How many BABY GOATS will Charlotte have?? (newsletter)

Spring is here it seems, the geese have noticeably paired up, the bluebirds are out in force at my little ranch, along with the blue heron stalking the edge of the pond. And on Monday I saw what I think may have been an OSPREY!??

Above: Not my pic! :-) Google says it belongs to Chen Chengguang.

Could it be? I know they are at nearby Jordan Lake. I watched it dive into the water repeatedly, coming out with small fish and always flying in the same direction with it. When I looked it up I found it was likely, size, coloring, silhouette, and the fact that it was fishing in my pond. It seems early for babies but maybe mom is laying on her eggs? Fun to watch our little wildlife refuge here! 

Thursday I started noticing some strange behavior from the Canadian Geese that call our pond home. Goose A was chasing goose B in our pond, paddling hard and beating it's wings. As soon as A would get close to B and start pecking it, B would disappear under the water and pop up 3 feet away! A would see it pop up and go after it again, furiously pecking the water where it disappeared. This happened 5 times in a row until B got out of the water and ran far enough away that A stopped pursuing it. I assumed they were both male but have no idea since they all look the same :-) (Although we have noticed that it seems each pair has one that's a big bigger, with a longer neck, that seems to be more on watch.)

Brad saw the exact same thing happen with two male Mallard Ducks the same day! I didn't know birds like that could swim underwater!

The happy dogs, just because :-)

The horses are starting to really shed out, there are big patches of white fur on the pasture grass from when they roll. I went out the other day and just used my hands to brush them, works almost as well as a brush really! Then I got some mellow time with Wynter, his muzzle resting on me. So sweet.

Sweetness the mini donkey isn't shedding yet, for whatever reason donkeys tend to hold onto their winter coat longer. He will still have scruffy fur and donkey eyebrows until mid June!

Speaking of scruffy! I brushed all that undercoat out after I took this! Alaska is finally really starting to look pregnant! She's due April 4th-ish.

And Charlotte...how much longer do you think she will fit in that chair?? Due April 11th-ish. How many do you think she'll have?

Brad's been working along on the stall area. We've decided that for now he will put the door area together (left) and then fence it all in and it can be a run in with a tiny pasture attached for rainy days. In the fall he will finish the stalls out.

He'll start working on this larger area soon! The whole barn will have fine gravel over the red clay and then heavy rubber stall mats over that.

It's been fun planning it out and figuring out how it will work best for us. The thing that really has to be done the fastest now that we are about 2.5 weeks out from Alaska's due date is the mom and baby goat pen. They will share the goat barn (to the right, outside of this picture) with the other girls but will have a portion of it sectioned off from the other goats until the babies get big enough to run away from a goat that might want to bop them around.

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