We got two feet of snow yesterday and Lilly was very helpful. She got right down to work and shoveled the walkway for us! 

It’s a good time of year to post pictures of goats in coats! Nibbles loves to wear a blanket and she always keeps hers neat and clean and properly in place.

Lilly has a very different opinion of blankets. Here is a rare shot where it’s still on properly. Usually by morning she has at least one leg through the neck hole or no blanket at all, and she somehow always manages to pee on it even if it’s still on. She’s managed to open or tear off most of the buckles at one time or another. Good thing I know how to sew!

Cuzco is picky about coats, but he loves this one and keeps it neat accordingly.

Cuzco was not always so good to his blankets. There’s hope for Lilly yet!

Nibbles got bred last month, which she was very excited about… more excited than the buck. He was a laid-back kinda guy and she started swatting at him and biting his ears when he wouldn’t get down to business right away. This is the fella we bred her to.

He’s about 18 months old, and the only thing I’m not sure I cared for were his small feet and long pasterns. But I think his feet just haven’t caught up to him yet. Colts usually go through a stage after a growth spurt where they look like they’ve got teacup feet until the slower-growing hooves finally catch up to the rest of them. Hopefully that’s the case here. Even if it’s not, Nibbles has very nice feet and really short pasterns so maybe she’ll balance him out. Ain’t nobody perfect!

Nibbles made a scene at the gas station on the way to the breeding. She decided to jump from the roof of her igloo to the roof of my truck.

Then she pulled a rude face at me when I tried to get her to come down.

Eventually, after a good bit of coaxing and wheedling, she slid down the windshield onto the hood where I could reach her. Nibbles was disappointed when I moved the igloo further back to where she could no longer use it as a springboard to higher places.

This little sweetheart has wormed her way into my affections in ways I never thought a goat could do. While she’ll probably never win any awards for impressive size or conformation, if she were human she would be the envy of every woman in America. This would be the girl we’d all hate because she could down three cheeseburgers and half a pizza every day and still fit in size 2 jeans.

Even though Lilly gets three all-you-can eat meals of grain a day and 24-hour access to hay, she stays thin as a rail. Yet I’m convinced she’s not unhealthy because she’s been thoroughly wormed and I’ve never seen a brighter eye or a springier step. She doesn’t walk anywhere–she runs. No, more correctly, she streaks. She’s our “Flash Gordon” goat who is here one second and 100 yards away the next. Be it the house or the truck, no door is safe. Any time one opens even a crack, Lilly is already jumping on it, even if she was on the other side of the yard before you blinked. If I were in the racing goat business, Lilly would be my prize filly. Lilly has also been honing her Ninja skills. She has a habit of running up the wall of the house and doing backflips off it. I wonder if Phil has been letting her watch Kung Fu movies?

But while she is a little ball of energy most of the time, Lilly also loves the quiet moments. If I’m chopping firewood and I sit down on a stump for a few minutes’ break, Lilly is in my lap with her head on my chest before I’m even settled. And she would likely stay there for hours if I let her. She’s a pure sweetheart, no two ways about it.

We had pumpkin pancakes at Thanksgiving, and they were very yummy. But I forgot to use up the left-over pumpkin and didn’t find it till sometime after Christmas (eeeewwww!). Nibbles thought the fuzzy green stuff on top looked festive.

But it wasn’t as festive as the end of her greedy little nose.
  
Lilly wanted some moldy pumpkin for her nose too, but this is where it ended up instead, thanks to Nibbles’ habit of biting Lilly’s ears whenever there is a confrontation over food.

I made this in 2009 when my colt, Skokie, was about 2 months old.

I had some heart-to-heart talks with Cuzco a couple of years later when he would come in from the pasture on three legs and with chunks torn out of his hide: “You know, Cuzco, the problem with making enemies of a baby horse is that one day he will bigger. MUCH bigger. And you’ll wish you’d made friends when you had the opportunity.”

I was really afraid Cuzco might not survive Skokie’s 2-year-old phase, but I can’t say he didn’t ask for it. Skokie tried really hard to befriend Cuzco during that first year, but he was soundly rebuffed at every turn.

“Well Cuzco, what goes around comes around.”

I haven’t posted any photos in quite some time, but I took a ton of them today so now I don’t quite know where to start. Maybe it’s time to get back to the basics. After all, whose blog is this anyway? I took a bunch of shots of Cuzco as he was lounging in one of his favorite spots. He always looks like such a monarch, sitting up there on his hilltop, surveying his domain with a critical eye. I tried several times to get him to look at me, but I was clearly not important enough to deserve so much as a cursory glance. I call this collection “Portrait of an Old Goat”.

Nibbles and Lilly both love this little “Dogloo”. I’m going to search Craigslist and see if I can get a few more of these things used. They’ll be perfect for babies.

I was disappointed that Nibbles came into heat again the other day, so we took her up to get bred again. More on that to come.

Cuzco is going to be one cranky old fart when baby goats take over his life!

Phil and I launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for Phil’s next project: Galcon 2. We did a series of videos that included our critters.

Here is Jet the “Galconicorn” with his teaser trailer:

Nibbles and I talk over a bath about the things we most look forward to in Galcon 2 and shamelessly beg people to back our project:

Phil and Lilly do a fireside chat to finish off our money-raising campaign.

I’m happy to say that the campaign was quite successful, and we credit our goats with giving us that edge.

So we got Nibbles bred the other day to a Nubian buck. Yeah, yeah, I know. We have this wonderful little Alpine doe with a beautiful pedigree and what do we do? We breed her to a Nubian even though practically everyone says Nubians and Nubian crosses are loud and lazy and stupid. Well, Cuzco says differently! And since he’s getting old and we want a replacement, we’re going to try our hand at making more Alpine/Nubian crosses and see if we can get more outstanding goats like Cuzco, who is quiet, hard-working, intelligent, and drop-dead gorgeous.

But Nibbles’ encounter with the buck left her very pungent indeed. It being December, we gave her a bath in our upstairs tub (I’ll post some video footage of that sometime for anyone who wants a good laugh), and then I let her hang out with me in the basement next to the wood stove (and on the couch!) for about an hour while she dried off.

Oh, and I got a wild ride on Cuzco yesterday. I was doling out treats and Cuzco was standing in front of me eating some fallen tidbits when he suddenly charged after Lilly, who was behind me. He ran right between my legs, lifted me straight off the ground, and then panicked when he realized I was on his back. He ran about 30 feet to his shed with me lying on my belly, arms wrapped around him like some huge backwards mutton buster! I thought he was going to scrape me off on shed door, but in his mad dash he missed the turn and ran head first into a concrete retaining wall where I fell off in a hysterically laughing heap.

Cuzco almost never chases the other goats when Phil or I are present because he knows he’ll get in big trouble, but I guess he forgot his manners yesterday. He sometimes gets very cranky when Nibbles is in heat, and this time she came home smelling like buck, so Cuzco was particularly on edge for those two odiferous days. I was stupid and forgot he was in a mood, and he was stupid and forgot he’s supposed to suppress his urges when there are people present. Thankfully no harm was done and I’ve got one more funny story under my belt. I just wish there had been a video camera present!