Farmer Life 168

Sorry there are no pictures, but here is a video of Amethyst playing at three weeks.  She is so cute and bouncy and energetic! Direct Link She weighed 15.7 pounds at three weeks.  I love this baby goat!

I am SO behind on posts, that I'm going to back post some to get caught up to what is currently going on.  In the latter part of February we enclosed the other side of the barn to make another area to keep pregnant goats.  Hubby built a pen attached to it.  We moved Garnet and Topaz into this area because their due dates are March 7th and March 13th.  Sorry the pictures are dark. Goats can easily give birth out in the pasture, but since this is our first time as well as their first time we wanted to have them where we can monitor them more closely.  The other reason is because we are trying to tame them all down.  Coral is still pretty feral, but Garnet is coming along great!  She will even approach and let us pet her. Topaz is a total pet as usual. Above you can see where we are using the old chicken nest boxes as a hay rack.  It works out pretty well! That started the long, impatient wait for more babies..... Oh and here is a picture of the pen ...

First up, that is not blood on the noses of my goats.  It is molasses from their goat tubs.  It's so ugly, but they sure do love the extra protein and calories in the winter.  :D First an update.  We put Garnet in the barn because she is due to have her kid(s) soon, but she was so distressed being alone that we went ahead and put Topaz up with her even though she has a ways to go yet.  They get along really great so I don't think it will be a problem having them together.  The side of the barn they are on is twice the size of the stall where Coral and Amethyst are (across the hall) too.  They are settling in well, enjoying their extra feed and hay that they don't have to fight for. We were feeling sorry for Jasper, Jade and Pearl though because their herd has dwindled a lot, so we let them out into the yard to free range today while we were working outside.  So all of the pictures of those three are out in the yard.  Enjoy the hodge podge. Th...

Amethyst is two weeks old!  She already weight thirteen point four pounds. My husband works at a school and the teachers sometimes throw things out that are still perfectly good.  He snagged this table and Amethyst LOVES it! This picture is blurry, but so cute!  I can't believe I got her in mid jump.  Sometimes cell phones are nice lol.  Below is a short video of her playing on her table.  I'll have to get a better one some other time. Direct Link I also got a close up video of her face so you can see her pretty eyes.  They are mostly blue with some brown mottling.  Her eyes make me think of her sire Crockett.  I miss him, but I'm so happy I have Amethyst to remember him by. Direct Link I love this baby goat!  I forgot how much fun they are and how attached I get to them so quickly.  I'm going to have to be careful not to get attached to the boys since we will be selling them.  Well besides Apatite of course.  I'll totally...

 While we were busy last weekend with goat herd maintenance and building birthing stalls, we also caught Jasper and weighed him again.  At ten months old he's finally 105 pounds!  That's not huge compared to Boers from certain blood lines, but these guys are from a commercial meat herd, not fancy show bloodlines, so I think that's a decent weight.  I was hoping he'd reach 100lbs before he turned a year old.  While weighing him I snapped some pictures for you.  Cute face!  His nose is all covered in minerals hehe.  Looking good.  he's growing a beard and really starting to look so grown up. He wasn't happy about being caught and haltered, but he does eat out of our hands still.  I wish I had to time to spend taming all of them.  Too bad they don't all tame themselves like Topaz lol. Just for comparisons sake, here are some older pictures in chronological order.  Also below is a selfie I took with him back in January that I don't...

I'm so excited!  We put down a deposit on this guy on Saturday!!  He is a purebred registered Myotonic buckling (same breed that Crockett was).  He was born on 1-13-17, so it will be another month before we can make the looooooooooong drive to go pick him up (really wish there were local Myotonic breeders lol).  Since she hadn't sent his papers in yet we got to pick out his name and we decided to call him Apatite, sticking with our gemstone (and minerals) theme, since goats are always hungry it seems fitting hehe.  I'm worried people will think I'm misspelling appetite, if they've never heard of Apatite the mineral, but oh well.  His full name is Apatite For That and it's a play on the saying "I've got an app for that" since my husband is an IT guy. Isn't he adorable???  We had the choices narrowed down to three and it literally took hours to decide, but I think we made the right choice.  The choices were between him (he's a twin), or a sin...

Yesterday we opened up the door that leads to the small pen outside for Coral and Amethyst.  So yesterday was baby's first day out!! Coral didn't want to come out because I was in the pen, but Amethyst got brave and came out on her own.  Coral eventually came out.  She was on high alert! Amethyst approached me out in the pen.  I was afraid the extra freedom would make her skittish like her mom, so I was very happy she came over to be for some scratches.  She had so much fun playing outside! Here is the video.  Fair warning, you might want to turn your sound down.  I'm not used to recording with a phone and there is a lot of LOUD snapping, popping and other noise from me handling the phone and taking snapshots during the video.  The noise isn't important to enjoy watching her play though. :) Direct Link I hope you are enjoying Amethyst as much as I am.  She is so much fun!  I have big news that I'll share tomorrow so make sure to check ba...