Thought about milking Vera and bringing the kids in; decided to just bring the kids in about 9:00 pm ... was suppose to be -16 last night .. good god!
 
Then -22 Sunday night and -18 Monday night .. what the frick!!
And January has just started.
 
Got the initial straw and goat poop cleaned out of the basement, but now am wondering if I should bring Vera and the kids inside again.
Those kids are big enough to get into plenty of trouble now ... but frozen babies is a lousy alternative.
I am no longer amused!
 
Have frozen chickens for sale ... May soon have frozen chickens in the barn, as well.

   In the "It's Always Something" category, I did not make it to my sister's for Christmas Eve, which apparently was a lovely/fun evening.

I did drive to Milwaukee during the day to deliver eggs and cookies for the gift baskets and pick up cats, presents and luggage from Jen's ... they couldn't fit their Christmas stuff, cats and 4 people in a Saturn Ion for the trip to my place later in the evening.

  All this because, when I went to close up the barn on Monday, Dec. 23, at about 4:30 pm, I heard a squeaky voice as I walked into the open side door .. found two baby goats, mostly cleaned off, but damp and ears folded and frosted together.
Vera, their 9-month old mom, looked confused and not sure what to do with them, so she went over to her mom to nurse for a bit ... yikes!

I got a heat lamp and towels to finish drying off the kids, but once I found their ears were frosty and one seemed  to be struggling to breath I made the executive decision to bring them in for the night to thaw by the wood burner. 
Temps outside were going to be subzero.

After getting the kids settled in a basket by the wood burner and finishing barn chores, I milked Vera (she was not sure whether I should be doing this, so wasn't totally cooperative) for cholostrum (first milk) and got about 4 ounces; she put her foot in the milking bowl only once.

In the house, the cats were looking puzzled at the new kids in the cat basket and wondering what the heck was going on now. The baby goats were smaller than most of the cats .. and they didn't smell like cats. After filtering the colostrum into a baby bottle, I tried feeding the bony, leggy little handfuls of fur. The big brother (white with black spots around his eyes) took to the concept of food right away. The smaller little guy (black with a tuft of bright white on top of his head), who I wasn't sure was going to make it through the night, didn't get the concept of sucking right off. After trying several different times, he figured it out and drank with gusto.

I wrapped presents until about 1:30 am.
The babies got up periodically during that time, sometimes stumbling or falling out of their basket and trying to take some faltering steps, sometimes just calling loudly for more food. 
It was freakishly cold by then and I was not going out to milk their mom again.
Besides, I did not want them to get used to me feeding them from a bottle.

In the past I had a newborn baby goat, Cam, in the house over night and he did fine with just a few ounces of cholostum. Cam is pictured with his mom Sophie in the Farm Journal header photo ... that's another story.
Cam had also been so quiet I checked periodically to make sure he was still breathing.
Not so with these two newborns. 
They yowled loudly for 5-10 minutes every 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

At 4:30 am, I decided I was not going to get any sleep anyway, so got dressed and trudged out into subzero weather to drag ... literally ... Vera through the snow and into the basement to feed her kids.
Fortunately, Vera, although very unsure of being in the house, was glad to see her kids and sniffed and licked them.
I placed them under their mom, pointed in the right direction and hoped natural instincts would kick in.
The little guy figured this out pretty quickly, but his bigger brother kept heading for me and trying to nurse from my pant leg.
Eventually everyone was working out the mother/child relationship ...  in my basement.

I had not had enough sleep to chance driving at night and couldn't leave 3 goats unattended in my basement for more than a few hours, so drove to Milwaukee during the day to help put together gift baskets and pick up Jen's family's stuff.
I probably should not have been driving at all, but with Agatha Christie on CD, the 2 hour drive each way went pretty well.

Maybe the 2 baby boy goats should be called Kris and Nick (as in Kringle and St.) ... too soon to pick out an APT Shakespear play for names this year.
Hoping to put the goats in the barn today with a heat lamp and some kind of 4-sided shelter ... may need to look into buying a hanging heater of some kind.
Heaters in barns make me nervous, but don't think these will be the only babies that show up this winter and goats in the basement is no good ... this was not suppose to happen.

Gizelle needs a new home.     Based on her ears, or lack there of, she is probably at least part LaMancha goat. She is big, she is a beautiful light brown, tan and white, she is very responsive and gentle with people. She has a wonderfully shaped utter and teats, but she doesn’t get pregnant. Both of my bucks have given it their best over the last two years, to no avail.

Her full, even horns extend gracefully back from her head. I can’t get her to stop using those horns to smack my other goats around. She terrorizes all the goats except the two large bucks, Cam and Petruchio, and the large, horned Angora wether, Dash. Cobweb is a large, gentle, half angora wether with a silky light gray cashmere growing over his black, white and tan body. Cobweb has no horns to speak of and won’t go into the barn when Gizelle is in there.

Goats, well my goats anyway, hate rain and snow. Cobweb will lay under the canopy near the door, tight against the side of the barn in cold, rain, snow and wind rather than go inside with Gizelle. She is brutal to him. Lowering her head and ramming him with the base of those beautiful horns.

It was already cold Monday evening as I was checking water and feed before closing up the barn for the night. Cobweb and a few other goats didn’t want to go into the barn. I could understand their dilemma; stay outside in the cold or get closed in with evil Gizelle. I took her collar in one hand and grabbed the unhooked end of a cattle panel in the other, swinging the cattle panel around to enclose her and clipping it to another stationary panel. Now she had her own ‘room’ in the barn. Cobweb wasn’t convinced it was safe and lingered outside the barn door. By the time I gave Gizelle her own bucket of water and some hay, and gave everyone goat chow treats, Cobweb had ventured into the barn and I close the door for the night.

Tuesday morning I let Gizelle out of her space to roam the barn and pasture freely. She immediately headed to the west pasture fence dividing the does and wethers from the bucks. Sauntering along the fence, she offered her rear end to the bucks for a sniff. Cam and Petruchio were on their way over or through the fence, whatever it would take, to join her. After distracting the boys with some goat chow, I clipped a leash on Gizelle’s collar and lead her back to the barn and into her own ‘room’. I had to go to work at the elementary school on Tuesday and could not have the bucks mingling freely with the eight does after being enticed to cross the fence by Gizelle. I only plan to breed two of the does this year, and none of them with those two bucks.

Tuesday night was very cold again. Gizelle remained in her space so, in theory, everyone else could have a peaceful night. But peaceful was not to be. Gizelle repeatedly butted the metal barn wall and called out. Petruchio, from the far west pasture wailed back. I went in the house for the night, hoping his only response would be vocal. At least the barn door was closed and the does were secure.

Gizelle remained in her room until the weather warmed up on Thursday. I hoped everyone’s ardor had subsided a bit, so let her out and went to work. Thankfully, all was well and everyone was in their proper pasture when I returned home in the evening.

I have put Gizelle in with the bucks in the past. That arrangement creates peace in the doe and wether herd, although Dash kind of misses her. And it placates Cam and Petruchio, so they aren’t focused on the does in the neighboring pasture (my set-up is NOT ideal, but it’s what I have right now.) However, when Gizelle goes into heat every 21 days or so, during the cooler weather, the boys battle each other bloody for the right to breed her. The third buck, a little yearling, heads for cover to stay out of the way.

Gizelle is very responsive and gentle with humans. She just hates being with a herd of goats. Sometimes she just seems depressed that she is stuck with a bunch of goats. I got her in a trade two years ago from her second owner, who kept her and a wether, Bucky, as pets for his four young kids - children. Both goats had full horns, which were at eye level for two of the children, and the parents were worried about a possible accident. I traded them four wethers without horns, one for each child, for Gizelle (aka Katie) and Bucky.

Gizelle’s original owner walked her on a leash and sang to her. This does not happen on my farm … I only sing in the car. She has a pretty cushy life here, for a goat, but she rarely gets much individual attention, and nobody sings to her. She’s smart. I already had a goat named Katie, when I got Gizelle. My friend Kit said she looked like a gazelle, so she became Gizelle. She learned her new name almost immediately, it seemed as soon as I knew it. If I yell at her across the yard for eating my cherry bushes, or across the pasture for beating up another goat, she stops and hangs her head.

I just don’t feel I can continue to pay to keep a goat who, to my dismay and frustration, disrupts the dynamics of my two goat groups. She’s just too cognitive for me to sell for meat. She apparently can’t be bred. But she would make a great pet. The best solution would be to find her a good home as a pet. Need a goat?

After talking about a website for years, and several attempts ... here it is!! 

Will keep you posted on the fun and games going on here on the farm ...two 4 month old Berkshire pigs are the latest news. 

Wild and crazy Porky and Petunia are keeping life interesting for the 11 goats they share the pasture and barn with. Pork was to be Jeremy's project. He informed me his pigs weren't going to be spoiled like my goats. Well, my pigs are sassy!! They make the goats look well behaved. What can I say?