Thursday, September 23, 2010

Cabbage Leaves! Get out of my way!!

Yes, my small herd of purebred and American Oberhasli goats are getting cabbage leaves and some cull cabbage heads again, just like every year. People are sometimes surprised how much they love them and how many they eat. My goats can hear the old farm truck putting up the road and run to the fence in anticipation. The horses are eating their share as well. All four of the horses are cabbage eaters. My granddaughter swears that the horses hooves are improved due to the cabbage leaves.

While the goats prefer the crunchy leaves, the horses eat the heads like big old apples. And speaking of apples, they are all getting apples as well this time of year. The pen of purebred kids has had their cabbage leaves thrown in but aren't really all that crazy about them. They nibble, but really haven't gotten enthusiastic yet.

So I have a routine that I have evolved. I fill up the feeders with hay. Then I thrown in cabbage leaves or let them go to the pile. Then I give them their grain a couple hours later.

Pumpkins will be coming soon, girls.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Catch up!

I have a new junior herd sire. He is a son of *B White Haven Bundaberg and out of a doe that is linebred on Willow Run Sir Wil Hassida, 3X national champion, 92EEEE and top ten. Her picture is here on the blog. Haven't bred him to any does yet but he's eager to get the chance. He's available for outside breedings. Just let me know.

Last weekend we shipped in 8 purebred Oberhasli doe kids from Rivards Farm in Texas. Along with them came a polled PB buck kid. So I'm in the PB Oberhasli ranks now. Still have the Americans but I'm sure excited about the purebreds. On the way back Bob stopped in Tenn and picked up another PB buck who is out of Milk-n-More lines. He's a big beautiful buck kid and if these little girls get busy and grow we'll hopefully get a few PB kids in the spring.

*B Heaven's Hollow Pistol Pete is scheduled for collection again in Oct. Then in December he will be collected again. Semen is for sale by contacting me any time. It will probably also be on Come to the Farm Auction for benefit of the OBA in late Oct.

*B Heaven's Hollow Stetson This is Pistol Pete's full brother, born in 2010. He's been selected to be in the Spotlight Sale at the ADGA national convention in October. Their dam Shotsi is milking very well and racking up a great lactation record for this year that will no doubt put her into the top 10 once again.

My friend Katie Morgan is out in California until December and is learning to collect and process semen for A.I. She'll be back in December and then we'll have a lot of practicing to do. I was chatting with Katie on Facebook and it came on the news that there was that huge explosion which leveled 50 houses and killed some people. Katie was not too far away from it. Terrible tragedy.

Well, let's see I think that's all the goat news.

Breeding Season or The Joy of Hormones

I have a pen of 9 sweet little 50# PB does. Right along side is a pen of 3 kid bucks. they're fighting and butting heads and mounting each other, blubbering at the girls. Then my big buck gets out and he's been blubbering around the little girls for 2 days. By that I mean, he was running around the pen on the outside, fighting with the little bucks in their pen throught the fencing and trying desperately to get to the girls. Knowing I was going to drag him back to his own barn, he wasn't about to let me catch him.

I go down yesterday to feed. Horror! Here's the 3 buck kids running amuck! the old buck was so upset and running around the outside, pushing the gate and sticking his head in. He just couldn't get over it. Just couldn't figure a way to get in.

The little girls are running around and around in the doe pen trying to get away from them. But there's no way to get away from 3 horny little bucks. One of the larger ones seems to be in heat but wasn't standing. And a couple of the other little girls had managed to get into the buck side. They were too spooked to let me catch them.

One person can only do so much.

I managed to get the three buck kids back on their side but the does wouldn't cooperate so I had to leave them in on the buck side, too. Poor things. They were jumped and mobbed and molested continuously until someone could go down and help me separate them.

Yeah, it's crazy all right. I don't really think anything got bred, but you know goats! It'll be over in a month or two. TG.