We still haven’t found a proper name for him…
Anyway here is a video of him bouncing round the yard. He’s looking a bit pink today – he’s be rolling in the johnby mud.
Archive for the ‘Goats’ Category
The Imp
This week we’ve been calling him “the imp” – he’s been nibbling things, escaping, playing football!
Little Goat is exploring
We still haven’t thought of a suitable name for him, so if you have any goaty suggestions let us know.
We are proud to announce the arrival of our first goat kid
Katia gave birth to a bouncing billy kid at about 2:30pm today. Mother and son are doing fine.
We have windows
They have finished the roof, apart from the chimneys (due to us not deciding on which log boiler we are going to have and thus what size flue it needs). The solar panels are installed for the hot water, not plumbed in but fixed to the roof.
The best news is that the windows have gone in, really good with this horrible driving rain we have been having this week. Earlier in the week it was looking like the rain would stop the tanking being done on the inside of the wall where its below ground level, which would have stopped the base plate for the timber frame, and thus the timber frame wouldn’t have happened next week.
Hopefully this means the scaffolding can come down and I can at the garden and start planting some things. I managed to get 1 row of potatoes in where there was room next to the scaffolding. It will soon be time to plant runner beans, carrots, beatroot and all the squash plants I’ve got in pots.
Johnby Hall Bed and Breakfast
Cecilia’s brother Henry (+ wife Anna) who live next door at the Hall are opening up as a B & B, you can see the details if you go to the home page of our site . To support this I had to rearrange the things with Google so that they appear first on the list when you search for Johnby Hall. All weekend I’ve been fighting with their webmaster tools trying to get them to update the sitemap. Now I know why it wasn’t working – Google had the goats in, and they must have been eating every sitemap I submitted!
Goats at Google Mountain View headquarters (c) google
Scary Monsters
Stanley the billy goat came to visit:
stanley the scary billy goat
As you can see his horns were rather wide, which meant you often got swiped on the back of your legs as he went past snowplough fashion.
His raison d’être was to play mummies and daddies with our goats. He did the deed with Katia no problem, in fact they had a rather love filled weekend. The energy he would normally put into a flock got lavished on our Katia! However the other goat was scared out of her skin by him; first night she refused to share their house and wouldn’t go to bed. When she was in season she would bleat and bleat for mr right, but as soon as Stanley got close she ran off. I guess being hand reared she’s confused about what a true billy goat looks like! So it looks like we will have some kid angoras next may, but nothing from Goat! so no goats milk for us.
Mohair Moments
This morning was lovely & sunny, so we set about giving the Little Goat her six-monthly clip. We were determined that it wouldn’t take as long as last time which was four hours of wriggling & squirming and she had developed a new habit of wincing at every snip. She was quite happy but we were exhausted bags of nerves by the end of it!
It’s a Goat’s Life
It’s been another miserable day today, but, for a little while this evening, a watery sunshine broke through, so the goats came to outside the conservatory where they could take full advantage of it and hung round, chewing. They have an amazing ability to turn any lovely, unspoiled patch of countryside into a street corner. Then the Goat! dozed off on the window-sill:
