Little Janis On the Way

Janis and Corrina, enjoying some morning grazing

When we first moved in our rickety old well-house had some busted up electrical sockets and all kinds of stuff would spark and certain sockets wouldn't work and others wouldn't stop working. So I had in my mind that I would fix them. Upon further introspection and open encouragement from Sweetbreads we decided to call an electrician.

Just so happens there was one right up the road. He came over and in about 15 minutes had the well house working like new and I learned a thing or two. It also turned out that he raises Highland Cattle. 

A month or two after his visit we got the urge for some Highlands and I gave our electrician a call. Sure enough, he was more than willing to sell a few. You see, we're about 12 inches behind our normal 28 inches of rainfall. That's almost a 50% departure from normal. No one has grass for cows right now. He was happy to unload whatever we wanted.

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Weaning. Ugh.

We started the process of weaning Sabine the day before yesterday. This involves separating her from her mother, Mayday, who she has been nursing on for her entire 3 months of being. To make this work we need to keep Sabine in a place where her mom is inaccessible, basically, in a paddock far away from the rest of our goats for a bit. Goats are herd animals and having Sabine be by herself during weaning would make an already trying time even more stressful, so we chose Karmen, one of the more adventurous and spunky Nubian kids to keep her company. Karmen had been weaned when we brought her and three other Nubian doelings to our farm from their previous home at a dairy a few hours away. She and her floppy eared friends had adjusted quickly to life without mom and milk, and we hoped she'd pass that attitude on to Sabine as well as give her some comfort with her presence. 
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