Welcome Home Apatite!

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 Amethyst introduced herself.  Coral wouldn't come in the barn while we were in there.

She had the ridge of hair up on her back and was doing a lot of posturing.  She's never met another kid before today. so she was a little unsure.

 Apatite was really laid back about it because he's used to being in a big herd of all ages.

 He just wanted a friend, because he's never been alone before.

 Sorry the inside cell phone pictures aren't that great.

 He is so stinking adorable!

 He finally got curious about my phone and came over to explore.

 We were going to leave him in there a couple of days to let him acclimate, but he was extremely upset when they went out in the yard without him.  He's not used to being alone.  He was so stressed out that we decided to turn him loose and see what happened.

 Happy to be outside.

 Coral did not like him!

He immediately ran for Coral, looking for comfort from and adult goat, but she headbutted him, multiple times.  Amethyst was running from him because she couldn't figure out what he was.  This led to a bunch of frantic running around.  We decided to put the two kids in the barn safely away from Coral to let them get used to each other.  After about twenty minutes together, they were doing much better and we turned them back out.  Apatite learned quickly to give Coral her distance and she was totally fine with him after that.  She just doesn't want him trying to nurse.

Amethyst was so cute!  She was being all dramatic.  Rearing up, head butting, posturing, trying to be little miss herd queen.  Apatite was very nonchalant about it and met each of her headbutts with perfect precision.  You can tell he's three weeks older and better socialized.

 Miss dramatic!

I love her ears!  So cute!

They are so cute playing together!  I knew Amethyst would love having a playmate.  Sadly he can only stay with her for a month because at three months little bucklings are already fertile. 

 Isn't he adorable??

I love his expression.  Amethyst came to say hi to me and he watched like "why are you going to the human??"

  This is as close as Coral will let him without trying to trample him.

 He gives Amethyst dirty looks as she goes to nurse.

Weanlings are so sad, he misses his mom.

 This kind of shows the size difference....

Apatite is three weeks older, but weighs five pounds less.  Myotonics are a smaller breed compared to Boers, but they are heavily muscled for their compact size.  He will eventually outweigh her even though she will be taller.

 This shows the difference in their faces.  Amethyst has a more Boer profile even though she's half Myotonic/half Boer and Apatite has the traditional Myotonic profile.  His face looks more dished than it is because of his brown mark that crosses to this side right where his face dishes.  They both have half mustaches on this side!!!!!!!

 He's already getting fairly close to us, so I don't think it will take long to tame him down.

I'll leave you with these last two adorable photos.

 On your mark! Get set!

 Headbutt!

I have a ton of videos to post, but I hate editing them... so it will have to wait for another day lol.

P.S.  We weighed Amethyst again and she is 25.3 pounds at six weeks.  Apatite is 19.8 pounds at nine weeks.