This year all three of our does kidded. Between them they had seven kids, four bucks and three does. 

First off Pinky kidded. She had twins, one buck and one doe. (Read about the birth here.)

Dwopple is Pinky's first kid, her buck. He is just like his sire, Pecan - lazy, friendly, naughty, and sweet. Also like Pecan, Dwopple has rather droopy ears. The farthest up he can get them is about straight out. Dwopple and Pinky together terrorize the other baby goats, but sometimes Dwopple will ram into Pinky instead of the kid. Dwopple is as friendly as a bottle baby, without all the sucking bottle babies do. And he loves selfies.

Songbreeze, or Song, is Pinky's doe kid. She is more like Pinky than Pecan, but unlike Pinky and very like Pecan she loves to be held and petted. With Pinky you must scratch her just so at the right time and she must be in the correct mood and she's going to pretend not to like it anyway. Song (or maybe just all does) was smart at birth and nursed right away. Dwopple took two hours to nurse.

Next Jenny kidded. She somehow managed to pop out triplets a day after her due date on February 4. I say "somehow managed" because I was commiserating with a friend on the third (her due date) about her being barely big enough to have a single kid in there. She had two bucks and a doe, and she also somehow managed to have them while I wasn't there even though we stayed home the whole day. (The story of her kidding is in this post.)

Wot is Jenny's oldest triplet, and the only doe. At the time of birth she was the same size as her next youngest brother, Lad, but she got the Nigerian body size from Pecan and is now about 2/3 Lad's size. Wot is similar to Rosebud, one of Jenny's kids from last year. Both are chamoisee (Wot's is softer because of the Nigerian side) and they have very similar temperaments and facial expressions and markings.

Laddie Buck (also known as Lad) is Jenny's middle trip. He didn't have the silly streak that all three other bucklings born here have had. He latched onto the teat and started sucking upon arrival. Lad is a really big goat, about as big as Jenny's full Alpine twins were at birth. He is grey roan colored. Lad is a big baby. Song, less than half his size, bosses him around so much it's a shame. Lad also isn't the brightest goat ever. He is always getting left behind by the herd and then he cries until rescued or he finally gets a move on and catches up with them.

Dontcha is Jenny's runt. He had a rough start but he pulled through after lots of TLC, medicine, and staying with Jenny at night when the others got locked up. He has a long, slightly shaggy coat and a large frame that he doesn't know what to do with. He was pretty clumsy at first. Now he gets locked up at night and is a really healthy goat. He is the first goat on the farm to have an abscess, an abominable thing. It is perfectly harmless to the goat, but the pus is nasty, and it's not so fun to put ointment on. He's been really good with treatment so far, though. 

Next up and last we had Honey, without a due date. (Side note: no due dates is for the birds. Perfectly awful. Absolutely detestable. Horrid.) She kidded the twenty fifth, three weeks after Jenny. She somehow managed two black kids, one buck and one doe. (Birth story here.) The "somehow managed" is because there is absolutely no way she could have had black kids. She and Pecan have no black lineage as far as I know and black is recessive. 

Scarum is a very sweet goat. He was fairly big as a newborn and I had to help Honey out a little and pull him. It took him a little longer than normal to latch, but he did in the end. As a newborn he and his sister were extremely playful. Usually kids that age wobble around and nurse and sleep, but not these two. They were bouncing around and falling over. 

Triss was a good bit smaller than Sacrum and did not take her precious time as he did with coming into the world. She was there in an instant. Triss is a sweet little gal, a mini me of her dam when it comes to temperament. She has a wild streak, but she loves attention. 

By Suzanne Tyler
​the Green T Goatherd

We installed two new beehives recently! They were packages, and we put them into Dad's new top bar beehives that he built. 

Here are the packages:

Dad opened up the packages. On the first package, he accidentally dropped the queen cage and it disappeared into the mass of bees. I fished it out. It was kind of hard to actually see the queen in the cage because there were so many bees on it.

Pouring bees! As Dad pointed out, whoever thought pouring bees would work?

We checked the hives the next day to see how things were going. The white hive was super active and buzzy around the queen, the yellow hive was much more calm, and the opinions and interpretations among us concerning their behavioral differences are a little varied... so we'll keep you posted on the proceedings of our first two top bar hives!

​Written by Jane
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