Farmer Life 168

I'm so behind on goat updates.  At the beginning of October (10/2), we put the breeding harness ( link here for a description ) on Crockett and took him over to the doe pen.  It was time for him to start making babies!! I don't think I ever mentioned it, but we put Coral in the pen with Crockett shortly after his negative test results came back.  So she was bred on September 5th.  That means she will have a February baby just like she was!  The reason we didn't breed the others is because they were too young.  They have to be a certain age or weight before breeding.  We were going to wait until November, but we decided to put him out in October since it could take a few weeks for them to come into heat.  I don't mind March or April babies because when they start having them too late in the spring you have issues with parasites.  Earlier is better.  Crockett was so happy to get out in the big pen with the does.   He was more worried ...

Jasper is doing great.  We moved him out into the big pasture with the horses, donkey and Rebel and Yankee several months ago.  He is doing really well out there.  Rebel and Yankee are obsessed with him, but he holds his own and I'm sure he will be bossing them around in no time.  He's now seven months old and we weighed him on Thanksgiving at 83lbs.  :)  Enjoy all of the pictures. He still has such a baby face, but his beard is growing and his  body is chunking up and starting to look like a buck.  That baby face!  Being Shadow's shadow hehe.  He was staring up at the pine tree branches in longing hehe.   So he came over to me, begging.  I obliged hehe.  Goofy goat! You can see his baby beard in this one.  Our baby boy is growing up. That's all for today's update.

I wasn't thinking last weekend when I scheduled the posts about Jack and I scheduled one for Thanksgiving day, so my Thanksgiving post is a day late hehe.  I spent Thanksgiving hanging out with family and playing with the animals.  I got a bunch of photos of the critters, so for this post you get a cat update as well.  :D  After all I am thankful for my rainbow of kitties.  That's what I call them when they greet me at the door every morning making circles around my feet and they are all different colors so they make a rainbow. Emi and Pharaoh teasing Jackal.  It is eerie how much Shadow looks like Gray Kitty!! Here are some old pictures of Gray Kitty. I don't have pictures of her at the same age.   Shadow is darker, but not as dark as that picture makes her look.   I have to double take all the time, thinking I'm seeing Gray Kitty, when it's actually Shadow. I wish I could get pictures of them beside each other, but they don't like each other.......

 We always knew Jack would need a new cage because there is no way a squirrel could happily live in a small rabbit cage.  I had the great idea of converting our old double decker chick brooder into a squirrel cage. This is what we started with.  My dad built it.  It had circles cut out of the doors for ventilation and it had wiring inside of it for heat lamps.  My favorite part is dad built it on stilts because my whole family is tall and most brooders are too short or they go on tables with top access which is awkward. We had to take all of the wiring out because that's dangerous for a squirrel.  We also added more windows on the sides and we cut a hole in the floor so he could use both levels.  We also built a feeding shelf because squirrels like to eat up high and he would be less likely to soil his food. Cute out holes on each level on both sides for windows. Put wire on them. In the top I hung a bucket for his nest and propped branches up so he co...