Enjoying the dry weather

I have to say that there was a distinct nip in the air this morning when I went to milk the goats.  I think that it's only the second time in the past few weeks that I have actually had to scrape ice off the windscreen.  But a beautiful clear and dry morning.

The goats obviously thought so too.  Despite the excitement of having a whole new bale of straw put in for them, most of them decided to make the best of the dry weather and ventured outside into the field for a few hours.



Gate leads to the yard area between the main barn and the field (to the right of picture).  Building to the left of picture is the milking parlour.

 

Goats on a mound!  This pile of earth was created when David dug the foundations for the new goat barn several years ago.  It was only meant to be in the field temporarily, but the goats enjoyed climbing on it so much that we decided to leave it there!

 

Pandora checking whether the grass tastes good

So, how many goats can you fit on top of a mound of earth?

Coming to investigate what mum is up to

Just as an aside, I forgot to include in my Saturday blog that I almost had a close encounter with the Kent Constabulary on Friday night!  One of my occasional milk customers lives down in the Weald and so we arrange to meet at a central point to save us both driving miles.  The place we have chosen is a fairly large car park outside a warehouse that is closed at night - the car park is therefore always empty.  I arrived there quite late on Friday night to find a police car parked up just across the road, watching my customer who was already parked and waiting for me. 

The two policemen watched with interest as we both got out of our cars, money changed hands and car boots opened.  Large boxes were moved from van to car and then both boots were firmly shut.  As we got back in our cars, the police car started to move off as well and we were eagerly waiting for them to come and arrest us for dealing in unpasteurised goat's milk.  Great disappointment when the car turned the other way and went off down the road!! 

Bad behaviour in the parlour (again)

Before starting milking we separate those who need milking from those who don't.  So, all the goatlings (goat teenagers) and dry goats are moved to one side of the barn and all the milkers are moved to the other side so that they can all pass through the parlour.

Here's KiKi waiting patiently at the gate to come in:

And here's young David demonstrating how to milk a goat!

As the girls leave the parlour, they go down a ramp and along the outside of the barn to join all the goatlings etc on the other side. This ensures that goats only come through the parlour once and that we only have those who need milking. Nice theory ...

At the end of the parlour there is a small wooden gate which is opened to let the goats out onto the ramp.  And it is here that the theory falls down ...  certain goatlings have discovered that they can run UP the ramp from the outside and into the parlour as the gate is opened to let the others out.

The main culprit is young Bassey (as in Shirley) who appears regularly at the outer gate:

She stands and waits for the gate to be opened and then seizes her chance as she barges through in the opposite direction to everyone else going out:

The main reason for doing this, apart from annoying the humans, is to check that there is no food left in any of the food troughs in the parlour.  And so, she works her way along every trough just in case ...
 
And no picture of the parlour would be complete without Tinky facing the wrong direction:
 
 

Feathered friends

One of the nice things about doing new markets is the opportunity to meet a whole load of new and interesting people.  One of my London markets has introduced me to one such lovely customer - Sara - and her beautiful African Grey Parrot, GeeGee ('pronounced like 'gee' in 'gee whiz' and she DOES whiz about a lot' says Sara).

I thought that as GeeGee also loves goat's cheese (and therefore counts as a customer!) that she should appear on our blog.  And it makes a change from pictures of goats!!

So, here she is - meet GeeGee Parrot (also known as 'She-Who-Flies' and 'Miss Featherface'):

Sara keeps an old souffle dish full of water which makes a perfect ducking dish for GeeGee.  The only problem is that Sara often gets as wet as the parrot!

It would also seem that she is great at helping with preparing dinner.  Whilst Sara is cooking, GeeGee gives a hand with the vegetable peelings - here she is with a bit of parsnip:

Hopefully, we will have more pics of GeeGee in the future ... When Sara was younger she used to live in Kent and had a goat of her own called Victoria - hence her liking for our goat's milk.  Now she lives in the town, she can't have a goat but it looks like GeeGee has plenty of character to keep Sara occupied!

Feeding time for the animals

As I have mentioned on several previous occasions, goats are not slow in coming forward when there is fresh hay to be had.  After milking all the hayracks are refilled with fresh straw and hay and when the gate is opened, it is like the first day of the January sales!  It is always wise to stand well back and wait for the crowd to dash past. 

One of the first books I ever read on goatkeeping contained a section on housing and the author mentioned that all doorways should be wide enough to accomodate even the largest goat entering at speed.  This always comes to mind when I see the girls running to their hay racks, udders swinging.  Even when they are hugely pregnant, they do not seem to slow down at all - those poor kids inside must get thrown around and squashed all the time!

David and I always joke that it's almost as if they have never seen hay before.  To a visitor, it would certainly look like we never bother to feed them as they are SO eager to get to those hay racks.

This morning, after I had survived the onslaught of a mass of large hungry goats pushing past me, I decided to take a few pictures.  And so here they are, stuffing themselves at the various hay racks:

There's that naughty black goat in the hay rack again!

I still have a number of little meat boys waiting to go to the butcher.  But, as our butcher has recently burnt his arm very badly and is currently off work, it looks like they may well be spending Xmas with us.  I could take them to another abbatoir but that would mean a longer journey for them and I am not particularly happy to take them anywhere else.  And so we wait!

Here are the little chaps eating their breakfast this morning:

Look at those lovely horns!  We don't bother having the meat boys disbudded like the other kids (no point and saves on the huge vet bill!) and so they grow the most beautiful horns.  I do love my little men - they are SO handsome!

Where there's muck ....

There is even more muck!!!!

David has spent the last 3 days mucking out the entire barn so that everyone is clean and ready for the winter.  Still, he got to play with his new dung fork grab thing, so he was a happy boy.  Amazing what keeps men amused :-)

And here he is toddling along in his tractor in the sunshine spreading some of last year's muck onto one of our fields:

And while everyone is starting to get ready for Xmas, it would appear that my Xmas cactus has got a bit ahead of itself:

In full flower with 5 weeks to go.  I think it has peaked too early - there won't be a single flower left by Xmas Day!

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous for the past few days and the goats have been making the most of the sunshine.  Even though the big chaps are now indoors in the barn, we can open up the big front gates so that they can enjoy the warm sunshine.  It also gives the place a bit of an airing as the barn is getting a bit 'manly' with all those hormones still raging.

One of my jobs tonight is to go through my mating list and see who is left.  We have to make a final decision on who is running through the winter (ie, not being put into kid) and then I need to organise my scanning man to come and check who is actually pregnant and how many kids we can expect next year.  And then I can book my nervous breakdown ...

Whilst looking for some more goatie pics to post on the blog, it suddenly occurred to me that I have never posted any of Ben and Nell, our two Border Collies.  It would seem that I haven't got any up to date shots of them either - they are now about 18 months old.  So, for the moment, here are a couple of pictures taken when they were puppies:

Ben - fast asleep at a couple of weeks old

Nell and Ben

 



JoJo has a boyfriend!

JoJo is our beautiful Anglo-Nubian goatling. 

Johari, to give her her full name, is our only Anglo Nubian.  She came to us last year as a kid from one of the top UK breeders.  Although she looks very different to everyone else in the goatshed, she fitted in extremely well and has made lots of friends.  The other kids did look at her a little strangely when she first arrived and many of them were fascinated by those lovely long ears.  But now, everyone has got used to her and they no longer stare at her or chew her ears!

As I got out of my van early this morning and walked towards the barn, I could hear an extremely loud noise.  At first it sounded like someone had their head stuck in something and so I ran to the door and switched on the light only to find young JoJo standing up on the gate, wagging her tail and bawling her head off at the boys in the next barn.

We do not possess an Anglo-Nubian male and, although we could happily use one of our own boys on JoJo, we wanted to keep her kids as pure ANs. So, after milking I immediately called up another goatkeeper some distance away and booked JoJo in for a little amorous liaison later in the day.

However, Friday is my main delivery day and so David drew the short straw of having to load our young madam into the trailer and take her for a little drive.  Apparently she behaved herself impeccably and was rather taken with young Dazzel.  Here she is, meeting him for the first time as he peers over his door at her:

And here is the man himself ... just a kid at the moment but he will grow into a fine big male in a couple of years:

Hopefully, everything will go according to plan and in the spring we will have some small black kids with very long ears!

Ginger - the Houdini of the goat world

Once upon a time there was a very naughty goat called Ginger.  When she was very small, she would slide out through the bars of her pen and run around the barn.  She would jump in all the feed troughs and sleep on the lucerne bale, until a human came and found her and put her back in with her friends.

The humans thought that as Ginger got older and larger, she would not be able to fit through the gaps in the bars any longer, but still she continued to squuueeeeeeezzzze herself out through the gate.  She would run around the barn, eat all the best hay from the large stack of bales and would then curl up in a corner and go to sleep.

As Ginger grew larger and fatter (due to all the extra hay that she ate) she began to develop a small udder, even though she had never had kids.  She started to produce milk and so the first 'maiden milker' in the herd had to join in with the routine of milking twice every day.  The humans thought that having an udder would definitely stop her climbing out of her pen.  Just goes to show that humans know nothing ...

Ginger has now grown so fat that she can no longer squeeze through the gap in the gate.  But as she has also now grown taller, she just climbs OVER the gate instead.

And here she is ...

Checking the coast is clear

Getting into position

And over she goes!

Apparently, it's all my fault.  According to David, Ginger only climbs out when she hears my van drive into the farm yard.  And whenever I open the door to the barn, there she is waiting for me - usually with a large mouthful of something to keep her strength up!

Ginger is now about 18 months old and has been mated, ready to kid next spring.  Many goats change character completely once they have kidded - they calm down and become much more friendly.  It will be very interesting to see what happens to Ginger.  Genetics are very powerful though and so I suspect that we will just end up with a couple of small very naughty kids who are taught escape tactics by their mother!