Here are a couple of shots of the new baby boy goats.  They get to go play at the bomb shelter when they have finished weaning.  Tank is the black one and Dozer is the patchwork boy.

Now that I am at the farm full time, we have been able to start building the livestock aspect of the farm.  The chickens and pigs were easy.  They could be set up on automatic waterers, bulk food and solar sensitive coop doors.  They required little maintenance during the week.  However, anything that needs hay is a whole different world.  The donkeys need their hooves cleaned, need fresh water, need fresh hay, and, of course human attention.

In keeping with our wanting to become more and more self-sufficient we have added a small flock of Nigerian Dwarf Goats.  Frankly, cows are too big and are a pain.  I’ve had a lot of experience being around them, but they are very large animals and we didn’t want them rubbing the fences which would require maintenance and dealing with something that large (900 – 1200 lbs) when we don’t eat a lot of beef.  So we investigated, and then purchased our little babies!  Nigerians get to about 70 lbs. which is the size of a moderately large dog.  These little sweeties aren’t raised for meat.  In addition to being pets, they have very high butterfat content in their milk.  It is our intention to 1. Milk them when they are old enough.  2.  Use the milk for making soap and 3. Cheese.  All of this to be made by a simple combination of pasture grazing, hay and water!

I knew quite a bit about the other creatures we have raised but these little buggers took some investigating.  They can come down with all sorts of health issues and we wanted to make sure that we didn’t get caught off guard.  The girls arrived about a month ago.  They are Ginger (the patchwork baby), Cumin (The Chocolate one) and Paprika (the rusty colored one).  This past Sunday (will need to post pictures) our two little boys arrived.  Tank is all black with frosty white ears and nose and Dozer is a patchwork like Ginger.

Goats have an incredible amount of energy and personality.  They want, and demand, attention, just like dogs.  They follow you around all over and because they are currently pretty tiny, they can get underfoot without you knowing it.  These guys are the reason for all of the extensive fence building.  They are little escape artists so things need to be secure.

The youngest donkey has established his territory.  He does NOT like them coming into HIS corral.  He isn’t mean, but he will chase them off and the pecking order is being established.  Not much of a contest between a 15 pound doeling and a 300 pound donkey.  It has all been very entertaining.

As I limped back to health and got back on my feet, the new garden beds got built, the barn got constructed (we just had power run to it) and the pasture fence got built.  The donkeys arrived and in the whole process we brought in turkeys and built a coop  for them to gobble in!  We have 15 “Bourbon Red” cheepers.  They aren’t quite as bright as chicken babies.  We had to teach them how to eat and drink because they kept eating the pine saving bedding while they were in the brooder.  We lost a couple as a result but we have a healthy flock of 13.  We have no idea how many are Toms or Hens yet.  Our goal is to raise them for meat and to hatch out their eggs to keep our flock going.  They are very sweet and have been trying out their new wings.  Turkeys like to fly and roost in trees so we are going to have to clip their flight wings (which is completely painless to them).  Turkeys don’t lay eggs year round like chickens so when they mature we will be hatching them in our incubator when that starts to happen.  More fun!  We eat far more ground turkey than beef so this made perfect sense to us.