Melanie's kids

Introducing Junebug (on the left) and Firefly (on the right). The dad is Lars, an Oberhasli - so Junebug looks like him. Firefly looks like Melanie who is pygmy/angora. They are about 36 hours old in this picture.

Forrest loves to talk to the kids.

As you can see they are very different in size. Firefly weighed about 2# when she was born, but she is growing quickly.

Christopher

Christopher is a triplet born to Iceni in April. He had a rough start - it was very wet and cold - so he wasn't eating well in the beginning. I bottle feed him for a weekend, but continued to bring him to the barn. He stayed bonded with his goat family. Christopher loves people and is a sweet guy - he'll be staying :)

Melanie

Melanie hanging out in her shed the day before having kids.

More kids!

Melanie had twin does yesterday. Her breeding was an accident - Lars opened the gate for her..... This is the last of the kids for this year. It's been pretty wild - 18 of them and only 5 females! It's time to sell may of the older ones and get the population back to a reasonable amount.

More about Melanie's kids later....

Meet Mattie Briar

A couple weeks ago we were at the family farm in southeast Colorado, when this little dog showed up at the door. She was soaking wet from the rain and couldn't even see well for the hair hanging in her face. We checked with all the neighbors (the closest one is 1/2 mile away) and no one recognized her. I was actually glad, as she had been neglected. I think she had been feed, but she had terrible mats of hair all over which were full of grass seeds and stickers.

So we couldn't just abandon her there since no one actually lives at the farm now. So I brought her home, took her to the vet - she is health, no heartworms etc. About 1 1/2 years old and not spayed. So right away had to get her spayed before she came into heat with our large male lab Cap handing around.

In the meantime I clipped the mats off - took 6 hours, but you can see how patiently she laid there while I worked.

She loves to sleep sitting up in my lap. What looks like a 5th leg here is a large mat of hair I couldn't trim as she had a sore under that arm. Turns out the vet flushed THREE foxtail seeds out of that spot!

She is not fond of goat chores, but doesn't like to let me out of her sight.

Amazingly, Wendy doesn't mind her - guess she doesn't consider Mattie a threat to her position as head chore dog.....

So not the size of dog I would have picked out, but she picked me and my best dogs have been foundlings (Wendy included). I guess I have a house dog now too.

Missing Bantams eggs

So I thought the heat was causing the bantam hens to lay fewer eggs (seems to be the case with the other hens), but last night peeking out from under their house was Thelma (a mottled cochin hen). She was sitting on a nice little next of eggs. Moved her and the eggs inside so they wouldn't be fox food. Hope some of the eggs hatch!

Been crazy around here

Sorry there's been no postings for awhile. Too much going on with spring/summer arriving. Must get caught up after the frozen winter. Will try to catch up here in a week or so.