Goat Weights & Pictures

 This is a cell phone picture if that tells you how close he was!

Rebel really impressed me last Monday. After work we went out and herded them into a pen so that we could trim hooves, weigh them and deworm them.  As you can see from the pictures Rebel was calm and even approaching me and letting me pet him on the face even though he was trapped.  Yankee on the other hand was freaking out so bad he was throwing himself into the fence... hence why I have no pictures of him....

Look at those horns!!

We weighed Rebel, Yankee and Jasper.  Rebel was a shocker at a whopping 125lbs!!!  Wow!  Pygmy bucks are only supposed to be between 60-80lbs.  We are beginning to think maybe they are Spanish/Pygmy crosses because of their size and the twist to their horns.

This is a Spanish buck.  See the similarities?

They aren't pure Spanish though because they are half the size of a purebred, so I definitely think they have pygmy in them.  They could even be Spanish/Nigerian Dwarf.  Not sure.  I don't really care, but I definitely wasn't expecting them to weigh that much.  Yankee weighed 100 pounds so he's a bit smaller.

They get so hot with that thick hair.  I wish I could shave them, but the only clippers I have that are powerful enough are the ones I use on my parent's Yorkie.  I'm sure they don't want stinky goat hair in their clippers haha.  You might notice blood on Rebel's horns and ears... that's from the headbutting and fighting he does with Yankee.  We had to treat multiple sores on Yankee's face.  :(  He's going to be fine though.  We are going to castrate them both this fall (when the flies aren't so bad) and let them be companions to Jasper once they've calmed down.  The plan was always to castrate them, we just never got around to it... kind of like with Zep.... sheesh I fail at castrating feral animals haha.

I snapped a picture of Jasper today, but it's awful because of the sun being overhead...

Speaking of Jasper we moved him to the small chicken pen in the horse pasture so that he can get used to Rebel, Yankee, Zep and the horses through the fence.  The first thing Chrome did was chew on him and try to pick him up by the tail...... sigh..... luckily he has lost interest and doesn't pester him anymore.  Sorry no pictures because it was raining.

Anyway the reason we moved him is because he's getting to the age where he could breed the does so he can't be out with them.  We also need to tame him down and that's impossible in a heavily wooded acre lot.  We also weighed him and he's 63 pounds at three months old!  Not bad!  :)

We are going to catch, weigh and deworm the girls this weekend.  We're also probably going to build a small catch pen inside their yard because Coral is so wary she won't let the younger does anywhere near us.  We're going to lock the younger does up until we can get them tame and eating some feed.  I don't want them to all be feral because that makes monitoring and birthing so much more difficult!  Not to mention moving them between lots.

So I'll update again tomorrow.

We have goats!! Again. ;)

We finally bought some does!!!  I've been hinting about it on my other blog, showing the fence building in progress.  One reader actually guessed correctly.  :D

We missed having our small herd of goats like we had before hubby got hurt.  Since his back has improved and he's able to do things again, we decided to go back to the breeder where we got our four original does Alyssum, Zinnia, Jasmine and Primrose to start our new herd.  We now have Coral, a four or five year old proven pureblood Boer doe and her daughter Pearl, a half Boer/half Savanna doe.  Jade and Garnet are both half Savanna.  Their other half is a Boer/dairy mix.  Topaz is one we got on a whim when we went to pick them up and I can't remember what the orange tag means, so I'll update when I get an email back from the breeder.  I decided to go with gemstones for themed names this time instead of flowers.  I'm still very sad about having to sell Jasmine and the others, so I didn't feel like doing flowers again.  I love the gemstone names so far!

We also got a buckling that we will probably use as our first year sire while we save up some money for the sire we really want (you'll have to wait for details on that one later).  His name is Jasper.  He is fullblood Boer I think.  Awaiting confirmation in the email from the breeder.  I forgot to write down some of the details in all the excitement hehe.

Jasper.

Their tags also tell what month they were born in.  If they have a 3 at the beginning they were born in March, a 4 they were born in April and so on.  It's a really great system.  Jasper doesn't have a colored tag (none of the bucklings do, that makes it easy to tell gender when wading through her herd), but we know he was born in April.  Here are the does' tag numbers and colors.

Coral - 150 - Purple - So she was born in January, but I'm not sure what year since she's the only full grown one we got.  The breeder said she's approximately 3 to 4 years old.  Purple means pureblood Boer.

Pearl - 425 - Yellow - Born 4-19-16 and half Savanna/half Boer.

Jade - 429 - Yellow -  Born 4-14-16 and half Savanna.

Topaz - 421 - Orange - Born in April, orange means 88% Boer.

Garnet - 301 - Yellow - Born 3-13-16.  Half Savanna and half Boer/Alpine.

Jasper - I forgot to write down his number, but he was born in April.  75% Boer.

Here is what a Savanna buck looks like for anyone not familiar with goat breeds.

A Savanna buck, but not their sire.

So let's start back at the beginning.  On June 5th we went to the breeder to sort through about fifty goats to decide which ones we wanted.  It was hard!!  It took a long time too, but it was so fun.  It doesn't help that they are not pets and are totally skittish of humans.  It was hard to catch them, but luckily she has a nice facility with a chute which made sorting them easier.

Coral in the chute on the first day we saw her.

Here are the rest of the pictures from June 5th that I've been dying to share with all of you.  There aren't any of Topaz because we picked her on a whim yesterday when we brought them home.

Garnet. The March baby so she was bigger than the others then.

Garnet, Pearl and Jade.

Jade.

Jade.  Doesn't she have the cutest face??

Jade and Pearl.

Garnet.

Garnet and Pearl.  I LOVE Pearl's face!

We were in love with Pearl the moment we set eyes on her.

She is so cute!!!  Coral is her mother.

Garnet.  I love her face markings.  :)

Jade.

Jasper.

Jasper.

Compare those pictures to this one from yesterday...

He grew a LOT in a month!

Now below are the pictures from yesterday.

On the way home in the goat hauler in the back of dad's truck.  Goat pile!!

Dad drove us to the breeder's farm because he'd never been there and wanted to see the place and meet her.  It was fun having him along for the three hour and twenty minute round trip.

When we got home Pearl was the first to stand up and peek out to see what we were doing.  :)

The pen we built is an acre of goat heaven.  It has lots of trees and brush so it's very difficult to get pictures of them, because they are terrified of humans and hide from me.  I will spend lots of time with them and get them tamed down though.  Jasmine was the same way when I got her and I eventually had her walking on a leash and taught her to shake hands.

Coral is very wary and dictates where all the babies go.  

She's going to make it difficult to tame them...

Running away because they saw me.  I thought this was cool even though it's blurry.

Garnet and Coral.

Garnet has opinions hehe.

Garnet and Pearl.  This one shows how much Pearl grew in a month!

Pearl and Garnet a month ago.

Last one is one of my favorites.  Coral and Jade.

I can't wait to turn them into pets hehe.  I am worried that Coral may never tame down since she's grown, but I'll definitely try.  Goats are greedy and the power of food wins over the most stubborn usually.  :)  Well that's our new goat herd!  Don't worry we still have Rebel and Yankee, but they are staying in the horse pasture because I don't want them breeding these girls.  We also caught Jasper and put him in the small pen by the barn so he can get used to the pygmy boys and horses.  He will go out there with them until it's time to breed the does.  Anyway I'll stop rambling. 

Garden Update

 Our first pumpkin from the garden!!!

It is 24.6 pounds!  It is a Yellow of Paris pumpkin so it's not supposed to be orange.  Isn't it awesome??

The garden has done so well.  I'm so pleased with it.  I've lost count of everything, but we've gotten at least 38 acorn squash, 12 butternut squash, around 20 spaghetti squash, a bunch of yellow squash, cucumbers and zucchini,  as well as miscellaneous other squash.  We've gotten a tomato, a bunch of okra, two watermelons and four eggplants.  That's only the beginning.  There will be a lot more to come. Check out these pictures.

See the acorn squash that was eaten on?  That's from Scuff, our resident box turtle....

Luckily he decided he's not really a fan of them because he hasn't eaten any others, but he LOVES cucumbers.  Did I ever tell you guys the story about Scuff and how he got his name?  I got in my car back in April to head to work.  As I was backing out of my parking spot I went over a big bump!!  I freaked out thinking I'd run over the cat.  I jumped out of my car and ran around to the passenger side.  It was a box turtle!  I'd run over him!!  I moved him to the grass and watched him for a minute. He popped out of his shell and seemed fine.  I figured I'd never see him again and was worried he would still die for some reason.  To my surprise I've seen him several times.  Once was in the garden and another time I saw him tipping over the cat's bowl to eat the cat food.  That little turtle is living the life!  I'm glad he's okay.  I can't even get mad about the cucumbers he's eaten because I'm just glad I didn't kill him by running over him!!

Anyway back to the garden.  The blueberry bush and apple tree are producing like crazy but I forgot to get pictures.  Check out the gourds.  They went from about six inches tall to almost four feet in about a week!

 I have to stand on my tip toes and hold the camera as high as I can reach to get a picture of the whole garden now that everything has gotten so tall hehe.

 More food from the garden.  It's so weird seeing yellow acorn squash because I'm so used to the green ones from the store.  They are soooo good though!!!  The spaghetti squash is a million times better than the ones at the store too.

 I should have rotated those last two.  You can see the tomato and okra in that last picture.  I have missed gardening!!  It's so fun to produce our own food again.  :D