It's almost autumn and you know what that means.... PUMPKINS!!

 Pumpkins!

There is a guy who works at the local grocery store that saves the damaged pumpkins for us.  He called yesterday so we went down to the store and brought these home.  You might be wondering what we do with them... we feed them to the goats!! They LOVE them!  I'm not going to ramble on, other than to say I'm still figuring out my camera so some of the pictures are blurry.  I don't have a lot of spare time to play around with it (also the reason I so rarely blog and probably don't have many readers left), but some of them turned out cute.  So enjoy!

 Kamikaze chomping down on his pumpkins.

 Daniel is obsessed with pumpkin!! He tries to chase everyone else away.

 Wildfire with a big mouthful!

 Daniel looking handsome!  The flash finally didn't go off so his blue eyes look pretty.

 My handsome Batman with his gorgeous blue eyes.  This is Georgia's son born in December.

 This one is my favorite of the day.  

Kamikaze has such gorgeous horns and I love his half white/half black beard.  So cute!

 Here's Wildfire with his mini-me younger brother Monarch.

 Monarch looks so much like his big brother, but he has blue eyes.

We will probably be selling him.

 Another cute one of KK looking over his shoulder at me.  

Shh, don't tell anyone he's one of my top favorites!

 Gulliver is looking SO grown up and handsome!  Can you believe this is my bottle baby??

LOVE him!  He's only a year old and already just under 150lbs!

 Here is hubby with Jasper (Gulliver's father)!  Jasper's head is bigger than hubby's!

Jasper is over two hundred pounds, so he weighs more than me and my hubby!

I love the photobomb by Buddy, my parent's pup.

 Nomming on some delicious pumpkin.

 Don't ask what is all over his face... you don't want to know.

 He was shaking his head.  It was too hilarious not to post.

 Then he was doing the flehman.

 Georgia is looking good!  I still can't believe she turns ten in a month and a half.

 Zephyr and Sandia inspecting the pumpkin.

 Sapphire was smart and used her leg to help break off chunks of pumpkin.

This turned out super blurry, but I had to share a picture of Lyric so you could see how much cashmere she has grown in already (and it's still in the 90sF).  She's normally jet black, but that dusting of white over the top is her cashmere.  She was being so cute eating the seeds off the ground instead of eating the flesh out of the pumpkins.

 Bubbles and Strawberry weren't sure about the wagon the pumpkins were in.

 Almost everyone piled right in to eat the pumpkin.

 This beautiful girl is Tanzanite Too, or Tanz for short.

I haven't posted much of the kids that were born this year because I've been so busy.  I hate that I don't have pictures showing them growing up like I usually do.  Her mother is Tanzanite, who we actually sold in the spring because a girl fell in love with her and wanted to compete with her at the local shows.  When we sold Tanzanite, Tanz was sort of adopted by Topaz (her grandmother), which was totally adorable.  She is half Myotonic.  Her sire is Daniel from earlier in the post.

This beautiful girl is Topaz's daughter from December.  She's the only one we have left from the triplets.  We sold her brother and her sister had her neck broken in a freak accident when she was only a week or so old.  I absolutely love this girl.  She is so much like Topaz.  I'm still trying to decide on a name.

I love this picture.  It looks like LeeAnn and her daughter are kissing, but they actually aren't even very close to each other.  Gotta love perspective.  LeeAnn's daughter (name also pending) is such a sweetheart and is built really nice.  We sold her twin sister.

The last shot is Bubbles, just because I love her face.

We have daughters of Andesine, Blossom and Strawberry, but they are in the weaning pen so I didn't get pictures of them.  I will try to get pictures as soon as they go back in the big herd.  They are SO cute and all three does were great first time mothers.  I will share more information when I introduce them.  We have Bubble's son, but we will be selling him.  She was a great mom too, although she did get a blockage in her udder.  Luckily she only had a single so feeding him was no problem.

That's all I have for now.  I really need to do better about posting because I keep the blog partly as a record for myself and I feel like I missed out on so much with the kids this year.  Next year's kidding season is going to be super exciting because we are trying something new, but I'll fill you in on the details with that later.

I need to update more often... I even have a new member of the family to introduce, but I just haven't had time.  I will get it scheduled to post tomorrow.  If you follow me on Instagram you will already know who it is.  If not, well you'll have to check back tomorrow!!

More Pictures

I LOVE the photo above of Jackal.  It shows the potential this camera has when I get my you know what together.  :D  Below are a few more pictures of the goats that don't have kids that I took yesterday.  The lighting is wrong with most of these and they were the early shots so I was still figuring out how to use the lens.  Please excuse how dirty they are.  We have had SO much rain and mud the last month, it has been unreal.

 Adorable Bubbles (Coral's daughter from her last kidding).

My filthy Amethyst.  She is looking so good lately, but I'm 99% sure she didn't get pregnant.  :(

I LOVE these shots of Sapphire (Zephyr's daughter from the last kidding).  She is getting SO big and chunky.  The morning light really brings out her gorgeous chocolate color.

Last, but not least, Blossom (Coral's daughter from last kidding and Bubble's twin sister), standing on a cinder block to get out of the mud.  I can't wait for it to dry up some.  We desperately need some sunshine.

That's all for now.  I'm sure I'll be taking lots more photos for you and I hope I have time to share them fairly regularly.

Our newest kids!

 These pictures were taken as we let the does and their kids out of the barn for the first time since they all gave birth.  The oldest kids are about two weeks old (Coral's).  In case you missed the previous post these pictures were taken with my new to me Canon EOS 20D.  This was my first time shooting with it outside (did some test shots inside) in years (I practiced with it years ago before my friend gave it to me), so I have a lot to learn and I need a lot of practice.  I cheated and used the auto mode, but this is my first time using a 50mm lens (in years) so the focus is off on some of them.  I plan on practicing the manual mode on landscapes, but for hard to photograph goats I'll just use the auto mode for now.  I hope you enjoy the photos and meeting our new kids.

We let Garnet and LeeAnn out first with their kids.  Garnet, as usual, was being super photogenic and derpy LeeAnn decided to sniff the wall.  Thanks girl.

The two in front are LeeAnn's twin girls and the two in the back are Garnet's twin boys.  LeeAnn's are adorable little mini mes.  They are so cute!  They look just like their mom except they have white spots.

 Here is one of LeeAnn's daughters.  Here you can see her white belly spot.

 Here is LeeAnn's other daughter and you can see her white star on her face.

 One of Garnet's bucklings kicking up his heels.

 Amethyst was being a pest fighting for dominance with all of the does.

 Garnet's buckling again.  I wish it wasn't blurry.

 Garnet being photogenic again.

Garnet's buckling.  I just realized I didn't get any pictures of the other one because he was constantly running around and playing.  Oops, I'll do better next time.

Garnet stops to pose in the middle of a fight with Amethyst lol.  She is so pretty.  Her markings look so awesome in the morning sunlight.

This made me want to cry.  Garnet's buckling ran right into the middle of the electric fence and got separated from his mom.  Hubby eventually caught him (he was terrified so he didn't want to be caught) and put him back with Garnet.  He will not go anywhere near the fence now.  I hate that they have to get hurt to learn about the fences, but it's a necessary evil. 

 Garnet calling for her son when he went through the electric fence.

 So gorgeous.  I couldn't stop taking pictures of her.

Next up, we let Tanzanite out.  She had twins by Daniel (purebred Myotonic buck), a buckling (left) and a doeling (right).  This was her first time kidding and I'm so proud of her.  She did it all by herself with no assistance.  For those who don't know Tanzanite is Topaz's first daughter.  We bred her to Daniel because he throws smaller kids than Jasper which is easier on first timers.  They are SO cute!!!  Both are black and white and 50% Myotonic.

 Adorable little boy.

 Girl on the left, boy on the right.  I love the little doeling's black spot on her back.

Tanzanite met Garnet's son for the first time (they were in different parts of the barn and couldn't see each other).

 Pretty Tanzy.

 She's another one with a gorgeous, photogenic face.

Next we let Coral out.  I didn't get many pictures of her kids because she took off with them out into the pasture.  She is always a little skittish when she has kids.  She will quickly calm back down.

Her kids got confused and didn't follow her out of the barn so she was staring back for them, waiting on hubby to catch them and bring them out to her.

Coral's twins.  Buckling on the left and doeling on the right.  They are huge for two week old kids.  The doeling is going to look just like Bubbles.  This was the only picture I got because she took them off into the pasture.  I'll get more for you another day.  There was so much going on at this point (dominance fights between the does) that I kind of stopped taking pictures.

 Pretty Coral.

Next up was Topaz.  If you follow me on Instagram you'll know that she had triplets.  I was so surprised and excited!  If you remember Garnet had triplets last year, so I kind of thought she would again.  I never expected that Topaz would.  Here is a cell phone picture of them right after birth.

She had two girls and one boy.  I'm very sad and upset to say that one doeling (at the top of the photo) in a freak accident broke her neck and died.  I've never had that happen and I'm still very upset about it.  So that's why she isn't in any of the following photos.

 Topaz's kids, boy on the left and girl on the right.

Going in for a quick meal.  

For those who might not know Topaz is Tanzy's mom as I mentioned earlier.

This is blurry, but their expressions are SO cute!!!!

I didn't get many pictures at this point because we had to monitor the does' fighting and then I was just having so much fun watching them.  I did whip the camera back out for the following pictures.

Zep was fascinated with Tanzy's kids!  I honestly don't know why.  Maybe because they are black and white or because they are spotted?  It was weird, but so cute.  You can see the girl jumping in the air and practically bouncing off his nose.

Fascinated donkey and brave kids who have no idea how scary he could be.  We watched him closely to be sure he was going to accept the kids and he was fine with them.

I also realized I completely forgot to get pictures of Georgia and Zephyr's kids... oops!!  The Myotonics are in a different pen (because if they lock up and fall under the horse or donkey's feet it could be dangerous) and I just forgot to go over there.  They both had single bucklings.  I was expecting twins, but I guess I'm not surprised.  It isn't unusual for older does to have singles and they are eight and nine years old now.  Georgia had a solid black buckling and Zephyr's buckling actually looks a lot like Tanzy's kids.  I'll find some crappy cell phone pictures to add below.

 Georgia and her little black buckling.

Bad pictures, but here is Zephyr's adorable little buckling.  He has blue eyes like her.  I'm sad that my only purebred Myotonics in this kidding are both bucklings because we can't keep a million bucks.  *pout*  Oh well, I will enjoy the heck out of them until they sell.  :)

So that's all for now.  It was perfect timing to get this camera ready to go because practicing on baby goats is so much fun hehe.  I'll try to post more pictures soon.  I have some pictures of the other goats (the ones without kids) that I might post tomorrow.