the goat barn is looking great!

And I am so proud of my hubbie Rolf for pulling it off... though having that "it'll be winter soon" deadline sure was motivating! We just about made it in time, they moved in about three weeks ago, initially without front door and windows but anything is better than a tarp tent, I'm sure. With the last November windstorm Monika aka Mountain Goat did catch a bit of a cold I think, plus Gazelle stopped nursing (and Whitey is safely rutting in the bachelor pad) which made her milk production drop significantly as well with me only milking in the mornings.

I did get her back up to milking fine again, only to find out I would need to stop milking her soon anyway so right now she's dried off and on her date with boer buck Octavian. Not sure why I missed her estrus last month, maybe being miserable from her cold minimized the signs; plus, with the new barn and the cold weather nobody is hanging out with Whitey anymore so he's not as good of an estrus "thermometer" as he was with Thirteen :-)

The barn is not completely done, but mostly done, and definitely working. We have heated water buckets, a place to separate Thirteen from her kid overnight, a large keyhole hayfeeder in the walk in stall, haybales stored within the barn - no juggling flakes of hay while trying to open and close gates - a separate area for the milk stand so I don't have to scrape poopies off every morning, opening & closing double pane windows, a dutch door and since a couple days: light at night! It's funny how "camping out" with minimal resources really makes you appreciate when you do get some!

And why I had to stop milking? Turns out that annoying pain I had in one of the knuckles of my right hand was a (benign) bone tumor - go figure! The milking aggravated the tumor (not used to this sore muscles etc) and made it show it's ugly head before it had grown large enough to be felt or seen, so the removal surgery was not as invasive as it could have been. Still they removed about a garbanzo beans' worth of bone, which was grafted and returned from one of my arm bones to give the knuckle ligament something to anker to. The surgery went fine, and I can still milk Thirteen (one handed) but other than that am pretty much confined to the couch & computer... Bummer!