One changes the order of things.
On Wednesday, I looked out at the goats and saw Fern wagging and flagging … she was back in heat. Crap! She was bred the end of September and has been living with a buck up until recently so why did she choose now to come back in heat?
Who knows, but yesterday morning Wally helped me pack her up into a dog crate and I brought her up to Janice’s house to be bred to her Saanen. She had been bred to a nice Alpine buck, but I guess Fern had her own idea of when she wanted to kid and it was not the end of February. Now she’ll kid in May as will Lilly. In the grand scheme of things, it’s probably not a bad idea to have two does kid about the same time so there will be a group of like-sized kids to play together. And who knows, this may be a better cross that what was done in September.
Of course, there is concern in the back of my mind as to why she didn’t settle, but she was not pasture-bred the first time: she was held while the buck bred her. Most times Mother Nature knows better than we meddling humans and the ritual that goats go through while breeding may be an important part of conception.
We’ll see …
We are currently under a winter storm warning. Rain is supposed to start this afternoon, change to sleet and then snow. We could get a good amount of snow. I hope so. I haven’t seen a good snow fall in a long time. Just in case we loose power, I’ll fill the bathtubs with water and we’ll have both kerosene tanks filled.
I rode Merlin yesterday and it was a good learning experience. You’d think that riding and caring for a horse would be second nature, but it is not and when I said it’s been 20 years since I last rode, in thinking about it, the last time I rode on a regular basis was when I was 16. After I left home, I road quite a bit, but definitely not on a regular basis. You forget things. I discovered yesterday I wasn’t setting the saddle high enough on his withers which is likely why it turned on Saturday. When I figured that out, it was a real “duh” moment. Oh well, the day you stop learning is the day you are dead so no matter if it’s something really stupid that I should have already known or something else, learning and admitting your mistakes are both good things.
Yesterday morning, we did another demo up at the Christmas Tree Farm for a group of school children. The owners of the Farm are currently applying for a grant to become an agritourism farm. If that works out, they’ll look to use to provide the animals. That may turn into something good for all of us.
Until later …