Category: goats (Page 8 of 9)

So that they don’t have any kids until after most of Winter has past, we waited to put our bucks Shatner and Eastwood with their respective does until now, as the gestation period of goats is around five months.

And so, this past Lord’s Day was the time!

We put Shatner with Winnie, Betsy and Pammy (shown back to front):

And we put Eastwood with their daughters Minnie, Tapioca and Marie (shown left to right, with Eastwood between Minnie and Tappi). Any kids God graciously grants will be their first ones. They’ve now graduated into being a part of breeding process! (They grow up so fast! 🙂 :

And here are Aramis and Porthos (left and right), and Donny (center), which, with Shatner being gone, are now kings of their castle:

We pray the Lord perpetuates the herd, in accordance with His will and divine wisdom; and we thank Him for the opportunity and resources to be able to set apart the goats for breeding.

— David

Well, because of some character traits we picked up on, and because the previous name is too much associated with Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” which celebrates Christmas in a way, which is something that we reject, thus causing us a conscience problem, and because we were probably just going to be calling him Timmy anyway, we are changing his name to Eastwood, because he seems to often give us those squinty eyes saying, “Go ahead…make my day!”

You can see it in the difference between these two pictures. You’ll probably have to click on each picture (and maybe enlarge them from there) to be able to see it; but in the second one, he’s giving “the look”:

We probably spend a little more time than is necessary on our animals with this type of stuff (naming, etc.), but we also like to try to be cautious and consistent with what we do.

— David

Although apparently inbreeding goats is a defined method for increasing a herd, we decided to use outbreeding instead, as inbreeding can bring to surface undesirable traits (as well as desirable ones, which from what I’ve read is why people inbreed); so our plan is to trade our males born here with other folks who are raising dairy goats. Our neighbors the Sustaires are doing just that, and the Lord had granted them twin bucks around the same time as He did our triplet bucks, which are half Nubian and half what Winnie is, which is part LaMancha. We also had Donny available, who is a little older and full Nubian. Theirs are Alpine-Nubians, and so we agreed to swap goats. They chose to take Athos, the first born of the triplets, partially because of how well Winnie is producing milk vs. how well Betsy, Donny’s mother, is; and we chose the one of theirs that had horns (one of theirs was born without them) so that he could compete with our other males since we are not de-horning our goats.

Since he’s part Alpine, that makes him rather “Piney,” and so we decided to name him Piney Tim (we’ll probably call him Timmy for short). And so here he is:

We’re thankful to the Lord for allowing the perpetuation of the animals for all of the families here on the land, and for allowing us to have this opportunity with a local family to husband the animals in this outbreeding way.

— David