After a brief taste of warm weather at the end of April and early May, the snow came back for a last word on May 10th. 

The kids could not have been more delighted!   

Phil’s parents were in town, and Jim couldn’t wait to get out and play in the snow with the other kids.

Thor helped Jim build a snowman. 
Brownie and Snowball helped too. 

Jim thought maybe Mocha would like to stand on top of the doghouse. Mocha wasn’t too sure of the footing, but the experience left ideas in her brain. A few days later she was the first kid to scale the top–a feat she alone could accomplish for at least two days before the others figured it out.  

Cupcake says, “Wheee!!!” 

The kids could not get enough of Jim. They all loved him, but Brownie and Snowball were especially enamored.   

Brownie posed for a glamour shot. 

Not to be outdone, Yeti posed for an even better glamour shot!   

And then Thor blew them all out of the water with his striking pose! 

“Up? Up?”

Laughing, leaping Yeti and Thor! 

Little Yeti attends one of Phil’s work meetings in the office. 

TinCup takes a break in the warm, sunny gravel with her three kids around her.  

TinCup’s kids took their first walk on May 3rd. Poor TinCup looks a little ragged with that old winter coat still clinging. Thankfully she’s gaining weight now that she’s had the kids. 

Little Buster Brown is one of the stoutest kids we’ve ever had. His build and personality remind me a lot of Finn. 

Run Cupcake!!!

This has been one of the greenest springs we’ve ever had. I look out the window and feel like I’m in Switzerland. 

After the first day or two, one of Snowball’s ears started folding back against her neck along a crease it had when she was born. It got worse over the following few days and soon the inside of her ear felt hot and weepy. She kept scratching at it with her hind foot. So I put a cardboard tube on the inside, a short piece of a paint stick on the outside, and duct taped them to her ear to unfold that stubborn crease. I thought it would straighten out in a day, but it ended up taking three days of wrapping before the ear stayed stiff on its own. It still has a funny little fold near the back, but at least she can hold it out now and the air can circulate inside.  

One day I found all six babies curled up inside the small doghouse. What a fuzzy little pile of cuteness! 

Phil and I love to bring the kids into the house in the evenings to watch movies with us on the couch. Cupcake and Brownie have been some of the most fun. They play and play before the show starts, but then they’re both content to settle down and sit quietly when the film starts to roll.  

Brownie makes friends with one of our stuffed goat toys. 

“Oops!”

Whew! The first three weeks of May were a whirlwind of activity and excitement–so busy that I never even caught us up on the photos from the tag end of April! April 30th was a busy day. It was Snowball’s first day in the Wide World, and the day Petunia’s kids ventured out on their first walk.

Tigerlily had to slowly warm up to her new role as “mother”. She had delivered two dead kids in two previous births and didn’t quite know what to do with a live one. I’m not sure how anyone could be afraid of this adorable piece of dandelion fluff, but Tigerlily harbored a few suspicions. She also kept mistaking me for her baby and would sometimes reject Snowball in favor of me when I would interact with the two of them. She did better when I left her alone. She’s the first goat I’ve had to lock up in a separate enclosure with her kid so they could bond in private. Every time other goats’ babies entered the scene, Tigerlily would go into a frenzied confusion and start butting all the kids away, including her own.

“Look out, Tigerlily! Don’t be fooled by the small, innocent appearance. It can probably smell fear!”  

Tigerlily also had a tendency to abandon Snowball for hours on end as if completely forgetting she had a baby of her own to look after. 

Where’d everyone go? 

I didn’t like seeing Snowball abandoned on her own so I put her with TinCup’s triplets. When you already have three kids, what’s one more, right? 

“Wait a minute, who are you?” 

As long as Snowball didn’t try to nurse, TinCup was happy to let her hang out. Looking at them side-by-side, I’m very glad I induced Tigerlily. Though she was almost two days younger, Snowball was significantly larger and thicker than TinCup’s babies. If we had waited for Tigerlily to kid on her own, this little gal would have had a very hard time coming out!

TinCup’s kids quickly adopted their new “sister”. 

Snowball bears a striking resemblance to TinCup’s first kid, Yeti. In fact, Tigerlily took an immediate dislike toward Yeti and even now, almost a month later, Tigerlily will bite his tail or butt him if he comes too close to her. She doesn’t do this to any of the other kids, so I can only think that she resents his resemblance to her own precious Snowball.

Yeti has the cutest swirl of hair on the end of his nose, just like his mama.  

Petunia recovered very well from her scary bout with milk fever and was looking sleek and fat again by the weekend. 

Buster Brown discovered the joys of jumping and balancing on this wobbly log. 

And realized he could use it as a launchpad to get onto Mama’s back! Mama wasn’t too pleased and sauntered off. 

Meanwhile, Cupcake thought she’d try chewing on mama’s beard. Petunia tended to keep that beard tantalizingly out of reach. 

Cupcake discovered her favorite hidey-hole inside the electrical spool. 

Cupcake wasn’t too sure about Brownie’s wobbly log, but she loved these rocks!  

And on the last day of April, Petunia decided that her kids, just shy of one week old, were ready to accompany the big goats on their evening walk. 

April, fare thee well! You’ve blessed us with green grass and bounding babies! (Including the strange radioactive one in front.)