The plan for ultrasounding the goats didn't work out, so we did blood tests on both goats. Felicity is pregnant and due February 11, 2013. Penny's blood test came back negative, so we bred her again a couple of weeks ago. I will pull blood again in January to see if she took this time around. The blood draw went sooo much better than last time. It took seconds and amazed both my husband (who was geared up for another fainting goat episode) and myself.
Scout came back over for a visit a few days before Penny was supposed to come back into heat. Unfortunately Scout was more interested in the new alfalfa hay than in Penny. As my sister-in-law said, poor Penny, passed over for a buffet. The owner of Scout brought their other buck, Dusty over. Dusty took to the challenge much better and I'm hopeful that Penny took (got pregnant) this time. If not, we will probably look to sell her in a few months and pick up another doe that is either pregnant or milking.
Felicity is starting to get a belly on her and every now and then I can feel the kids moving in there. My preliminary guess is 2 or 3, but we will see how big she really gets. We are 8 weeks out and starting into the time where she should be gaining most of her weight. I am already seeing differences from day to day. When she started to dry up I slowly stopped milking and she has been dry for a couple of weeks now. We sure are missing our milk.
With winter here the kids (human, not goat) are not using the back yard as much so we decided to change things around a bit. We brought the fence line forward. Now the goats have most of the back yard. While goats are great at clearing brush, their hidden talent is eating fallen leaves. They munch them just like potato chips. So far this year we have not had to rake leaves yet!
Some day I will look out on my yard and not see a single toy/truck/sand box. I'm trying to enjoy the days now that my kids are young. This time will be gone too fast and my kids will grow up. So, for now, here is our totally messy back yard.
Our panel fence has worked really well. We zip tied each panel together and put them up with step-in posts. You can also see that I have attached the water buckets to the fence to give it a bit more stability. They are not galvanized, but they work great and are a fraction of the cost of cattle panels. I wouldn't want to use them for full sized goats and if they were to be used as a main fence (we have a privacy fence all around our back yard, so if they get out it's not like they will have access to a busy street) I would put them in with concreted posts.
The best part of this particular fence type is that it is totally movable. And, anyone that knows me knows that I love to rearrange!
We still have our squirrel hanging around and we have named him, Jumpy. If you are familiar with the Curious George cartoons you will recognize the name. Jumpy has gotten to the point that he will climb into our lap to get food. He will also come to our back door and beg if he gets hungry enough. I think he has fun tormenting our dog and standing just on the other side of the glass out of reach.
Otherwise, we are settling in and enjoying the Christmas season and looking forward to new kids in February!
