Where does the time go?

Over a month has gone by, hard to believe. We hit the ground running in the morning and don't stop till we pass out at night. I usually don't even know what day it is. A lot has happened in this past month, some good, some not so good. We now have 22 babies on the ground. They are so much fun to watch we can hardly stand it.
They run and jump and play. So, now I have to tag them. We have so many and their markings are so similar that it's hard to know who is who. Tagging is like getting your ears pierced. Not much fun but over pretty quick. This is one of my jobs. Castrating is one of my jobs also. It seems that I am going to get all the fun stuff.

We have now lost three momma goats. One had stillborn twins and I just knew something else was wrong. We took her to the vet the next day and I truly believe he misdiagnosed her, apparently a common problem with goats. Anyway she was dead the next day. We lost two more to pneumonia, again a common problem with goats especially if the weather changes are extreme, they are.

The temperature dropped 30 degrees in a couple of hours the day the storm hit. We had freezing rain then ice, then snow. We were housebound for 2 days. Luckily Reed and Sherri live out there and they fed and watered everyone until we could get there.

One of the biggest problems is that all the water troughs froze and goats don't do well with cold water. By next year we will have heated water troughs but this year we are still working on getting electricity. We lost another baby to dehydration (something I learned on my goat chat room) If the water is too cold they won't drink it. A baby dehydrates fast. It's all a learning experience, but a hard lesson. When it got cold the cows decided it would be a good idea to go in the barn with the goats. We think they trampled one of our babies. No more cows in the barn, another lesson. We also lost Molly. We got to the farm one day, Max came running and no Molly. We cannot imagine who has happened to her. We have searched the entire property for days. Talked to neighbors, we just don't have a clue.. We are hoping that she is hiding out having puppies but we just don't know. There is no evidence that something has happened to her. Max is lost without her.




But then we saved one. Twins were born in the middle of this cold one night. They looked okay, but the next day we noticed the one was unable to get up. She was dragging her hind legs and appeared lame. I got in there and held her up so she could nurse but she was really cold. So, after she ate I wrapped her up in a towel and sat in the truck for a couple of hours to warm her. I milked her mother (another first) and we took her home. Rory's son Sam and his girlfriend Cora and friend Mike, have been staying with us and helping out. We all got into the act holding and feeding her. Cora worked on getting her to stand. By the next day she was much stronger and we took her back to her mother. Again holding her up to eat many times a day. Long story but in the end here she is. And is she ever demanding. She loved the extra attention. In the mean time we have started on the house. It's like putting legos together, well, a little more involved, but I can't wait till they pour the cement.






















This last one is the view looking at the front of the house and this is looking at the house from the old barn. It will be nice to be out there. By the way, Rory bought me a present one day while we were out. And it's blue, my favorite color!!

And of course there's always the Bear. He will be 4 months on the 27th. We go to the vet for a checkup tomorrow and I bet he will weigh in at over 40 lbs. Can't house break him, I think he has ADD. He spends a lot of time outside and still goes to the farm with us everyday. He's a free farm dog now and gets to wander the whole from 40 that's fenced in. He loves it out there.

So, that's about it for now. Obviously there will be no Christmas or Hanukkah card from me this year so I hope you all have a Happy Happy and a Merry Merry. It will be interesting to see what the new year brings. Till next time..............

Work, work, work, work............

Ahhhhhh, the joys of the farm. It is a ton of work, but, it beats sitting in an office, flying around on a plane, staying in hotels and just being home long enough to do your laundry, any day.

We now have a barn. It's for storage and fixing stuff and we intend to put a small lab in there for all the goat things. It really helps a lot to have our tools and other necessary things stay out there rather than have to cart it back and forth every day. I always wanted a red old fashioned wood barn but cost is a factor here so this was the next best thing. Next, we've been building a pen behind the old barn and repairing, as best we can, that old barn. We would like it to last another few years if possible. We hope to paint it to match the new barn. We sunk something like 16 poles to do build that pen. This little project took over a week to do. We hurt all over but we are proud, proud. We are getting better at this. We have now learned that you need to cement the big poles in or they have a tendency to lift. When that happens goats escape. Several days in a row when we got to the farm the girls were out in the back pasture beyond the fence. This is when we learned that one must inspect the perimeter fence frequently. We had major security breeches so we spent several days repairing the fence. It really does have a life of it's own.

The Bear is now 10 weeks old. He has grown so fast. He is well over 20 pounds. He knows his name and will look at you when you call him but that's as far as it goes. Brat Boy is one of his nick names now along with Jaws. And all he wants to do is be outside. We take him to the farm everyday and in the beginning we would put him in a kennel close to where we were working. This worked really well for awhile. Meantime I would let Max and Molly sniff him everyday and they would sit with him sometimes during the day. Well the Bear has now graduated to being a farm dog. Max and Molly seem to know he's theirs and he gets to be outside running around all day. He may end up being an outside dog after all, he never wants to come in.Life on the farm can be tiring even for the Bear. All that running around, playing with Max and Molly and chasing goats. Although the goats really don't like to be chased and he has been butted a few times now. I think he's starting to get the picture. Anyway sometimes one must just take a nap. It's hard work being a farm dog after all. Just look how big he is, 10 weeks old. I will leave you now with just a few more pictures of the Bear because he is just so darn cute. By the way, in the middle of all this we thought it might be nice to build a house. So, the footing is suppose to go in this week. We are building a cement house, not block but poured cement, and we plan to do a lot of it ourselves. It will prove to be interesting I'm sure. Also, along the way I have found an herb site that has a lot of things for goats. I've always been a sucker for this kind of stuff so, I'm now doing herbal wormers for the goats and dogs and I'm making my own dog food. I don't know how long I'll be able to keep it up, I guess it depends on if the dogs health seems to improve. So till next time.......... And you guys could send me a note once in awhile......Would be nice

Okay, I know I'm going bonkers posting on this baby, butI can't help it. He grows so fast it's like you can watch it happen

Sugar Bear is 8 days old. He slept 5 hours last night. If the size of baby poops is any indication of the future we will need the tractor with the bucket on it to clean up after this guy.

Soooo sweet

Look at his nose. It started turning black a couple of days ago and becomes more black every day

The good life

More Baby Pictures

Okay, I'll get it right one day, in the meantime more of Uno.

Max takes his guard dog job very seriously.

Mommy an baby

Surprise!! Another new baby. We weren't expecting this one so soon. His name is Uno. first baby, first buckling, born on the first of September. I'm going to try and figure out how to send videos because these guys are just too funny. Not to mention the cows following us around wherever we go. This guy is just about 3 hours old here. It's just amazing

The Little Girls

Okay, so as you will see I still haven't figured out how to get the pictures on is the right order but "oh well" You get the Idea. The little girls and the big girls arrived a day apart. It's been pretty hectic since then. We found out this week that Sam has scheduled the footing for our house to be done in 2 weeks. We will have to fence around it to keep the goats and cows off. Meanwhile we have the new puppy. The water well is in but not hooked up so we are hauling water every day. Reed and Sherri have been a big help with that and what ever we don't do they do. They babysat for every one while we were in Hilton Head. Hilton Head is another story.
As I'm typing this it is showing that 4 pictures are attached. I have no idea if they will come through or what they are until I post. Looks like I will need some help from the Nephew!! More soon, the baby's crying, time to eat!!!

 

This is Darling. She is the most friendly and she will let you pet her sometimes.

He likes to sleep on dad.

Okay I think I got it. Is this not the cutest?

I'm still trying to figure out how to get these pictures on the blog

Sugar Bear is 1 week old today. He has gained 9 oz and is now more that 50% bigger than his birth weight. He sleeps about 4 hours at a time, for which I am very grateful. As you can see he has already figured out that his life as a Whittle will be pretty good. He goes where I go in his puppy carrier and he likes it very much. We'll see how it is when he weighs moe than 150lbs but for now he is sooooo cute!

Surprise.....It's a Boy!!!!

This is out of order but, we were coming home from our week at Hilton Head Sunday (more on that later) when we get a call from Rory's brother Reed that our guard dog Molly was delivering her puppies. All was going well except that she abandoned the first born. They tried to give it back to her but she wouldn't let them near her so they left it as close as possible. Although it hasn't rained in months here, this day it was raining. Anyway, by the time we got there the puppy had been exposed for several hours. Molly had not retrived it, soooooooo, he's two days old today, he eats every three hours and I'm real tired. I looked up on the internet what to do and created a formula for him. He eats like a champ from a baby bottle. If he makes it we will need a manly name for him since he is such a tough guy. Anybody got any suggestions?


 

Here come the girls!

Okay so technically it's 56 girls, 2 guys and a eunuch but who cares. Although we were planning on picking up everybody after we got back from Hilton Head, we leave this Thursday for our annual vacation with my brother and his family, it just didn't work out that way. We had bought our billy goat "Billy Bob" in March along with the two guard dogs. The seller agreed to hold them for awhile but after 5 months he was getting anxious. Our estimated time on completion of projects is still a little off. Anyway, we had to get them now. Sam, Rory's son, has a stock trailer and convinced us that if we were going all that way, gas being 3 dollars a gallon, we might as well pick up everybody. Meantime we were to pick up the cows (cows?) now known as the big girls, on Thursday then off again on Friday to get the little girls. And, we did!!! So without further rambling here they are

The Big Girls

I'm having trouble with uploading the pictures so I will continue on the next blog

Country Roads

"Country roads,take me home, to the place I belong"

This is the road in front of our driveway. Gotta love it! If you like country life that is.

So we've been busy. Old Front Gate

Here's the front gate as it is now

It may not look like much but it took us a week in 105 degree heat to get it done. See those posts? There were 5 of them to dig in 3 feet deep. Turns out it was rock under there. We were doing this inches at a time and ended up having to do it by hand. We had to drive about 10 t posts (the smaller metal ones that you clip the barb wire on to) by hand also. So even though to the city eye it's not much, we sure are proud of it! When there's time some time in my life, I hope to landscape it, but that's out there in those someday dreams.

We bought a goat head gate and a ramp and we built a chute

This red thing is a creep feeder. Creep is food and you can put down that gate thing and it will exclude the larger animals and only let the babies in. Pretty neat. So we're ready. Of course we didn't want to pick anybody up till after we got back from Hilton Head, we leave next week, but things never work out the way you plan sooooo stay tuned...................

Did anyone notice I'm getting better at the picture thing and I have discovered colors!