Some Shade for Billy Shakespeare

In an effort to control the goat population here at Thornhill Acre, 









Billy Shakespeare lives in separate and by no means equal quarters.  For June and the first week of July, the temperatures were 100 degrees and no clouds or rain.  B.S. gets shade from different shadows made by the fence and house, but not really very much and for a couple of hours a day no shade at all. He often just goes into his igloo to get out of the heat. One day I was at Kings Hardware getting some keys made for the rental properties and wandering around the store.  I found a 5x7 tarp and thought of Billy Shakespeare's need for shade.  Well, of course, a tarp will not just float above the pen, so when I got home with just a tarp and told Don of my plans, he made a list of things we will need to actually put the tarp up.  Then, bless his heart, he went back to the hardware store with me to get them. 

Through the powers of my extraordinary gifts, I was able to distract Don for a few moments from his sedentary hobbies of reading and napping, just long enough to put the tarp up.

 

Now that we have had rain for the past week, the tarp is great for keeping his hay dry.  Goats will not eat wet hay. In fact, they come up with all kinds of ways to waste hay.  To make things worse, they won't eat just hay; it has to be expensive alfalfa that they waste. 

OMG

Oh Mister Goat can now jump on the hood of my truck.  I know he has been thinking about it for about a week.  But today he did it before I could stop him.  He may have just limited his freedom.  Billy Shakespeare is almost 8 months old and is truly the best pet I have.  Whenever I'm outside he is out roaming around.  Usually he likes to stay down by the girls' pen, but he also wants to follow me around.

I bought 4 bales of alfalfa Friday, so I was unloading them. 









 Billy Shakespeare made some of the bales lighter.


By the way, I can't believe I'm having to pay $17.50 a bale for alfalfa.  The fellow at the feed store told me they are compressing them into very tight bales and shipping them to China.  So if they have found the Chinese market, will the price ever go down here?


Anyway, when I wasn't looking, B.S. decided today was the day for him to jump on the hood of my truck.  He may have just lost his "Best Pet" status.

The Little Goat Shack Gets an Addition

This past week Don agreed to add a covered area to the goat shack so if we ever do get rain their hay will stay dry.  We did get a little rain last night.  The goats waste a lot of hay.  I've read that they typically waste 25%.  I'm mixing coastal hay with alfalfa.  They seem to throw out mostly coastal hay since they have a definite preference for the alfalfa.

That adds up to a good amount of money, so that motivated Don to build the cover. 

I'm still using the 2 tubs I've repurposed.

 I'm shopping for the perfect hay rack. But once I buy one, that will probably lead to having to buy a different one when the first proves to not work as well as I thought it would. So I just keep shopping and getting by with the tubs.  At least the hay stays dry.  If anyone has information on a hay rack that I can fasten to the wall and the goats won't waste it, feel free to send your suggestion.  I would appreciate it.

Now I need to scrape off the old paint and paint.  I wanted to paint it pink and the grandsons wanted orange, so we compromised with Sunny Park yellow.  It is a very bright yellow.

New Treats for Dottie Bell and Gypsy

Don and I heard a news report about hay being in short supply with this drought.

So Monday I bought 4 bails of alfalfa.  I will keep buying a bail as they eat one, so there will always be 4 bails on hand encase I can't get any at the end of the summer.  The girls would go nuts if they didn't have it at all times.

The first of last week, I found a web-site for buying treats and such for the goats. 
I got a bag of  Goat Treats by Manna Pro
Delicious and nutritious treat specifically for goats to aid in training show animals.  I'm not going to be showing them, but it does help make them mind me.

• Easy to feed nugget
• Made with real anise to stimulate appetite and palatability
• Goats can't resist the licorice flavor
• Resealable 6 lb. bag

 The girls really do love it.

Trinity, my son-in-law, spent part of Friday cutting the bamboo in his backyard.  


I saw it and said, "I bet the goats will love it."
  Trinity commented, "I don't know.  It's tough and will probably cut their insides up."  I laughed and said that was silly, they eat my roses bushes.  So I took on large shoot and sure enough the girls loved it.  They stripped all the leaves off in just a few minutes.  I went on and did a lot of things.  But when I got in bed about 1a.m., I got to wondering if bamboo was okay for the goats to eat, so I got up and googled "can goats eat bamboo." http://fiascofarm.com/goats/poisonousplants.htm  
So according to this web site bamboo is edible.  So I went back to bed and didn't need to worry.

I do have a tendency to do something and then research it.  My sister, Debbie, has a workshop that she presents on personalities using the Winnie the Pooh characters.  She says I am Rabbit. http://www.half-asleep.com/pooh/interact/quiz/quiz.php Using the procedure of "Ready, Aim, Fire" to exemplify each character's behavior, Rabbit's is "Ready, Fire, Aim."  I have to confess, I do like to try something and see how it works and then really think about it or research it. Too often I get bogged down in research and never actually do the thing I'm researching.  So it's better to go ahead and do it and then find out how it should have been done and do it right the 2nd time, when I have experience.  I'm really kidding, but sometimes. . .

Anyway, at about 4:30 a. m. I found myself standing at the gate of the goat yard petting the girls.  It's crazy how something will not bother me when I'm awake, but then I will dream about it and find myself reacting to it in my sleep.  I dreamed that Gypsy was having major problems because the bamboo was cutting her insides up.  I am aware that I am dreaming and I shouldn't get out of bed, but I can not stop myself.  I have been doing this since I was a little girl.  I will have 2 things going on in my head at the same time, reality and a dream.  Nine out of 10 times I will react to the dream even when I know I am dreaming.  Sometimes I remember it and sometimes I don't.  

In fact, I have had a lot of phone conversations in my sleep and do not remember them.  But people who know me well usually realize that I am asleep. They say they know I am asleep, because I am not very nice.  In that case, maybe I should go to Board Meeting asleep.  They could be mean, I could be mean and I would never remember it. 

But this past Saturday, since my husband was at work and I really woke up standing at the goat yard in the dark at 4:30 a.m., I remember that.  Most importantly, the goats are fine, and I made it back to bed.

Animal Food

Again this summer I am keeping grandchildren, Connor, 5, and Chase, 10 as well as their sister Kennedy, 10 months while their mother is at work.  Yesterday after Connor's speech lessons at the Masonic building on Cotton, we went to the feed store on N. Market.  Dottie Belle and Gypsy needed some alfalfa. I read one should always have alfalfa for goats to nibble on so they will not get nervous and over eat on plants.  They were also out of alfalfa the day Gypsy made her escape to the bank.  So I am being very careful to always have it hung right within their reach. Nothing worse than nervous goats.

As we entered the feed store, there were watermelons on the porch.  So I asked Connor did he wanted to get a watermelon.  I did not understand what his reply was, good reason he is in speech classes, but his expression was certainly one of disdain. He had to repeat it 2 more times before I understood.  He said, "Isn't it animal food?"  I said, "We've bought watermelons at the grocery store.  You love watermelon."  But he still had that disdainful look and said, "Isn't it animal food?"

"Well, you are an animal, Connor; a human animal." I replied. He let me know really fast that he was not an animal.  He never did get too excited about the watermelon I bought from the feed store.  I'm going to wait until Monday to cut it with them.  Maybe by then he will be over the fact that I bought it at the feed store where I buy animal food.