Growing for the Goats

We're keeping the goats. I seriously thought about finding them another home (my in-laws) because I didn't enjoy being charged at, bucked with horns, etc. and neither did the boys (can't say I blame them...who likes to have their shirt nibbled on or arm nipped at?). The change of heart came when Ashley and I were able to spend more time with just Waylon and Ziggy while the boys were at my parents. We moved them out of the large dog pen to a pen in front of our house (under the trees). They quickly made work of the underbrush there so we decided to they needed a larger space. 

So this past Friday Ashley and one of his employees completely fenced in the area below our house using hog wire. Ziggy and Waylon will have lots of room to roam about. We'll probably have to protect our trees from them (any thoughts on this???) but for now, I'm just happy they have a bigger space. 

The garden is growing along well. We had a problem with squash borers and lost most of our squash plants. Ugh. We've replanted and hope get some more yellow squash later in the summer. You can't see it from this picture but our cucumber vines are struggling, too...they've turned yellow. We're not sure if they got too much water during the recent rain storms or if they don't like growing upright. We may need to plant a replacer crop on them as well so I will have enough for pickling. 

Ah but the corn...now it's doing great! 2-3 ears of corn per stalk. There's evidence that raccoons may be lurking about so Ashley will set a live animal trap soon to take care them. 

Back to the goats...since we decided to keep them and because we have no plans for breeding them, we decided to have them castrated to become wethers.  A guy came this past Thursday to take care of this. He used the "slit" method, which is apparently pretty common (they're too old for the "bands"). Aside from laying around the first day, Waylon (the smaller, grayish-brown goat) is doing pretty good. His incisions are healing nicely and he's enjoying the new pen. Ziggy, however, is not doing so well. 

Here he is laying down. His previous owner came by to help us with him on Friday--she's in school studying to be a vet tech. His wounds are larger and aren't healing very well. Ashley has been on the phone with Mike, the guy who came to work on the goats--including sending him a picture (I won't share here because it's not at all pleasant to look at) of what may be an infection. Mike will come by tomorrow and help us figure out what is going on. Right now, we continue to wash the wounds with alcohol and iodine. And we figured out that they both like to eat peaches :o)

Poor Ziggy, he's living in this great new large space and hasn't been able to enjoy it (the picture below shows what is now fenced in). 

On a separate note, blueberries are in. We really on get a handful a day (enough to top my cereal and for the boys to snack on)--but they're delicious and I can't wait until the bushes are larger and produce more! My cousin made ginger blueberry jam and it was yummy!