With the snow starting to fall, I let our girls top off their bellies with oat leaves Thursday afternoon, then put them to bed early with a sunflower-seed head.

As she's gotten bigger, Artemesia has grown an independent streak. She now has a bad habit of lagging behind for just...one...more...leaf. But our doeling soon gallops to catch up.

"Gee, I almost missed the treat?!"

Both goats enjoy eating the sunflower-seed head right down to the stem, but Artemesia isn't nearly as good at it. Our little doeling always takes one big bite that doesn't quite fit in her mouth, then she spends several minutes trying to wrestle the seeds into her throat. Meanwhile, Abigail takes little bites --- gulp, gulp, gulp, down the gullet --- and ends up consuming 85% of the head. No wonder our doe is getting fat while our doeling just holds her ground.

Sorry for the dark pictures, but hopefully you enjoyed walking the goats back to the coop with me!

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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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