A Snap Shot of Life

I only have time to grab snap shots of life from my phone as I bounce from one thing to another.   We picked up 8 more today bringing the total to 29.   While we were picking up babies today, one goat had three, two had two and one was off to have hers.   Wonder how many we will pick up tomorrow?

 

This is my 11 yo learning to bottle feed babies.   He is doing good.  

We only bottle when we get new babies that need colostrum or when we run out of real milk.  This is babies on their new mama.  Really they have no clue who mama is.  We start with the smaller ones on the goats. When we run out of goat milk, we have 5 producing, we move to cows.  We have 2 cows that will allow this to happen.  

 

Here is new one and 11 yo working at bottle feeding.  They both are learning.  I am very impressed with how well new one does when shown how to do something. She is very caring.  I was impressed that the bus driver said he would be missing her on the bus as she such a helper.  She helps the littles get buckled and all.  She really has a servants heart.  I see her  doing something serving others as an adult.

This very pretty spotted billy kid has a new mama.  She lost her lamb and I decided she needed a baby.   MN decided on this baby.  She would really like to keep him as his color is so flash.  (She is my daughter.) But when you handle the males all time they loose their fear of humans and think they should be in their herd.  In simple English they get mean.  The one she has now is getting a little to pushy.   She is hoping that raising him on a ewe he will not be gentle.  I do think his breed, (Nubian), are just more gentle than many breeds.

 

 Meet Pumpkin!  No ears?   She has them she is a la macha.  My favorite milk goat breed. Many people don't like them because they look funny.  I love them as they adopt easy and are high production goats.   I knew as soon as I picked her up she was a keeper.  It is kind of hard to see how orange she is. 

 This picture is several days old the black and white one standing up is a sheep.  The rest are the first few days worth of goats.   We have over double this many now.  

 

This was the sight that greeted us this morning.   Yes, the goat is IN the cage, well halve way.  No, the goat can NOT get out.  She is stuck.  We had to move cages and re stack them after they got her out.  

 

Life is never dull!   Right now it is taking about an hour to feed babies with lots of hands.  Some even help and know what they are doing!  Some want to help and don't have a clue, some.... well they would like to be a pain and get ran out of the barn area.  Jumping jacks may improve that for those that want to not help. 

Add to that being gone from early, before 9 am until late, after 5 pm THREE days in a row and I am rounding myself up on the way back.   I do think next week will be much slower.  We should be able to focus on school and learning.   It will be fun having all my kids home.  I can really start teaching my new one. 


 

Exciting News.... Busy Day

Today was town day.  We got a late start and had lots of stops.  I did get a wonderful phone call from our CPS case worker.  The waiver went through! Yea!  But that did put my mind in high gear.  As strange as it sounds two of the hoops we have to jump through were to get her eyes and hearing checked.  I already had an eye exam scheduled, but it was later than the time they said.  So I called and they could get her in at 4:30 today.  I also found a place to do the hearing tomorrow, so back to town :P  

Once I picked her up off the bus I scampered to the next town to get her eyes checked, I had 40 minutes to get there.  Made it!  She got a good eye report.  Her glasses are very very mild and so if she doesn't want to wear them, she doesn't have to.  :)  She was excited.

Then we swung by my friend that we are buying baby goats off of. We picked up SEVEN more.  That brings out total to 21.  Add two lambs, one a triplet and one a lamb we had to pull and mom went eww no!  

Once home just as the sun sank behind the hills we unloaded babies, groceries and scattered to get hay out and babies fed.  Of course there were issues.  We had nannies where they didn't belong, meaning no milk from one Nanny.  Another ewe having trouble lambing.  With lots of  work we pulled a dead lamb.  We brought her to the house and I am hoping she will be OK. I am also thinking she needs some babies.... maybe a goat or two.  We finally got critters done at 8 pm.   Then we had to feed the two legged critters  kids.  So here it is 9 pm and supper is done.  I am tired!   Oh in the morning we will have 23 babies to feed :)   Should be interesting.  Then we will pick up again on Sat. if she has more babies born.  

Life in the fast lane...

 Life is busy.  The girls and I spent the weekend at the Heart of Motherhood Retreat.  We left Friday morning and had an awesome weekend.   This was our new one's first time to ever help with anything.   She did awesome.   I know she had to be overwhelmed at times. 

One of the awe moments was when I ask her, "So how does it feel being treated like a young adult?" 

She smiled this beautiful smile and said, "It's fun!  They let me handle glass."   What she was talking about was she was helping decorate and had been putting mason jars on tables and decorating them.  None of us gave it any thought as even the 6 year old helper was helping with glass.    For her it was huge.

Here are a few of the pic from retreat.  I was so busy I didn't get many.  Did want a few of our new one for her to scrap book. 

 

 

 

 

One neat thing we did at retreat was we had some paper hot air balloons that you light and they rise.   The wind made it not work to well, but the idea was to write things that you wanted to give to God on them and then let them float away.   New on did one. 

 



 

In other news we are still waiting on the waiver to home school. She is going to PS for now.  It is much harder on me than her as it is all she knows.   It has went OK.  I do know God's hand is in it as the lady that picks her up of a morning is a Christian.  Tomorrow they move her to a different school with a longer bus ride.  Please pray that God meets her there also.

 

 

In other news life around here is flowing.   Kids are all doing well.  We will end our school year at the end of Feb.  We are about to start a new season of  bottle babies.  We will be buying all of a friends baby dairy goats this spring.  They are due to start kidding this weekend.  So it may get interesting.  There could be near 100 before the season is over.   Should make for an interesting spring. 

 

We need rain!  Please pray that we start getting spring showers to make the grass grow.  We are terribly dry.   We need rain for our pastures, but also for our lakes and our underground water supplies.