Rubbing Coconut Oil on My Goat

Smile!  It's a donkey with a pool float on his ears!  ha!  Silly Rufus wasn't afraid of the pool float at all.  He let me set it on his back and hang it from his ears.  We tried rolling it on the ground, but he wouldn't chase it.  How do you teach a donkey to fetch?  

Rufus must know I'm entertained by hanging things on his body, because he's pretty tolerant.  Just wait until he sees his holiday decorations!

The dry weather hasn't been very good for the forest fires in Kentucky, but I've enjoyed having so many nice weekends lately.  By the end of last winter I was fed up with the mud and day dreaming about gravel pathways to our outbuildings, and that was before we had an all white puppy and four hoofed animals.  Every mud free day is to be enjoyed.  

Peaches and I are getting better at getting lined up in the right place on the milk stand.  She's not really sure why she can't just walk around the stand and put her face in the food bowl, or why she has to put her head through the center hole, when if she puts it to either side, it far more comfortable and she doesn't get her head stuck.  We've come up with a few suggested alterations for Brandon to make to the milk stand, and we've figured out that our biggest problem is Wendigo.  

Brandon called me on his way home from work the other day and asked what I was up to.  I was just finishing up in the barn and launched into the woes of trying to rub coconut oil on my goats legs with a giant puppy that thought the coconut oil tasted great when flavored with goat hair.  Turns out, goats do not like to have their legs licked by giant dogs!  This makes it hard to get the coconut oil applied, since her legs wouldn't hold still while I was trying to catch her feet and fend off the determined dog! 

Brandon laughed at me, and said that someone should make a cartoon of me.  Why was I rubbing coconut oil on the goat?  As you know, I think Peaches has mites.  I ordered some stuff called Nu-Stock, which someone hypothesized worked so well because it's made of oil, which suffocates the mites.  It also has sulfur and pine tree resin in it.  So, while we waited for the Nu-Stock to arrive, I decided to put some tea tree and coconut oil on Peaches legs.  I did that for three days before the Nu-Stock arrived, and she's already much better.   See Brandon, there is method to my madness, but Wendigo adds chaos!  My darling Puck, with his short legs and sensitive personality, never grabs things from tables, or licks the goats.  If Puck gets scolded his heart is broken.  Not so with Wendigo. 

Joe, who raises hundreds of animals each year, asked when we were going to raise a pig, and I told him that I wasn't ready for a pig yet.  I told him that a puppy, a donkey, and three goats was as much as I could handle right now, and he laughed and said that was because I take my goats for a two hour walk on a leash everyday.  I wish I had two hours to walk the goats!  

They days are getting shorter, but the goats and I try to take advantage of the sun when we can.  I wonder if you can walk a pig on a leash?...