We were blessed this week with two baby Dwarf Nigerian goats, a boy and a girl. They are simply the cutest things ever and a nice addition to our little farm. We purchased their mama and daddy about a year ago, and had kept them separated because we didn’t want them breeding too young. Unfortunately Clyde got into Bonnie’s enclosure one day and we’re pretty sure that is when she became pregnant. We ended up putting them together a few months later for the purposes of breeding, but the timing of the babies’ birth was way to early for our planned breeding.
Bonnie chose a rainy cold night to give birth. The first baby came out fine and she cleaned her up right away. She was tiny. However, Bonnie showed no interest in the second baby after she gave birth. It just lay on the hay covered in after birth barely moving. When it was clear, she wasn’t going to clean up the baby, we stepped in and cleaned him all up. While he had a hard time standing for awhile and seemed week, he has caught up to his sister. He was quite a bit bigger than her to begin with, but now he’s hopping around and doing very well. Mama is doing well, and seems to have figured out these two little ones are hers, and she is responsible for them. She’s doing a great job.
In addition to the two sweethearts above, we have 10 new baby ducks, and two more ready to hatch. The best thing about call ducks is that they all look very different even if they have the same parents.
The mama is the largest brown duck in the bottom right hand corner. All of these are her babies. Today was the first day we released them into the farm. Due to mongoose and other animals, we have to keep them tightly penned until their big enough to fend for themselves. All eight of her eggs hatched and all are thriving. It’s too early to tell the male and female ones apart, but we’ve got some talking already, so we know we’ll have some females.
We’ve had a lot of rain for the past month, and a few weeks ago, a heavy wind storm knocked out power for a few days. A whole strip of electric poles by our home just snapped in half. Due to all the rain, it’s been difficult to get anything done. We got a little reprieve yesterday and this morning, so we were able to take care of some much needed mowing and harvesting. Right now we’ve got oranges, lemons, tangerines, mountain apples, avocados, and asparagus. We also harvested a bunch of Okinawan sweet potatoes. The chickens are crazy busy, and we have tons of eggs. It was nice to get back down to the farm and take care of things. Our son got a chance to go fishing this week, so we got to enjoy some mahimahi this weekend. There’s nothing better than a dinner where you grow or catch everything on your plate!
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