LAST BABY OF THE YEAR

Well, a week ago tomorrow our last nanny kidded, giving us another little buck baby. That is three bucks and one doe this year. 

He didn't really choose the best time to be born as it was stormy and nasty, he was born just outside the door, and with all of the people coming and going as our eldest son and his family were here over the weekend. Meg, the mom, didn't have a good chance to bond with the baby until Monday.  Our youngest grand daughter loved being able to see the new baby and hold it, but we were all very worried that at first the baby and mom were not bonding and the rest of the herd were picking on Meg. 

But mom and baby are now bonded he is growing and even traveling down to the pasture with the other goats.

 Meg and new baby

 Meg keeps good track of her baby now and is yelling for him most all day.

 Momma and baby just hanging out in the sun.

 This is a picture of Brownie, her two babies this year and the two first year nannies which were Brownie's little ones last year, Ginger and Meg, and of course the new baby.

 Ghost is our oldest goat, who we retired last fall when she was done milking. Ghost is also the mother of Brownie, who is the mother of Meg and Ginger.

This is Ginger's little boy from this year. He was the first baby we had born this year.

NOTE ON GRAFTING

Well I tried six Cleft Grafts last year, only one out of six were successful. I know that this is a low percentage graft, but I think some of the failures must have been because of something I did or did not do. 

Also, we had to move an apple tree and some roots made small unknown trees, so like any determined gardener, I re-potted them.
This spring, actually just the other day. I grafted these small trees. most were grafted with the purchased tool, but I did do two whip grafts. Three of the little trees were already grown into small branched trees, and with these I top worked, or in other words did multiple grafts, on the smaller branch wood The pictures below are some of the grafts That I just completed about a week or so ago.

All of other grafts look to be taking thus far, I grafted them all to honey crisp, just because I like that variety. The large tree in the yard that was a Spartan appears to have those grafts taking hold also.

. I will try to keep everyone updated.