THE NEW ADDITION TO OUR LITTLE HOMESTEAD

Well we finally did it, we have been getting tired of searching out billies to breed our goat girls to, so we broke down and started looking for a Billie to buy. I looked at several on Craig's List, and nothing seemed like it would fit in up here. I finally found an ad for Crown Hill Goats. I called the owner, who was very nice, and she had a couple of little ones that sounded good. So we finished putting the box back onto the trailer and drove to Central Point to the goat farm. We had called ahead of time so Donna was home, though her husband was away at first. The Crown Hill Goat Farm was set up very well, the barn had been a turkey barn back in the 1940s. Donna was kind and showed us all around the place showing her Nanny's and Bucks. We then concentrated on the babies, she had two that would have been good, one with a little more white than the other, but we liked the the other little guy.

Both were very friendly and loved the attention, although we had to be careful with  the petting, after all these guys were little boys of breeding age. I don't know how much you know about goats, but lets just say the breeding males have some truly gross actions, and these two were pretty stinky.

After we chose the one we wanted Donna took him into the laboratory room, vaccinated him, wormed him and trimmed his feet. During this time Donna's husband came home. He was equally personable and welcoming. Anyway while there Donna asked if we knew how to draw blood for the CAE test, we didn't, So it was time we learned. Donna got the clippers and cleaned a spot on his neck just above his chest and prepped it with alcohol, she had also gotten out two 3cc syringes. Donna very carefully showed us how to find the two main arteries in the neck, how to insert the needle and how to draw the blood, She them handed me a syringe and said OK now it is your turn, she said you don't know how to do it until you've done it. Since my left hand is still bunged up Janice (had been doing all the holding) used some surgical rubber tube to bring up the vein. I followed her directions and inserted the needle and drew some blood, really not hard to do. Donna went ahead and tattooed his ear after we chose a name with his registration number, and filled out the paperwork for his registration.

We drove home and it was late when we got home, and we completed chores quickly, After chores and getting the stall door to a point where it opened, we went out and brought Grizzly into the barn. He was nervous and the girls really sniffed him like he was wearing perfume.

We feed him some grass hay and water and left him for the night. This morning Janice went to the Barn and released Grizzly into the general population. Well that didn't work very well, cause Brownie started to chase him around Janice kicking his little butt.

We discussed that situation and decided that maybe out in the pasture it may work better. Wrong again, Poor little guy could not escape the wrath of Brownie, so we took him back to the stall for a while to let the girls get used to him being around. He will be housed up in the new corral with Dancer when in the rut anyway. We will keep trying to introduce him to the herd and as the girls come into heat and they are bred by him they may change their minds about how useful he is to have around, we will try to keep you posted.