Frantic activity!

It's been a busy week so far and it's only Wednesday!!  Frantic activity on the hay-making front to make the most of the good weather.  I dread to think how many miles David has done in the tractor this week - up and down the road with trailer loads of hay and straw.

The hay barn is starting to look very healthy indeed and we have a rather large stack of gorgeous barley straw slowly appearing at the back of the goat shed - no space in the hay barn!

Yesterday:

Today:

And still 4 more trailer loads to come!

We have also taken back several fields immediately adjacent to the goats - having been rented out as arable land for years to a neighbouring farmer, they are now back with David's family.  The crop was harvested last week and the fields handed back.  This field is right next to the one which the goats use at the moment:

Early yesterday morning David's brother turned up with a rather large tractor and cultivator:

And he then spent the day working through all the fields for us.  Cultivation churns up the soil to quite a depth and throws up all the rubbish.  Leave for a short while and let the rubbish grow, then cultivate again to chop it all back into the soil.  Then you are ready to sow your seed.

All the fields will be turned back into grassland for the goats (and Gracie Moos, if they are very lucky!).  Some grazing and some for hay.  The field above will be mostly for grazing and so we have to decide what kind of grass seed we should sow.  So, this has been my bedtime reading for the past couple of nights:

Riveting stuff!!

Actually, it's pretty fascinating.  There are SO many different types of seed.  David and I have decided that we would like to sow a nice herbal ley for the goats .. problem is that it is the most expensive seed in the catalogue.  Hey ho.  Worth it though.  Has lots of lovely stuff in it like clover and chicory, sainfoin and timothy, meadow fescue and yarrow ... The goats will absolutely LOVE it!!

Some of the new hay has exciting crunchy sticky bits in it.  Here's a couple of the kids sharing a particularly tasty bit of nettle yesterday:

And, we have our final student of the year with us this week.  Beth is in her final year at school and is spending her summer getting loads of work experience ready to apply to veterinary college in September.  Haven't got a photo of her yet, but I will snap her before she leaves on Friday!  Poor girl gets her AS level exam results tomorrow morning.  Good luck Beth!!  She's pretty smart though so I am certain she will be absolutely fine.

And, just in case you were wondering what Ginger is up to this week ....

 
Bit tricky getting that udder over the gate!  Quick swing of the back legs and over it comes ...

While Dad's away ...

The goaties will play ...

David is very busy baling hay and straw at the moment (hurrah!) and so I am left home alone with the goatie girls for feeding and milking.  As you will know from reading previous blogs, there can be some bad behaviour in the milking parlour at times, but it does seem to get worse when they know I am on my own.  They call it 'character' I think.  And that is supposedly why we love goats so much.  I must remind myself of that ....

I'm sure that you don't get this problem with a flock of sheep ... A herd of goats is 300 individual little goatie people, each with their own personality and character.  And here is one of tonight's characters .. Florence.

At 5 years old, she should know better.  For some reason she was being especially naughty tonight and kept on running back up the 'out' ramp.  I have said it before and I will say it again - naughtiness is genetic.  Her mum, the lovely Fig, was an exceedingly naughty goat.  We used to see her at least 6 times every milking ..  She would push open any gate and just come strolling back into the parlour.

However, compared to Beanie, Florence is a saint.  Here's Beanie ... Spot anything wrong??

Yes indeed.  Beanie was actually the 10th goat into the parlour.  When she had finished milking, she decided that she was bored with being near the end.  So she lay down on her stomach and crawled all the way along the parlour under the other goats ....

Never a dull moment ...  They must think that I need entertaining when I am on my own.

It was a glorious hay-making day today.  Lots of mist around this morning as the sun rose

but it soon burned off to leave a very warm and breezy day.  Ideal hay-making weather. 

Balham Market was very 'August-ish' today ..  Everyone on hols or at the Olympics.  Certainly not at the market.  Never mind .. there's always next month!

Day off tomorrow!!  I use the phrase loosely of course, as there's no such thing as a day off when you have a herd of dairy goats.  It just means that I haven't got to go and make cheese or go to market.  I have a feeling that my day may well be spent throwing bales around in the barn!

Small goats and Mad Max

What is it about small goats that they all have to cram into a small space to get at their breakfast?!  Plenty of room at the troughs which are hung on the gates:

But no ... we have to cram ourselves into a tiny space, bottoms in the air ...

They are entirely too big to be using the feeder now but we left it in their house as they enjoy jumping on it and sitting on the ledge.  And some of them still insist on having their breakfast out of it ... so I keep on putting food in it for them.

I suppose that it's the goat equivalent of a crowded restaurant - noone wants to go into the place that has empty tables!

So, the weather is still unsettled and David has turned his attention back to hedgecutting for the past week.  1st August is the end of the closed season and so farmers can get out to their hedges again.  The tractor has had all the guards fitted back on it - always reminds me of something out of 'Mad Max':

The guard over the bonnet saves dented bodywork and the grills over the windows are for David's safety.  Once that blade gets spinning, there can be some nasty bits flying around and it is very easy to get a smashed window (or worse).

I  was looking back at some photos of the boys yesterday and came across the one we have on the blog of Daramac - I really must update it!!  This was taken not long after he arrived with us:

And this is him now .. grown a bit I would say!!

He was quite nervous when he first came to live with us but now he is much more laid back.  Bit of a mummy's boy in fact.  When I go round to feed the boys he always comes out to the gate to meet me - even if it's pouring with rain!  I think he may be going off to Dorset on a 'working holiday' later in the year but we will see.  He was a very busy boy with us last year!

I am trying to make time at the moment to read a new book that has just arrived. Recommended by Jo, our last vet student, it is called 'Zoobiquity'

 Absolutely fascinating!  It looks at the incredible similarities between many human and animal health and behaviour issues and how they overlap.  What doctors could learn from vets and what humans could learn from animals.  Incredible reading ... Thoroughly recommend it!

Right .. must get myself sorted.  Off to make cow's cheese for Jane the Cheese this afternoon ... weird yellow milk.  Not like that lovely white goatie milk at all :-)

Ginger's little apprentice

Walk into the barn most afternoons and you will invariably find Madam Ginger Goat wandering around snacking on lucerne or hay.  I think David has now finally thrown in the towel and doesn't even try to get her to stay in with the other goats!  She is quite happy tiddling about and never wanders off.  She just seems to like being on her own.

Except that she is no longer on her own.  Meet The Apprentice:

Yes indeed, dear readers .. it would seem that we have another Ginger in the making.  Only she doesn't squeeze through the gates like Ginger.  She leaps over the top of them.  No matter how high the gate.  She stands back and assesses the height ... takes a few steps back, runs and launches herself over. 

Like Ginger, she is quite content just to wander about and have the odd snack.  Then she finds a comfy bit of straw to lie on and settles down to wait for the humans to arrive.  As soon as someone walks into the barn, she runs over to greet them.

As we can't keep calling her '298' (her eartag number), David decided that she should have a name.  McQueen.  Can't think why ....  So, she has become little McQueenie goat ..

The weather has been rather changeable (to say the least).  The forecast early in the week was for mostly hot and sunny weather with a couple of isolated showers.  Good haymaking weather.  So, David mowed off one field.  And then the forecast changed.  And we have had really heavy showers.  And quite a few of them.  Despite all that, David persevered and this morning the hay was ready to bale.  So, out he went to row it all up ready for baling ... and it poured with rain.  Absolutely chucked it down.  And it looks like we may have lost the lot now.  Good job he only cut one field.

When the weather is nice, the goaties go outside to play:

When the weather is wet, they stay indoors and you can always see a couple of sad little faces peering out of the back door:

Larkin is becoming very popular with his ladies and they are quite happy to have him around.  They even allow him to share their hay rack:

Well, that's my day done!  Off to Wye Market tomorrow and then Parson's Green on Sunday.  I have to say that the London markets are fairly quiet at the moment - everyone has stayed out of town for the Olympics.

Students go home ...

Well, the end of a very hot week.  About 1000 bales of hay in the barn so far.  Hurrah!!  Well done David.  Some of the taller goats have discovered that if they stand up right on their tippy-toes, they can JUST about reach the bales stacked against the corner of their barn.  Look closely in the far corner and see Cassie happily munching away!

Our vet student, Jo, has finished her time with us and went back home on Friday evening.  Apparently, she had tickets for Olympic badminton on Saturday ...  We thoroughly enjoyed having her here and, as Molly stayed with us again last week as well, it will be VERY quiet in the goat shed this week without those two around!

I think that Jo fitted in with us very well and I was pleased that I managed to feed her successfully for the two weeks without giving her food poisoning!  We are both very partial to a bowl of pasta and I was thrilled to find some dried pasta with a veterinary theme:

We had an enjoyable meal sorting out the various animals .... We really should get out more.  I blame it on sleep deprivation ...

One of Jo's final jobs on Friday evening was to give Sadie goat her last milk feed.  Sadie is the kid who would not feed from a bottle or a teat - she had to drink straight from a jug.  Well, now she is weaned.  Much to her disgust.  She had got used to having her jug of milk every evening and so there was much pitiful bleating last night when she only had her hard feed with the other kids.  She tried giving me a hard stare ... a pitiful bleat .. and then a very sad little face ... poor Sadie.

The grown-up goaties had a good week out in the field, especially when the electric fence came down and they were able to reach the hedge.  Yummy ...  It proved quite diffficult to get them back in for milking but eventually they all came running down the field:

The heat also made them especially naughty and here is a small selection of bad behaviour from last night:

A view from outside the parlour ramp.  Notice the black goat at the top of the ramp - Martha waiting for the door to open so that she can run back inside the parlour to check for any leftover food.

Willow and Magenta outside the parlour.

Diddi and Sibyl having a snack from the feed barrow.  They have already been milked and fed but ran back down the inside ramp to find the extra food.

The boys are enjoying their summer quarters out in the cattle yard.  Still eating well and eyeing up the ladies from a distance.  They are all ready for action when the time comes!

And before Jo and Molly left us, they decided on a name for our little Nubette.  Molly and I had thought that something exotic and Eastern would be appropriate and, for some reason, we both came up with 'Shakira'.  Mmmm ... Then Jo and I both thought 'Cleo(patra)' would be a nice name.  So, 'Cleo' it is.  Or 'Miss Cleopatra Shakira Nubian' as the students decided!

First hay of the season

And here it is ... the first bale of the year.  With our official taster - Miss Ginger Goat:

Apparently it's rather good.  And you can't believe what a relief it is to have some hay baled and waiting to come into the barn.  SO happy!!!

Young Larkin went off on his 'working' holiday today to spend some time with the goatlings.  He is a good lad - very laid back and gentle - and all the youngsters were quite impressed with him.  I think he will be very popular with the girls although they are not quite sure about him at the moment!

One of our little male kids went off to a new home this evening as well.  A very nice family sadly lost one of their goats a few weeks ago and wanted a new youngster to keep their remaining goat company.  He's a really sweet little chap and was a favourite of Jo's as she was bottle feeding him this week:

If you look at this picture closely you will notice a naughty white goat directly behind Jo.  Just after the picture was taken, this goat pulled a sizeable chunk of her hair out!

With the weather being so hot today we spent quite some time making sure that everyone had lots of fresh water.  The weaned babies are drinking quite a lot now and have an automatic water bowl in their pen - how big and grown up!  But they still love to drink from a bucket whenever they get the chance and some of them like to drink straight from the tap.  As I was trying to fill a bucket this evening I had a small audience of little goats sticking their heads under the water tap:

Sunshine at last!!

At last!!!  The weather forecast looks hopeful for the next few days and so David has been mowing grass in earnest ready to make hay (while the sun shines!).  We have quite a few acres mown and down at the moment so keep your fingers crossed for warm and breezy weather for the next few days.  We are getting absolutely desperate to get some hay into the barn for all those hungry goaties! 

Our vet student Jo decided to stay with us for the weekend rather than go home and come back for her second week.  As I only had one market over the weekend, I decided to give myself some time off and take her out to a couple of places.  After Wye market yesterday we enjoyed a delicious lunch in the Goods Shed in Canterbury and then went for a walk around the city - it's years since I have been into the town.  Plenty of tourists around, especially at the entrance to the cathedral:

And today we took a trip to the Whitstable Oyster Festival to watch everyone else working. It was great to be able to wander around and not have to sell cheese!!  We started with a chilled glass of Prosecco around 11am:

And then ate our way round the festival for the new few hours.  The weather was glorious and the sea was flat calm:

And being an Oyster Festival, there were more than a few oysters around .. this was just a small part of the discarded shell mountain!

It was lovely to have a few hours off and enjoy the sunshine and some very nice food.

Back to work now though .. I have told Jo that there will be no more lying in or time off until she finishes with us on Friday.  Hard woman that I am ...