Saturday, February 14, 2009

Goats (again) and fences


This is Vlad running with Nathalie, the babies already give the kids a run for their money!


Close up, I love how all feet are off the ground and ears are ready to take him flying! I think I can, I think I can...


Poor Pepsi, she cant wait to see the babies and loves to spend time with them. I wish I could let just her out, but I think Nona will then behave quite badly.


Not sure if Vlad's intent is to head butt scout here, but she is fast out of the way and no contact was made.


Now Scout going for Chiva and Vlad getting ready for the water in ears head shake.


And here, shaking the ears again. What do you guess is in there to shake out other than their Brains?


Our fence rigging. These are not in order though I meant them to be. Our big red gate that you can see had too much space under, next to and in between! We are putting the babies in a room that exits onto this closed yard, they are too little to be with big goats who are not their mama, when they do not have a mama to cling too. I fear nona will be rough with them.


It was quite cold out, the 3 of us pulled an extra cattle panel out of the barn storage room, and zip tied it across the gate and between the feed barn and chicken barn. But there was space under still bc of a large railroad tie we tried to move, but it has been there a long time and Tad and I were not strong enough to move it. So the cattle panel had to go OVER it, thus making a whole new space and they can go through the cattle panel squares. So now are down to chicken wire which was spread over this (not fun!) and then cut out around rr tie to make sure no spaces.


A finished picture, well almost finished. I have to reinforce right end a bit, right as you are looking at it. I dont intend to cut the chicken wire roll, its just zip tied to the cattle panel. When we are done with it, I will cut the strips and then roll it back up. When frank is home, I want the red gate gone and fence posts sunk, cattle panel cut and put in proper across there with a smaller gate entrance like the girls have. This isnt the entrance into the main 2 acre goat yard, this is just a smaller yard within. We dont need the big gate here.

I couldnt have dont this without Tad, he was a huge help. Nathalie took pictures and tried to distract nona who was a huge pain most of the process.
This is about the furthest she went from me. For a large part of the time her head was over my shoulder, her body leaning against me, her eating my hair in large quantity and 5 min later having the gall to chew her cud over my shoulder, me knowing that was MY hair. She really loves to be next to me, and she has purposely ignored me this wk due to arrival of babies. She thinks she is punishing me.
Example of Pain In The Butt Nona, hardworking Tad, freezing mommy and photographer Nathalie (also cold but refusing to go up to the house alone and miss anything and happy to run commentary on what daddy would do were he me, or were he here and how much better at it he would be-than me-and how she would enjoy his company and on and on...)
Again, Nona in the way, in a moment here though I wont show, Nathalie took leave of absence for awhile. She took pictures of goat and chicken poo, pictures of stray cats, Pepsis back left hoof, the ground, more goat poop, some straw and several pictures of the back end of me that WERE NOT NICE and all of this (apparently) accidentle photo-ing while she sucked her thumb of the other hand.
Here Nona again. PAIN IN THE BOTTOM! Tad is holding the fence bc the chicken wire kept rolling back in itself and it isnt actually fun to roll out, esp with large goat in the way. Biting you, okay fine nibbling on you.
Nona distracted? Oh no. She doesnt bother walking off to see what Pepsi is eating. She assumes she can simply bully it away from her later.
So there is our fencing experience, and our semi warm day outside with the goats. Frank said he wants more pictures, maybe the reading posts I have put up have been un-interesting to him. Nathalie is right, he is better at this and I know its rigged but its temporary. We will now have to enter this yard through barn front room, and then barn back room. Not hard or anything, but the gate entrance is useful and I want one long term. This just until babies are slightly larger.
Nona ISNT as sweet as she looks.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Poor Frank. He's gonna come home for R&R and have about a gazillion chores to do all because you keep getting more stuff LOL.

Jo Abair said...

Oh I know... more babies. And we are going to BREED more babies this next fall! So he will have even more fun things to help with! He wouldnt know what to do with himself unless there is work to be done anyways.