More on dahlias and Dahlia

On the last really warm and sunny day I went out and took some pix of the dahilas. Mostly so I wouldnt forget which was what color when I dig them up. We had some great results this time....

In other news, Too Short is about to go on his merry way. His new farm is eager to have him and I'll be glad when he's gone. Last nite he smeared his pee-covered face on my bare legs for the last darn time. Smell ya later, pal.

I'm pretty sure that Nibbles is bred - she has "pregnancy boobs"..that is, her udder feels different. If she comes into heat it will be in the next week. But I don't think so. She also sounds different and she's complaining about other things (then the regular complaints about the bad service and lack of respect).

To me Dahlia looks different but she could just be "fluffy" because of the cold weather. Hopefully she is bred. Deb was interested in Too Short just long enough for him to make her milk taste and smell bad. So hopefully all these gals are knocked up and now its just waiting around. One of my friends asked me how many babies I'd have in the spring. Honestly I hadn't thought about it. But I'm guessing that it will be somewhere between 3 and 9 babies. Wow!  That's a lot of goats.

There's a couple things we won't do with our goat herd this next go around. First, goes without saying that we will not get another buck. I've already contacted Nibble's breeder and told her that we'd be first in line next fall. She got a good laugh.

Next, we won't keep another doeling. We kept Dahlia because she was so well bred. You really can't buy a doeling that has such good milking lines. But I have to say - I don't like the extra hassle. Debbie loves her kids so its hard to get her to stop letting them milk off her. And our plan to separate them didn't work at all.  And I'm not convinced that breeding a doeling is the best strategy - and it might not even work. Next time we'll just sell all the kids and use the money to buy another doe in milk.

And to be truthful - I just don't like having the kids. I'm not enough of a goat snuggler to want to spend the extra time with them that I should. Our position is that if Dahlia isn't a champion milker like Debbie, or if she doesn't get bred - then she'll go to a new home. We really need all the critters here to work. So feeding Dahlia this whole time with no benefit doesn't really work with our farm-o-nomics view of the world. Hopefully she'll have good kids and be a good milker. If not... she'll get her pink slip and a layoff package from Human Resources. 

We had a pretty good frost last nite - the dahlias might actually die back in these next couple of days. Good thing I got these pictures. As for Dahlia - hopefully she'll be out there complaining about the service and wondering if she looks fat.

Happy Friday everyone! Is anyone else feeling the winter coming on?

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