Yesterday we went back to the goat farm and picked out another goat.
What can I say, I’ve become a sucker for a good bag.
A bag is essentially a goat’s breast, in case you’re wondering, and I’ve learned what to look for in a milking goat. This goat’s mom had the best bag I’d seen at the farm, so in spite of the not-so-exciting colors on the goat, I decided she’d be a good goat for our farm. She is an almost look-alike to our other new goat as they are both mostly black with white ears and muzzle, though this one has brown eyes unlike the other with blue.
I threw in a blue-eyed goat last minute even though I find them a bit creepy because I know they sell well and that will become important when we have too many baby goats running around to keep. Since this is bound to happen since you can only get milk from a goat after she births babies (similar to a human, though of course there are the few mamas who do induce lactation to be able to nurse their adopted children! Love it! But that won’t happen with goats).
Sadly taking the new goat meant that we had to say goodbye to one of our others who was really not going to be a good milking goat. Ah, if only we just needed pets, but alas, we can’t just think about the “cute” factor; we must really focus on useful animals.
Today I got an updated picture of our LGD puppy which I have to share because for the first time I am just SMITTEN with this girl!
The last picture the breeder had sent prompted my joking that the puppy looked like she’d lost her best friend and then someone ate all her food. She looked incredibly sad! But that was mostly a joke because she actually looked like she might have some kind of walrus lineage since she was a little fatty pup, so definitely no one ate any of her food at all. I was glad to see that in the past two weeks the puppy has decided life is good! We don’t need any more sullen faces; we have a teenager for that.
Last week I also learned that we are the lucky mommies of TWO LGDs; the mama dog of this one is likely going to be coming home with us too because her humans are closing their farm. She will be our actual useful dog since the puppy won’t be reliable until she’s two years old or so (large dogs stay puppies for quite some time and even though they’re bred for livestock protection they do have their puppy phases when they are likely to chase, injure, or kill small livestock if left unattended. Dogs are dogs, after all).
Now if you think we sound busy with all of these farm animals, now might not be the time to mention that our teenager who is in several ways the most responsible teenager I’ve ever known (she’s been doing her own laundry since she was eleven and she cooks her own meals completely by choice) has been begging for a puppy…not just any kind of dog, but a floofy fluffy toy breed creature that resembles a marshmallow more than it actually resembles a dog. And she manifested the exact puppy she’s been dreaming of this week. We bring her home next week.
So that’s our news this week. I wonder what kind of animals next week will bring?!