It's working!

This afternoon Mopple and Edmund were playing together, chasing each other around the pen, up and over the rock pile and back again, taking turns being “it”. They’re bonding. Yay!

Blessed silence

I’m glad to report that Edmund has decided there are worse things in life than living with a lamb (and drinking bottles of milky water at intervals throughout the day). He’s been showing Mopple how tasty their hay is and they’re lying by one another today. Oh, and did I mention that late this afternoon Edmund stopped screaming for The Red Brothers? Bliss!

Unhappy campers (with loud voices)

It’s still very hot and humid but there’s a nice, stiff breeze blowing, so I decided to put Mopple and Edmund together today. It’s working fairly well, though Edmund is a very unhappy camper.

For those who aren’t familiar with goats, Nubians are arguably the most vocal goats on earth and some have astoundingly loud and strident voices. When Edmund was small he sounded like a demented jungle bird (with great lungs). His voice has improved but the boy certainly has volume and he’s in full voice today.

Since moving outdoors, he’s been bunking with two slightly older Nubian wethers named Meegosh and Hutch, collectively known as The Red Brothers. They aren’t biological twins (Hutch’s mom graciously adopted Meegosh and raised him with Hutch) but naturally they are very close. So while they’ve been tolerating Edmund, they tend to treat him as an outsider and I didn’t think they’d mind him leaving.

Not so! Meegosh is shrieking almost as loudly as Edmund, so it’s pretty noisy here today. The up side is that Edmund is so focused on getting back with The Red Brothers that he’s largely ignoring Mopple. Mopple seems to think that's fine.

An odd twist is that when I took Mopple his bottle, Edmund demanded one too. Usually, once bottle kids are weaned they won’t take a bottle again. So, I put a few ounces of milk in a bottle, added ten ounces of water, and gave that to Edmund to keep him occupied while Mopple eats. It’s not an ideal situation but for now it will have to do. I upended a water container in the pen to sit on while I feed these guys, to make certain Edmund doesn’t mob Mopple for his milk. He stopped a few times and eyeballed the milky water with suspicion but he drank it. We’ll see what happens next time…

Mopple grows up

Mopple is growing up! I weighed him this morning: 20 pounds! He’s nibbling some hay now and tastes just about everything, including dirt.



I haven’t been doing much with Mopple these past few days as I’m hustling to finish some writing assignments so I can get back to Get Your Goat—due the first of next month.

Mostly we’ve been polishing leading skills and working on indoor manners. As many bottle babies seem to do, he’s house trained himself to some degree: he returns to his crate if he has to pee rather than going in the house proper. So, I let him wander around in the evening while I work at the computer.

We’ve had only two problems. One, he likes to chew electrical cords (as all kids and lambs do), so I’ve put everything up out of his reach. The other thing is pretty unique: he’s determined to sneak up and then hump on my leg. This is a bottle baby first.

For those that don’t know this, like baby males of many animal species (sheep, goats, cattle and llamas to name a few), Mopple was born with a frenulum (a small, elastic piece of tissue) that secures his penis inside of his sheath. He won’t be able to extend his penis until it breaks loose and he’s determined to do this sooner than later. This is why lambs and kids spend so much time play-breeding their moms, sisters and others in their herd or flock and also why goat kids “air hump” (which is a pretty amusing process to observe). Normally Mopple would be assaulting his playmates—not my leg.

Telling him ‘no’ and placing his front feet back on the ground wasn’t getting through, so I asked for suggestions at HFSheep (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HFSheep). Rebecca suggested a squirt gun. A quick spritz from a squirt gun or spray bottle is the traditional means to repel over-enthusiastic goats (because they hate to get wet). Two spritzes and Mopple got the point. Now why didn’t I think of that?

I hope the oppressive heat breaks soon, so I can put Mopple and Edmund (Nubian former bottle baby pictured below) together to see if they can be friends. I can’t imagine why not—Edmund is not a pushy kid—but I need to be out there for a few hours to make certain they get along. It’s about time for Mopple to move out of the house, but not until he has a pal to console him at night. Edmund has been living with The Red Brothers and they treat him like the odd man out, so he’s the logical choice to become Mopple’s buddy.

Really scary Saturday

Background: five or six weeks ago, some lowlife dropped six small puppies at the end of our neighbor’s driveway: three Beagle mixes and three pups that appear to be a cross of Dachshund and Beagle. Our neighbor is diabetic and on disability, so with his own dog to provide for, the puppies were way too much. He easily placed two of the Doxie mixes, then no one seemed to need pups. So, being soft hearted (or maybe soft headed) and despite already being an eight-dog family, last month we agreed to take the last of the Doxie mixes, a charmer our neighbor called Fred.

Fast forward to the present. I’m housetraining Fred, so when indoors and unsupervised, he bunks in a puppy crate alongside Mopple’s crate. As a result, they’ve become good pals. So much so that Fred spends his outside time lounging alongside Mopple’s fence when Mopple is in the outdoor pen.

So on Saturday morning, after feeding animals, milking the goats and depositing Mopple in the pen for the day, John and I headed off to the grocery store for grub.

It was time for Mopple’s bottle when we got home, so I heated his milk and took it out to him. He usually meets me at the gate ravenously (or so he says) hungry. This time he didn’t. As I opened the gate, Fred raced out of the Port-a-Hut. What? How did he get in there? And where is Mopple? I rushed to the Port-a-Hut to see. Fred had cornered him and bitten him several times and Mopple was in shock.

I rushed to the house with Mopple: he had a small nick behind one ear and superficial bites on both shoulders. The injuries weren’t much but his shocky condition scared me—a lot. I gave him Reiki (I’m a Reiki practitioner) and held him on my lap while John dabbed his injuries with emu oil. Gradually over the next few hours he recovered.

Today he was spronking around the yard, good as new but I kept him indoors except for exercise periods lest flies bother his wounds.

And where did Fred get in? The tiniest hole where a goat had bashed the fence. It’s fixed now but I’ll be watching closely when Mopple goes out again. My poor little guy!

This is why dogs, except for LGDs, should never be trusted with sheep and goats. Even though Fred and Mopple are buddies, no doubt when Fred got in the pen, Mopple ran, and to any dog running sheep and goats are prey.

Mopple is okay but what if we hadn’t come home when we did? Never take dogs for granted. Unsupervised dogs, even sweet, household pets that think they are only playing can easily kill or maim a goat or sheep.