Tag Archives: goats

January 3, 2020 · 7:11 am

The Last of Elvis’s Love Children

The last of Elvis’s love children, a set of twin boys, have arrived. While we have other goats that are pregnant, they aren’t due for a month or so yet, so their conception was after Elvis had left the building.

All of Elvis’s kids have the longest floppy bunny ears. Several have the distinctive black stripe down their backs like dear old dad. None are the lovely dark brown of Elvis though.

While we were still celebrating Elvis’s fecundity, one of our other goats gave birth to a premature and sadly, short-lived kid. The rest shouldn’t be ready to deliver for another month or so. Since they are younger and smaller goats, we don’t expect any more twins, which is fine by me.

On other animal news, Lady is now nearly fully recovered from her hoof staking incident. She and Red even went for a short ride up the hill and back with my husband this week. Red has figured out how to open the goat pen to Jolina’s delight.

George and Terry have yet to become friends, both are extremely jealous of my son’s affections even though he tries to give equal time and attention to all three boys. Their neediness has prompted my son to declare that when he marries and has children, three are too many.

My husband had a scare with Jolina the week after Christmas. The neighbor down below had planned to serve birria when his son came to town and needed a smallish goat. He and my husband decided on which of our goats was to go. However, when the neighbor came to pick it up, my husband was working. He insisted that my husband had sold him Jolina and my son let her go.

In the morning, when my husband was feeding the goats, he noticed Jolina was missing. When my son told him, he panicked. He jumped on his moto and without even a helmet, headed to the neighbor’s house on a rescue mission. Fortunately, Jolina hadn’t been slaughtered yet and was brought back to the fold safe and sound. Whew!

Other than that, things are as quiet as they can be in our still overcrowded animal situation. Who knows what delights or tragedies 2020 has in store for our own animal kingdom?

New Additions

Well, that pregnant goat my husband bought last finally gave birth–and to triplets no less. Two boys and a girl as cute as can be. They are just as lovely as Chiveta–making them way better looking than the kinder boys we have running about.

One of the boys is Spot because he has yep you guessed it, a spot on the back of his neck. The other we really haven’t named, except to say Not Spot, so maybe that’s his name. We can only keep one of them anyway, so best not to get too attached. The girl we’ve decided to call Bunny, which was also the name of a lovely twin that got goat-napped a few years ago. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again.

Meanwhile, he’s gone and bought a pregnant mare. Our horse Lady is just 2 years old and won’t be ready to breed for a while. I’m pushing my husband to wait to breed her until she is three, but she may go into heat this summer.

Anyway, back to the new horse. The guy up the hill had 4 horses which he let run semi-wild in an overgrown area. He’s decided 4 is too many so wanted to sell one. My husband immediately decided this was the horse for him. I asked him to wait until I saw it, so Sunday afternoon, he dragged me hither and yon to hunt down the horse. Eventually, she and her herd buddies were located and my husband brought her to the fence to meet me.

I estimate she’s about 10 years old, although the owner is saying she’s only 8. A lady never tells her age anyway. This is her third pregnancy and it’s quite advanced. I think she’ll have her foal before the month is out, but my husband says not yet. I also think it will be a boy. So we’ll see what happens there.

She’s a nice docile horse. My husband says she “my” horse but that’s not really true. She and Lady have decided that they can be friends. Since I’m in charge of the naming around here, she’s been christened Cookie. She’s mostly white with a salt-and-pepper mane and tail with black freckles all over her face.

My husband had to go and get her that very afternoon even though he hasn’t finished paying for her because he was concerned there wasn’t any water where she was being kept. And it’s been SO hot the past few days. He and my son led her down to our house and she drank 3 buckets of water, so she was thirsty.

Our population explosion isn’t quite finished. We are still waiting for the pregnant ewe to give birth. My husband keeps saying any day now.

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Tagged as Animal Husbandry, goat triplets, goats, homesteading in Mexico, horses, Livestock, raising animals in mexico

September 4, 2017 · 7:00 am

Horse Trader

One evening I got home and was going about my business when I heard a whiny from the animal area. Now we haven’t had a horse since my husband sold them (See A dismantling of sorts) and the whiny perplexed me. So I headed out to find that in place of our 6 goats, there was a tallish red young stallion with a black mane.

He was friendly, but a bit on the thin side. Probably not well cared for by his previous owner. Of course, that doesn’t explain how he got into our animal area and the location of the goats. I waited around for my husband to get home and demand an explanation. He was a bit worse for wear, so the explanation had to wait until morning.

It seems that in addition to his poor choice of activities the night before, he had made a deal for a horse that he didn’t have any intention of buying. However, as soon as the neighbor down the road expressed some interest in this horse, my husband had to have him. He traded our 6 goats and $1000 pesos for Alto (Tall boy).

Along with the subsequent hangover, he had a huge case of buyer’s remorse. We had already determined that a horse is not profitable. If my husband isn’t sharecropping, the horse has no way to earn its keep. A horse provides no milk or eggs. This particular horse couldn’t even be ridden as it was in such a malnourished state. Plus, we no longer had any horse gear (saddles, bridles, reins, etc). Well, if he wanted a horse so bad, he’d have to figure out how to maintain it.

My husband went hither and yon looking for a new owner for Alto. Alto didn’t mind. There was plenty of grass and over the month he spent with us, he plumped out considerably. Finally, a new deal was struck. In exchange for Alto, my husband would receive 2 boy chivitos (young goats) which were part of a triplet birth, always a good thing (See Goat Genetics) and a young yeguita (mare) plus $3500 pesos. Immediately upon the transfer, my husband took one of the chivitos (because you only ever need one macho per herd) and traded it for one of Jirafa’s twins. (See Assassin Goat )

With some of the money from this deal, my husband bought La Flaca (Skinny) and La Chica (Small one), both white goats. There was some talk about selling the new mare for $5000 pesos, but that deal fell through. Meanwhile, the rest of the $3500 went to buy Jirafa and her other twin back.

Another deal that didn’t happen was the sale of La Flaca. Jirafa had been trained to return to the corral once full. La Flaca was not. My husband was not happy with her as she liked to travel hither and yon instead of staying put. She also divided the herd. Half would follow Jirafa, half La Flaca. As the potential buyer didn’t have the cash, my husband wasn’t about to just let her go for free and fiado (with a promise to pay later). So La Flaca became part of the herd with the provision of being tied should her nomadic nature caused her to roam.

The herd was back up to 6 again and we still had a horse. She was a pleasant horse and there really was no reason not to embrace her into the family. However, our hearts had been broken with the sale of Shadow and it took some time for my son and me to accept Buttercup. She was fattening up nicely now that she had proper care. My husband thought she was a bit older than the previous owner stated because of the length of her tail, but malnourishment kept her from growing properly. She will probably be smallish, but that’s ok. Our rancho is smallish. She isn’t large enough to be ridden or bred. We’ll have to see how things go during the dry season when food is not as plentiful. I would say she is on provisional permanence.

My husband still had it in mind to add to the animal holdings. Suddenly there were two borregas (sheep). I have been opposed to sheep because they bleat all the time, but these two have been bearable. The previous owner assured my husband that they both were pregnant, but that remains to be seen. They know they are sheep and not goats and have nothing to do with the goats. They refuse to share their corral and only just barely tolerate their presence while grazing. I think Puppy thinks they are largish dogs. (See Separating the Sheep and the Goats)

Oh yes, we have a new puppy. Again, we were reluctant to open our hearts to another dog after Chokis was poisoned, but Puppy appeared and we are smitten. He is friendly, obedient and so wants to be a house dog. Of course, my husband is opposed to that, so he’s only a house dog when he isn’t around. Puppy and I take a walk every morning and most afternoons now that my schedule has freed up (See Transition year). He and Devil, our macho cat, are buddies. The only problem is he refuses to be inside during the day and chases motorcycles, so we are concerned someone will either run him over or poison him. (See 101 Perritos) People here have an irrational fear of dogs. He does like to jump on people to have his head rubbed so we’ve been working on retraining him not to do that or chase motorcycles. As for his name, well it was supposed to be Rascal, but he responds to Puppy, so Puppy it is. My husband keeps threatening to give him away, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Puppy goes with him and the goats and the moment my husband sits down, there’s Puppy ready for a head scratch practically climbing in his lap.

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