Happy, happy!

Here’s a tip from someone prone to depression (me) who uses holistic methods to manage the blahs. Get sheep and goats—they’ll make you smile each and every day.

Best, get a goat like Bon Bon, whose smiles and silly antics will make you smile and feel good too. I shot the above picture day before yesterday as she posed with her four-month-old twins, Jadzia and Curzon. The other picture was taken the day the twins were born. Bon Bon loves motherhood—and it shows!

No normal playground

Many people build elaborate playgrounds for their goats to romp on. However, since I haven’t (yet) convinced John that our goats need one, apart a few wiring spools and overturned fiberglass horse tanks to jump on, they have to amuse themselves. And that they do—in the “hills” and holes out beyond the house.

John wasn’t here the day the septic tank was installed (and I was back in Minnesota minding horses) but up until two years ago he was pretty sure he knew where it was.

During the spring of 2008 he decided he wanted to give it a checkup, so he and Charlene (Charlene is our stinking and ornery vintage Case tractor), decided they’d uncover the lid. So, they dug—and dug and dug.

No septic tank.

John left the piled dirt and holes, intending to come back to the project it in a few days. Days stretched into weeks and then months, until late that fall he gave it another go.

Still no septic tank.

But by then we’d noticed our sheep and goats loved to play on the tailings. King of the hill is a favorite game for sheep and goats of all ages. The silly Boer does climb to the top, plop over on their sides and roll down into the pit; Salem and Shiloh kneel and scrub their faces in the ground. It’s a favorite place for the lambs to stage lambpedes—and what’s more fun than practicing ovine ninja kicks atop mounds of dirt and rock?

So the mini hills and hollows stayed. They remain an ongoing source of amusement as we watch our sheep and goats enjoy them from our living room window.

Would I like a “normal” playground for the sheep and goats? Indeed I would! But until it materializes, the septic tank pit is a decent alternative.

Mopple has a milk goiter

Mopple has developed a small milk goiter. When our first bottle kids developed milk goiters (Salem and Shiloh, today’s 250+ pound behemoths), I thought “Oh no!” But a milk goiter is not a goiter in the usual sense of the word: healthy, well-fed goat kids and hair sheep lambs often develop milk goiters while they’re nursing.

The best discussion of milk goiters I’ve seen is Karin Christensen’s article at Biology of the Goat: www.goatbiology.com/milkgoiter.html (note the good pictures of a Katahdin lamb with pronounced milk goiter on the page). Her explanation, based on the results of a 1988 study appearing in the British Goat Veterinary Society Journal: Milk goiter is part of the maturation of the immune system; it's a common, normal enlargement of the thymus gland.

Another unusually good article about milk goiter is this one at the Fias Co Farm Web site (this site is a best bet for reliable information about goats): http://fiascofarm.com/goats/milk_neck.htm. Click on Milk Neck Photo Gallery at the bottom—note that number 5 appears to be a Katahdin-Dorper lamb a lot like Mopple.

At four months of age, Bon Bon and Martok’s son, Curzon, has finally outgrown his milk goiter (it was a big one!). His twin, Jadzia, didn’t get one at all. Why some kids and lambs develop them and others don’t remains a mystery.

Speaking of Jadzia and Curzon, Edmund and Mopple have begun chumming with the twins during the day. Here are Curzon (red wether), Mopple and Jadzia (black doeling) in a picture taken earlier today.

A near miss!

I am so glad rams don’t behave like male goats. We have five rams and one buck; tonight I’m thinking one buck is more than enough.

As rut draws near the rams are growing fatter noses and growling at one another quite a bit—and that’s the extent of their rutty behavior. In the meanwhile, Martok (Ozark Jewels General Martok, Nubian buck extraordinaire) is making our Stink-o-Meter spin like an airplane propeller.

Last year he was a yearling. Although he engaged in the usual dubious bucky behaviors like peeing in his face and whooping loudly at the pretty does (and even some of the ewes), his musk glands apparently hadn’t matured. So, he was pretty mild-smelling, all things considered.

They’re mature this year. He makes our previous bucks (all registered Boers) smell like Chanel No.5. The crown of his head is oily-stinky and it reeks to high heaven. The fact that his face is usually drenched with urine adds to the ambiance.

And, like all good bucks who know their mamas love them, he thinks he has to put his scent on me. This usually amounts to vigorous scrubbing with his head (while I try to hold him back and shout, “No! No!”). He doesn’t scrub John; he pees on John’s shoes.

Tonight after feeding I decided to dunk myself in the little plastic wading pool that serves double duty as a watering hole for sheep and goats and a refreshing place for John and me to cool off. I shed my shoes, climbed in, closed my eyes and settled back—ahhhh!

A few minutes later something (intuition?) said, “Open your eyes.” I glanced over my shoulder and—there was Martok twisting his body sideways to deliver a jet of urine in my direction. I set a world record leaping out of the pool!

He seems so disappointed at my lack of appreciation. He’s a former bottle baby and an incredibly sweet guy, but bucks have decidedly strange ideas during rut. He’s only trying to mark me as his property, but I do not want him to do that, no siree!

An update—of sorts

I haven’t done much with Mopple for a week or so as I’m working hard at finishing Get Your Goat! He and Edmund spend the day in the yard or out in the pasture with the other sheep and goats, then go back into their own little area at night.

He’s getting to be a big boy. When anyone opens the door, he and Edmund are right here wanting in the house. Edmund hops up the steps and Mopple leaps directly from the ground into the doorway in a single bound. We let them stay a short while, and then they go out again.

I've noticed that Mopple is growing a soft, woolly undercoat now. If you look closely at the picture above (taken a few hours ago), you can see some of it at his upper shoulders and neck. I wonder if this means we'll have an early winter? It can't come soon enough for me!