Goat in the manger
"Oh, Abigail, why do you
have to be so bad!" I exclaimed when I entered the goat shed Monday
morning. I'm used to Artemesia jumping over into the kidding stall and
then onto the tarp-covered pile of stored hay therein. But Abigail used
to stay put in the main room where both goats belong.
No longer. Our herd queen bent down the top of our wire manger
then figured out how to leap from milking stanchion to a new perch atop
the hay. Next, she proceeded to sleep there and poop there, meaning the
loose hay was no longer on her goat-approved menu.
In her defense,
though, I think Abigail was just trying to force my hand since I'd kept
adding new hay on top of old hay that she wasn't entirely keen on. So I
cleaned out the whole manger and put a much smaller layer of fresh hay
back in. Hopefully that will be enough to make our herd queen obey the
rules...although I have no hope that our little leaping charmer will
keep her feet planted firmly on the ground.
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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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Right.... like the Latin "Capricious" doesn't come from the root for "goat"... I like goats, but I won't ever get any more...