Our New Goats!

[lupinfarm]

OH MY GOSH. Today was an interesting day. I was up bright and early at 7am to let the chickens out ready to get some things done before getting the goats with my mum. Kevin went to water the chickens and about half an hour later, I went to use the hose to fill the mini stock tank I got for the goats and realized Kevin had left the hose running the hole time... The coop was flooded, 4 inches of water on the floor and the chickens were wading through the Hurricane Chickenhouse aftermath!

Sigh, so not a great start to the day!

Anyway, The girls are home...

In the back is Hermione... She's a 6 month old doeling, she's rather shy and sticks pretty close to our nanny even though they aren't mother and daughter, I think she feels safe and looks up to the nanny.

Also, I think we need to rethink a name for Cotton, the older goat, because my dad would like to stick with the Harry Potter theme we have going on. So far we have used, Hermione, Luna, Ginny and Accio on the farm so those names are off limits! Any ideas?

And the whole set up, they are in a 12x12 chainlink dog run, I'm not finished boxing in the dog crate but It is out of entirely reused materials. The stump they have in there to play on I found by our lilac bush, and the tire is one of about 20 we found lurking in the thicket by the house.

Notice the AWESOME 15 gallon stock tank! How cute is that? It cost about $30.00 new.

While I was on my way back, we noticed a farmer was selling calf huts and we stopped in to see how much, he wanted $140 for the older ones, so we picked one up... Turns out they are enormous LOL, we plan to use it for a run-in shed for the goats when they are on full pasture. It has bucket holders inside, which we will use to hold pails of minerals, and we'll give them a little step ladder to use to get to it.

About an hour after the girls got to their new home, I gave them their CD/T shots which they took fine while munching on some grain They'll do anything for grain

I was wondering, about how much should I feed them daily? Kerry just had them on "grain as they stole it" from the donkeys sweetfeed but I'd like to put them on a proper diet. At the moment all I could pick up was some Rolling Acres Goat Ration which is a sweetfeed type mix with almost no molasses in it. I have ordered a bag of the Goat Maximizer from the feed store to try as well, but that doesn't come until next friday.

Anything else I'm missing?

 

[ksalvagno]

Cute little goats. I'm sure they will love their new home.

 

[Laney]

How about Fleur or Narcissa??? The coloring is right there. If you used Narcissa you could call her Cissy. They were both blonds. Both are floral names....

Of course there are more obscure names too....but those are off the top of my head.

Laney

 

[lupinfarm]

Narcissa is nice! .. I think we'll call her Narcissa.

BTW, they escaped today LOL

We went out to get nails to do more buck fence and came back to goat berries down by the horse pasture (a good 900ft away!!) and missing goats!... Well I figured out how they got out and got that resolved (they actually pushed the gate of the pen wide open, turns out the latch was mounted on a angle and they were able to push out and the door opened for them.. crime of opportunity lol) so I fixed that and added 3 chains just incase the latch failed, they still wouldn't get out hehehe.

Anyway, I drove down the driveway to see if I could find them, and there they were, naughty little minxes standing in the middle of the driveway. As soon as they saw me with a bucket of grain, Cissy (as she is now called ) came bounding alone the drive with Hermione in tow. I tried several times to scoop up Cissy but she wasn't having any of it, and kept looking at me then the field and going towards it like "ohh mom I want to eat grass!!" Eventually I scooped her up and got a collar on her. I took her up to the pen and had her with me, then she started calling to Hermione who, thankfully, followed Cissy's call and came bounding up to the pen in record time. Both are securely back in their pen hehehe.

They seem far more relaxed now than before their little stint in the wild! ... Befor ethey wouldn't get off their house and stood most of the time looking on edge, now they are lying down on the ground chewing their cud next to the house and eating in front of me, and the like. I think they just wanted to survey their new surroundings. Really, all they wanted was to be in the pasture with Luna. They were friggen determined!! Luna was very interested and seemed to like Hermione, ears forward and alert.

 

[Laney]

Cissy Is a great goat name. We only named one of our adult goats. We have 4. Frederick who we actually bought because his name was Frederick. My Stepdad who passed away in 2006 had the same first name. Then the duo of Lil'Mama and Toro.

When we finally went to get the last adult goat we were going to get and they were simply calling her Nanny, I put my foot down. She had to have a new name. So we asked a little more about her and it turned out that she loved to eat magnolia leaves. So we named her Magnolia, or Maggie for short.

We never thought to have a theme on the names, I love that you have that. If you run out of Harry Potter you could expand to children's literature or, classic, or however you want.

Our three new bundles of joy were just named as they were born. S'more because she looks like one in coloring. Perseus because he was born under the Perseid Meteor Shower (daughter objected to Perseid, we just call him Percy) and Storm because he was born literally in the middle of one.

Maybe with any of S'more's babies we'll have an all candy theme?

Laney

 

[lupinfarm]

I think the idea of a candy theme is great! ... Our farm is duel named, Lupin as in Lupin Flowers and Lupin as in Remus Lupin

I'm eagerly awaiting my first horse since having to give up my old haflinger X boy last year (he was in his late 20s and I couldn't care for him anymore since he moved out west to live with my coach, so he has gone to a companion home to live out his days) so I can name it Mischief Managed (as in the words you say to the Marauders Map to hide itself).

We are now planning on enquiring about nigerian dwarf babies in the spring, a while back I discovered there was a breeder in the town north of us but at the time minis were not in the running and now I am hooked!! So we will be looking into a couple more babies this spring coming, and also looking at a couple Nubian/Boer X's from a farm in Norwood.

 

[Laney]

Our farm is named Rigby's Folly. But it's not Folly as in a silly undertaking (like the old English garden structures) but as in a mystical place full of magic and beauty.

My husband's family has been in this country for several hundred years and no matter where their farms have been, it's always been The Folly. So there is still a Rigby's Folly, no longer owned by the family that was established 17XX.....in eastern MD I think?? and now ours down here in NC.

I've always laughed over Remus Lupin's name...Remus was half of the pair of twins Remus and Romulus in Greek mythology who were raised by wolves, and Lupine is the wolf equivalent of Bovine for Cows. How could he have not been bitten by a werewolf? He was doomed from birth. So many names in that book are so symbolic.

Laney

 

[lupinfarm]

I know

I named my Ipod Sirius and my Flip Camera (USB video camera I use for youtubing) Regulus LOL

How hilarious is that that I named my electronics? We will be in the market (as in looking through our litters) for a new stud dog in the next couple years and we intend to name him Sirius. We aren't registered breeders because we breed crosses but we still use the registered naming that registered dogs use.

My favorite silly animal name here is our CKC Reg. Mini Poodle, Quesa... her full registered name is Biz Czar Quesa

 

[lupinfarm]

More photos...

Cissy on the Left, and Hermione on the right

Can you tell where they spend most of their time? LOL

And Hermione resting after an eventful escape this afternoon

 

[freemotion]

Awwww, snugglies! My goats would be eating that plastic...