Goats should come with warning labels

The current goat count still stands at eight – no one has produced yet but the five Boer goats that look like these in the pic but with horns, are getting very agitated.

I went down to feed and water them yesterday morning at around 7.30am as usual; bright morning, the sun just coming up and the grey sky gently turning pink. It was very windy and it was all I could do to hear Jack Johnson on my MP3 player (I have to listen to happy sunny music in January – otherwise I would run away to somewhere hot with a beach, alone). I could hear the goats bleating from the top of the field and when I reached their stable at the bottom I could see the two smallest (Dilys and Daphne – I didn’t name them) standing on the back wall. When I got into the stable armed with fresh hay for the hayracks I got pushed about a bit as is usual when they’re hungry. Picked up the food buckets and managed to get out without any escapees following me. Filled up the buckets with beef nuts (generally fed to beef cattle but also suitable for meat goats – there you learn something every day!) and then re-entered the stable. Put down three buckets – very carefully as they all have horns and you do not want to be putting your face anywhere near a hungry goat’s head…..Then moved to the other side of the stable to put down Dilys and Daphne’s….only to have Daphne decide to get at the bucket by the shortest route – through my legs and only narrowly avoiding knocking me over. I think the wind and the bleating probably covered my swearing at the top of my voice….Oh, and here is a pic of the resulting bruise…..

And now the updated picture...taken today (11th January 2007)

So, 1st January 2007…..

Well I’m just guessing what this day is about because I’m writing this back before Christmas….I’m planning to go to a party on New Year’s Eve and don’t anticipate being in a fit state to post what happened…maybe by the 3^rd….

Anyway, a new year…new beginnings…new life….

As some of you know this time last year I had not long been the proud owner of three goats…the herd has gone up to the grand total of eight and six of them are pregnant….we hope. We don’t have a Billy goat here – too smelly – so we had to take them for a trip to visit the boys….Which was fine apart from the fact that Billy goats stink really badly…and they’re quite affectionate ….so when we visited I stupidly made a fuss of these beasts (some do look like Wildebeests and some sort of look like this) and Mr Chickenlady wouldn’t let me back in the car at first because of the godawful smell – a bit like very, very ripe goat’s cheese.

But I digress…the Billy goats…the first one we saw was called Basil and he was a huge white beast with a very large head and very large rest of him too. He stood in a paddock with four dainty looking dairy goats and he was the king of all he surveyed, so to speak. I felt a little apprehensive venturing into the paddock because he looked so big and mean, but gathering my courage in both hands I went in and was greeted with the lovely sight of one of the dairy goats deciding to take a pee. Normal, you might think, farm animals pee wherever they like…true…but they don’t usually have a large white Billy goat sticking his head into their flow of pee…and curling his lip up in a Les Dawson fashion…nice. The keeper at this point was more embarrassed than me – I was trying very hard to keep a straight face – she was red-faced by comparison and nervously remarked, “Well, at least human beings don’t behave like that”….Hmmm, I thought…she obviously doesn’t know the people I know….

So that was a few weeks back now and all the goats are back home and full of kids with any luck…time will tell – three are due in February and three in April. If and when we get the arrivals I’ll post pics….