It's Dinah! Isn't she a charmer?

Look at this little love! Our latest arrival is doing great!

Dinah is up and doing great! She tried to run after us when I walked Dahlia to the milking stand - how cute is that?  Dahli did pretty good for her first time milking. One side was pretty hard to get going - so we brought in an expert. We got one of the Too Cutes to latch on and relieve the pressure. Yay teamwork!

We'll see if Dahlia is good natured enough to take on the Too Cutes - if she lets them nurse then I won't have to bottle feed them! Now THAT is teamwork!

Happy Sunday everyone!

Dahlia had her baby! Meet Dinah... and other goings on

Today had everything down here on the farm - action, adventure - chicken butchering.... and the arrival of our newest goat..... Dinah!

The biggest baby EVER. Yay Dinah!

We were surprised when Dahlia was acting weird today.  Even more surprised when she was "laying down taking a nap" and then just plain shocking when stuff started happening. There was yelling, running, and me about to puke. In the end the biggest baby goat we've ever had was up and about and getting sips from Dahlia.

She's up!

Even tho Dahlia was bred by Too Short it looks like she had a full sized baby.  Isn't that amazing? Dinah also has those adorable little La Mancha ears. Welcome to the team, Dinah! 

Without question the chicken butchering was much better. For me. After us being too sick or too cold to get our meat chickens in the freezer - we finally got some work done on them. We would have gotten a lot more done if.....

And she has the same cute crescent that Cressie has - how adorable is that?

...We hadn't looked over to see a beagle standing in our goat yard. IN OUR GOAT YARD. There was screaming. Running. And me not puking but doing a lot of swearing. We found the culprits.

Remember our Old Man Neighbor who cut down my hay? Yeah. Well. They've got some 20-something grandkids living there who couldn't keep ahold of that beagle. I'm making a public declaration of their naughtiness just in case I need to prove it. If you know what I mean.

I'll just say its surprising when folks move out to the country, let a dog run loose, then act all surprised when when a completely unhappy neighbor, covered in chicken guts pounds on their door yelling at them to keep that dog in their yard. So guess who is gonna be doing more fencing this weekend. And yes I'm really super duper mad. So we are going to have to run more fence and also run some electric tomorrow.  We warned them that the charger for our electric will bring them to their knees so they'd best keep away from it.

The good news is that we have way more yard than we thought. We ran a line between some newly pounded in fence posts on the line that the survey guys marked -  and now they have less yard. We don't even feel bad. I'm pretty excited for when the Old Man Neighbor comes home from wintering in Florida to see what we've been working on. Why, I'm gonna be there when he gets out of this car to tell him why we put up the ugliest fence that we could find.  And that I finally have my much-longed-for dog moat on that side of the property. Then I'm gonna plant a lot more hay so he can look at it all summer and twitch.

That's the goings on - we are so glad that Dahlia had her baby!

Well there you have it.

Remember when I was all worked up over the crap they call food in school lunchrooms....and how "they" took a kid's lunch and gave her the school's food instead because it was better?

Well there you have it. Just so we are clear - the fast food places won't serve this anymore... but they are gonna sell it to the schools and then feed it to your kids. Super. Duper.  Just so's ya know... I won't feed that to my dogs.

And just in case you need a little more reinforcement... Get a load of this guy and why he won't buy ground meat from the store.  Everyone knows that you can grind your own meat at home, right?  And stuff like sausage is just ground meat with seasoning and you can do that yourself, right?

Or you can ask your butcher counter to grind some beef for you - just get a better cut out of the case, hand it to him, smile, and say "Hey buddy - will you grind this for me?"  Easy peasy.

However, if we've just walked thru and burst into fits of laughter at our classic joke "Hey do we need ham?" the butcher guy might just be crying. Our poor meat counter guy, honest, we aren't laughing at him. Just in his general direction. We about fell over each other a couple days ago when we looked into the meat case for the first time in months. No thank you.

So when I'm prattling on and on about raw milk - remember it is not just about raw milk. Its about YOU being able to grow and eat the food that you want to with out anybody - including school lunch inspectors - telling you that you can't.

Happy Friday everyone - are you really going to send your kid to school with lunch money after reading and watching these articles? Ick.  Lets just chalk this up to reason 942 why home schooling may not be such a bad idea.

WARNING! Adorable baby goats

So cute your eye may just melt. I'm not even kidding. You can also see the video here on youtube.

Will you just get a load of these little Too Cutes? They are doing great - happy to see me, eager to take a bottle, and willing to let an enormous dog lick their little milk faces.

Little Cali is chocolate tipped and totally splashy.  She is more Nigerian in form.

Little Cressie is mostly black with cow markings and has an adorable white crescent shape on the top of her little head. Don't those little La Mancha ears just slay you?

They are only this big. Well, they are only four days old. They are up and pip popping all around. This was their first trip outside and they thought The Whole Wide World was the best thing ever.

What could be cuter than adorable baby goats!  Happy Thursday everyone!

The Too Cute's Big Arrival

I mentioned the other day that the nite of the Too Cute's arrival was pretty hilarious. I finally have some time to tell you the tale. But first I'd like to thank D who took the 3rd and last of the bucklings today. He is going to a great home and we are so glad!

And for all you corporate monkeys who complain about your hard days in the salt mines... you ain't seen nothing. THIS is what I gotta put up with all day..... You can imagine my suffering? HA!  Nibbles decided, again, that she needs more "me" time and gave up on the doelings today. So I'm bottle feeding them. Sheesh!  Not for long, tho, we think we have homes for them also.

Back to the arrival...

So there I was tucked safely in bed with our cats, Peeper under one arm and Pepper under the other. I was dreaming my favorite dream... I was in Pie World where everything is made of pie... and was running across a peanut butter pie beach about ready to plunge into a blueberry filling sea...

Angry yelling.

Suddenly the ala mode mountains started to melt and the whipped cream clouds were smeared across the sky...

More angry yelling.

I lifted my "Hello Kitty" eye mask and peeped open mine eye to see The Big Man backlit against the hall light wearing a sock hat and his barn jacket. He was yelling. At me. I looked at Pepper who was just as surprised as I was. She just shrugged.

Then he yelled "YOU HAVE BABIES RIGHT NOW...."

I couldn't tell if it was a statement or a question. I don't have any babies. I looked at Peep and she just shrugged and closed her eyes.

"...GET UP!!! THE BABIES ARE HERE!"

Then he turned and ran. Being a person of action I tossed off the cats, pulled on barn clothes, and ran after the sound of huge feet running across the yard. I was still not entirely sure of where I was going or why. I wasn't even awake when I tumbled into the goat house and for the life of me I still couldn't understand what was happening.

The Big Man was yelling again, this time it was, "ITS STILL IN THE SACK! THE SACK! ITS IN THE SACK!"

I had no idea what he was talking about. Why would he need a grocery sack? I looked around and saw... I dunno... Nibbles and some little things....lots of little things.

Then the haze lifted and reality came sharply into view... Nibbles was having her babies right now! 

I don't know why he didn't just say that.

Still a little befuddled I reverted to my Data-mode and started barking orders in bullet point form,

"Priority One:
* remove all goop from eyes and noses.
* make sure Nibbles licks them all..."

And so on.

Then more stuff happened but I'll tell you about that tomorrow, for now lets just suffice it to say that we stayed out there in the goat house with Nibbles until just before 2 in the AM. We still can't believe that Nibbles had five, FIVE, of them. Nor can I believe they all lived thru the nite.

When we got into the house I immediately turned to my own med'cine and poured myself a couple of huge shots of tequila. I figured I had earned it. However, I was so worried that I really couldn't sleep. Especially since Kai shattered the nite with a bone chilling bark about an hour later.

Coyotes! I was sure coyotes had scented the fresh babies, rappelled over the fence, dug under the goat house, and killed them all. I sent Dog#1 out to investigate but apparently it was just some varmint that had gotten up on the deck. I went back to bed. And laid there all nite wondering if the Too Cutes were gonna make it.

At O-dark-thirty the dogs started pawing around so I sent the team out of recon. They had nothing to report and were suspiciously quiet so I tromped out to th goat house not knowing what to find. But the baby goats were fine. Actually they were great. Everyone was up and nursing from Nibbles.

So the record breaking, boat sinking, net busting haul of five - count them - five baby goats was a raging success. And that's just the start of it! pretty soon Dahlia will have her babies and I'm pretty sure that Debbie has a couple buns in the oven as well.

You gotta hand it to Too Short... or Too Pimp... that guy has got the goods. By the way, I know who has Too Short now if you are interested... but based on his success I'm pretty sure his price just went up.

Remember that baby goats can show up at the craziest hours. And as we come into the full moon, anyone with babies due should keep a watchful eye on the flocks.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

The "Too Cutes" are doing great!

Thanks to K for inspiring the term the "Too Cutes" to describe the Nibbles Horde. Wow what an arrival!

Feeder for scale - aren't they a scream? They sound like squeaky toys!

And thanks for everyone's will wishes - Nibbles and the Too Cutes (from the baby daddy "Too Short" aka "Just Tall Enough" aka "Too Pimp") are doing great. They drank Nibbles dry tho so I sprang to action, worked the phone lines, sealed the deals, and delivered two of the bucklings to their new home on Monday nite. We thank D for taking the babies and know that she will do a great job with them. We think we have homes for a few of the others so hopefully Nibs will have a more manageable number of Too Cutes to feed in the next couple days.

Like me to a tequila bottle.. this Too Cute latched on and had a couple of shots

My pal the Big Onion asked me how I handled all of this - with two shots of tequila before I went to bed, my friend, with two big shots of tequila.

Aren't they splashy? Such beautiful coloring!

Five kids is pretty unusual - I figured three was plenty but five is a "wow!" for sure. There was no way Nibs could nurse them all - or even remotely produce enough milk. And you know I'm not great at being an udder, so we had to think fast. The best choices were to either "pull" some of the babies (take them away from the momma) and make them full time bottle babies, or supplement all of them a little with milk replacer or just milk from the store in addition to being on Nibbles, or rehome them.

This little love would have had plenty of milk if I had planned better. 

Normally, if we had our act together, Debbie would have kidded first and we would have had plenty of milk for everyone's babies. But we were so excited to get Too Short here and installed at the Pimp Daddy - that it didn't work out how we thought. So we chose Option #3 and found some folks experienced with bottle babies - and one is a vet tech to boot. A perfect fit.

Look at that little face! Ooops! And a little poo also shhh...it happens.

Managing goat babies is a troublesome topic. Everyone has "their" way of doing it - some people like bottle babies, some people don't, some people do thus or such. Honestly there is no "right" answer so do what works for you. We believe in "letting momma do it" but we realize that folks around here want bottle kids. We'd normally let the babies be with Nibs for a while, transition them to bottles, then find new homes for them. But today proved that desperate times call for desperate measures.

We had a lot of the ol' switch-o-change-o going on today. We could not keep Dahlia contained in the stall in the goat house - and she really wanted to be with Nibs and the Too Cutes - which was not an option. Since we think that Debbie might be making an udder (hope hope hope) we didnt want to put Dahlia in with her as Dahlia's still milk-stealin'.... so once again the turkeys got the short end of the stick. We moved my little ducks in with the creepy meats, the turkeys over to where the ducks were, and Dahlia in where the turkey's were. Got that?

The ducks were mad, the turkeys were confused, and honestly I don't know what Dahlia thinks - that gal is crazy.

Tomorrow after I deliver the last of the bucklings to his new digs I'll have a better idea how Nibbles is doing. The Good Neighbors came over and declared Nibs "fit for active duty" and she looks pretty good. All of the babies got big drinks of her first milk, the colostrum, which is so important for their development.  So we are tip top for now.

Next, I need to milk Nibs out, evaluate how she is doing, and make sure the remaining babies are getting plenty of eat. We may end up feeding the remaining babies with bottles to make sure everyone gets plenty of eat. Of course the weather is working against us and we have an extremely cold nite - but we have the babies and Nibs in a great snuggle spot with heat lamps, fresh straw, and a draft-free spot.

The best line of the day was from my friend L who summed it up mightily... she said "only on your farm" could this happen. Yep. We couldnt make this up if we tried.

Happy Tuesday everyone - and oh gosh, don't forget to vote if you're part of SuperTuesday!

For Heavens Sakes - There's Five Niblets

**** UPDATE: they are all doing great!  All are vigorous and are drinking off Nibs like college kids at 'free beer' nite.

Two doelings and three bucklings - they are supersplashy and adorable. We are taking suggestions to rename Too Short...the leading choice is "Too Pimp" - thanks to WL for the inspiration.
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I'm writing this at 1:55 in the am. I just got in from the goat house.

Leave it to Nibbles to have 5 that's FIVE babies at an unholy hour. I'm going to bed. More cute pix later of "the herd."

That Nibs - she is something else.

Happy Midnight Hour, everyone! Anybody else awake?