You say ammonia, I say pneumonia

(I can do this. I can do this. I can SO do this.)

Once again, I'm cleaning the barn. It's not so packed full this time, but what is there is very wet and nasty and -literally- reeks of ammonia. My eyes were watering, and I've been having to take Advil congestion to be able to breathe at night...that's how bad it is. I'm so glad to have it out, though, because if it's bad for me, it's ten times worse for the goats whose noses are only two feet from the source. Ammonia causes lung inflammation, which leads to pneumonia. Having already dealt out one round of antibiotics when half of the babies got pneumonia after the sudden change from SUMMER to WINTER, I don't want to have to do it again. Not only is it detrimental to them to have pneumonia in the first place, the antibiotic costs money, and the lovely power-punch NuFlor may do wonders for pneumonia, but it also hurts like no other when you give them the shot. Their reactions are somewhere in the vicinity of it's-the-end-of-the-world, flinging their entire body onto the ground and writhing in agony before limping off into the mud making pitiful noises. All of this intended to garner sympathy from the shot giver - me - who now feels terrible.

So you can see why I want the pens clean. There's also a much simpler reason - it looks and smells nicer. It is so satisfying to see all of the goats blissing in their fluffy clean straw...

THIS is the life!

It's so relaxing to watch them when they're full, and clean, and happy. And entertaining, when they're down on their chests, rumps in the air and tails wagging, scooting through the straw to scratch their bellies. It's also entertaining, albeit frustrating, when you have a clever LaMancha baby who has figured out how to dump water buckets so she can wear them on her head:

Hello? Hello?

What a genius Sitka is. Too bad she doesn't do it with the empty water buckets...sigh. Speaking of bucket heads, we have calves! Two of them. For those of you who didn't know, I have a Guernsey cow - Sadie. She is the best cow in the world, even if she does think she's a goat. Anyway, she was bred to an Angus bull and had her first calf, Guerngus, on November 17th:

Sadie!

Who are you again? You look somewhat familiar...

He's rather a pain. Sadie has the maternal sensibilities of a clothespin, so Mr. Gus gets fed from a bucket and lives with his newfound friend Radar, a Red Holstein who arrived a week later courtesy of the dairy. (Look! Another reflection photo! I love it.)

Radar - named for his odd habit of sticking his tail up in the air whenever he's out and about.

Ironically, Radar looks a lot more like Sadie than Gus does. Both of them are slightly stupid. Not a lot, just slightly. They like to clean each others' faces after they drink their milk...by sucking on the other calf's nose.

I EATS YOU!

It's hilarious and weird at the same time. How can he breathe like that? I guess they don't ever do it long enough to cause a problem, but it's still weird.

And with that, I am off to milk my wonderful cow and feed some obnoxious babies. Including goat babies. Who will be introduced at a later date...

Well this is embarassing

This time it took me two months to update. Ye gods. It's been so long, in fact, that I had forgotten my password and had to reset it. Fail? I think yes.

So what's happening now? Not much. We finished the feeders and moved the goats in....a long time ago. They (and I) are enjoying the new feeders immensely. We designed them to be filled from the back (outside the pen), so I no longer have to go "swimming" through anxious white bodies to get the hay in the feeder, and because they have to stick their heads into the feeder to eat, they no longer drop loads of hay on the ground. (As soon as the food touches the ground, it's DIRTY and obviously no longer edible.) This, along with the feeder's solid bottom, means that they waste almost no hay and have food in front of them all the time. Even the anorexic Sensation is starting to put on weight! Some of them are getting a bit jiggly, but they're also supposed to be pregnant, so for now it's all good.

Speaking of which! I am slightly frustrated by the number of repeat breedings I've had to make this year. Almost a third of the does re-cycled at least once - two of them, Zi Zhi and Havana, have yet to settle despite having shown three and five strong standing heats. I would threaten them with the taco truck, but they know me too well. Sigh. Affair settled on the first breeding like a good girl, a breeding that I was extremely excited about and would have produced February kids, only to lose her pregnancy at 80 days. Double SIGH. All three of these does didn't kid this past year - Zi Zhi never settled (making this her second strike) and Havana aborted. Affair had 2010 off due to the trauma she lived through the previous year, which included being run over by a cow, a spinal cord injury, and re-learning to walk four months after being fully - albeit temporarily - paralyzed due to seizures from her injury. Hopefully they get the memo.

So. I have lots more to write about (including a baby cow!), but I am going to save it for next time in an attempt to get myself back on the blogwagon. Ciao!