Goats for sale and progress bottling the keeper girls

First up, a short progress report on bottling Molly's two daughters, who will be two weeks old Wednesday.  I'm not entirely sure which girl was born first, but Madison (as in Dolly Madison), the girl with the smaller white spot on her forehead, took to the bottle almost immediately, and yesterday took down at least 8 of 9 ounces in the big bottle, plus squabbling for a teat once I let Molly into the pen.  The other girl, whom I originally was going to name Flanders (as in Moll Flanders) but looks more like a Francis (like Baby in Dirty Dancing), finally got a good latch-on this morning and chugged half the big bottle on her own.  So, two bottle babies out of three!  And as Meatloaf sang, "Two outta Three Ain't Bad," especially since these are the first of Molly's kids I've ever gotten on the bottle.  The boy, Pitcher (as in Molly Pitcher) is still not sure about the bottle idea, but I hope to change that the next few mornings.

Because my pasture will only support six adult goats in a dry year, keeping Molly's two daughters means I will need to sell two of the adult herd.  So far, I've decided on selling Tangie, the pretty girl who tends to have singles, but also has the temperament to make a good pet.

Tangie, ADGA registered adult in milk

Cocoa Puff's ornery little imp, whom I call Cinnabon

I'll be taking sales pages up for each to TSC in Palatka today when we do the feed run.

Another set of triplets from Molly

Molly finally kidded last week on Wednesday (the 3rd), wrapping up this year's kidding season in fine style with healthy, good-sized triplets.  The first two were girls, as I had told Molly before taking her to be bred that I would very much like two daughters from her and Harry.  I was beginning to wonder if there were only the two when Molly laid down and delivered the boy.  According to one of my goat books, this is unusual, as "95% of the time" when both genders are in a kidding, the boys will be born first.  All three are horned, which means I need to fire up the disbudding iron, and hope I do a better job than I did with Cocoa Puff.  I'm working on switching them over to the bottle, as bottle babies are so much friendlier.  The punchline here is, after over 7 weeks of refusing, yesterday morning Cocoa Puff's daughter Cinnabon decided she wanted to try the bottle.

"Molly loves that camera -
she always thinks it is food."

almost like three peas in a pod

now you can see all three faces

A picture a week of a garden box

Just hubby's weekly pictures of the lettuce and broccoli bed, with the last three being the most recent, where you can see the lettuce bolted, although not before we got several good salads out of it.  The broccoli has sort-of bolted, in that right now there are only three crowns not yet past eating stage.  They should all do side shoots in good style, though, so all is not lost.