We arrived with 4 horses and have now added ducks, chickens, and goats to the place! And for the record, all of these were Josh's idea. He did the research, found the ads, and made the appointments. What a guy!
The ducks and chickens were in the same place (thankfully, less driving!) and we weren't sure what to expect. Maybe friendly ducks, idk. Well, these things didn't like you looking their way 😂. Fun fact, to catch and carry a duck, grab it by it's neck. Josh is now a pro duck carrier. We got six younger khaki/running ducks that haven't started laying yet, but we're excited to try their eggs when they come!
With the chickens, the seller was a little worried that they would just fly out the side windows of our stock trailer, but he had a quick solution: "the Kentucky slip". He ziptied their legs together, threw them in the trailer and we were off! 😂 We got five already laying leghorns.
Upon getting the ducks and chickens home, we had a little hiccup with one of our blocking agents coming down, and the ducks got out into our neighbors 20+ acre field. You can imagine the anxiety of trying to keep all our wild ducks in a row 😂. We ended up catching five of them, and the other one "wandered into forbidden paths and was lost". We truly thought that maybe she would hear her friends quacking, and would come back. So, suffice it to say, we have five ducks. 😅
Now ... The goats. I will be the first to admit that when Josh started talking about goats, I was hesitant. " Goats are for the wimpy. The ones who can't take care of big animals and don't want to milk as much." 😂 Having grown up milking one Holstein and one Jersey twice a day, goats seemed a little *too* simple. Plus, I was nervous about the milk. I really wanted to be able to like and use the milk ... and who even likes goat milk?
We went to a goat farm to look at a Ewe-kid pair and it definitely wasn't ideal. The mom was not a good hand-milker, and wasn't very friendly with people. Just nervous. We asked if they were selling any other ones that were good to milk, and they brought up Fern. " She is our best milker, though. I'm not even sure we would get rid of her."
I stepped around the corner and saw a precious little brown and white Nigerian dwarf goat. They brought her in, she jumped up on the milk stand, and that was it. So simple.
We told them we would think about it, and they gave us some milk to take home and try. We nearly finished the jar on our way home. It was so good! It had no resemblance of coming from a goat, and almost seemed sweeter than I was used to.
To this day, I'm not sure I could tell a difference between cow and goat's milk but that day the goat's milk seemed sweeter.🤷♀️
So, we went back the next week and brought home Fern and a little 5-month-old kid, Pearl.
Pearl has been Hazel's farm BFF and she's constantly getting out to come and say hi to us. She's the perfect mixture of a goat and a dog. 😂
Add comment
Comments