Not many things better than watching our goaty girls havin' fun be-boppin' around this morning.  If they only knew how happy they make us with all their "goatness"!

The girls have been wanting to camp out at the show, like some of our other friends do.  I pulled the tent down from the attic and told them if they could get it up, we would camp out at the upcoming show in Fletcher, NC.  As you can see they got it up, with a little help from Bando!  Should be interesting!

Someone very wise once said, "If you can't beat'em, join'em."  Well, we tried breeding Honey, Nilly and Sugar (twice!) and we just got our last blood test results--negative.  We were sooooo looking forward to having little Valentino babies this fall and actually having our own goat milk.  We also had been planning on "somebody" having a buck so Bando wouldn't be alone in "buck prison".  No milk for us and no prisonmate for Bando.  Rusty Repp's Mimulus doe recently kidded having been bred to Valentino.  We have always admired her and her udder and like the breeding "nick" of her sire LTE Tsuga, being out of WHF Cowgirl, who is Bando's dam.  We picked him up at the Monroe, GA show this past Saturday.  His sire, Valentino was is in the pen directly behind him, which showed an amazing resemblance to eachother.  A true "Me and Mini-Me"!   So if we can't have Valentino himself, it looks like we will have the next best thing!  We will be registering him as "Brigadier".

We were so happy to have the opportunity to purchase such a nice buck to be a foundation to our herd and compliment our does.  Only five weeks old, we are loving the chance to hug and kiss on him, until he gets preoccupied with "huggin' and kissin' "on the goaty girls.  His breeding is  LTE Acer Rubrum X Woodhaven Farms Cowgirl, bred by Rusty Repp.  One of the things that makes having this buck so special is that he is out of the beautiful 11yr.old, PGCH, 6X  Grand Sr. Doe, 9X Best Udder, Cowgirl.  Also, his sire, the up and coming, Acer, 3X Jr. Ch. and 1X GCH is a son of the late great Cowboy Cadilak, who happens to be a full brother to Cowgirl!  Check out his full pedigree on the Goat Page.  We named him Bandolier - "A pocketed belt for holding amunition"!  Perfect!  

Chalk it up under the column of great times!  Becca, Katie and I (and 6 of our goaty girls!) trekked up to Carrollton, GA for the West GA Dairy Goat Show this weekend. This marks our official ONE YEAR anniversary of Katie and Becca showing goats!   There was no shortage on hugs and laughs.  Once again, we are limited to the Junior Doe Division, not having had any Hooah Hill babies of our own yet.  But hopefully that will change soon.  Got the bad news from the vet on Friday that Sugar and Nilly's preg test came back negative, but fortunately Sugar looked like she was receptive to another date on Saturday and Valentino luckily was at the show!  The realization from that show was "You really do need a buck of your own!"  More to come soon on that issue!  While Sugar was busy on her "date", Katie and Becca started the day with Showmanship.  They both did so well, and I'm always proud to see them working on the important showing skills and knowledge.  Our little goaty girls won 2 classes, 3 seconds, a couple of fourths and a fifth.  Classes were all large and competitive.  We get a three week break before heading to the show marathon, Clemson!  

Spring show season has officially begun!  Such a wonderful start to the year!  We ventured out Friday with our five Junior Does in the back of the truck and headed almost 5 hours north to Clinton, SC for the SC Classic Nigerian Dwarf Specialty Show hosted by Teena Bagwell of Gypsy Moon. Compliments go out to the Bagwell's for being such gracious hosts and opening up there beautiful farm to all us Nigey people.  No matter win or lose, it was a fantastic good time with great people!  Becca and I were flying solo since Katie had a ballet performance she participated in.  Becca's Bunbluza made us so proud capturing both judges, Karen Smith and Brent Deitrich's attention for 2 Reserve Junior Champion ribbons!!  Katie missed her Roxy being expertly shown by Becca for a strong 2nd out of 13 yearlings, with her (sunburned) Nilly following behind with a strong 4th.  Bella and Coppelia showed very disciplined coming in 2nd and 6th in a large under 6 mos class.    Most importantly......we had a great time visiting with friends and meeting new ones!!!  The only disappointment was my camera wouldn't work and there were so many opportunities for glorious pictures.  Many promised to send me what they took :) Thanks to them!    

We had a pretty good gust of wind come through last night around midnight that blew over a couple of trees in the goat paddock.  The goatie girls were thrilled at Mother Nature's gift left for them this morning.  It did damage some of the fence, but we just didn't have the heart to remove the debris quickly since they seemed to be having so much fun.  

As day 150 came and went, it's become quite clear that Honey will NOT be having more Honeys.  We have concluded that she must have the dreaded CBS (Chubber Bubber Syndrome)! I didn't realize it could be contagious, maybe she caught it from me! 

We got all prepared for welcoming a new little family member to Hooah Hill, but even though she is round as a basketball, her udder never developed.  Strangely, we can't figure out what the weight gain could be attributed to.  Her diet is no different than the others and she is very active.  I have the vet coming in a couple weeks to float the horses teeth, so I will have him check her out.  Honey still remains the Grand Dam of the herd!

An additional blow to our attempt to grow our herd, is that Sugar and Nilly were bred last month and Sugar came in a very strong heat last week.  Nilly had a questionable day, but not sure.  I will have the vet do a blood test on her to determine if she is pregnant, so no more guess work!  We will definitely get Sugar rebred to Valentino. 

The goat who cried NOT pregnant!  Or is she?  Here I am again blogging about Honey's maternal status!  I first would like to clarify that I do have an IQ in the triple digits.  I have had two children of my own and been around hundreds of pregnant horses.  I felt I was, at the very least, somewhat qualified to notice if a goat were to be pregnant.  I was wrong!  To recap:  Honey was bred on November 9th.  I was there... I saw it happen!  Within 18 days she was in a full blown heat.  Like clockwork she came in heat almost every 18 days following.  I "assumed" she was not pregnant.  As winter progressed, Honey's winter coat came in and only started to notice in the past 4 weeks how bulbous she was looking.  It must be the feed, or her coat, right?  Not one thought of pergnancy.  Making many excuses for her global figure (I have years of experience doing that for myself!!).  Ironically, 2 weeks ago, we had just returned, in the evening, from getting 2 of our other does bred up at Rusty Repp's, while David and I stood in the paddock with all the goaties, David commented on how round Honey was looking.  We just paused in silence for a moment staring  at Honey, slowly looked back at each other with eyebrows up!  No... she can't be.  It was getting dark fast, so had to wait until the next day to get a solid look at everything.  First thing, put her on the milkstand and gave her a full exam!  She definitely felt round and tight, but just couldn't tell about the udder with all the hair.  She is not freakishly big, so it's not ultra obvious.  With the hair, it was really hard to tell definitively.  We actually spent last week, convinced she wasn't pregnant.  Back to the hair excuse!  It has been quite warm the past few days and the goats seemed to be a little stressed with their winter coats.  We decided to rough clip a couple to give them some relief.  We did Bear, and Nilly first.  Pulled Honey out, and with each swipe of the blade across her side, we became more certain, this may be a baby. The ultimate test...what was happening with her udder.  You be the judge!    We are still not 100% convinced, but are erring on the side of caution, getting all our supplies and fixing her a nice place to have her baby.  Here due date would be April 3rd...two weeks!  Check out our blog posts regarding Honey's pregnancy  11/15/2010 and 1/19/2011