I am in a bad mood!

I have been in a bad mood for a few weeks. I have decided that I don't want to share my stall with Cookie, the Nubian (patooey!). She is getting in my way when I want to walk around and she won't let me eat both bowls of grain (like she needs her own bowl, gimme a break!). All this has put me in a very grumpy mood. Now whenever I see Cookie I push her out of the way and head-butt her. If I have a problem with where she is napping, I go over and step on her until she lets me lay down where she was sleeping.

My bad mood is not only focused on Cookie. I have been grumpy to the other goats when we are in the pasture. I have tried to push Pepper out of the way of the hay bale but pushing her is a little like trying to push a 55 gallon drum up a hill. She usually just stands there until I give up. I have tried pushing Gloria out of the way but Gloria gets more grumpy than I am and she pushes me back. We have a little tussle and I usually end up having to go back to my hay bale and push Cookie off of it.

The farmer says that whenever a goat who is 3 months pregnant starts getting grumpy for no reason, it means that the goat is going to have only male babies. The extra testosterone in my body from the growing male babies is causing me to be "hormonally imbalanced" and grumpy. I don't know if the farmer is right because my last two pregnancies both resulted in twin boys and I was not grumpy during them. Maybe I am pregnant with twin girls and I can't handle the added estrogen? Well, we will see who's theory is right in 2 more months. Until then, watch out Cookie!

I have been busy!

It's winter here on the farm. That means snow and cold and more cold! Us, goats, do not appreciate the snow very much. It's wet and cold and yucky. We much prefer to stay in our warm pens in the warm barn. The farmer makes us go out in the snow every other day or so. We try to protest but she is not easily swayed.

Well, I don't have much time to say much more than that. All of us goats are expecting babies in the spring so we are using most of our time ruminating on that situation.

Breeding Season

Well, it's that time of year again -- breeding season. All of the goats (me included) decided to come into heat all at the same time this year. Cookie led the charge by coming into heat on November 3rd and 4th. Pepper, being a total Nubian and not wanting to be outdone by her daughter, followed on the 8th and 9th. Here's a picture of both of them in all their Nubian (PA-TOOEY!) glory:

My mom, Gloria, decided to give it a go on the 10th and 11th. Here she is looking much rested after her year off from having kids:



And I rounded up the rear on the 12th and 13th. I was looking very splendid on this wonderful fall day:


We were nice enough to the one and only buck on the farm to come into heat in succession and not all on the same exact day. That way he wasn't overwhelmed with adoring females to the point of total exhaustion.

Here is the lovely buck from both sides. Notice the wild spots and large splashes of white between the black. Hopefully his kids will be just as wildly colored.

The buck has one more doe left to breed. My half-sister, Madge, has come back from the farm she lives on in the next town over. She is here to visit for a few days because she didn't get bred the first time around when she was with the buck in September. After she leaves, the farmer says she will keep the buck for one month to make sure none of us decided not to get pregnant the first time.

I heard a funny rumor the other day:The farmer said that her friend's Nigerian Dwarf can come and visit our buck when she is in heat to make sure that she is totally in heat before being shipped to the next state to visit with her Nigerian buck boyfriend. Can you imagine what our buck will think of a Nigerian Dwarf?! Of course, being a buck he probably thinks anything with four legs and a heartbeat is a good thing but really... REALLY?! Sometimes I don't know what this farmer is thinking.....

Happy Halloween!

Okay so I am a little late on the whole "Halloween" thing, but heck, I am a goat - I don't exactly get to go trick-or-treating or anything (although some treats would be nice once in a while -- hint, hint farmer!). One thing good about this Halloween was that the farmer has really started to make her new assistant pay off. Here is a picture of Assistant Farmer, Emily, in her Halloween costume:


Can you guess what she is? That's right - She's a goat! I thought Emily being a goat for Halloween was a great way to pay homage to us wonderful goats of the world. It also is a great way to spread the message about goats being just as cute to dress up like as a sheep or lamb (patooey!) would be. The only criticism I have about this costume is that judging by the roman nose and the airplane ears makes me think that she must be dressed up as some sort of Alpine-Nubian (patooey!) cross. Nubians (patooey!) aren't exactly the best representatives of the species, so I am a little perturbed that such a nice costume is somewhat wasted on that branch of the goat family tree. Oh well, at least she doesn't have horns!

On another note: Cookie is having a hard time with this breeding season. This being her first time coming into heat, she is having a very difficult time deciding what is going on. Take yesterday for instance; yesterday she sat all day screaming throughout the barnyard. All we heard all day was, "Let me see my boyfrieeeennnnddd! I love my boooyyyffrrieeennnddd! I llllooooovvveee hhhhiiimmmm!". And soon on it went all day long. When the farmer came to do chores, she noticed the extra vocalizations from Cookie and did as Cookie was wanting. The farmer put Cookie in with her boyfriend. Well, once Cookie was in with the buck, she decided that this was not what she wanted. So all we heard for 30 minutes was, "GET ME OUT OF HERE! I DO NOT WANT TO SEE MY BOYFRIEND! HE SMELLS AND IS UGLY!!". The farmer got tired of this yelling so she took Cookie away from the buck and put her back in the barn with us girls. Cookie decided that this was not want she wanted either so she immediately started to protest and cry, "BUT I LOOOOVVVEE HIIIMMM! HE'S MY SOUL MATE! YOU CAN'T KEEP US APART!!!!!". And on and on it went, all night long. Sheesh.... Teenagers......

I won an award!

Many special thanks to Lilyian and Tayet Silverspoon over at "In a Goats Shoes" blog at www.lucky13goatranch.blogspot.com. They gave me my first "One Lovely Blog" award. Sweet! I will pass it on!

HORNS!

I, Lucy the goat, do not like goats with horns! I know that almost all goats are born with horns, but that doesn't mean that all goats should have horns. I was born with horns but the farmer had mine removed when I was 2 weeks old. Now I have a lovely head with no ugly horns. I am quite beautiful being a hornless goat, in my opinion. I had some goat friends at the farm that where born without horns at all! The farmer was quite pleased with these naturally lovely goats, as was I. They were quite impressive being polled from birth. I wish it could be that way for all goats. It would save goat farmers around the world a lot of trouble and it would save goats around the world a lot of eye-sores from looking at ugly horned goats all day.

Where does my lack of love of horned goats come from? Well, being Lucy, the daughter of Gloria the herd queen, means that I have to stay on top of my game to stay on top of my herd. I am second in command (Pepper Ann likes to think she is second, but we all know better). It's a hard position to be in. As second in command, I have to keep my post and keep all new comers in line. Should a new comer arrive at the farm with a full head of horns, my post will be in jeopardy. I cannot stand up against a horned goat. I just don't have the resolve to tolerate all that hard head-bashing that will go on. I, Lucy, might lose my post. I might be pushed lower than Pepper! I might be relegated to the bottom of the herd, lower than even Pepper's excruiable daughter, Cookie! This would be very bad indeed. Thus my hatred of horns is borne on a sturdy foundation of status preservation.

I also do not like horns due to what the farmer has told me about horns. Dairy goat horns grow up and out, and are very pointy. I have seen this myself on a few goats. The horns are like swords sticking out of a goat's head, waiting to impale passers-by. This is very bad news, not only for other goats, but for the farmer. She has to work around those horns and be very careful not to get poked or stabbed. Now, the farmer has a farmer-in-training (FOT) in the form of her new daughter Emily. Could you imagine what would happen if dear Emily were to be stabbed by a goat horn? (I can imagine the farmer would be having filet of goat for dinner that night). Thus my hatred of horns also comes from a love for the farmer and FOT.

Another reason that horns are ridiculous is that my mom, Gloria, is always complaining that she is cold. Gloria has one horn. It's a short little nub that was the result of a botch disbudding by her original owner. This little nub sticks up out of her head, making her a unigoat. This little nub catches the wind and snow and transmits that cold right straight through her thick head into her body. She is freezing all the time due to this little heat sink stuck on top of her head. Goats horns help regulate their temperatures. They are full of blood vessels and nerve endings. This is perfectly fine for goats confined to the scorching southwest, or the heated plains of Africa, but it is totally ridiculous for any goat confined to the frigid north! Temperatures drop routinely to well below zero around here. I can't imagine having two large heat loss masses stuck to my head in the dead of winter. Brrr!!! Thus my hatred of horns is part from my love of staying a non goat-sicle.

So, there is my edict on stupid goat horns. I find any goat with a full set of horns to be a perfect waste of a good goat. Some farmers will argue that horns are "the way God intented goats to be". Well to that I say, a cat is born able to breed and reproduce "the way God intended it to be", does this mean that they should never be neutered/spayed and allowed to breed freely thus populating the world with many unwanted and unloved cats in order to leave them "as God intended"? I think not... Oy!

The Escape: Part Deux!

When we were put out to the pasture yesterday morning, I could hear the familiar click of the electric fence charger in the distance. We knew the fence was on. We knew we would get shocked if we touched the fence. We knew we would get no extra grain treats that night if we got out of the pasture. But we also knew there was a great delicious forest on the other side of that fence.

Pepper was the first to make a move. She eyed the fence up and down and then picked a spot to test it. She put her head down, aligned her shoulders, and gave a mighty shove to the hot fence. She did it fast, faster than I thought a Nubian could move. So fast in fact that the fence didn't get time to shock her. Once the fence was leaning, we could all easily step over it. Pepper went first, I followed, Cookie followed me. Gloria hesitated but didn't want to be left out of the feast like yesterday. She daintily stepped over the hot fence trying hard not to let her dangling teats brush against it (nothing is worse than a hot shock to the udder!). Just a little hop, skip, and a jump and Gloria was free from the pasture along with the rest of us.

We started first on the raspberry bushes and maple trees that we hadn't gotten to yesterday. Then we moved back to the spruce trees by the chicken barn. Gloria taste tested all the flowers in the two barn flower planters. Cookie and I moved along the front of the barn to the bushes next to the dog pen. We found gooseberries, maples, and a spruce to eat.

By afternoon, it had started to rain. We decided to move the party indoors to the barn. There wasn't much to eat in the barn since all the grain was in bins. Pepper tested the bag of oyster shell for the chickens and found it too much like sand to be tasty.

The farmer came home and noticed there were no goats in sight in the pasture. She asked her husband if he had put the goats in the barn. He said that he hadn't. The farmer came out to the barn to find us all drunk in massive food comas from the day's pillaging. She put us in our pens with no dinner for the night. Oh well, we really didn't want any dinner after that smorgasbord we had today!

Perhaps tomorrow the farmer will let us out to the pasture again?