1st Alpine kids are on the ground!!!

See what I found in the kidding pen with Tansy this morning!!

I completely missed it!!
I left for 2 hours and come back to TWIN DOES!!!
Merry Oaks Tansy's Penny Lane(darker one) and Merry Oaks Oreo's Dancing Days.

Dancer weighed in at 9.5 lbs, Penny 7.5.

My Girls:)

I took some pictures today of my girls. I twas sunny and pretty and everyone(goat and human)is happy. It looks like Alpine babies are close! From both Tansy and Emerald. Emerald is on day 147, Tansy on Day 146, Poppy 145 and Clematis 144.

My pretty Lily~ And that's her BFF Loretta in the background.

2015 Alpine girls.

 Oh wait, that's not an Alpine...Lily felt she was being left out. Doesn't she have such a cute face?

Another photobomb from Lily^

See the buckets hanging from the ceiling? I outsmarted the goats. They were rather annoyed at me for placing the buckets up, so far out of reach. I tried hanging them on the metal bars at the side of the shelter...that didn't work so well. I hang those buckets on the hay feeder at feeding time but as soon as they're done eating they get bored and knock them off the fence.

Loretta~ Lily's BFF and the only Nigie yearling I have. She's lambar raised like the rest of the kids, NOT dam raises, so she's very sweet. 

And THIS is Miss Brat. She now thinks that because I keep forgetting to band her itty bitty horn she is herd queen and really enjoys beating up on my babies.

Parting shot...

Ain't that sun pretty?

Kidding season has started...

Kidding season has officially started at Merry Oaks. 
Rebekah had buck doe twins on Thursday(January 21)
This is her a few days before she kidded.

I didn't get any pictures of the birth because she kidded around 5 AM, and I wasn't there for it.
Here are a few from Friday though.

Doe~One Ring Reb's Jasmine

Buck~One Ring Reb's Cypress(polled)

Maybe I'll manage to get better pictures soon.

I was hoping things would go just as smoothly with Iris's kids, and I was excited to see them, Iris usually has lots of very pretty kids. (Quads first year we had her and triplet doelings the next) Unfortunately there were complications, and all 4 of her babies were DOA. Yep, she had quads again, 3 bucks and a doe. They all looked like Jasmine. It was a devastating loss, I was really looking forward to seeing those kids.  I was also hoping to keep a doeling from Iris. I'm grateful for the healthy babies that we do have though, and Iris is doing well.

In happier news, the first group of Alpines is due very soon!They are now on day 144, 143, 142 and 141. We're gonna be busy next week!Merry Oaks Emerald is due Saturday, January 30. She's already filling her udder quite a bit. She usually kids very close to her due date, maybe a day over.

Sweet Flowers Tansy is due Sunday, January 31. She's our old girl, herd queen. She'll be 10 this year! She usually kids right on day 150, barely ever goes over.

Sweet Flowers Poppy is due Monday, February 1. She loves to kid waaay over her due date and hates having girls I really, really need a doe Poppy!


Sweet Flowers Clematis is due Tuesday, February 2. She likes to mix things up and kid whenever she darn feels like it. Early, late, right on time, never, what ever suits her fancy that year.

More babies on the way! Yay!

Of mud, bucks, barn cleaning and winter!

Happy New Year! 2016 should be an interesting year, with 14 does freshening, new additions to the herd, ADGA Nationals and we are expecting close to 30 kids. 14 does doesn't seem like very many compared to the number of does some of the other breeders around here are freshening, but I'm sure we'll be kept busy enough.

As usual, the weather down here in NC has been crazy, up until sometime last week we have had. Lots. Of. Rain. The whole year has been wet and recently it has been raining non stop leaving the farm a big muddy mess! It was also really warm for December, but that isn't exactly strange seeing as we live in North Carolina. We see a lot of warmer winters. But with the New Year came the cold! I think we finally caught up with the season...Now all of our lovely mud is frozen every morning. It's nice not to have to wade through inches of mud soup to feed the goats every morning(and the goats hated it too!) But it's kind of cold! And now looking at the forecast it seems as though it's going to warm up a bit and dump MORE rain on us. Yay. Don't we love rain?

On a more exciting note, we are starting to get ready for our first group of kids!! Both of my sister's adult Nigerian does will be kidding in around 2 weeks. I'm starting to see udders filling, and both does are enormous! We cleaned out all pens and stalls and are in the process of removing all the junk that has built up in our barn over the last couple of months.

And we FINALLY got our new Alpine buck, Google.
January isn't usually when people buy new herdsires, but we couldn't get him until our premium checks came in from the State Fair. We eventually got them and so we hooked up the trailer and went to pick him up. It seemed a little silly to hook up our big goose neck trailer just for one goat, especially when we only have a 15 minute drive or less...but I couldn't see how putting him in the back of the van would have been a good idea. So into the trailer he went! 
He's big and strong but a bit of a baby so it's not that hard to control him. Which I'm happy about because this is the first time I've owned a full grown Alpine buck. My younger bucks(Adonis and Taxman) have both gone out of rut but Google is still quite fragrant. It's rather amusing to see the little icicles hanging off of him and his frozen beard, he has a LOT of hair and it quickly freezes when he pees on himself. I wasn't able to get a good picture of him as we got home right before feeding time but I did manage to get this...

He's hairy, stinky and yellow but he seems to have nice conformation under all his hair. He's a very long level buck, a lot more level than he appears in the picture. I guess we'll see what he really looks like when I clip him down in May for the Spring Show. The real test though will be what kind of kids he throws. He is bred to 2 yearling FFs, Bam and Tokyo so hoping to get some doe kids from them.