Goats thinking about spring...

Frosty and Cle have been way more active the last few weeks. Instead of hanging around in their house, or not wanting to go out in the snow, they've been high energy. When we take them out on leashes, they drag us around running.



When they think we're not looking, we see them through the window jumping and head butting their way around the kennel. Check it out for yourselves.



They've also taken to pushing each other off the top of various obstacles, and helping each other scratch itches -- maybe their coats got so thick during the winter that now they are overheated and itchy -- we're not sure that the whole scratching each other is so effective (see below), but really, who am I to judge goat itches?





The other news on the goat front is that Frosty has started going into heat. Female goats go into heat about once every 3 weeks for about 24 hours. We knew that if we ever wanted to get milk, we'd have to breed Frosty, so we'd have to introduce her to a buck during one of those 24 hour windows. We had been wondering how on earth we would know, though, which 24 hours was the right 24 hours -- the books say that does in heat look a little nervous and act a little funny and that if there were a buck around, it would be pretty obvious that the doe was in heat. But we don't have a buck, in part just for that reason. Bucks get really stinky, especially around does in heat, peeing on themselves and all (literally). Cle, for example, is neutered.

So, everytime Frosty started acting a little funny, we would wonder if she was in heat. It became a bit of an ongoing joke. And then one evening she was acting a little more funny -- running away at the offer of food, getting spooked by Cle. And in the morning she started bleating... loudly. Neither of the goats is terribly vocal normally. And when they do bleat, they are pretty quiet about it. But in this case Frosty just bleated loudly for a good 36 hours.

We were glad that we lived in a house where our neighbors liked and approved of the goats. If we had moved to a new place thinking our goats were all unobtrusive (as they had been until now), we would have been in trouble. And of course Frosty's heat cycles last 36 hours rather than 24, and come about every 17 days rather than 21. So now the whole neighborhood can follow her progress.

This got us thinking, we can't have Frosty making this kind of racket every two weeks forever and ever. So maybe it's time to get moving on this milking idea and find a buck. But apparently that's harder than it sounds. One woman we heard about who has Nigerian Dwarfs in Wenatchee doesn't offer buck service, and the lady we bought the goats from a little farther away hasn't answered our email yet. One other place seems to offer the service but charges about the same amount as it would cost to buy a buck, which seems silly. So we're in the process of trying to find a solution. We'll keep you posted.