My Name is Mud

There was all of one mud puddle on our entire property. It's measurements were approximately two by three feet. Who manages to fall in that particular location about three minutes before we are going to go to town with Meemaw? Gunther....of course. Who is not going to let his brother have all the muddy fun? Barrett, who jumps in the puddle immediately after Gunther falls in it.

Who is not amused? Me. Who documents the whole clusterf&%# ? Meemaw.

A Kid (goat babies, not redheaded midgets) Update

The kids are now two and a half weeks old. Daisy, the doe on the left, is doing well. She is a little on the wild side, though. She is making it increasingly difficult for me to catch her, and cuddle. I am trying to make friends with her via the sweet goodness of raisins.

Elliot, our little billy, is as sweet as honey. We made an unfortunate discovery last week. It seemed that Elliot had/has a broken rib. We weren't sure how it happened. We suspected that the other mama in the pen, Evey who is not his mama, may have hurt him. I have seen her head butt him to get him to go away. It was the next day that I realized that my theory was wrong. I caught Mack, our knucklehead puppy, dragging the billy out of the pen. I am sure that Mack was the one who hurt Elliot. For a short time I thought perhaps Elliot's injuries were more than he could recover from, and we would have to put him down. Not two hours later, he was hobbling around, nursing, and wagging his tail. He spends a lot of time resting now, but is doing well. We are hopeful that he will heal, and lead a happy life.

After the incident with the Mack and Elliot, I made the difficult decision to get Mack a new home. He was just not working out on our little acreage. He was a smart dog, who was bored and many a temptation (remember he murdered a chicken too). A neighbor of ours took him on. Mack will have a job running cattle, which I think will make him happy. The man who took him recently lost his wife, and a new dog to train is a welcome distraction. I can still go see Mack and give him cookies, but I don't have to worry about him threatening my other animals.

Think good thoughts for Elliot. He is still recovering.

Edit: Thanks to my mom for taking pictures of the goats.

You Can't Milk The Dog, Son

We are in milk! The twins are producing plenty of delicious milk for both the kids, and for our family. We began milking last week, and the girls have been agreeable about the whole thing. Jason even built a milkstand out of some miscellaneous lumber we had sitting around. I must say that milking would be much easier without a couple kids underfoot, but we manage to get it done.

Barrett has been intrigued by the whole process. I imagine a two year old must have a hard time understanding the what hell is going on. I am even struck by how weird it is if I think about it too much. Barrett kept calling the goats' teets "weenie". We corrected him "No, son, those are ninnies". The goats' "ninnies" look nothing like the ninnies he is familiar with (my own breasts)....thank the lawd. So, he thought we we were some sickos who like to put goats on a platform and yank on their weenies.

Dan, our fat coonhound, was the victim of Barrett's confusion. We caught him trying to milk Dan one day. Dan, as sweet as he is, only grumbled and shot Jason and I a look that said: "Please do something about this". We have since explained that Dan has a weenie not a ninny, and it does NOT produce milk. I think Barrett is still confused, but the world is a confusing place....what can you do?

Goat Dude

If you know this guy, tell him to e-mail me. A man that has a jacket commemorating his second place show-goat NEEDS to be my friend. He was spotted in Oklahoma according to People of Wal-mart. I would love to meet him, and his goat.
Thankyouverymuch.

So...I Took A Month Off

I abandoned the blogging world for a few weeks. What has been going on this month?
I would love to say that we went on vacation, or something fun. Nope. We were here on the acreage, doing the same stuff as always. I was just lacking motivation to write about it.
Notable events:
---We had two more births. They came as a total surprise. I knew that two of my goats were pregnant, but I figured that I had a few more weeks. I am an inexperienced goat OBGYN, and my EDD was OFF. Evey gave birth to a baby girl on Friday, February 26th to a baby girl, and Jeanette gave birth on Saturday, February 27th to a baby boy. Both kids, and their moms are thriving. We have named the girl Daisy and the boy Elliott.
---- I jabbed myself in the eye with a feed bag the other evening. I tore my cornea pretty bad. I am currently wearing a patch. I have heard all the pirate jokes, so save it.
----The boys have had approximately 869 baby fights. They break something every day.It's been the same ol' stuff.
----I still haven't replaced my funky USB cable for the camera (the boys did something to it), so no new pics. I am hoping my mom will bring her camera over to take some pictures of the new baby goats next week (Puhhhhlease, Ma!?), so I can show everybody.
---- We got ten new hens. They are all babies. I will give them names, and introduce them once I am fairly confident that they will survive....as chicks have a high mortality rate. The last thing I want to do is honor one of my friends by naming a chicken after her, only to have it die a day later. It's bad juju.\

That's about it! I have you missed you, my bloggy friends.