this guy. my first baby. he sure looks dapper with his spring haircut.
about a month ago we purchased violet and lacey from a lady craigslist. it was our valentine’s gift to each other. last friday, 03/09/12, lacey gave birth to two little female kids. this happened between the hours of 9 and 11 at night. lacey is a birthing machine, apparently, and so it happened quite quickly and seemingly effortlessly. i’m a little jealous.
friends, please welcome prima (the white one) and secca (the black one). they’re named for the brothers in big night, one of our favorite food movies. they are happy and healthy, eating like champs, and already jumping on and off all of the trunks and turned over metal bins in their pen. mama lacey is doing great.
when i would go out to the barnyard in my flip-flops, our chickens (RIP) would always waddle over to my toes and peck at my painted toenails. when i bent down to offer them scraps from my hand they would often lunge at my wedding ring instead. they thought that my red toes or my shiny ring were bugs. i was always amused by this and would most often allow it (pecks don’t hurt). after a peck or two they realized that there was no protein to be gotten from those toenails and would move on to the scraps in my hand or the offerings i had dumped in the corner pile.
bean is my little chicken little. when i’m doing things with my hands in front of her–showing her how to clap, waving at her, pointing out my fingers or her nose–she grabs for my tiny but shiny wedding ring. when i’m sitting on the couch and she’s playing around on the rug, eventually and always she shimmies her way over to my oft-tapping, dancing toes. she grabs at them, tries to contain them, slaps at them, claps at them, sometimes puts her mouth on them. she loves to watch them wiggle.
she’s my little chicken.
sometimes things get crazy in this small house with two little ones crawling around. when this happens, otto goes and finds a quiet spot under the coffee table (or the dining room table) and pretends to be invisible.
meet violet and lacy: jp’s valentine’s present to me and mine to him.
lacy is on the left (she’s knocked up), and violet is the sassy one on the hollow trunk. they are nigerian dwarf goats and are about the size of otto (but a little heftier). Once she kids, Lacy will provide us with milk. Both will provide us with loads of entertainment (Violet, as far as we have been told, is sterile. she’s recently been exposed to a buck but has no history of becoming pregnant. so if she is, that would be a shock to us all).
up to two goats are allowed in denver county as use-by-right (same law that permits people to own x-amount of dogs and/or cats without having to apply for a permit for them). we had built the fenced-in-yard for them a year and a half ago knowing that one day we would have goats (we didn’t plan on our flock of chickens being decimated in between that time). there was certainly some preparation involved (securing shed, buying feed, hooking up water warmer) but all the big stuff had already been done (again, thank you mama and papa!).
we drove up to evergreen, loaded them into a dog crate in the back of jp’s pick-up truck, and brought them on home to the PowerDriver Farm. we’ve scheduled most mornings as my responsibility to tend to them. tonight i put them away for the evening and found that i really loved sitting on their bed brushing their hair with a horse brush we picked up at our favorite feed store. they’re still getting used to us and their new environment so i’m working on giving them extra loving and treats (alfalfa cubes!).
(my helpful ranch hands.)
happy valentine’s day, everyone!
welcome
