New kids on the block

14.4.2020

Our friend from the next valley collected the goats he brought from us this weekend.  I will miss them, but I am relieved to have reduced the number we have to feed.  With five now at their new home we have empty spaces in the last group of six at feeding time, so we have put the largest of last years kids in with the main herd.  Edd has replaced their baby collars with adult sized ones in their team colour.  This age group will be the ‘turquoise terrors’ as they are pretty pushy.

This is their second day with the herd, and they are already pushing out older goats to get into the dairy faster. This morning we even got them all up onto the platform with their heads in the bale. There are still four in a separate pen who will have to wait until later. It is always an interesting time as we get to know the youngster better.  Some are the offspring of our new American buck Barak and they do look a bit different.  The older goats have started to teach them the required behaviour they have to adopt to fit into the herd. I think the ‘blue collar worker’ group from last year are a bit put out.

Our milking machine is playing up again and sound decidedly sick.  Luckily the goats are giving much less milk now that the season is changing so we will soon be able to go back to hand milking.  We think that taking the milking machine to be repaired would count as a legitimate trip out, and at least get us a change of scenery.  We go right down to Warragul for this which is a long trip.

Tomorrow Edd heads back to Ballarat to pick up the rest of the straw and the borrowed trailer that collapsed on his last trip and had to be repaired. The good thing is that he now has room in the ute for more bales as he did manage to get a ton of oats back on the last trip.  With these supplies we should be able to manage for months.

Today we had an early start because Ben was trying to get his demountable home to the new owners.  Indi and Ben have split up and Indi now lives in a rented house with baby Alice.  It is all very sad. The removal was meant to start early and Edd had to be ready at 7am to cut the fence.  Very sensibly the truck decided it was too wet to get into the paddock and everything was cancelled.  We all got out of bed early for nothing.