The New Kids Spent Their First Night Alone

This is about 1/3 of what I bought that still need planting.

Today was a busy day.  I still have hundreds of plants to put out from last weekend's shopping trip to every nursery in town with my mother and daughter.  In fact, when we unloaded the truck, my daughter said that it looks like a nursery threw-up in my yard.

But before I could get to my landscaping, I had to milk Honey Bunny, my Nigerian Dwarf goat, for the first time.  This is very exciting for me, mostly, because I haven't had fresh goat milk to make all that cheese and yogurt I learned to make in the classes I took back in February in Waco.   

Milking Honey Bunny this morning meant that the kids, April and Minimus would have to spend their first night away from their mother.  I expected a lot of crying and that's what happened.  I decided to give Honey Bunny a bedtime snack. So I put her up on the milking stand facing away from the pen so she would not see me moving the kids into the "baby house."  That's where they were born and spent the first 10 days of their lives with their mother.  Oh! I haven't even blogged about their birth that was on April 1st.  Things move along quickly around here. 

April, Minimus and Honey Bunny

Of course they started crying when I took them to their house and their mother got upset and started crying.  I put her back in the pen and went to the babies and held them for 45 minutes until they fell asleep. Actually they were asleep after about 3 minutes.  I just enjoyed holding them.  Honey Bunny had calmed down by then. 

For her first day of milking Honey Bunny was super calm and still while I milked her.  Just the opposite of my stubborn girl, Dottie Belle.  Maybe it was good that Dottie Belle was my first goat to milk, so I can truly appreciate a great one like Honey Bunny.  Dottie Belle was a bottle baby. She was not raised with her mother. Instead I bottle fed her.  I'm not sure she has ever understood that she is not human.  So I think she cuts up  more because she is more familiar with me.  We'll have to see if Honey Bunny stays good.  Tonight the kids never cried when I moved them and they went right to sleep.  Honey Bunny still called out to them a few times, but settled quickly.

Working in the front yard allows people to stop and ask me can they see the goats.  Of course I love to do that.  So I had two sets of visitors today; both with children.  They all love holding the kids and chickens.

Gypsy Ginger enjoyed sampling my friend Lola's clothes.

  This evening it was so great to look in the refrigerator and see a jar of goat milk.  It won't be long before I can have some really great yogurt for breakfast.  Now that I have made my own yogurt, I can't eat that stuff from the grocery store.