To Begin Again

The farm continues, though the blog has been sadly neglected. We have many plans for the year, though cute new baby Lucy is providing even more distraction to keep us from all the hard work that needs to be done. Our little family has moved temporarily to a house down the road, since the farmhouse couldn't stretch anymore to fit another kidlet, and we are working on a more permanent living arrangement.

In farm news, we have one pregnant sheep and 4-6 pregnant goats due to overflow the barn with babies sometime at the end of this month or the beginning of next month. We discovered last summer that our little buck Faithful, who was living at our neighbors' farm, was being bullied so badly by his roommate (an older and larger buck), that he was getting almost nothing to eat and had hardly grown at all. He was a pretty sorry sight by the time I found him--so skinny you could count his ribs, with his black coat turned rusty and mangy, and a hollow despairing look in his eyes.

We brought him over to our place immediately, since it was clear that he couldn't survive much longer where he was, and put him in with our herd while we discussed (and discussed, and discussed) what to do with him. My mother is not fond of the pungent odor of bucks, and it didn't seem possible to keep him in constant contact with the does once he returned to full health. Somehow a solution was never reached, but for a while it didn't matter since he was in no condition to have any interest in the girls, who only go into heat in the winter anyway.

So we let him roam free, grazing and browsing his fill, and after a while he began to look less like a skeletal alien creature and more like a goat. His eyes changed first, losing their dull and anguished glaze; we began to notice him taking interest in things and interacting with the other animals. Within a few months of no special treatment other than worming (much needed!!), he put on some weight and his coat returned to its proper black sheen. The bare mangy patches filled in, and he's grown several inches in height as well.

We were especially relieved to see him displaying the usual (unpleasant) buck tendencies as the weather grew colder, and it appears that Temerity, Patience, Whimsy, and Felicity are all pregnant. We had not intended to breed the other three does, but since we didn't get around to separating anyone, had resigned ourselves to a deluge of babies. However, Special and Fawn seem to have done our job for us, since Mercy and Peace have gone into heat several times and the wethers have monopolized their attention, chasing Faithful away every time he tries to get things done. It's possible they may be pregnant now, but won't kid until later in the summer, which is fine--we'll price the babies to sell quickly and advertise more widely than we have before. Even so, we could have a lot of little goaties on our hands pretty soon--up to 18, if they all had triplets!

I'll save the gardening news for another post...