This is Lex, our stealth goat. Let me explain, Ginger our doe kidded at 1:20 am. She had a doeling. All went fine, we cleaned her up and took her inside since it was cold. We checked Ginger but did not feel another kid. We felt this was strange since she was so big. After we got the doeling all taken care of we went back out to do our customary check of mom, to she how she was doing passing her afterbirth. Michelle went out, I told her if there was a problem call me. A few minutes, later I get a call and jump up and run to the barn. She tells me to grab some towels. As I get there, we had a ANOTHER goat on the ground. We still like to know where she was hiding him!
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Michelle has gotten quite good at the art of bale flipping. Let me explain. The hay is much easier to remove from the bale when it is on its end. One of the last things we do when we bring hay to the barn is to flip it. This is not as easy as it looks. The bales weigh in at around 700 pounds and you cannot place it on the ground to turn it. So it like threading a needle with boxing gloves on and the needle weighs 700 pounds.
A few nights ago while doing evening chores I switched the fence back on in the goats area and my fence voltage dropped to almost zero. I put on my headlight and trekked out into the cold and dark. I started checking to see which wire the short was located on. I have a fault finder, it will show the amount of current in amps and the direction of flow. With it you can trace down the short on the fence. Well, that is in most cases, but this night when I used the fault finder it showed current in BOTH directions. This was not in just one spot, but over a very large area of the fence. Now it is dark, cold and I am alone. There are three MILES of wire out there over two acres. So back to the basics, start looking in the usual places. With God's Grace I found it a half hour later. A wire was touching in the bucks area. Here on the farm we have had our fair share of goats intelligences. Ranging from dumb as "A box of rocks" to "Too smart for their own good!!". Well this year we have one of the latter type. Her name is Ember, she thinks she is cute. But we have other choice words that we use, none of them can be repeated here. Recently while doing evening chores, Ember thought the hay we had given her was not of the high quality that she was used to, so she took things into her own hooves. She jumped into the "penalty box", AKA the enclosed area around the barn sump pump. You see the old waste hay that has been sitting there for over a year insulating the top of the sump was so much better than the fresh hay she just got from us. So there she stood looking at us from behind the wooden slats. She found out two things that day. First, the hay on the other side is not greener. Second, OK how do I get back out of here. We reached over and both of us pulled her out. She has not tried it since. She is not a dumb goat! ....most of the time..... |
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December 2023
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