Baby Goats

Here's the pictures from the first night, about an hour after the babies were born. Sorry for the bloody stuff, but hey, this is farm life right? hehe :) The lighter colored one is named Fawn, and he's a he. The blacker one is a girl, and her name is Lucy. We thought the black one was a boy, so we named it black billy, and the other one Fawn because we thought it was a girl, but obviously we were wrong. So we (I) changed the names a little. I decided to go ahead and keep the name Fawn for the billy, after Mr Tumnus in Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe who was a fawn. And then I decided to name the black one Lucy after the little girl in the Lion, Witch and Wardrobe.

And then there was one

Well, another baby goat died, well she had to be put down technically. She got some sort of vitamin deficiency or goat disease. She was paralyzed, and had a 107 degree fever. She was fine yesterday, then today she was dead. That seems to be the norm now. They do fine, and then they die. I'm not really sure I'm cut out for this, because frankly, this sucks majorly.

Eagle and dogs

The other day there was a really big, cool eagle sitting on the edge of the parking lot. I got some great pictures of him (or her I guess). I wasn't 8-10 feet away from him, and he just sat and looked at me. It was pretty cool.

My funny girls. They have to sit in the trucks or be on chains most of the time they are down there because they like to chase stuff, run, and just generally get into trouble and other things that smell nasty. But they look funny and cute sitting in the truck waiting.

Boat launch

Catching some sea doos. If you can put it on a trailer we can launch it or retrive it! :)

Here's Justin cutting the skid plate off the bottom of his machine so he can get to the transmission and front end to work on them. The skid plate isn't supposed to be welded on, whoever had the machine last really did a number on it!

There's Justin's legs under his machine. See how the tire is off the ground? He used the blade to life the front end of the machine off the ground.

More of Justin under the machine.

The door wasn't quite latched when Earl took off and as he went down the ramp the door flew open, got hooked on the tire, and popped off. It was hilarious!

There's the boat as it motors away.

Farther into the water

Deeper and deeper

Pushing the boat deeper into the water.

Backing it into the water

Down the runway

Down the way

Here they go

Hauling our first boat out to be launched

Our other skidder - Justin's skidder. He runs the yellow one. His dad runs the red/orange one

The big house loaded on the trailer to go down to the beach.

Skidder with all its teeth, ready to go to work, rake some rocks, and launch some boats.

Bunkhouse ready to run down the road.

Here's our first little bunkhouse, safely delivered to the beach.

Down the road...

Just can't wait to get on the road again...

Our first skidder.

Justin's dad welding some "teeth" onto the blade of the skidder. The teeth are for raking rocks off of the beach.

Talatha, and Justin's mom, putting together some spill pans for underneath the skidder. We put them under the skidders while they're parked to catch and leaks, spills, etc.

Here's our "big" bunkhouse/kitchen/bathroom. It was quite a project to build. Then we also built another small bunkhouse, that is just 3 beds.

Here's the "little" bunkhouse on the trailer, ready to move to the beach.

Little bunkhouse, loaded on the trailer to move to the beach.

Well those are the pictures of our first couple weeks of boat launch business. I'll try and get a video of us launching, and a video of us retrieving so that you can really see more of what its like.

Two down

Well, two of our baby goats died last night. We think it was white muscle disease, from Gretta having toxemia or ketosis. The prognosis was pretty grim, but we hoped they would make it, but they didn't. The two that died were Edie, one of the blonds, and Mike, the little red billy goat. I guess the good news is the two that are surviving are doing really good, so I guess that's the best we can hope for now, is that they keep doing good, and at least we'll have 2 goats out of the four (5 if you count Gretta).

Today

Well we had a pretty good day today all things considered! We had 46 launches at the boat launch, which is our biggest day yet, and despite the one skidder going down for about 2 hours, it all went pretty smooth, if super busy. Then Beth, the nice goat herder lady, came by to check on how these two baby goats were doing, and then she volunteered to take them, since they really haven't taken well to the replacer, and raise them with the others until my other doe has her kids in a couple of weeks. It's SO nice to know that they are being well taken care of, much better than I was able to do without my Gretta. So anyway, just wanted to say we had a good day!

You know....

This has been a weird, sometimes good, sometimes horrible week. A couple of days ago 2 of my baby goats were not doing good at all, so I called the really nice woman Beth that we got our 2 does from, and asked for her help. I took those two over to her house, and she agreed that they weren't looking good, and the one especially might not make the night. So we went over what I could do for them, and suggestions and stuff, and after a while I said, you know I'm at the point I would give them to someone just to make sure they survived, and she said, well I could watch them for you, and nurse them for a while if you like. I, of course agreed! She's got a large herd of goats, and she always has really good ideas and is really helpful and nice.

So she agreed to take the two of them for a while to nurse them and help them hopefully feel better. She's done a great job! They're doing really good she says. I'm not sure how long she will keep them. We're actually trading one of them to her for a billy goat that she's been bottle raising for us, so we'll do a little goat swap and one of them will end up being hers anyway, but it was really nice of her to take them. The two I kept are doing better. They have been eating more each day. I added a little whole store bought milk into their bottles, and they've been liking that, plus Beth also said I should give them canned pumpkin for the diarrhea, and they LOVE the pumpkin. I open their mounts and put it in on their tongue and they get so excited and eat it up. Really cute! I'll have to post some pictures soon. The camera is in the truck with Justin at the boat launch. There are some really cool pictures on it too that I want to share.

Mom had her procedure up in Soldotna and she's doing better today. We'll get the results back on wednesday hopefully. Then we can go through another round of deciding what to do. Her new doctore is really good, and we really like him though, so I think he'll do a great job on whatever needs done.

Other than that, everyone but me (so far) is sick with some kind of cold/flu thing. They are all miserable! I hope it passes quickly (and I hope I don't get it!).

Let's see - its mostly spring now. We've had some really beautiful days. The boat launch is going good, business is picking up every day. Tomorrow the river opens for salmon fishing, so that should really give us a boost too (we hope). Then next weekend is Memorial Day Weekend, and that's traditionally the first really big weekend, so we're hoping to do good.

I guess we don't have a lot else to report. Our DSL modem died a few days ago, so we've been waiting to get that fixed, finally the repairman came today and set up a new one. YAY! So glad to be back online. I never realize how much I do online until the internet is unavailable. The first day is okay, but after that its kind of rough, hehe. Ok, well hope you're all doing good! love Alicia

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the women and mother's in my life, especially my mom! I love you all.

Thank you

Thank you so much to everyone for all of the loving and helpful comments. It means very, very much to me, well to all of us really.

Today the babies are doing good. Justin buried Gretta out by the pond, and he noticed that she seemed like she had some kind of infection, and that's probably what caused her to die. So he was talking to his mom, and when their goats have done that in the past, they give the babies each a couple drops of tea tree oil, and that helps them get over any of that that they might have gotten if Gretta was infected. I think she probably just had ketosis - she had 4 live births (mom thinks maybe a 5th was stuck or dead inside), and sometimes when they have that large of a brood it is too much stress on the body, and they build up toxins and even if you catch it in time, which is very rare, they usually die, because their bodies are basically poisioning themselves. Anyway, whatever it was, at least the babies are doing good so far. Thank you Carol for letting me know about the colostrum, I was really worried about that, and how I was going to dig up the energy to feed them every 2 hours for 2 weeks. That was pretty daunting.

Anyway, babies are good, they're inside enjoying the warmth. Mya is pretty sure she needs to love them and lick them clean, so I've been trying to slowly teach her how to love them without getting too excited and scaring them. She's a good dog. I think she would snuggle them all and love them if we had a way to do that. 2 just stares and sniffs them, but Mya is really worried about them.

This morning was pretty much the perfect ending for the week I've had. I woke up after sleeping from 3am - 4am, and I was just sick, I'd been so sick after Gretta passed, and the stress of everything else that I started throwing up, and pretty quick I was throwing up red, so after trying to lay down and calm down I decided I better go to the doctor, and since it was Saturday I had to go to the ER (that'll be a nice couple thousand dollar bill) and after a bunch of blood tests the Dr. said everything looked really good except I have an ulcer, and the throwing up had just scratched my esophogus, and that was the blood I was seeing. He said not to worry about the blood, and he gave me 2 acid reducers, and 2 anti-nausea pills, and told me to eat a bunch of small bland meals, so my stomach will stop attacking itself. I really liked the Doctor. He's an ear, nose and throat specialist, and I'd been wanting to see him anyway, for myself and Justin - me for my tonsils and me ears, and Justin for his nose (its been broken at last count 26+ times poor guy!). So it was nice to meet him and know that he's a good doctor. So someday when we have a little disposable income we'll both go in and he'll get his nose cartilage re-attached, and I'll get my tonsils out.

Sorry for all the bad news, I hate to post bad stuff, but I guess the bad stuff is important too. Thank you again for all of your kindness and love and prayers and support - its much appreciated and helps a great deal. Love Alicia

Oh, little good news, the local radio shack/computer store was having a Mother's Day Sale, and we got the laptop we've been needing so that I can do the accounting we need for a really good deal. So we have a nice, BIG, hp laptop. Justin got the one with the 17 inch screen, almost full size keyboard, and it has the 10-key keyboard for numbers, so that will be really helpful. So at least we had something good. :)

My goat

My momma goat died tonight, at about 1 am. We hope we can save the babies, if we can find some colostrum milk, and formula for them in the morning. I am so completely heartbroken.

So stinking cute!!

This is Edie closest to the camera, she was trying to head butt me to give her some milk. She's the runt.

This is Edie after Justin's mom taught her to nurse. That's Susan behind her.

Edie is closest to me again. Susan is the black and white. Mike is the red one, and Bree is the blondish one close to Gretta. Sorry about the placenta in the picture.

Oh my gosh they're so cute! And we have four of them! Four desperate housegoats! We were so blessed to get 3 girls and one boy, so now we'll have at least 5 nanny goats we can breed and have milk from, so we'll be able to have milk year round if we schedule it right. So cute, and so fun. I was going to work at the boat launch, and as I walked around the house to get in the car, I heard a really high pitched goat whinny, and I thought, well that's odd, I wonder what's wrong with the goats. And I went in and here's all these little babies! The one was outside, and really cold, so I picked her up and started rubbing her and snuggling her. So then she warmed right up and started walking around. Mom came downstairs with the camera, and helped snuggle the cold one, and Justin's mom came right over to the house from the beach, and checked them all over, and said they looked great and Gretta's a good mommy goat. Gretta's so tired though, we finally got her to lie down this evening after we milked her a little and gave the runt some milk. Edie is the runt, she was the one laying outside, and she's pretty cute with a strawberry blond body, and yellow blond face. Then there is Bree, she looks just like Edie, except she's not got the yellow blond face. Then there is Susan, and she's the black and white goat. The boy is named Mike. He's a beautiful red color, with black and white accents. Really attractive. So this is our herd! They're so cute. We've got about 3 weeks left before Gabby has her babies, but Gretta was a week early, so we'll see what happens.