Farm Update 4/30

Good Lord, what a week it has been here on the farm. 

I have all kinds of news but I want to start with an apology for the infrequent posts of late. It is no exaggeration to say that interest in our farm has exploded in the last two weeks when the Wall Street Journal article ran. In addition to the dozens of new shareholders that have joined us (Hi Ya'll!) I have been swamped with kind emails and phone calls and I have sometimes felt like I am barely keeping up. Obviously, this is the best kind of problem and please don't think that I am anything but grateful, grateful, grateful, but I have been completely distracted and remiss about blogging. I promise to make it up to with lots of posts this week because, as you know, babies are on the way.

In fact, the first new kid was born about an hour ago! I am pleased to introduce you to Astrid's new doeling, Tansy. 

Mama and baby are both doing just fine.  It is always exciting when a knew kid is a doe (female) because I know that I will get to see her grow up and have kids of her own. Bucklings are just as good for growing fiber, but there is definitely something extra special about doelings.

Speaking of bucklings, we have two new bottle babies on the farm. We picked up Clover and Sweet William from Buckwheat Bridge Angoras last weekend. [Thanks to Karma, Carol and Caroline for the name suggestions!] They are both funny, sturdy little guys and we fell in love with them instantly.

[I love the looks on Patrick's face in this series of pictures.]

Sweet William is on the left and he is a little milk thief! He waits until all the nanny goats are eating their grain ration and he runs from mom to mom, nursing on them until they realize the baby drinking their milk isn't theirs and butt him away. Sweet William doesn't let the rejection slow him down - he just moves on to the next available udder. And this is in addition to the three 16 oz bottles of milk he gets from us everyday. I am completely smitten with him!

We also picked up 7 new wethered bucks this weekend. Wethers are castrated males. Every flock only needs a couple of good bucks for every hundred nanny goats, which typically results in most buck kids (and ram lambs) being sold for meat. We're lucky because the CSA allows us to keep as many bucks as we want, but we have to castrate them because too many intact males would bring no end of frustrations and problems. Males tend to be more aggressive with one another and they will worry the nanny goats to death. 

All of the new wethers are beautiful and shy. We unloaded them in the dark, so I was unable to get individual photos of them for you, but I did get a couple of shots of the one blue horned buck in the group.

Isn't he lovely? We need to choose a theme for this group of goat names and a really special name for this fella.

Another goat from this new group is the twin of my all-time favorite goat Jack, pictured below.

Jack was a bottle baby that we purchased last year and he has the best personality of any animal I've ever known. He's just so good-natured and affable. We bought him with an eye towards using him as a breeding buck this year, but her got very very sick in the fall and didn't get the kind of size on him that I would like to see. Bucks keep growing until they are three so I haven't given up on Jack yet, but when we went to pick up the new wethers, Jack's twin- who was raised by his mom, hadn't been wethered yet, and I was sorely tempted to keep him intact for future breeding. The thing is though, my reasoning was completely faulty. 

I wanted to breed him because I love Jack so much and I was thinking of this new goat as some sort of Jack clone. Patrick, Sara and Dan had to convince me that however much I love Jack, this twin brother wasn't him, and it didn't make sense to keep the twin as a substitute.

It was all very interesting and I felt like I learned a lot about the way I make decision. 

We have five nanny goats left to kid, although I am not over sure that one of them is actually bred. I will send out updates just as soon as Jane, Linda, Beatrice, Olivia and Hannah go into labor.

Friday is my last day at my full-time job and I am going to celebrate by shooting some videos of the babies over the weekend to post here, so check back on Sunday. 

If you have any questions about the animals or anything else, you can post always post them here in the comments section or email me. I love getting your emails and I am constantly amazed by the level of detail you all are interested in. So ask.