Monday, April 16, 2012

New Lawnmowers!

Up until last fall, we have kept chickens for eggs. They has a pretty large area to run but they were able to keep the weeds and grass completely out if it. Their pen looked like a moonscape. Now that they have all been dispatched by varying critters, it resembles a jungle. That is just one spring's worth of growth.



This area resembled the moon with craters as well as lack of vegetation.  I was not going to try to mow it for fear of falling into one and never being found.  It is too large of an area to weed eat and I didn't want to spray it.  It was beginning to look like a jungle.  I asked Jeff if we could get a couple of goats or lambs.  He went one (two) better.  We got four, a nanny goat and her triplets.  They are about two weeks old and are the cutest lawnmower ever!  If you have never seen kids jumping around and playing, well, you just haven't lived.  That may be the greatest stress reliever of all time.  With our new acquisition we hope to have the former chicken pen in shape soon.  We also hope to be able to milk the nanny some.  First she has to warm up to us.  All three kids are doelings-BONUS!  They sell better than bucklings and we can also have them bred to keep a supply going of meat and milk.  We were blessed with paying less for them than normal as well.  The three doelings had gotten off by themselves and we were able to catch them.  As siblings they like to stick together, so once we had them we decided that was the group we would take. (The man had 4-5 nannies all with at least twins.) I had picked out a nanny before we had the kids.  She just happened to be their nanny.  We had been quoted a price over the phone.  Once we had all the goats the man checked their sex and was surprised that they were all female.  (he had only ever checked one of them and figured law of averages would have at least one male in the group.)  Normally this would raise the price for a family, but since he had already quoted us one, he kept it at that!  So now they are here and we have named them.  Fortunately they were not bucklings or they would be Moe, Larry, and Curly.

Ginger
Jack Rabbit (Jackie)
Buttercup
Stormy


1 comment:

  1. Fitting names; I can see it even in the pics! They're cute. Good luck with them!

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