Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Don't know why I was ever concerned about how these two would get along. Max has fallen under BossyToe's spell. Max is my self-appointed cocker spaniel stock dog. This basically means he chases the goats back in the fence when they get out. Unless one of them decides to make a "stand". In which case, Max yelps like his tail is on fire and runs back to me. A few of the goats have taken note of this behavior and more of them are giving Max the finger...or hoof...as the case may be.

I did my first disbudding today. I nabbed Rose, the smallest of the triplettes and I think I did a pretty clean job of it. It's a dreadful job. I held Rose on my lap in the porch rocker and each time she started to freak out, I'd stop and rock her. This seems to calm her down much as it does a human child. We took our time, but the screaming was terrible. When I was done, the entire herd had left the property. Even BossyToe.

Goats are smart. If torture is happening and you can leave....Leave.

No worries about Max though. He's turning into a right nice goat daddy. He's licked BossyToe from one end to the other. He's having a bit of a hard time translating dog play to goat play and I've had to remind him to be gentle. She's putting up with it. She's not thrilled about all the dog slobber all over her where Max keeps licking her.

The long underwear needed to keep me warm has just not been invented yet.

At least the sun was out today. I took my craptastic Canon A40 out and took the four photos it allows me to take before completely draining the batteries. Yet another damn thing I need to replace. I know it's time. I know in this throw away consumerism world that five years is a lot to ask of a digital camera. But I really resent that stuff doesn't last as long as I feel like it should. I've taken lots of really great photos with the damn thing and I really don't want to step onto another learning curve with another digital.

I take BossyToe's bottle and go and sit in the sun with the kids. The idea being that the triplets will eventually come around to seeing me as just another herd member and start coming up and playing with me as Bridey and BossyToe do.

I sit there and the two of them play "king of the mountain" on me. Bridey is much better at it. She stands on my shoulders like a pirate's parrot before diving off of me to twist and dance in the sun. BossyToe tries, but she's much bigger and a bit clumsy. Both follow me around the pasture twining between my legs like cats and bumping my knees with their heads.

Betsy came by today and delivered a much needed royal bale of hay. We pushed it from her pickup truck into my trailer. The goats were really excited. After she left, they swarmed around it and tore off some chunks. But they really want the alfalfa.



This is Bridey's unnamed big brother of the amazing ears. Betsy says he has great ear control. He's very Yoda that way. He was curling his lip up today while laying in the sun with his ears pricked and stretched behind him. And the great whopping white blob of a kid snuggling with him is Kidzilla. I sort of hate to get rid of Kidzilla because I just want to see how frickin' huge he's actually going to get. Rockit, these kid's granddaddy is as big as a damn pony. I'd never seen a goat that big before.

Betsy left her disbudding iron with me. There is going to be much wailing and gnashing of kid teeth here in the next day or so. But the horns must go and this is the time to do it. I watched the vet do it on Bolly and Lufu. It's going to be my first time trying it. Not fun. You have to burn the horn nubs off of their skulls. It leaves just bare bone showing when it's done right but the iron cauterizes it so there isn't any blood. The skin heals over and leaves no scar. But I'm not looking forward to it.

I'm glad it's cartoon night.

It's been a brutally cold and bitter morning. Snow and sleet have been falling intermittently. I made the decision to keep Black Doe inside and Pearlie is not happy about it at all. I'd been keeping Black Doe inside at night since she is so small. Feisty, but small. And her brother is a great whopping thing who is obviously drinking all the milk that Pearlie is making. So, Pearlie recognizes that I haven't brought Black Doe out to spend the day with her as I have been. So she's standing outside the back door blahing most pitifully.

I get Maggie up on the milk stand and milk her out. It barely yields enough for the morning feeding for Bossy Toe and Black Doe. She usually gives me a quart and a half. Her milk hasn't entirely come in yet. Hmmm. The weather is only going to get worse and Maggie is a real bitch to catch. So I get her settled on the back porch and plan to keep Kidzilla off of her so she can make enough milk for me to feed the girls. I further plan, since we are probably going to get snowed in, to keep her back there. That way I can just go out and milk her as needed.

Which means I have to go collect Kidzilla. I trudge through the snow and pick him up to bring him down to the house. He's snuggled up in the shelter. Blinkin' has her triplets all cozyed up with her. I'm not worried about the triplets at all. They were out dancing and romping in the snow this morning. Blinkin' probably has more milk than any of them. Pity that milking her is damn near impossible. But she needs all that milk for her big family.

I quickly realize where all my milk went. The little bugger must have drained her dry this morning. It feels like he weighs 20 pounds already. He's easily twice the size of the bottle babies and larger than any of the triplets. I can feel how full his tummy is. I put him in the dog crate where he immediately passed out to sleep off his milk high.

It's a real chore keeping both girls in diapers. Black Doe is so tiny that she tends to leak through hers. And Bossy Toe has to keep her onesie on or she gets out of hers. By the way, if anyone has any suggestions for naming Black Doe...I'm open to suggestions. The name of my farm is "Old Maid's Aerie"...so I like to keep sort of old fashioned, old lady themes if possible.

Posting is likely to be spotty during this cold snap. Bell South hasn't changed the phone lines up here since 1972 or thereabouts. I feel sort of snitty about this since we are paying the same for basic phone service as the rest of the southeast but are forced to use these old connections that don't work so well in bad weather. I'd be happy if I could just use dial-up at the normal 56K speed. But we are stuck at 26K. And that doesn't even work half the time. I've been meaning to write a nasty letter to Bell South about this. They take advantage since most of the people here aren't accustomed to anything different than poor phone service. The honorable thing to do would be to charge us less if they are going to continue to provide substandard service.

Bossy Toe