Haying my Herd with the Dog

My friend Tonia over at allnaturalsimplelife.blogspot.com. , makes taking a good picture of a goat look simple. Ha-it's impossible!

I am never particularly motivated to take photos of my own herd, usually because I have my hands full when I am around them. Hay, grain, water, chainsaw...lol.

This afternoon I decided to try and get pics of the ones whose feet I have trimmed in the last few days-sorry no pictures of hoof rot, of which there were several cases.

I put my camera in my new Turkish shoulder bag ( a gift from Boss after a recent trip to Turkey) and slung the hay under the other arm and headed out.

I took four times as many pics as I am posting. Goats just don't hold still for a camera! And the light was bad, even though it was overcast late afternoon. Still, I came up with a few to share

Here is Moonshadow, or moo, or moonie. He is our only polled goat. His horns had been removed when we bought him, also at auction. I saw him advertised in a local buy and sell it guide and called the woman to find out she had indeed taken him to auction that day, so I know that he is Nigerian dwarf and pygmy cross.



Cricket the Beautiful and her white face. She was bought at auction and was also sick as a weanling. Nic the cashmere weck is to the left, stuffing his face. I made up the name weck since he is what I call a wether with buck characteristics. A pain in the *** is more like it.

Nic had a retained testicle and I banded the down one, rendering him sterile but he is just like a buck. He smells worse than 19 bucks at the farm combined, and coddles his group of does and kicks the crap out of the wethers. I couldn't give him away,(I tried on Craigslist) and don't care to eat him, so he is still with us for the time being.



The small doe in the center is Anna, Cricket's daughter. Cricket is all white, Anna's father, Derek, is brown with black points. Anna is so cute but wild even though she was born here. The herd took her in. Her Grandma, Daphne, our herd queen,the black pygmy yawning in the front, tore down the fence and had Anna sleep with her every night in a little house while her mother slept in the cold outdoors against the house.
The face in the far left is Moonie-no horns.



Anaken, three year old Alpine wether. Look at that nice straight topline! If I was going goat dairy, I would try and get a couple of Alpine does. Anaken was the runt of a pack of around twenty Alpine bucklings at auction, and had coccidiosis rather severely, so he is on the small and scrawny side.



and lastly here is Peko, who loves to race along the fence as I carry the hay out tot he goats. He barks viciously at them to keep them in their places. Here he is in the pet cemetery, next to Louise's grave with his tennis ball...Gandalf's grave is in the background on the right.