You've Come A Long Way Baby

This yearling doe spends a lazy summer day with her friends in the goat pasture. Some of you might remember her from her birth pictures. She sure has changed in the last year hasn't she?

A Hopeful Heart

I don't think I have taken as much time as I should in the past to look for the special little things in life. I am trying to change that and to take the time to appreciate all the beauty in the world around me. Like a beautiful sunrise, morning dew shining on the grass, or the way the tree leaves rustle in the wind.

I do know one person who knows how to appreciate the special little things in life and in the heart of nature. In fact she has a wonderful and interesting blog called Random Hearts dedicated to it. Clytie was kind enough to feature a picture of a goat I raised on her "Guest Heart Thursdays" blog post yesterday. This goat's registered name is "Chance's Hopeful Heart" but we always called her Heart for short. Can you figure out why? Heart was not alone on Clytie's blog this week, you should really check out the other animals with heart on her blog.

And what about Heart the goat? She is doing well, Heart and her two young kids went to live in a wonderful home and now belongs to a couple of the nicest people you could ever meet, sisters Deb and Dee. Who also own Heart's two younger half sisters as well, so she went to live with family you could say!

I do still have some of Heart's other sisters and one of her doe kids from 2009 on the farm. This is an old picture of Heart's doeling taken last year when she was a kid. I can't believe I don't have a more recent one. I had not even planned on keeping her last year but she has turned out to be such a nice goat. She isn't going anywhere now!

Heart's mother Hope is also still on the farm, you may remember her as the alfalfa loving goat.... definitely not her most flattering picture! So I promised Hope the goat I would make it up to her by posting a much nicer picture of her on the blog, one where she isn't stuffing her face with alfalfa anyway. Three generations of great goats, Grandmother Hope, Daughter Heart and now Granddaughter....shoot she still needs a name! I am terrible.

Hope as a three year old.

Hello, I Am New! - Farm Photo of the Week

While looking through some pictures that I took last spring of the new goat kids I came across this one and thought it was just too cute not to post. This kid was just born less than 2 hours before this picture was taken and she seems to be saying "Look at me, I am new and cute...look out!" Got to love those baby goats! This Boer doe is out of one of my favorite does "Hope" and from our buck Joker. She went to a great new home this summer and I hope she will be as good and productive of a doe for her new owners as her mother Hope has been for us.

I Got My Eye On You - Farm Photo of the Week

"You better not be thinking about jumping up on MY old toolbox. This is my toolbox. Got it? I am keeping my eye on you..."

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!

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.

The Lap Goat

Peeps thinks she is a lap goat.

She likes nothing better than to take a nap or relax and chew her cud all cuddled up in a friend's lap. Peeps won't be a lap goat forever though because she is a cross of two very large breeds of goats. See, her daddy is a big, burly Boer buck and her mom is a long, tall Nubian doe so Peeps is destined to out grow her position as resident lap goat someday, but for now she is milking it for all it is worth.

Peeps was born on Easter, in fact that is how she got the name Peeps. I was there to get some cute baby pictures of her right after she was born.

Earlier this past Spring my husband made it very clear the goat herd size was already as large as it should be, so we would not be keeping hardly any of this years doelings. I had some tough decisions to make but it seemed to make sense to both of us to sell the cross breed doelings first. The fact that I already had her mother, and both of her half sisters in the herd made Peeps seem like a logical choice for one of the doelings to sell and I even posted about it. The word must have got out to Peeps about that because she really turned up the charm. It wasn't long until she had my husband wrapped around her little hoof and he eventually changed his mind about selling her. I was secretly glad because she had wormed her way into my heart as well with her friendly personality and funny antics. So Peeps is going to hang here with us, as our farm mascot, resident lap goat and hopefully a nice backyard milk goat someday.

Peeps!

This is Peeps. She is a goat, a baby goat actually so she is called a kid. She is half Nubian and Half Boer. I guess that would make her a Boubian? Or would it be a Nuber? She is also a female baby goat so she is also called a doeling but I tend to call her a pest. Yes, Peeps is a pest that is always under foot but in the best, most adorable way possible.

The only decent picture I could get of her was while she was napping because she doesn't really have any concept of personal space, so unless she is napping ... extreme close-ups of her nose is about the only pictures I can get of Peeps. She has a need to be the center of attention, maybe she let the fact she was born on Easter go to her head so now she thinks she is the most special kid in the pasture. Of course she should get our complete and total attention and affection.

Most of the goat kids are friendly but for some its more in a "Hey, I wonder how far I can jump kick off of this person" sort of way. (though that phase wears off when they get older) I think those kids tend to reduce us just to another toy or as a piece of hair to chew but Peeps really seems to enjoy the company of people. She especially likes to have her chin and the sides of her nose rubbed. Her mom Dym is the same way, it must be the Nubian in her. It never fails as soon as Peeps notices I am in the pasture, here she comes! She will stand up and put her knees up against my leg, stretching her head and neck up as far as she can reach. "Rub my chin! Rub my chin!"... I always give in. This is a habit that needs to not be reinforced but then she gives you those sleepy doe eyes and who has the heart to ignore her?

It isn't just me she likes, she is an equal opportunity attention hound; as far as she is concerned the world revolves around Peeps and who wouldn't want to rub her chin? Every visitor to the farm is there just too see her. She will put her little hooves up on any person, especially if the pasture is muddy and they are wearing nice pants. Nobody escapes the Peeps pasture without her personal little hoof print signature. Nobody believes me that she was never a bottle baby, but she wasn't. It isn't a bottle she is looking for when she comes running, it is just some human company and a good old chin rub. She isn't the most fancy goat kid in the pasture but Peeps stood out this year because she is Miss Personality all the way.

I wish I could keep them all but I can't and since this is a working farm I can't base my decisions on personality alone, not when I already have her mother and two half sisters in the herd. Our herd size is based on how much pasture we have available and we are pretty much at capacity for the amount of pasture we have fenced off at this time. So if Peep stays, that means someone else would have to go. She is going to make someone a nice dual purpose goat someday. Her two half sisters from the same mother and a different Boer buck are both fair backyard milk goats and always produce the fastest growing market wethers every year.

Peeps the Pest did grab a little piece of my heart this year so it won't be easy to let her go but sometimes life on a farm is about making difficult decisions for the good of everyone, including Peeps. For that reason Peeps is for sale and she is looking for an appropriate, special home where there is other goats and she will get lots of attention and chin rubs. If you would like the position give me a call. Peeps will be conducting interviews the middle of next month....just don't wear new pants.

Missing You

I had to post an update, I am in full blogging withdraws here with no relief in sight. Our Internet service still has not been repaired and I am still making do with only a few minutes of dial-up usage each day. It has not been down that long, it just seems like it to me because the truth is I miss sharing stories of our life and farm through blogging but that isn't what I miss the most. What I miss the most has been not being able to keep up with the great blogs that I follow. I can't help but wonder how Joanna's barn renovation is going or how Jason's new goats are doing. I really miss Alix's funny, wonderful stories and the trips to the farmer's market with Flartus & Miss Chef. I wonder how many horseback adventures with Esther across the beautiful African countryside I have missed. How are the goats on the hill or those cute chickens Kudzu & Buttercup doing? Did Miracle Eve ever kick her bottle addiction? Of course that is just to name a few of the blogs and friends I have missed. Hopefully our Internet service will be repaired soon and I will be able to catch up with everything.

Life on the farm has been going on as usual. The ground has dried up and everybody has been enjoying the sunshine and beautiful weather lately. Many people asked if any of the animals were hurt during the severe thunderstorms recently. I appreciate their concern and I am happy and very thankful to say that none of the animals were hurt or had any problems during the bad weather. We did lose a dependable old friend and I had not even realized it at the time. Apparently our Internet tower and bedroom window was not the only victims of the bad weather because the electric fence charger also fell to the fury of the storm. Lightening must have struck the fence or close to it and zapped the fence charger good. We were not able to save it and had to buy a new one. I did not realize it was not working for several days but the goats must have had their halos and angel wings on that week because not one of them got out. I am recommitted to checking the fence every day again.

Most of the garden is coming along, even with the late start it got because of all the rain. The tomatoes and peppers are growing. I planted a row of calendula for beauty and to use the petals in soap making. I have lavender in peat pots in the house to use in homemade soap as well but they are growing pretty slow. I hope they will get big enough to transplant outside soon. We are trying spaghetti squash in the garden this year, neither one of us has ever ate it before but I have heard it is actually very good and a healthy pasta alternative. I have had a heck of a time getting very many zucchini seeds to sprout though. The ones that have come up are doing great and getting huge but not very many of them came up. I have no idea what the problem is, we plant it from seed every year and it sprouts and grows with no effort at all. Corn and sunflowers were added to the garden this year as well.

There is now 26 goat kids running around the farm. The count is 10 buckling and 16 doelings born this spring. All of the does have kidded but Annie but she is playing coy. She is one I didn't actually see get bred, though she has a suspiciously large belly. No udder yet though, so maybe she is just fat. She isn't going to tell me though, not as long as she is getting those extra late pregnancy grain rations. I also have a group of does that are in with the bucks now so I expect a smaller crop of goat kids in November and December. The Whatwhat brothers are a mess, they spend all day chasing the other goat kids around with their little tongues hanging out, pawing at the air and saying "whatwhat...wwwhat". Those two baby boys are way to big for their britches and may have to be weaned a little earlier than some of the bucklings for the sake of their sisters. I am sure the doelings (and even the other bucklings) will be glad to get a break from the overly enthusiastic Whatwhat brothers.

The pictures are of the Whatwhat brothers, who will be for sale after they are weaned if anybody needs a nice young, colorful Boer buck for their goat herd. They will be registered as American Purebred Boers. (97%) They are out of a nice paint Boer doe and a black buck so they should throw lots of color that so many people like into their kids. More information will be posted on the sales page of our farm website at www.kansasboergoats.com when I am able to update the website again.

What's More Fun?

What's more fun than a barrel of monkeys? Well kids under a mineral tub of course!

New Kids on the Block

These are pictures of some of the goat kids born on the farm this Spring. Some pictures are of newborns only a few minutes old and others are of kids that are a bit older. The new kids have kept us well entertained with their playful antics. The farm is always just a little bit more fun when there are young goat kids around!

A red doeling takes her first nap in the sun after being born.

This doeling gets her first taste of milk.

DH calls this doeling Japan because she has their flag on her side.

All the kids love to play on the tree stumps.

I call this buckling "WhatWhat" because he is already chasing all the other kids around, clucking at them and acting like a little buck. When he does this it sounds like he is saying "whatwhat".

These four girls must have found something interesting.

A new doeling takes a wobbly first walk.

I never get tired of the miracle of new life on the farm.

This good mom thinks her new buckling is very special.

This young buck tried to come into the world bottom first, but according to my mom so did I so I won't hold that against him. He is a colorful young buck for sure!

Jumping on tree stumps must be a lot of fun!

No pictures please..go take some of that diva Emma...she loves the camera!

I really love this doelings markings and she is as sweet as she is pretty.

Say It Ain't So - Farm Photo of the Week

Say it ain't so...you are not going to cut up our Brush pile for firewood!

The Brush Pile and the Gourds

Sunset on the farm

Last summer we had a few black walnut trees cut down on the farm. Where they were located they would have eventually had to be cut down anyway so we decided to go ahead and have it done. The little bit of extra money from the trees really helped out at the time too. The down side is we were left with two large brush piles in the goat pasture that need to be cleaned up still. Most of it will be used as firewood as soon as some extra time can be found to cut it up and stack it. Until then, the goats are having a grand time testing their agility as they climb on the limbs and play "king of the brush pile".

These two Boer kids are having a good time playing on the tree limbs. The two larger goats behind them are the yearlings "Cherry" and "Blackberry". (You have to look close to see Blackberry after the sun goes down like this.)

A young Black headed Boer buckling holds still long enough for me to actually get a picture. This is one of Nifty's kids. Nifty is the deep sleeper that almost gave me a heart attack one morning.

Trouble's daughter Annie is really starting to look like her mom!

The birdhouse gourds and other plants were not doing well in the house so what did not get planted yesterday, I went ahead and set outside in their pots. I will plant the rest of the gourds tomorrow. I am using an old cattle panel as a trellis, it is not the prettiest thing but it was free and a good way to recycle an old, bent cattle panel into something useful again. By summer it will be covered up by the plants anyway, hopefully!

Black Velvet

Introducing "Black Velvet" to the farm and yes, she is as soft as she looks. I got the idea to name some of the new kids I will be keeping this year after favorite songs, so of course this pretty doeling had to be named Black Velvet. How often do I get the chance to name a goat after such a favorite song of mine. "Black Velvet" was number one on the charts in 1990 which dates me a bit, but it is still a great song.



Almost as good as the "Goats in the pasture" song.

We Had Easter Babies!

Happy Easter Dym!

Dym did indeed have her babies on Easter this year. This is the first time a goat has ever kidded on a holiday here at Shiloh Prairie Farm. The kids came with the rain, luckily it was nice and dry in the kidding pen but a steady rain fell on the farm all evening, flooding the backyard and forming large puddles of standing water outside the pens and sheds that evening. It was actually kind of peaceful sitting in the kidding pen listening to the rain while Dym kidded, never mind the fact I sunk up to the top of my shoe in the water outside of the door afterwords. At about 6:30pm she had a 10.5 lb doeling and a short while later she had a big 12 lb buckling. I really kind of thought she was going to have triplets but she just had two very good sized twins; which I think is great because I prefer them to have twins over anything else.

Dym's new doeling

The doeling came very quickly, in fact Dym was just checked and before I got back out there with the kidding box she had already had her. Notice the dot of color on her back? I guess that is going to be Joker's mark, because not only does he have a spot on his back like that but so far he has passed it on to almost all of his kids. The buckling took a little bit longer and was presented incorrectly with one front leg back. All I saw was one big head and one leg coming out but with a little bit of help Dym's buckling was born too. It is possible she may have been able to have him herself anyway like that but it certainly made things a lot easier on her and increased the kid's chance of survival that I was there.

Dym's new buckling

This is the reason I do like to be there when they kid, it is rare that one is not positioned right but it can happen. The one I never want to see is a kid with it's head folded back, as that is one of the hardest types of births to straighten out because their head often tends to keep folding back over whenever you let go to pull and obviously it can not be born like that. This is one of the few cases when a lamb puller can come in handy. Just a note, if you ever have to "go in" to reposition a kid the doe will need antibiotics to prevent infection.

Growing up and Twitter

One of the joys of living on a farm is the blessing of seeing how plants and animals grow and mature. Not long ago I posted about my vegetable sprouts, and I am happy to say most of them are growing by leaps and bounds. I have had to transplant many of them to larger containers already. My tomato seedlings are still spindly though. I can grow zucchini, cucumbers and most vegetables from seed like nobodies business but not tomatoes; they hate me. Tomatoes and me, it is like a bad relationship...so one sided...so disappointing. They all always start out well but then some of them will wither up and die before they ever get big enough to transplant outside in the garden. Once they are that big I have great luck growing them but it is just getting them all to that point that has been a challenge. So if anyone has any advice for growing tomatoes from seed I would love some tips while there is still hope for my poor, little tomato sprouts and me.

The goat kids are growing up fast. They look good this year and unlike the tomatoes... no love / hate relationship here! The pregnant does were due in two waves this year. The first half is over and the rest of the herd is due from now until the last week of April. The kids bounce around so much it is difficult to get decent pictures of them sometimes. I got this one at night when I caught a few of them sleeping on the overturned ramp to the milk stand.

In other news I have decided to try and get with the times and see what all this fuss about Twitter is. So if anyone would like to follow me on Twitter you can check out the sidebar of this blog and my user name is "ShilohPrairie" there. I am new to it and still figuring things out. Gosh I sound 72, not 32...shoot I mean...33, yea I tried to forget that birthday!

Edited to add: I am starting to realize today that my life might be entirely way too boring for twitter. LOL I also have a facebook page under the name Jennifer Fulton.

Rose's New Family - Goat Birth Pictures

*Warning, graphic pictures of the birth process of a goat below*

This is Rose, she is a red Boer/Nubian cross doe in our goat herd. I knew what day she was bred by our Boer buck Joker so I knew about when Rose was due to have her kids. I was keeping a close eye on her. She was checked less than two hours before and she wasn't showing the typical signs of pawing the ground, getting up and down or talking back at her stomach so I thought she might have her kids later the next morning. My 10pm check however found Rose had sneaked one by me because she already had one kid on the ground when I got there. Not that Rose needs my help but I do like to be there just in case there might be a problem and this night was rather cold as well.
I didn't miss everything though, as the water bag indicates another kid is on the way. This is Rose's second kidding, so she gets right to business giving birth to her second kid.
If you look close you can see the front legs and head of the kid. This is what you want to see, two front feet followed by the head resting above and between the front legs in a normal presentation.

A good push later and the head is out now. The hard part over, the rest is quick to follow. It looks like we have a pretty black and white paint colored kid! I was crossing my fingers and thinking pink thoughts hoping it was a doeling.
Rose is such a good mom, she starts cleaning and talking to her baby before it is even all the way out.
It is a cold night so I am sure to help Rose get her kids dried quickly so they do not get chilled. After this I dip their umbilical cords in iodine but otherwise I don't interfere so Rose and her new babies can bond.

Congratulations and good job Rose! They are both girls! What a nice looking family.
It does not take them long to stand up and start looking for their first milk. Rose continues to bleat and talk to them, she must be telling them how precious she thinks they are.
Now they are "punching" at the air and Rose's stomach looking for her teats so they can nurse. You are so close...getting warmer...
Nope, that is her armpit..no milk there....but neither kid gave up and it did not take them long at all to find their first meal. With full bellies they laid down and napped for a bit. Rose passed her afterbirth and got some well deserved warm molasses water which she drank down with enthusiasm. Mama Rose and her two new girls are doing great!

*Pictures can be made bigger by clicking on them.