Animalitos

I guess I'm sort of a monthly blog post-er. Good to know, I suppose.

This month has been pretty packed. Mike & I moved into our new place, managed (with tons of help) to get it painted (yes, there is one wall of one room that is that bright orange color)...



...and fenced and full of cardboard boxes (here's a picture from a little ways down the road)...:



...and also went to NY for a wedding of friends and also a little pre-wedding party for us too at my folks' place (lots of old friends in the garden on a pretty day, it was lovely).

There are also all sorts of animalito updates, starting, of course, with the goats.

Frosty and Cle have changed a bit the last few months. Where Frosty used to be the dominant goat, Cle seems now to have taken her place. And not that she (Frosty) was all that kind to Cle in her dominance, but Cle has gotten even a bit less kind and more annoying with his. He's always been more hyper than she, but now he's also more aggressive, pushing her off the top of wherever she's sitting, and just generally being a bit of a pain. Not that she doesn't push back, but it's just different than it used to be. They're less attached at the hip, a little more independent (well, it's all relative) and kind of combative.

The other funny thing is that all of a sudden everything we had in the old house -- leashes, lawn, goats -- now looks so small against the backdrop of our current (versus former) yard. There's no way that two dwarf goats on their own can keep up with their jobs as lawnmowers anymore. Luckily, the previous resident of the house left us a push mower, and Frosty is looking pretty pregnant (check out the udder!)



so we might be getting some extra goat help this fall (and we also found two pygmy goats on craigslist in need of homes who may join the herd as well this week -- p.s. I wrote this a little while ago, so we do in fact have two more goats now -- updates and photos pending).

Anyway, the major goal at the new place so far has been getting a fence up. There already is a horse fence, but that's just big wood slats that would not keep the goats anywhere near inside it. So Mike has been lining this fence with smaller-holed wire fencing. It's almost done, and so the goats almost have free reign of that part of the yard (which is actually really exciting and fun to see, and I think it'll help mitigate hyper Cle too -- p.s. true, Cle is much less annoying and way cooler in the bigger space), and meanwhile it's given us the opportunity to try out some different goat pen configurations.

At first we just had the goats in their normal kennel and we'd take them out on leashes when we were around. Then we tried tying the leashes to posts when we were around, which used to work at the old house. But with these bigger spaces, somehow it just didn't go as well. I think the goats, even though they don't really like us getting too too close (well, at least Frosty doesn't), didn't want us to get too far away either in this new unfamiliar place. Every time we were out of sight, Frosty would just start bleating and bleating. Whenever we came back over, she'd be fine.



So one day Mike figured out that if he attached their leashes to our push mechanical reel mower they would mostly stay in place but if they got really excited, they could pull it around the yard behind them. Think goat-style ball and chain. (And note fence-in-progress too below).





That way they could stay near-ish to us as we worked on the fence or the moving boxes, but couldn't run outside the bounds of where they were supposed to be. That worked great until all that pulling snapped the two leashes and started wedging the wooden handle off the mower, at which point we started just tying their leashes together to make them one anothers' ball and chains.

The other problem with the lawnmower system came out one day when, untying them from the mower to put them back in the kennel, Cle, in his infinite hyper-ness, just pulled the leash out of my hand and took off running, dragging the leash behind him. As Mike and I started after him (he's way faster than us), we saw him coming around the side of the house, leaping off the porch with leash in tow. A quick dive tackle got him back under control, but it reminded me of the dive tackle chase adventures from when we first got them last fall. (apparently we haven't done our duty well enough training them it seems -- the pygmies who we've adopted are rumored to understand "here goats" and come when called... although we haven't really seen it work yet -- it seems that that kind of training works better the more goats you have, and the more of a herd mentality you can develop).

Anyway, we've meanwhile added some chickens as well -- 6 (meat) chicks, 6 young layers (may start laying in the fall), and 3 inherited "jungle" (i.e. kind of wild) chickens (who started pecking at our layers when put in the same space, so we've just let them out to wander the yard and feed themselves instead). The meat chicks are living in our bathtub in a cardboard box with a heat lamp, until they grow enough feathers to be out in the barn.





The layers are in the barn until they grow enough feathers and get big enough to be outside and defend themselves against the jungle chickens (okay, this photo is actually a preview of them being a bit bigger and exploring outdoors, more to come).



The first few days with us, one of the barn chickens got lost under a pallet on the dirt floor, but after a rescue (which she probably didn't need, chickens are pretty self-sufficient even if not so smart), they're all back in the game.

In other bird news, we have a nest of wild baby and mama birds inside the electrical box right outside our house, which probably will need some disrupting once the babies leave the nest, as I can't imagine it's that good for the electrical box. And in non-bird news, we saw a (bull?) snake in the grass -- well actually, while laying fence, we had a fence coil that had been spread out and then slipped and rolled itself back up, catching the snake (that was 10 feet from us but we hadn't seen it) up in it and throwing it across the yard. It was a bit of a scare for all of us, snake included I'm sure.

And in non-bird, non-snake news, we were driving back up to the house one evening after dark and saw a young deer in the road who didn't quite understand how to get out of the way of a car. So as we slowed down, the deer tried to run away, but did so by running ahead of us on the road so that we just had to drive slowly behind, following it. Eventually he found a side road and figured out how to get onto a different path and we could make it the rest of the way home at more than 5 miles per hour.

So I guess our lives have gotten a bit farmier in the last few weeks. Mornings and evenings checking on animals and chasing wayward goats inbetween. I like it, though. A bit overwhelming in terms of getting things all settled, but I like coming home in the evening and getting to spend a couple hours outside putting up chicken wire (well, I didn't like the chicken wire itself that much, but I liked needing to be outside) or rototilling a garden space (well, just a little bit so far -- the rototiller is still a work in progress (ooh, and we got a snowblower for winter too)). Will keep you posted.





I think that's it for animal news, surely as we unpack more there will be more house pictures and updates... Meanwhile, a question for you readers: is there too much goat news on this blog or are we liking the balance? Weigh in and be entered in a raffle drawing (well, maybe).

Meanwhile, here are a couple of pictures from bike-riding the loop trail by the Columbia river in Wenatchee.





Hope all is well and be back soon.
N :)