It's so nice to be home. The bat work this summer hasn't been too bad, really, but after a few weeks away from home it's taken me a couple of days to settle back into home life. It feels so luxurious to have the morning and evening hours to follow my whims. Of course, my whims revolve around housework and farm chores - but that's the way I like it!
As I was hanging laundry on the line and observing the lush green that surrounds me, I decided to let the girl goats out of their pasture to enjoy some fresh forage. This means they immediately headed for my fruit trees to strip the branches bare. Stop it!
Next they went inside the corn crib barn to see if they could rob the feed bins. In this picture, you can see how Peaches opens the cans. She knows to use her forehead to push up on the lids. If the lid doesn't open right away, she pushes and pushes until she dents the can or knocks it over. Stop it!
Before Peaches tried opening the feed cans herself, she jumped onto the milk stand, put her head in the lock, and cried for me to place the food in the bowl. She is more than happy to be milked in exchange for sunflower seeds. I let her explore the barn so little Noobi could get used to standing on the milk stand too. I've been practicing with Noobi so she can be trained to be a milk goat. I pet her and rub her all over, including under her belly, down her legs, and on her tiny udder. She goes into the same trance that Peaches does when she is being touched and petted. She stands completely still, barely breathing, with a distant look in her eyes. I think she likes it.
Once they gave up on getting to eat stuff from the cans, they sauntered out to browse the greenery near the barn where the chickens were scratching up the remains of their dinner.
All this talk about goat breeding and the research I've been doing about line breeding has me looking at Noobi and Little Buck with a critical eye. My goat experience is limited, but I think Noobi might be a pretty good looking goat. Not just her pretty colors, but her body seems well proportioned and sturdy. Her udder is small still, but it looks like it will be shaped like her mothers, which isn't too droopy.
She has long elegant ears and a high narrow nose. She also has horns. Sigh. She wasn't supposed to have horns because at ten days old I took her to the vet, and had her horn buds cauterized, like the goat book said to do. It was painful for her, so it is disappointing that it didn't work. Not only did her horns grow in anyway, I think they might be a little oddly shaped from the botched horn job.
The reasons people don't like horns on goats are practical ones. She is more likely to get her head caught in a fence or a wire, and she is also more likely to poke me or one of the other goats with the spikes on her head. When I squat down near her to pet her, those hard little horn spikes are right at eye level. One jerky movement and she could poke me right in the face. I also worry that they will grow at a strange angle, and start to poke into her head as they get longer and more curved. Hopefully she will manage her horned life as well as her ancestors did. I sort of like they way they give her a jaunty character.
She has plenty of character. While Peaches gives all her focus to eating, Noobi dances around and entices the dog to a game of chase. She's shy with Brandon and stays just out of reach.
She likes to climb walls and will sometimes leap sideways and put all four feet on a vertical surface as she springs away. She runs at full gallop and stops with a funny nose snort.
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