Farmer Life 168

We made the difficult decision to rehome some of our goats.  We've been contemplating it a while with Yankee because Rebel was bullying him and it was impossible to tame Yankee, when Rebel wouldn't let him close to us.  We banded Yankee in February and then today gave him to a friend who wanted a pet and who has more time to work with him than we do.  We will more than likely be banding Rebel at some point as well because we don't have plans to ever breed him and even though he's a lot friendlier than Yankee ever was, I think he would still tame down a lot more as a wether.    Pearl and Jade also went to a new home.  We originally got these goats from a commercial Boer herd as brush goats to help clean off our property, but after being introduced to the Myotonics and Crockett in particular we have fallen in love with the breed and we want to change direction toward breeding purebreds.  That being said we had too many commercial does and these two never...

Amethyst got her first hoof trim on Saturday and she fell asleep in my arms!! I was holding her while hubby trimmed her hooves.  She had just got done meeting and playing with Apatite and was worn out, so she drifted off to sleep in my arms.  So adorable!! Here's a video of her sleeping. Direct Link Here is a picture of her hoof about halfway done.  One side is mostly trimmed and the other side is untouched. She's a good girl.

We finally got to bring Apatite home today!!  In case you missed my earlier post, Apatite is the pure Myotonic buckling we bought as our future herd sire, since we lost Crockett.  He is nine weeks old and just weaned last Wednesday.  His breeder drove several hours to deliver him because she was taking her kids to a gymnastics meet in the area.  We brought him home and put him in the creep feeding pen inside Coral and Amethyst's pen so that they could all get used to each other. Apatite is skittish of people because he was raised in a herd and fairly hands off.  She has too many kids born each year to spend a ton of time taming them.  He actually fainted twice so he has a high rate of myotonia.  I didn't manage to get it on video, but I bet I'll be able to sometime.  You can YouTube fainting goats if you've never seen one.  I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  It's sad and funny at the same time. It doesn't hurt them though. Anyway Am...

First off, sorry all the pictures are blurry.  Not sure why... cell phones meh. Today was Amethyst's first trip outside of the barn (to our fenced front yard) without her mom, well at all actually.  I love how curious and brave she is.  A lot of almost six week old goat kids would be crying up a storm if they were separated from their dam.  Amethyst is very confident with us as her "herd" though and loves going exploring.  Coral can't go with us because she's still to wild and would be impossible to catch.  Enjoy the pictures.  She only stayed out for about five or ten minutes.  We want to keep the trips short and sweet for now.  Eventually I'll finish her leash training and we will go for walks, but that will probably be after she is weaned.  For now she gets to enjoy being a baby.

Amethyst is five weeks old and weighs twenty two pounds. She is such a chunk!  I wanted to get some nice conformation shots so we can see how she changes, but she does not stand still so hubby started playing the head butting game. It was so cute!!  Keep in mind I do NOT recommend playing this game with baby goats because once they are grown they can seriously hurt you if they think head butting is a game.  I'm full aware of the risks and willing to pay the price for my stupidity should it come to that.  We don't do this very often though, so I don't think she will be a problem.  The jumping up needs to be stopped though.  That's getting annoying.  Anyway, enough rambling, here's the video. Direct Link Isn't she adorable?  He super ninja kicks off the table crack me up.  I love it.  Here are the rest of the photos. I normally don't like pictures of them looking away from the camera, but this one shows her "racing stripes" on the back of ...