The other day I divided the brush herd into two smaller herds. I have been struggling to stay ahead of them, because twelve goats can eat a whole lot. I would move their entire fence, giving them what looked to me like acres of stuff to eat, and two days later it would all be gone. I kept my four little guys in the small trailer at the property close to my house, and the other eight went to the place where they spent the winter.
The little guys are pretty whiny about the situation. I think they miss their buddies. Goats are very social animals, and create deep bonds with each other, so mixing and matching them is always a little stressful. Toaster doesn't seem too stressed in this picture, but that's because his foot was itchy.
Screech is now the biggest goat in his little herd, which is a nice change of pace for him. He's always been a bit of a runt, and kind of lives on the bottom of the food chain. When I combined three trailers of goats into one herd, he got a chance to change his narrative a little, and has gotten a little bossy with the smaller guys. They all get along, really, but there's a certain amount of posturing they do to make sure everybody knows where they stand.
The bigger guys have lots of yummy snacks and seem pretty pleased with themselves.
There's a cattle squeeze in their area, which wasn't there the last time they were here, and Panda has claimed it as his throne. He's the buck, and therefore in charge of everybody and everything.
Every day when I get there to check on them, he wanders over to the squeeze and stands there. I think he's trying to impress me with his greatness, but anybody who pees all over their face has already lost the battle, in my opinion.
The goats have some neighbors they hadn't bet before. The homeowner, after declaring himself done with farming after more than thirty years of it, bought five heifers who are sharing the space with the goats. They are separated by my electric fence, but they can gaze at each other over it.
The cows seem to feel that the arrival of the goats is a non-event, but the goats are pretty interested in the cows. They've never seen one before, and even though these are young, and therefore small, cows, they each still outweigh the heaviest goat by at least 150 pounds. The girls were nice enough to pose for me.
So there's my super exciting goat update! Not much has been happening with them, and it's been a challenge coming up with anything to post about, especially since my raccoon moved out. I did go to the wedding of one of my son's high school friends yesterday. I can't wrap my head around the fact that my kids are old enough to get married. Well, maybe not exactly old enough. Here's a picture of my son and the groom.
They're not nearly as grown up as they pretend they are. It was really fun seeing all my kids together again. I only have one biological kid, but I unofficially adopted about eight of them, and I don't see them as often now that they aren't always at my house. Being with them yesterday made me pretty nostalgic and a little teary, but then I remembered how nice it is to always have toilet paper and bread, because there isn't a herd of teenage boys camping in either the kitchen or the bathroom. This one is the groom pretending to be a dryer vent.
I guess it's time to head out to visit my goats. It has just started raining (yay!) so I will probably skip the clipping I had planned for today. I will close with a shot of the sky yesterday.
And another picture of Robin.