Another mucky day

It's been another one of those mucking out days today.  This time it was the turn of the little girls.  Partly because we are going to move the remaining little meat boys down to their barn to make room in the main barn ready for kidding (and all those new babies!), but also because a couple of the more nimble little goaties have decided that they can now leap over the fence.  So, it was time to muck out, change things round a bit and get the level of that fence higher!

When I was there yesterday, one of the local foxes came to visit ... They live just across the field and don't seem to bother the goats at all.  Fingers crossed, they haven't yet anyway!  I just hope that the babies are a bit too big for them, too many in number for a single fox to take on, and way too feisty to let a fox in at all!

Just managed to snap him/her as he/she was trotting past ..

So this morning, the first job was to get all the little girls to the back of the barn and pen them off out of the way:

Then take part of the fence down so that David could get the tractor in:

Spend a few hours transporting huge piles of straw and poo .... closely watched by all those little people:

And, of course, when you move their feeder, it becomes something completely different.  Not the old feeder at all!  No ... a totally new feeder that they have never seen before and have to jump on.  Objects are always far more exciting when they move ...

Then finally, all that lovely new straw is spread everywhere, the gates come down and everyone can go skipping back into the barn.  Bottoms up and heads down - all trying to find those nice yummy bits to eat!

And the final thought for the day .... according to our mating records and scanning results, noone should be giving birth until 26th Feb.  However ..... bearing in mind that we did not see all the goatlings mated to Daramac, and the scanning is not completely accurate (though Michael is generally spot on) .. it is possible that we could see babies before then.  We are keeping a very close eye on those goatlings as the very earliest day that anyone could possibly be due is ... tomorrow!!!!