Paris Got Her Sweet Tooth

Nubian goats are notorious for having a sweet tooth.  The sweeter and sticker the better.  They are especially fond of powdered sugar donuts and honey buns.  I love it when they eat the donuts...they get little white mustaches.  I also adore watching them eat Swedish Fish and Twizzlers--it is kinda like watching a dog eat peanut butter.

When i walk out with treats, the senior does storm the fence line, and poor Maud, Splendora and Paris stand in the middle of the doe yard, all cute and blinky eyed, wondering what is going on, but not wondering enough to risk injury by getting in the middle of the feeding frenzy.  I have tried many times to give them their share of the fruit and treats, but they have chosen to remain hay and grain babies.

This morning i was handing out animal cookies at the gate, then walked back in the dairy barn and found Paris, all alone with her head in the manger.  I tried to give her a cookie, but she was not sure...sniffed at it, but remained leery.  I dropped the cookie in the hay in front of her, and allowed her to experiment on her own.  She finally  took a chomp on it, and i swear her eyes popped open wide!  She then chewed with gusto, and when finished, looked at me expectantly.  I hand fed her a good dozen cookies, which she pretty much inhaled without discretion (she bit my finger trying to get one of them.) 

I then took another handful out to try to entice Maud and Splendora. 
They weren't having any.

But Paris joined the Big Girl Feeding Frenzy.

My little girl is growing up.

Miss Becks

Nothin' really to say, today, just thought i would share this picture of Becky.

I hate it when someone is taking a picture of you and you get caught with your mouth open.
Happens to me all the time.

If she was wearing a hat, she would remind me of Mr. Ed.
We'll just call her Miss Becks.

Texas Water Sprinklers

In the immortal words of Kenna...."This is how we do it in Texas."

The REST Of The Story

I now have visual proof that Sparta is not jumping the fence.

And there still is not a breach in the fencing.

Came home and found Sparta in the chicken coop, and MOON IN THE DOE  YARD!!!!!!!!

Dare you to try to remove a 200andsomething pound buck in full rut from a yard full of does.
It is a test of strength and wills.

But i prevailed.  To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke, "Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and Raging Hormones."

After closing the gate on the buck pen (Moon was panting like he had just run a marathon,) i went to go retrieve Sparta from the coop yard.  The Big Boyz tried to help, we all got tangled up, and in the process, Sparta got away from me and flew like a shot to the doe gate.  As i was walking over there, i noticed that the water spigot was dripping and bent down to give it a crank.  My back was turned for like three seconds....CERTAINLY less than five.  When i turned back around, Sparta was in the middle of the doe pen doing the buck dance.

The buck dance is a male goatie version of the hoochie dance that drives the girl goaties wild.  Two legged girls think it looks rather stupid--comical, even--but then, it is not important what we think.  The buck dance involves a stiff front leg pawing repeatedly at the ground, tongue lolling out of the mouth, and a hard to describe sort of garbled moose call--sort of a mulll-ulllll-uuulll.  I am not going to tell you about the part where they pee on their faces first.  Ellie May does a very good impression of the buck dance (but not the peeing part.)  You should ask her to do it for you some time.

I dragged Sparta out of the doe pen, and closed the gate.  He was still totally focused on the does, so i slyly turned my back on him, but kept my Mamavision turned on (you know, Mamavision--the eyes in the back of our heads that women develop during the third trimester of their first pregnancy.)  Sparta whipped around the corner of the kid pen and i followed just in time to see him climbing....actually, it was more of a clambering over the fence.  Two front legs were over the fence, two back legs in the chain links, neck outstretched doing a serpentine thing like he was willing his body to snake on over the fence.

Next thing he knew, he was on his back, four hooves (or eight, in the case of goats) in the air.  I jerked him off that fence so fast he didn't know what hit him. 

And promptly removed him from the premises.

Not that i have any delusions about controlling the outcome of this year's breeding anymore.  At this point, i am looking at it this way...if kids are born March 11th they are Sparta's, if they are born on March 12th, they are Moon's.

I really only planned to breed two does this year, and neither one to Sparta.  But that was just a Happy Thought.

Sparkin' Sparta

Get a good look at this guy.

He might just go to freezer camp before it is all over with.

Plus, along about March 11, we may be having a whole bunch more that look just like him.

Remember when i said he was getting out of the buck pen and i couldn't find the breach in the fence?

That would be because there isn't one.

We have another Sail Goat.

Only this one is fixin' to be a Sale Goat.

As in For Sale.

I had decided he must be jumping, but had no proof.  I still have not SEEN him jump, but a couple of days ago, the 12th to be precise, we had to drag him out of the doe pen three times.  

He was in there sparkin' the girls. 

 And the stinkin' does were standing in line.

Buncha hussies.

So much for my breeding plans for this year. 

I laugh at Susan Dear Susan every year. 

Susan LOVES making breeding plans.

She pretty much starts on the next years breeding plans as soon as all that years kids are on the ground.

Each year she spends hours and hours running pedigrees and genetic probability charts. 

We spend hours on the phone hashing over options and possibilities.

Charts and graphs are prepared.

Decisions are labored over.

And then a buck jumps the fence.

And i laugh.

This year it is my turn.

From this point forward, i will be referring to all breeding plans as

Happy Thoughts.

Because that is about all they ever are.

Happy Goatie Food, And The Puppy Milk Program

Every now and then i get lucky and find big bags of clearance produce CHEEEEEP.  Around these parts, it is known as Hog Food.  But since we don't keep hogs at Tails Up, we know it as Happy Goatie Food.  This particular day i got about 25# of grapes, 5# of cucumbers, and a bunch of bananas for $4.  Not only Happy Goaties but Happy Me, too!

This is very timely for us.  We have been trying to give an extra boost to the does nutrition because we have had to press them back into service.  They were just about dried off for the season--except for Chickory B who is on an 18 month lactation--when The Baas received The Gift That Keeps On Giving.  Somebody dumped an Australian Stumpy Tailed Cattle Dog (look that one up...This dog puts the UGH! in UGLY.  They call her Hyena dog) in their neighborhood, and she promptly crawled under The Krew's house and gave them 10 puppies.  Then she took a hike. 

The Baas sent The Petite Delicate Flower in to drag them all out, and they have commenced hand feeding everyone.  Mama dog turned back up, but is not in good health, and not expected to survive.  So Chickory B and Becky have volunteered for the Puppy Milk Program (i say volunteered~i had to ante up bananas and apples, The Baas promised animal cookies and Twizzlers.)  Apparently the puppies are satisfied with the arrangement, having, according to Baas, "no qualms whatsoever and were holding up small score cards with 9.3 and up.  They are young dogs and were having trouble getting the cards up while they were eating cause you know they couldn’t do it after what with all the milk-induced comas going on."  She swears these are cute puppies, and i did see a cell phone picture of them and, well, to be honest, all i could see was black and white blobs, but we all know that there is no such thing as a puppy that ISN'T cute, at least according the The Petite Delicate Flower, anyway, so we are hoping they won't have any trouble finding homes for all TEN of them. 

Anybody want a PUPPY???

So there is today's public service announcement.

Now let's get back to these adorable goaties...

Can't you just almost taste those grapes yourself?

While bananas are a hands down favorite, cucumbers are a nice change of pace.

Plus they count as a "green thing,"  as in "eat a green thing every day."

Now they can skip the broccoli.

Cherry Blossom does not have a very discerning palate. 

 I thought maybe she was gonna dry this and burn it later,  but she ate it.

I'm tellin' ya, this goat is a freak. 

And a pig.
In a goat suit.
Come to think of it, i guess we should call it Hog Food here, too.

Meet S'houldaleftthattrollupgoatalone

I think Sancho finally figured out what we did to him.

He has been rather "in your face" with us the last couple of days. 

And pretty vociferous, to boot.

If you are wondering about his new name, revisit the Sept. 20 posting "Sancho Got A Headache" and read Susan Dear Susan's suggestions for his new name. 

The Trollup is our nickname for Legacy.  Sancho gave her some grief this summer.  It is one of the reasons he was emasculated.  He is darned lucky that is all we did to him.  I thought about turning him into dog food.

So he has absolutely no right to complain. 

He asked for it.