What? It's not September anymore? Oh, that must be why my head is still spinning.
What a month! It has been so crazy busy. Between school, soccer, ballet, canning, school, soccer, bal....oh, right. Let's just say, it's been crazy.
One of the things that has taken up some of our time was getting Penny bred. The plan was to breed Penny so that she would freshen (give birth and start producing milk) late winter/early spring. It so happened that both girls ended up bred. Oops.
Felicity was showing absolutely no signs of being in heat, so I thought we would throw Scout (the buck) in with both of them and then I would pull Felicity out if she started to get romantic. Alas, 30 seconds after the introductions she and Scout were done and snuggling while smoking a cigarette.
The plan is to ultrasound them in 6-8 weeks to see if they took (actually got pregnant) and see how many babies are in there. If they both took the due dates will be February 12th (Felicity) and 13th (Penny).
Here is the dude himself:
His name is Scout and he is also a Nigerian Dwarf goat. So far all of his babies have been born with blue eyes, so we are anticipating blue eyed babies too.
When male goats go into rut (breeding season) they think that the ladies swoon at the smell of their pee. Unfortunately they are right. So, the bucks pee on themselves (and please don't ask me to explain how this is accomplished). All over, but with special care given to making sure that their head/face/beard is especially pungent. Scout normally has white ears. As you can see in the first picture, they are not white at this time of year. Eewwww.
Otherwise, he is quite a cutie and has a rather sweet personality.
We are also working on cleaning out the shed and converting it over to being a barn. We (read: my sweet hard-working husband) got everything (mostly) out of the shed and stowed in the garage this weekend. The next step is to paint the floor since it is wood and we don't want to rot it out. Then we will divide it (half for the goats and half for storage/milking area) and fence the new goat area. It will be nice to have a bigger covered space for milking and delivering kids in February. The plan is to also move the chickens into the same area and the goats and chickens will share the new "pasture" space. That should help cut down on the amount of chicken poo that I have to clean off my patio each day.
