adoption, goat style

20.8.2011

BUILDING NEWS

Dion is here measuring up, again, for the roof. Yesterday he put his quote in and we agreed that he should go ahead. This is a great relief because the lack of a roof was holding things up. He tells me he will start on Monday but that the first few days will be just for organisation purposes. The steel has been ordered and will come later in the week.

We also got the solar tubes put in yesterday and what a difference they make. I did not think that they would be so effect yet, because the wall in the back storage area is made of very dark concrete blocks that absorb light. We will render and paint some time and the effect should be stunning. Two men, Michael and Tom, put them in and covered the light chimneys with neat colourbond steel caps with the Perspex domes in the centre.

There is a special inner glass that stops bushfire embers from entering the house at these points and the other end of a tube has a light deflector that covers the hole in the ceiling. We do not have our ceilings yet so it is suspended from above for the moment. The men worked very efficiently and left with the job completed and everything tidied up, I would recommend them to anyone.

OTHER NEWS

I was all ready to leave for market this morning when I heard a small bleat in the goat shed. I know what that means so I went into the pen and discovered that the goat, Erin, was cleaning and feeding two babies. The problem with this was that I was pretty sure that Erin was not pregnant. On examination it was obvious that she had not given birth so logically another goat must have had the kids.

Looking round the pen the obvious suspect was the teenage goat, Queenie, who was peacefully lying down chewing her cud in a far corner. I stood her up and yes, she was the mother. The kids refused to suckle off her and Erin was definitely not going to hand her adopted kids back to their irresponsible mother. The kids needed colostrum though, and Erin could not provide any so we had to milk Queenie and give the kids their colostrum in a bottle. By the time we had sorted this out I was late for market.

Erin is taking her self-imposed responsibilities seriously and has stayed in the shed with “her” kids when all the other goats, including under age mother Queenie went off to graze. We should be grateful to Erin. If she had not been able to help the kids would probably not have been licked off at birth and would have died.

This means goat season is with us again. I am stuck home bottle-feeding and Edd has gone off on to buy oats. I was looking forward to getting time away from the farm but it was not to be. At least the sun is shining and I have eventually had time to prune some of the new fruit trees. Better late than never!