Since the ground was still pretty damp from the thunderstorm on Friday, the goat’s hooves were soft. It’s a lot easier to trim hooves when they’ve been running around on soggy ground for a few days. Got everybody taken care of but trimmed Stormy’s hooves a bit close and she was bleeding for a while. Stuck her in the kid pen for a few hours so she wouldn’t be stepping in poopy mud until the bleeding stopped. I’ve noticed that Stormy, Pan & Chop Suey’s hooves don’t grow nearly as fast as do the rest of the goats. Not sure if it’s a Nigerian trait or if it’s because they have black hooves.
Stormy says "Hi!"
Also mucked out the area around the goat manger. Again. Seems like I did it a week ago. The goats waste so much hay it’s driving me batty. I swear that half of it gets trampled into the ground. The buggers pick through it looking for god-knows-what, but they will chow down on the same stuff from the same bale if it’s stacked inside the feed storage section in goat barn (where they shouldn’t be in the first place). This stuff isn’t all Bermuda so I suppose it’s my fault for getting just a mixed grass hay. They only have four more square bales to go & then we’ll get a big round bale of Bermuda for them. If they waste that stuff as much as the mixed grass I’m going to just flip out.
Our goat manger.
The goats eat out of an old dog house that Paul recycled into our current manger. It holds two fat flakes and I thought that the slats were close enough together to at least slow down the hay wasting, but the goats obviously didn’t hear me when I mentioned that feature. I was at the Homesteading Today forum last night (http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/) & got some information on whole-bale-no-waste feeders from a few people (thanks MOgal!) and may try making one of them this winter.
I mean Paul will be making one of them this winter. He just doesn’t know it yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment