Farm Friday

Well, it's not really Friday, but still better late than never.

We had another rough week on the farm.  One of our oldest goats, Sheena, who was also the sweetest goat, succumbed to old age.  When Sheena came to us, she was skin and bones and we had no idea how old she was.  Over the course of her first year with us, we fattened her up and she rewarded us by being one of the best mother goats we had.  She was such a good mother that one of her daughters, Blondie, refused to be separated from her once she reached maturity.  Bill would put Blondie in an adjacent pasture and somehow (we never learned how) Blondie would be found by Sheena's side in the wrong pasture.  She also loved to have her face scratched and would lift her head and close her eyes while you scratched and petted her.  We'll miss Sheena.

We also lost another adult and her kid, plus one more kid.  I spoke with a veterinarian from Virginia Tech and he said it was most likely parasites.  We did have an incident that could have been another sad event but turned out happy.  We have one mother goat that we're sure isn't pure Boer goat.  However, every kid she's ever had has looked like Boer goats should, until this year.  Jolene gave birth to twin boys, one that is the usual white with a brown head and one that is almost entirely brown and has white spots like a fawn.  Here he is:

One extremely cold night when Bill was checking on the goats, he realized this little guy was missing.  He walked the pasture two times and couldn't find him.  Of course, we were heartbroken as we thought he had died like the other kids or a coyote had gotten him.  I joined Bill for one last tour of the pasture, not expecting to find him.  However, Bill heard a little noise coming from our old cattle catcher and there he was!  Brownie (as I now call him) had decided to visit the goats in the adjacent pasture and had somehow gotten stuck.  So a good ending to a very cold and late night.

We got a little more snow yesterday but it's supposed to get warm again this week.  Warm is a relative term as I used to believe nothing below 75 degrees was "warm."  That is, until I moved to Virginia and experienced single digit temperatures for the first time in my life.  Although we do get bad weather here in the winter, we always get amazing sunsets.  Here's one from earlier this week:

Have a great weekend!