The Agility Goat

I found this video on YouTube and I think it is amazing. This young lady clearly has a lot of patience and has worked with and trained this goat very well!

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Thanksgiving thoughts are the kind of thoughts that we should have all year long. For it is the folks with thankful hearts whose lives are filled with song. We should take time for kindness to those we hold most dear,and just extend a helping hand to others through the year. Let's set aside some quiet time and share it with a friend. For friendships brings a special joy and pleasure without end. So may the blessings of this day that I would ask for you, now fill you with Thanksgiving Peace that lasts the whole year through!"

Quoted from - http://www.thanksgiving-day.org/thanksgiving-day-thoughts.html

I would very much like to wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving. I hope you have a wonderful holiday with your family. In many ways this has been a particularly tough year for us but I don't forget all of the things I have to be thankful for. I am most thankful for my husband and family and my treasured friends. I am also thankful every day for our farm and all our animals that fill each day with laughter and companionship. There is so much to be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving!

You Stink So Good

"Oh no, You stink better!" Or at least that is the conversation I imagine when I watch this video, or maybe they just had really itchy faces that day.

For those that don't know these are both male goats, called bucks. They do have a distinctive musky odor when they are in rut, (I don't find it offensive, it is just a farm smell to me. Some bucks have a stronger bucky smell than others.) however the female goat (known as a "doe") does not smell at all any time of the year, well not unless she has been in a pasture with a smelly buck that has been rubbing all over her! ;-) They are very clean and in fact our dogs have more of an odor than the female goats do. Our hands do not smell and are not dirty after petting the does.

Our Boer bucks do not have too strong of an odor as far as bucks go when they are in rut, now we did own a Pygmy cross buck years ago that did! That boy would make your eyes water and peel paint straight off the barn wall with his bucky aroma, or buck funk as I like to call it... but the does went crazy over him! It is the best, most attractive cologne in the world to them.

Wait For Me! - Farm Photo of the Week

This is a picture of some of the goat herd headed back down to the house from the big pasture early this past Spring. One of my favorite does, Paint Party is in the lead with one of the WhatWhat brothers, the red doe behind them is Cherry and if you look further back you can see a young, black Boer kid who really did not want to be left behind! I think if she would have ran any faster or those big, long Boer ears would have got to flapping any more she might just have taken flight!

A closer picture, actually maybe she did there for a bit! :)

*Pictures can be made larger by clicking on them.

The Whatwhat Brothers Found a Home

Baby Whatwhat brothers last spring.

Some of you that have been following my blog for awhile may remember the Whatwhat brothers that I wrote about this past spring. If not you can read about them here. They are two brothers, both paint colored Boer bucklings that were born on our farm this year. Their mother is one of my favorite Boer does, her name is Dot and their father was a handsome black Boer buck.

If you are wondering why I called them the Whatwhat brothers it is because of the way they would get frisky with the other kids at such an early age. The two brothers would chase the other goat kids around, stick their tongues out and and yell "whatwhatwhat..whaaaaaat!" at them.

They were loud, obnoxious (but in a cute way), hormone driven fellows. Not really too different from some of the young boys we all went to school with at one time or another. The two Whatwhat brothers got to go to the same new home together today. This is a good thing, we have more than enough bucks on our farm and they would never have been happy seeing our other older bucks get all the girls on the farm. The brothers will be staying in Kansas and they have quite a few new girlfriends waiting for them at their new home.

The brothers today, they grew up a lot over the summer!

That Is No Way to Talk to a Lady

Actually jokes aside this is completely normal behavior for a buck goat that is trying to court a doe. It is that time of year here on the farm, the leaves have turned color, the air is crisp and the bucks are in rut. It is time to get the does in with the bucks so they will have kids in the spring. Some of them have already been bred. Joker was a greedy boy this year and wasn't happy with the 5 does he already had so he pushed the fence in and let out three or four more does with him. Looks like a couple of the does we kept this year will be kidding the end of Feb/first part of March. The rest of the does will go in with the bucks this week for April born kids.

What Is It? - Farm Photo of the Week

I wonder what it is under that log that these four young Boer does are so interested in. What do you think it is? I think Peeps, the spoiled lap goat told the other kids there is a troll that lives under the brush pile just so she could keep the whole pile of logs to herself to play on; but goats being the way goats are, that only made the other kids more curious.