Thursday March 29, 2007

I got a call this morning from the woman who sold us our goats. She had a baby goat she didn't need to keep and wondered if we wanted it, since our pygmy goat's baby did not survive. I didn't feel the woman owed us anything - this is just part of what happens with animals sometimes. She was certainly not obligated to do anything to make it up to us. But she said she wanted to give it to us anyway, and I was very pleased to take it. I drove to her house and picked it up. It is a very beautiful little girl, one week old, and very people friendly. It rode on my lap all the way home.

I am hoping that the pygmy will adopt it, though that will be tricky. For one thing, most mothers reject other animals' babies. For another, the kid is a full-sized goat baby and will have to get down on her knees to nurse out of that mother, since the pygmy is so small. But they seemed comfortable with each-other and I have some hope. I am keeping the in the barn for a week to give them a chance to bond. I will go down tomorrow and see if I can hold the mama and help Rambler (what Dave and I decided to name the little girl) learn to nurse off of her.

On the advice of a couple of people (and my books) I also did one other thing to help the match take. I skinned the dead baby goat and sewed on Velcro straps. Then I strapped her hide to the back of Rambler. That was the first time I have worked with a dead animal (Dave always does the butchering because I just hate that part). But the general consensus is that the match takes better if the new baby smells like the momma's baby, and I was the only one here to do the skinning. So I did.

When I went to feed the horses today, Ryder was in with the youngster's herd (he had broken his fence) and they were all scattered around (they had broken their gait). Turns out I have a three year old and a two year old that are in heat. So Ryder bread them, then chased the geldings in that herd clear out of the pasture (didn't mind the young stud colts, just the young geldings). Ugh. I spent a couple hours fixing fences, then caught all the horses and put them each in their own pastures. Then, as I was leaving (finally) I noticed the mares in Ryder's pasture all wondering out of the other end of the pasture into my neighbor's field - another fence down.

I have this summer blocked off to replace most of my fencing. But it is going to be hard to get by until then. I have help doing it come June and I am hoping I don't have to start this project on my own. But right now Ryder's sex drive is waking up and he is not particularly content to be in a herd of pregnant mares that are not coming into heat. And then he has these young horses coming into heat across the way from him. It is going to be next to impossible to keep them apart. I am going to have to do some major moving around of pastures if I am to get through this spring without unplanned pregnancies, but I so want to let my main pastures grown in well before I put horses on them! I will have to figure all this out in the next couple of days.

In the evening I tried to milk Smudge (the Pygmy goat) so that I might be able to entice Rambler to nurse, but couldn't figure out how. Loaded Rambler and Smudge in the back of my pickup and closed the cover on the bed so they couldn't jump out. Drove a mile down the road to my neighbor's who raise goats. They taught me how to nurse her and I got about 1 baby bottle full out of her (I am saving that for tomorrow - I plan to take a baby goat to town for my sister's daughter to pet, walk and fuss over. She will love feeding it a bottle). I worked on getting the baby to eat, but she wasn't hungry yet, so we will see how that goes again tomorrow.