blows. Sugar loves eating them. They’re like potato chips to her. When she’s done snacking, she runs around in that outer pen, bleating like her heart is broken because she’s stuck out there alone. Until we finally stop whatever we’re doing and let her back in. And then she gallops back inside, jumping up in the air in apparent glee.
Here’s a photo of Ray:
Earlier this week, I was digging out a gate in the back pen. It’s fun to go into the pens when we aren’t bringing food. The goats are so curious about what we’re doing.
Here’s a photo of Sugar trying to figure out what on earth is happening with the gorilla cart.
When we clear the gates, we fill that cart with the dirt we’ve dug out, and then we spread it elsewhere on the farm. Currently we’re trying to kill some foxtail by burying it in the goat dung mixture. Foxtail is a type of grass that, when it goes to seed, drops spears that can penetrate a dog’s paws. When I looked it up on the internet, pretty much all the sites shouted, “Foxtail can KILL your DOG!” I don’t know if that’s true, but we are trying to get rid of it for the sake of our dogs. One of our herd-protecting dogs got some foxtail stuck in her paw, and it was a huge issue.
Another two goats who live in the back pen are Triscuit and Madam. They are both twelve years old. I can’t find any reputable site that gives the life expectancy of a Kinder goat doe. Wikipedia says does live 12 to 20 years. Most sites only tell you how many pounds of milk they give annually, and how many kids they can have. I asked Jan. She said, “No one knows, because we eat them.” Yikes!
In any case, Madam and Triscuit are each the mother of an entire goat lineage. Madam is the mother of Jan’s favorite buck, Jordan. This is a photo of Madam. She’s eating peanuts, and that looks like Ray right next to her, trying to horn in on the action.
And, here’s a photo of Triscuit.
These two goats have a strong and loving relationship with Jan. You know, when you milk a goat every day, you bond with them. So, they will live out the rest of their lives in the back pen. Yay! Sometimes, when we look out there, out to the back pen, we’ll see Triscuit with her head stretched up to the sky, and Madam rubbing Triscuit’s neck with her head. They really seem to enjoy each others’ friendship.
The final word today is about chickens. A couple of days ago, we had just headed out to feed the goats in the morning, and we heard an insane sound from the direction of the chicken coop. It was the sound a cartoon chicken would make. It was extremely loud, “Bock, bock, bock, BOCK!” Jan smiled and said, “That’s the sound they make when they’ve just laid an egg.” The next day, in the afternoon, I heard the sound again, and I said, “Hey! Another chicken is laying an egg!” But Jan said, “No, they don’t make the sound while they’re laying the egg, they make it afterwards.” It’s as if they’re saying, “Look what I created! Wahoo!” Once again, thank you, chickens!