Today I'm going to talk about goats instead of sheep.  Well, mostly about goats.  

To be specific, I'm going to talk about THESE goats:

In case you're wondering, the guy on the floor is a cat, not a goat.  His name is Hobbes and he one of the barn cats.  Though a barn cat, he ends up in the house on a regular basis and we are bros.  Although he keeps sneezing and rubbing his nose on me.  And clawing up my leg, demanding love when I am trying to finish my coffee before work.  

Overall, Hobbes is not a goat.  The dudes sticking their heads through the fence are goats.  They are actually young goats (kids) and are being kept in the feeder.  A feeder is an inside pen where a selection of young ruminants are kept.  There are multiple reasons for their isolation:

• To keep them from drinking their tired mother's milk 
• To build up their strength on hay and corn, which has more fat and protein than grass
• To keep them from getting worms
• To prevent the male goats from impregnating their mothers (does)

Think of the feeder as a control room, allowing the goat farmer to organize the goats for the best results.  Also for the good of the goats, actually, as worms and inbreeding and continuous milk demands on mothers are not good for the herd.  

These specific kids are a mix of oberhasli and boer breeds.  Oberhasli are Swiss milking goats, while boer are South African meat goats.  Boer goats have some of the most muscle in the current goat market, according to Anne.  The mix allows for brownish coats with a white stripe.  The white ones are  more boerish, the brown ones more oberhasli.  Or such is my understanding.  

Anne is my employers daughter and my landlord/host.  I live at her house and work for her dad, Bill.  These goats are raised at Anne's, then shipped to Bill who will eventually take them to the slaughter house.  

Which is sort of sad, these goats are beautiful.  

WARNING: THIS NEXT SECTION CONTAINS MATERIAL NOT SUITED FOR YOUNGER AUDIENCES

Goats, however, are assholes.  This is the exact word from not one, but two farmers (plus Anne's son, who is not a farmer at the moment).  They are headstrong and unruly.  Some of the mothers won't let their kids drink their udders, so get really big, swollen udders.  Just because they are assholes.  

Aight.  That was it for questionable content.  

For some reason, of the animals I've been in contact with over the past few weeks, these goats are my favorite.  They are curious and playful and gorgeous.

So next time you are eating sausage, think of these young goats.  Shed a tear.  Remember that they were once fine specimens of boer and oberhasli and refused to stand still for the photograph below.  

I'm going to talk about sheep death again.  I'm working on an infographic about the finer points of hay making, but it's progressing slowly.  Until then, sheep.

Barns are huge and simple on the outside, complex and confining on the inside.  I imagine there are different barns for different farms, but my employer's barn works like this:

• The top level is a large hayloft.  There is a chute in the middle for hay which descends to the middle level
• The middle level is where the more demanding animals (carewise) are kept.  Also the shearing room and corn storage.
• The basement is open at one end for a small herd of sheep can shelter.  The rest of the pens down here are unoccupied except for a pair of evasive kittens.  

The middle level is fascinating.  The pens are divided by sheep category.  This is something I'll get into later.  For now, the important pen is for nursing mothers.  Only ewes with suckling lambs go here while all other ewes go to the basement.  Lambs who are suckling go in a different pen.

Two days ago, there was a sheep riot.  Like a prison riot, but with the lamb kind of shank, not the sharpened toothbrush kind of shank.  The older lambs got out and mixed in with the milking mothers. Once we sorted them out, we found a dead lamb.  She was either trampled or an existing condition was exacerbated by the shortage of food (that's just my guess I really have no idea).

The lambless ewe was moved downstairs.

Later that day, it was raining.  I was shoveling poop and dumping it out the back of the middle level into the pen of the basement sheep.  Sheep eat anything and will graze their poop piles for undigested corn.  As I took a breather, looking over the outside basement pen, I saw the xed out sheep.  

Blue x on her soaked back, she stood halfway up the refuse pile.  She was staring at the corner of the barn wall, a little down and to the left of the door.  I was pretty confused.  Then I realized that she was staring at the spot where her lamb had died.  So I turned around and went back into the barn for another  wheel barrow load of sodden straw.  

I'm doing the bi-annual cleaning of a pen.  In the pen are currently an ewe and her two lambs.  They are kept separate because the ewe cannot produce enough milk for twins. I told them my life concerns and they listened patiently.  The farmer said talking to the sheep is alright, the problem is once they start talking back.  

She was out there yesterday as well.  I accidentally threw a load of refuse on her and had to climb out down the pile to dig her out.  The farmer told me that once one of his farm hands did that and buried a sheep.  They didn't find her until four days later when the pile started to reek.  

So I've buried pets.  I buried a bunny we lost to a heart attack.  I lost many good fish to a black cat.  I lost a rat to cancer.  I lost her sister to a broken heart.  But I still have no idea what conclusion to draw from animal death.  

I don't know if she's still out there.  The farmer said they usually forget about their dead lamb after a few days.  So here's a picture of the puppy (Nick's dad's puppy, Molly) who keeps trying to interrupt this post to play ball.  In the movies, the dog always dies and the sheep...there isn't sheep death in movies.  This ain't the movies.  

Meanwhile, down at the sheep farm, everyone is asleep.  Somewhere across the driveway there is a pig sleeping, blissfully unaware of his future date with my knife and fork.  There are goats with distended udders dreaming of stealing from babies.  There are some chickens.  And then, having drifted off after counting themselves, are these guys.

So as it turns out, I have distorted the facts.  Goats don't dream of criminal activity.  The pig may not exist, I haven't actually seen him.  Sheep don't count themselves.  More importantly, everyone is not asleep.  Clearly I am awake.  

This leads the final distortion of facts:  At the moment, I am not down at the sheep farm.  Instead, the sheep farm is almost exactly 3.3 miles up the road.  Myself and the adorable sheep above are actually at a farm house owned by the daughter of my employer.  The sheep farm has way more sheep than the sheep in the above photograph.  It also had, as of this morning, a dead sheep.  

Today was my first day as a farmhand on the sheep farm.  After parking my bike and walking into the barn I was given two loops of twine.  

"Tie these around the hind legs of the dead one over there."

"Which one?"

"The dead one."  

So I did.  By the time I got back to the house with the currently sleeping lambs, I basically fell asleep, only to wake up at 12 AM.  

Allow me to recount a few things I learned today.  

• Sick sheep don't fare too well in the heat, the heat finishes em off
• Goats and sheep with kids and lambs are kept in the barn, as are mares being raised to slaughter soonish
• There are at least two cuts of hay.  The first time you mow a hay field, it's First Cut and yields twice as much as the second time you mow the hay field.  Second Cut is more nutritious with more leaves to stem.  
• Cows poop on the other side of the enclosure from their food
  

Now it's time for to rejoin the lambs, goats, chickens, and probable pig in sweet slumber.  Before I do, I am going to make a few promises.  First, I promise to provide some form of image with each post (OC).  It might just be more photographs of lambs, but that's not a problem amirite.  Second, I promise to follow up with in-depth discussion of various farm phenomena.  I have already begun looking on farming forums about why Second Cut hay is more nutritious than First Cut.  Third, I promise to update at least once weekly.  Finally, I promise that if you're okay with death and poop, this blog should be safe for small children (my youngest brother for example).  When it's possibly a tad risque, I will place a warning.  Like a black curtain in an art gallery.  Like so:

WARNING: THIS NEXT SECTION CONTAINS MATERIAL NOT SUITED FOR YOUNGER AUDIENCES

Basically sheep photography is porn for sleep.  A visual stimulus to make you sleepy.  Sheep Smut.