Introducing our new doelings...

Realized I had never posted the new kids names...

Melantha was born first and we are so happy with her markings and blue eyes. She is very sweet. Her name means "dark flower". We call her Mel for short.

Magnolia came next and looks much like her mama. She is precious and we call her Maggie.

Both girls are doing wonderfully. They are healthy and happy, so much fun to see bouncing around and playing. Daisy is a wonderful mother and her udder is filled in nicely, we look forward to milking her in a few weeks. We have decided to keep the girls so far, so they are not for sale at this time.

Traumatic experience

We just had a very traumatic experience, having week old kids I am sure you can guess what it involves! Thankfully turned out well in the end... We have a nice farmer friend that has cows and goats and chickens and we asked him to help us with the dehorning of our new kids. We have done it once ourselves before, but it didn't take and we wanted to see someone do it right. He agreed and we took the girls and their mama to his farm (mama so that we could bring kids right back to her to be comforted), only one of the doelings had enough tip to be able to do yet and so my hubby and I went in to watch and 2 of our children said they wanted to be there. We knew what to expect, had looked at pictures, had talked about why it was best and that it would be difficult and painful and smelly. Well, we had brought a box that we built to use for holding the kids but the farmer always had someone hold them so we let him do it how he is used to it. I assumed my hubby would hold her but he had a young helper there who did. They finished the first one and I noticed she had stopped struggling, and they lifted her and she was completely floppy - I rushed my children back out and we stood outside praying and crying. I knew they sometimes fainted but she really looked lifeless. We waited 5 long minutes outside the door not knowing what was happening and then went to the van and told my older daughter who had opted to stay there with the mama and other doeling. I told them I thought she was probably gone or daddy would have come out to tell us that she was okay. We all cried and cried, it was so heart-wrenching! 5 more minutes and my husband walks out with the little doeling who is perfectly fine and has both horns finished and goes right to her mama and nurses. Apparently the young man who had been holding her had never done it before and had his hand covering her nose and she passed out not being able to breathe!!!!! I couldn't believe that hubby hadn't come out and told us as soon as they realized she was fine. Needless to say, he will be holding the next one and the young man learned a lesson too. She had revived as soon as they moved her around and had walked around for a while before they finished the other side and had done fine through that one. It was soooooo scary though, we are still pretty shaken. :-(

Mini Alpine goat babies

Video of goat birth

Free range chickens

We love having our chickens free-range.  We enjoy watching them flock about the yard and they do a good job of keeping bugs and weeds under control.  We have had these free-ranging for several months now and the only complaint I have is that they like to lay their eggs all about the yard!  The dogs have realized that they are yummy - so it is a race to beat them to the newest hiding spot and gather them.  I have started paying the kids 10 cents an egg.  It is frustrating to me because I want the chickens to serve their purpose but I don't like having to pen them up all the time.  We are experimenting now with capturing them all (27 of them now) and putting them in the houses at night and then letting them out after a few hours of daylight and hopefully they will get in the habit of laying their eggs before then.  We are going to try 11am and see what happens from there.  I don't really want to feed them all winter if they aren't going to produce at least enough for our family, so they better get the message or they will be in the freezer!  :-)

New to us fish tank!

We were able to get a very good deal on a 30-gallon tank setup from craigslist.  Will had been asking for one, and when Liz died, it became a little more urgent.  We had read books from the library and found a really neat one that showed creative / unusual ways to decorate your tank.  One of the ideas was a winter wonderland - which we decided to try to create first.  (Stay tuned in the spring for a playground!)  We found items at the dollar store and made a background with the blue snowflakes, tissue paper and glitter.  The white snowflakes are suspended on fishing line and dance around in the water so that it looks like it is snowing.  We plan on getting some more things to fill up all that space, but this was a fun start!  We will add a few starter fish on Tuesday and then if they do well we will add more to the tank.  We plan on barbs, gouramis, sharks, etc... nothing too aggressive but still some fun stuff.