Surprise in the Barn

Well, Sunday, Dana and I finally were able to work on gates and fences. We've been trying to get to it for weeks!

It was hard work, but it's so nice to have it done.

This morning, Olivia and I worked about half of our herd. There were several who needed boosters of CD/T vaccine and we vaccinated about 2/3rd of them against pneumonia. We'll finish the rest tomorrow.

We also had to treat a few goats for coccidia. They REALLY don't like the medicine. It's really bitter. We tried adding Stevia (which is a natural sweetener) and it actually did seem to help a little.

So, this evening, we went out to do chores and we found a surprise in the barn. Can you guess what the surprise was?



His mother is Daisy, and she has really been busy the last few years. She's kidded four times in the last 28 months! I guess she deserves a break! I didn't realize that had happened, or I would have been more careful. However, I hadn't actually sat down and thought about how many times she had kidded until I began writing everything down in one place from my notes that were scattered here and there (notebooks, calendars, etc).

She kidded in January and I had actually dried her off after a few months because she wasn't really giving that much milk for some reason. (I think it was just too cold this winter!)

I think she's going to give plenty of milk this time, though, because I milked out over a pint and a half of colostrum! Little Cookie Monster drank over six ounces of Daisy's good, rich colostrum, so he's settled in for a nice nap with a full tummy.

Olivia is going to call him Cookie Monster because his sister is named Oreo. I thought it was a cute name.