Early December goat news
It's getting on toward
that time of year when the world is wet and our goats don't want
to stand in damp grass even long enough to pick honeysuckle off the
fenceline. I prevailed upon our little herd to go outside long enough
Tuesday to let me take some pictures, but they mostly made trouble
instead of eating.
Abigail is completely dried off now, and I'm hoping she'll start packing on a bit of fat soon. After quitting milking cold turkey,
our doe's bag got bigger and bigger for about three days, although
Abigail mostly complained only during the first twenty-four hours and
before there was any real pressure at play. Like me, she's not a fan of
disrupted routines. By the end of the week, the milk was being
reabsorbed, and now her udder is about the size it was when we first
bought her. Drying off is officially a success.
Meanwhile, Artemesia looked a bit befuddled when we brought her back from her driveway date,
but she's since bounced back...except that she still smells strongly of
buck. Now I'm peering at her butt regularly once again, this time to
see if I can note signs of early pregnancy. I realized in the process that the changes I'd seen in her butt
this summer and fall were symptoms of increasing maturity and heat
rather than pregnancy. Perhaps in a few more years I'll be reading goat
pooches like a pro. In the meantime, I'll be listening for yelling
around my birthday, hoping Artemesia pokes along into pregnancy instead.
And that's the news in Lake Wobegon, where all the goats smell strong, the cats are good looking, and our dog is above average.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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