Tia & a few of the goats, checking to see if I opened the gate back up yet.
Yesterday, at my suggestion, Dan put a gate between the goat pen and the front pasture. The idea is that in the morning I can open the gate, the goats can go out to the front pasture to eat the abundance of grass there, and then in the afternoon when I feed them they will go back to their pen.
This is because we only have one cow currently. One lonely cow on 10 acres of pasture. And an abundance of goats, and a llama, in a very adequate, but much smaller, area. So we basically have 10 acres of free goat food, just out of reach of the goats.
Lets install a gate, and give the goats access to all of that free grass! What a great idea!
Day One: I open the gate, pet the baby goats, assure Tia the llama that it's safe, and watch them all happily munching on the grass in the front pasture. YAY! Success! This was such a great idea! I go back to the house and sit down with my laptop to work on a writing project.
Day One, 15 minutes later:
Piper, Meg's goat, trots purposefully past the living room window, straight to the feed barrel, and carefully opens the lid to eat straight from the barrel. Our backyard is not part of any pen or pasture. Neither is the driveway she walked in from.
I laugh, and head out to put her back in the pen. Piper's the oldest goat here, and a bit spoiled. She was originally raised in the house with diapers, bottle fed... and we've always left her choose her own pen, fences have never slowed her down much.
First I put the lid back on the grain, then I watched her easily open the lid once again while I was trying to unlatch the back gate.
Ok, so that's a TINY bit annoying. She can open that barrel in seconds, while it takes me no less than five minutes and three broken fingernails.
But she is pretty easy to work with, and I convinced her to go back in the pen, after putting some of the grain in the feeder for her.
A few more goats... and see how short the grass is here?
Then I thought I had better check on the others, to make sure Piper had escaped through the fence, and not because a pasture gate was open.
As I walk out front, the first thing I see is the big billy goat in the calf feed barrel. This boy has a HUGE rack of horns, so this is physically impossible. The barrel is not that large. His horns have to be at least 4 feet across. He's a large Kiko billy. And yet, somehow he managed. He's also pretty tame (all of our goats are, for the most part) so when I hollered at him he went running... which scared the row of baby goats that were wandering down the lane.
In case it's not obvious, the lane is not inside the fence either.
This upset some of the mom goats, who then came through the pasture fence to the babies. And it got the attention of two more goats, who realized Horton the billy goat was no longer in the feed barrel, leaving it free for them to try.
So now the pasture has approximately 3 goats, one Scottish Highland cow, and, thank God, one llama. I'm not sure what I'd have done if Tia was loose.
I chase the goats out of the feed, lock the lid down tight, and head to the back yard, where I fill the goat feeders. I bang on the feeders and call... no response. I walk out front, and several are gathered around the feed barrel, working together to try to open it. Monsters.
Finally Sandy, who is not the oldest but is definitely Queen Goat, notices me holding a feed scoop and comes running to me. All of the others, including the llama, follow. Several jump on me and wrap around my legs as I walk. I feel like a master goat herder, if goat herders are supposed to look ridiculous and have no control over the goats.
As the goats finally notice the grain in their feeders, I head back to close the gate between the two pens... and Hilda, the very not tame scottish highlander cow meanders into the goat pen.
Day One, an Hour Later:
I could not convince Hilda that the grass truly is greener (SO much greener. Taller. And so much more of it.) on her side of the fence, so for now she's a goat. I did spend the next 20 minutes trying to get her to eat out of my hand... but she wasn't interested in getting that close.
To recap, after Dan spent a great deal of time installing a new gate so that the goats would have more grass to eat, I now have a cow, a llama, and a turkey in the goat pen with the goat, and I have 10 acres of completely empty pasture. (Did I mention the turkey? He didn't get in the way too much today, just followed along wondering what on earth I was doing, and taking advantage of the goat feeders being full with no goats around.)
Well that worked out about as well as most of my farm ideas.
But I got to pet Tia the llama, and I think Hilda the cow got a foot closer to me than ever before. I'm counting these as accomplishments, and hoping Dan still finds me amusing.... I had probably bake something, just to be sure.
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Day One - Lunch Time
I go to make myself lunch, look out the window and Tia is GLARING at the gate, ears back. So I go open it for her. There's still a cow in the goat pen, but now the pasture at least has a llama happily munching on it's abundant grass.
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