What's Happening!

So a lot has happened since last I posted here.

Anthony and I welcomed our newest family member into the world on August 15th. Little Anthony Elliot was 8lbs 5oz and ?? in long. I had to be induced due to high blood pressure, but otherwise went natural. Labor was fast and furious. I walked and walked and walked around my hospital room until it was time to get into the tub and push. Elliot came out perfect and healthy into the warm water and his dad's waiting arms. I had a few health issues afterward, but all is well now. We are both doing just great!

The other big news is we moved! Anthony was offered a really great job up in Greensboro, NC just before Elliot was born. The bad news was that they needed him to start very quickly which meant leaving baby and me when El was only 3 weeks old. Anthony found us a wonderful farm less than 15 minutes from his work and busted his butt to get it ready to move me, the baby, and a select group of our animals.

On my end, I sold off a lot of livestock and tried to pack up the house and farm. My mother moved onto the farm and helped with animal and baby care. Of the goats, Eve and Turnip got sent to a wonderful lady to join Rutabaga (now Mayberry) and get spoiled rotten. I sold off all but the very best of our flock leaving us with a very nice looking group. We ended up moving with 9 sheep, 9 goats, and a motley group of turkeys, chickens, ducks, geese, and quail. My dad helped us purchase a gorgeous livestock trailer to get everyone moved.

Anthony with the invaluable help of my step-dad packed a giant u-haul truck full to the brim with our belongings and used it to pull the stock trailer up to our new place. All the animals did well with the move, though Fred, our barn cat, was more than a little pissed at being moved with the livestock (safe in a crate, of course). We are all now settled in our new home awaiting kids and lambs and trying to convince the chickens to stop flying out of their pen at night.

The farm itself will be shifting from a business to more of a homestead. A place for us to raise our own food and focus a bit more on our own family. There may be some products in the future, but both Anthony and I agree that egg sales are for the birds!

So what is the future of this blog? We'll be keeping the name HighTail Farms because we feel like it is who we are, not where we are. Ideally I'd like to turn this into a 365 project. That's a picture a day, everyday. I did it for years, but we'll see if it is something I can keep up with now that we have a farm and a small human to contend with.

That means there will also be a bit of a shift in the content. Expect a lot of pictures of the ins and outs of our daily life, less direct focus on the farm, and of course lots of pictures and videos of baby Elliot because I'm a new mom and I think he's really stinkin cute. I'm warning everyone now so you can get out while the gettin's good!

I'll be moving a handful of posts over here in the next few days (weeks?) because I was originally thinking I would start a whole new blog for the 365.  I hope everyone will stay tuned. Life with baby and farm certainly hasn't been boring so far. I look forward to chronicling our future here with all of you.

Eve's new vegetable

Last year we put a breeding harness on our goat buck, Gimli, so we had a pretty darn good idea when the girls were going to kid. This year, I did make note of when we exposed all the various girls to our two boys, but didn't have exact dates when the deed occurred. This has made for some interesting speculation as to when the girls will decide to have their kids. Even after all these years and all these kids, the girls still manage to confound and confuse us. You can look at udders, check for swollen vulvas, and feel for loosened ligaments, but at this point, I'm pretty firmly convinced that the only way to know for sure if a doe is about to kid is if there's a little hoof sticking out of her backside! 

We had been waiting and watching Eve for a couple weeks sure every night that the next morning we'd find her snuggled up with a new kid or two. No dice. So one day when I was out on the lanai putting in a load of laundry and I saw the girl standing oddly and squatting in the middle of the pasture, I had the thought that maybe, finally it was her time. Then I heard her. Eve is normally a very quiet goat, but the yell she let out let me know something was absolutely happening! 

I ran back inside yelling at Big Onion that I thought Eve was in labor as I flew past, threw on my boots and sped out the back door! 

 By the time we'd reached her, Eve was standing in the middle of the pasture with a soggy little red thing at her feet. As to why Eve chose to give birth in the middle of the pasture instead of inside the safety and security of one of our many buildings on a sunny, but very chilly day, my only guess is that Eve has some pretty significant rear end weakness. We think she was injured by another goat (Josie!) when she was young and suffered some spinal damage. She gets around just fine, but watching her closely and it's pretty obvious that the girl doesn't have full function or feeling back there. Best guess is that labor just snuck up on her before she could find an appropriate spot to do it!

I ran inside and quickly grabbed a couple towels. We got the little girl as dry as possible and before we knew it she was up on her feet and trying her best to nurse.

Unfortunately, trying to nurse while you are a soggy, wobbly, one hour old infant kid is not the easiest of tasks, especially when your mother doesn't have the good sense to hold still long enough for you to find and latch onto your target. Big Onion ended up grabbing a cupful of grain just to keep Eve distracted and still long enough for her little girl to get fed.

The poor thing kept trying and just totally missing her mom's teat, but the instinct is strong in these little ones and this doeling was not going to give up.

Finally she found her goal and figured out how to get it in her mouth. We all breathed a sigh of relief as the little one had her first meal.

Her belly full, it was time to move mother and daughter to a more secure location so that they could bond properly and get some rest in peace.

I've mentioned before on this blog how baby sheep and their mothers react to being carried. Basically the lamb goes limp and decides that today might as well be a good day to die while mother, as soon as the lamb rises more than a a few inches above the ground, ceases to recognize the thing as her child at all and generally decides her lamb as vanished into thin air even if the thing is right in front of her face!

Well, let me tell you that baby goats could not be more different. Pick up a newborn goat and it is going to yell and scream and kick its little heart out. Meanwhile mom is probably going to be trying to mess you up or at least get as close as possible to her distressed little one.

This little one was not pleased with being made to "fly" across the pasture and she let us know it in no uncertain terms! Meanwhile, her mother practically crawled up my backside to stay near to her little one.

Soon we had Eve and her kid tucked into a cozy pen with lots of hay for mom to munch on and baby to snuggle down for her first nap in the big, new world. The proud father, Gimli, looked on from the pen next door.

We decided to call this little blue eyed darling Rutabaga since she reminds us so much of her older sister, Turnip. She actually already has a new home lined up where her name will most likely be Mayberry so we've been compromising and calling the girl Rudy-May at least for now. She a little spitfire full of sass and attitude with the other goats, but still just as sweet as can be with us. At the time of this posting, Rudy-May is a little over a month old and doing great!

Turnip's Tumultuous Arrival

  We had been up and down all night bottle and tube feeding Gwen's newborn kids, and I volunteered to get up early and start morning chores while Big Onion tried to catch a couple extra Zzz's on the couch. Since he had just built us a new milking system (yay!), Big Onion said he would follow me out in a little while to show me how it works.

  When I opened the back door, I heard goats calling. Now this is not all that uncommon around here since Francesca is THE most vocal goat known to man, but today her usual yelling was accompanied by other voices. As I was getting close to the poultry house, I looked over to see Eve nibbling at something on the ground. It took a few minutes for my sleep deprived brain to process that she was nibbling at an afterbirth and that afterbirth meant that she had probably just kidded....but where was the kid?

  Now Eve is a weird and goofy goat. I had visions of her giving birth, taking one looks at that kid and being freaked out by what just fell out of her backside and running away! I feared I'd find a little cold, dead baby goat left in the field somewhere. About that time, I heard a goat calling again only this time I was sure it wasn't Francesca.

  I walked around the corner to find Josie standing there with a little blonde, blue eyed baby pinned to the fence behind her. Josie was calling to the baby over and over again in hopes of claiming it as her own. Josie had stolen Eve's baby!

  I had a moment of panic while I tried to figure out how to catch a wild eyed, half crazed, very, very pregnant Josie without her trampling or crushing the baby that was sandwiched between her massive body and the fence. I had to get that baby reunited with her actual mom as soon as possible or there was a chance that they wouldn't bond, and we would have yet another bottle baby in the house. Thankfully, we had taped up Josie's teats so there was no chance the baby could have nursed from her and potentially contracted CAE. I put in a quick call to a half groggy Big Onion yelling something along the lines of, "All hell's broken loose! Get out there NOW!"

  Josie isn't the easiest goat to get your hands on in the best of times so I started talking to her very softly and walking slowly toward her. All the while she was calling away, "I'll show you! You ain't stealing this baby from me because I stole her first!" When I got within range, I swiftly grabbed her collar and pulled her away from the baby and the fence. I dragged her across the yard and into the milk room and quickly slammed and locked the door.

  Meanwhile, that poor baby was calling and calling, and I think Eve finally figured out that she was missing something and started yelling back to her kid. Gwen having just kidded and never to be outdone, started calling too and then the two teenaged kids, Francesca and Lucia, decided to chime in for good measure.

  Somehow in all that cacophony, I got mother and baby together and closed them into the goat room. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Eve immediately start grooming her kid and the little girl start nosing around for mom's udder. My relief was short lived though when I realized that behind me one very pissed off Josie was doing her best to headbutt her way through the milk room door.

  She was still yelling her fool head off and the confused little doeling was calling back not sure who she should answer to. Hearing her mother so upset, Gwen started calling even louder! In an effort to calm everyone down, I waiting until Josie was in between bashes and unlocked and flung the milk room door open. I grabbed Josie by the collar and dragged her out, across the first pasture, and locked her behind the gate to the bridge. I came back, grabbed Gwen, and locked her behind the gate with her mother. They could still call, but at least Josie wouldn't be doing her best to demolish our out buildings!

  When I finally made it back to check on mother and daughter, the little one was happily nursing away like nothing had happened! What a resilient little girl! It was about that time that Big Onion finally made his arrival on the scene totally missing all the action!

  We decided to call Eve's little girl Turnip, and I have to say that despite her having a very dramatic entry into this world, that little girl probably has the best temperament of any of the kids we've had this year.

  She is sweet, silly, bold, and inquisitive. She drives her mother crazy with her independence and lack of fear. Of all our kids, even the bottle babies, she is the one who seems to enjoy human attention the most. She will seek us out and get our attention by nibbling on our clothes or pawing at our legs. She loves nothing more than to be picked up and snuggled and to have her cheeks and neck scratched. Her wonderful attitude reminds me so much of her grandmother Gertie who we lost not that long ago. Of all the kids, she will be the hardest to sell, and Big Onion and I have already started talking about maybe keeping the sweet little thing around to take her grandma's place.

Gimli on the job

  Gimli, our new dwarf buck, has been out with the girls a few weeks now. When he first got here, we ordered a breeding harness for him. A breeding harness is a slightly indecipherable contraption that has a place on the chest for attaching what amounts to a large crayon. It sits right between the front legs of the goat or sheep and leaves a colored smear on the back end of any of the females that the male...ahem...services. The harness we ordered was made for smaller sheep and goats, but I don't think the creators had dwarf goats in mind when they made this thing.

It took some maneuvering and a few zip ties, but we eventually got the thing securely in place on Gimli's small but very sturdy frame. We chose a yellow crayon because we thought that would be the most visible color on all our various girls' rear ends.

That lip curl is goat talk for, "Damn girl, you so fine!"

Eve was the first to cycle into heat almost immediately after we released Gimli to the girls. By that evening, Eve was sporting a bright yellow butt. We tried our best not to make fun of her tramp stamp.

The following day, Gwen was ready to get into the action, but Eve was still madly in love with our blue eyed boy. What followed was a whole lot of goaty weirdness that involved all three of them jostling each other around and doing things for which I really wish I hadn't had a first row view!

At this point, we are fairly certain that Gimli has had his dwarven way with all the girls except Gertie. He tried is his best, but that big, old lady was just not having it from some pipsqueak of a buck!

At some point, I even saw her mounting him! I'm pretty sure my trying to explain to Gertie that that was not how things were supposed to work in the goat world fell on deaf ears.

The next step is to send off pregnancy tests in a few week to make sure everyone is in a motherly way. Boy are we going to have our hands full come January!

Goat heaven

 Look who I found out in the back pasture all by themselves for the first time! All 6 goats have finally decided to take advantage of the massive amounts of brush out in the third pasture. Up until now, the girls would follow us out there but would not stay out there unless we were there working on something. The minute we headed back up front they would hightail it across the bridge back to the barnyard area.

 Josie and Jenni in goat heaven.

Jenni, who has an advanced case of the arthritic form of CAE, got a big dose of Banamine today. It was nice to see her walking almost like a normal goat and out grazing with the rest of the group.

 I suspect we will have a much smaller blackberry harvest this year thanks to these girls.

Unfortunately, goats love blackberry bushes. The girls were very happily chomping away at any hope of a future berry harvest. Oh well!

Gertrude and Eve - Rescue Goats

A few weeks ago, we got a message asking if we would be interested in taking in a rescue goat. Apparently this female goat was found swimming around a flooded area during Isaac and was being kept at a public barn south of New Orleans. Not long after she was rescued, she gave birth to a set of twins, a male and a female. 

Today we picked up Gertrude and Eve, mother and daughter.  Gertie looks like a much older goat than our adult girls. One side of her udder is completely died up. The other is so long it almost drags the ground. Both sides look like kids have been chewing on them for years, lots of scar tissue.

Eve is about 2 months old and is already almost totally weaned. The male kid, Wall-e, will be going to another farm to act as a companion to an older pygmy female.

 Gertie was very nervous in the car at first, but eventually settled down in the back with her little girl.

 We think she is a Nubian/Boer mix.

And we are really not sure what Eve is going to turn out to be, but she is sweet, friendly, and feels soft as a puppy.

I'd be happy to hear from any of you goat folks out there if you have any breed suggestions.

When we got home, we let Gwen into the yard to meet the new arrivals. Gertrude was not very interested as long as Gwen didn't come anywhere near her udder.

Little Eve and Gwen greeted each other with lots of sniffs. We are hoping that Eve will be a good playmate and friend for our Gwenny.

 Thea and Hunter also came running up to the fence to meet the new goats.

Before long everyone was happily chowing down together.

Before we put the new goats into their backyard pen for the night, we did put Gertie on the milk stand. She was a little nervous and kicky at first on the stand, but before long she settled down to chowing on feed and letting me get down to the business of cleaning (and cleaning and cleaning) and milking the one good side of her udder. We only got about a cup of milk so it may not be worth trying to milk her right now. We'll see once her baby stops nursing entirely if her output improves.

Either way, we are very excited about the newest additions to our herd.