Eyes and Baby Meat

Before the sun was set last evening, the goats and dogs and I took a long walk around the little farm.  The dogs entertained themselves sniffing sniffs, and the goats were happy munching leaves and weeds.  I mostly just admired my goats.  They make such a pretty herd.  

Especially now that we have Little Buck.  His coat is soft and shiny, and he thinks it's fun to let the herd get ahead of him and then pretend he has been left behind, so he can run and jump to catch up.  His ears flop all over the place when he prances.  I can tell he thinks he's cute stuff.  He is. 

His eyes are the color of amber, and the setting sun makes them glow. 

Peaches has yellow eyes, and when she faces the sun her pupils shrink to tiny rectangles inside a shiny yellow marble. 

Dark River has bright blue eyes. 

So does Light River, although sometimes they are so light they look clear, or gray.  Square pupils never cease to be surprising when I notice them.  I think goats might be aliens from another planet. 

Wendigo has pretty brown eyes and always wears dark eyeliner.  Her bottom lids are droopy though, so the pink shows through and makes her look grouchy, even when she isn't.   

When she's getting petted and snuggled, she gets so relaxed that her entire face hangs down.  Her jowls wobble and her forehead droops down and her eyes get lost in her skin.  It's like her skin is too big for her face!  

Puck's skin fits him perfectly.  His chocolate eyes still shine bright, but under certain light I can see a faint transparent haze over this eyes now.  Cataracts, maybe? 

For some reason I counted up how many eyes lives here now.  One hundred and twenty-four!  This includes two for myself and two for Brandon, plus two eyes each on the twenty-five meat chicks that live in the brooder box in the greenhouse.  The picture above is from two weeks ago, when they arrived at the post office in a card board box. 

This is what they look like now.  They grow so fast!  And look at the size of those feet.  These are the bar-b-q special, which are some sort of cornish cross birds bred for their size and speed of growth.  I've never raised this kind of chick before, and I'm already amazed at how fast they grow and how much they eat! 

This is a picture of them all on day one...

 and now here they are after only two weeks.  Of course, they've consumed nearly an entire forty pound bag of food in these two weeks, and they drink the entire bucket of water each day.  It won't be long before they will be too big for the brooder. 

The hatchery routinely gives you an option for a free "bonus" chick, which I said yes to, but I didn't think about it being so much smaller than these meat babies.  It's name is MJ, and I worry that it will be squished by it's giant brooder mates.  So far, he's okay, and he walks on the backs of his big buddies when they crowd him out from the food.