I had to tattoo a junior Saanen this evening since I forgot I had not done that and she is entered in the State Fair next week.  She is my favorite little Saanen and has never been shown but she is easy to handle and loves to go for walks with me.  Hopefully that will mean she will be a good girl in the showring.  Maybe not after what I did to her today.  I hit a vein with the tatto thingie and she bled all over both of us.  I had blood all over my shirt, my arms, my hands and I just noticed my  left leg has blood on it too. How could one little ear lose that much blood from a tattoo??  Finally got it stopped and she "seemed" to forgive me but she might just remember that episode when she gets me in the showring.  Not looking forward to that.  Hopefully some extra feed and some petting will help make her forget the torture today.

Bug is a recorded grade that is a very large yearling.  I love her to death and she can be quite entertaining. 
Goats don't really eat tin cans do they??? But wait.  That is an aluminum can she has in her mouth and she is raking it up and down against the plywood wall of the barn making a terrible noise and she won't quit.  The other goats are staring at her hoping she gets tired of her new toy soon.
See what happens when hubby helps in the goat pen and leaves an empty can behind.  Entertainment for at least one of the girls.

I have so much to do this weekend I had better get busy.  I have to finish packing my trailer for the State Fair.  All of the girls are clipped and ready to go.  Will take all of my clipper collection with me in case I need to do some touch ups when I get there. 
Have to make soap since I am so low on stock and I am going into the busy season.  Lotion making is also on the schedule.  I need to retire.  My day job is getting in the way.  Now that Kyle has graduated I am hoping he starts paying his own way soon.  Maybe?  I see he is still using my gasoline credit cards and I would not be surprised to see a new iphone show up on my bill either. I still pay for his truck insurance as well.  Cheaper to leave the truck in my name than to gift it to him and let him pay sky high insurance premiums.  And we have three iphones on the family plan and he can't beat that price either.  Who could beat free

I am still milking five does.  The rest have been dry for months.  For the past several evenings, the dry does have started trying to come into the milkroom.  One of them ran right over me tonight and succeeded in getting on the milk stand.  She is a huge Saanen and I thought she had destroyed my knee as she knocked it out from under me when she came barrelling in.  Luckily the next one that tried wasn't as large and I was able to block her.
Then the poor barn kitty was jumped on by a feral cat that came from the neighbor's barn to drink milk.  Kitty and I are not having a good evening. I am feeding the evening milk to the chickens.  I have been doing that for about a month.  I bet my eggs have the hardest shells around. It is getting harder and harder to crack them open. 

I have one milker to clip for the State Fair.  Milkers are easy to clip since I work on them a little at a time.  Every time they get on the milkstand I clip something. A leg, a neck, a side and eventually they are all clipped.Juniors are another story.  I have one left to clip and I am sure she will be like all the rest.  Bounce, bounce, bounce. All over the milkstand in true kid fashion.  I should be used to it but I never enjoy clipping a  kid.  Plus I have to bend over farther than with a milker.  Oh my aching back.  Then the hooves.  Those little girls have some really strong back legs when they don't want their hooves trimmed. 
But they sure are pretty when they are clippe

I had a migraine yesterday but today is double the pain so I stayed home.  No fun with these things.  I really had very few for about ten years then this past year they started up again.  We also moved our offices so I do not know if the two are connected.
I did get the goats milked and fed so now I am trying to stay in semi darkness and after lunch will take a nice long nap.  That always helps.

I entered eleven goats in the State Fair of Texas Dairy Goat Show but I can't take all of them.  Four won their dry legs at the Brazos Valley Fair so I am looking for replacements in my herd.  I have an extra Saanen junior but my Saanen yearling was dam raised by someone else and I don't want to bother with a semi-tame doe at a show although I took her last year. Was not fun.  I was constantly worried she would get away from me and take off for parts unknown. 
So it looks like I am down to nine that I can take.
Three LaMancha juniors
One Alpine junior
Three Saanen juniors
One Saanen milker
One Recorded Grade milker
And maybe I will take the RG junior I have (even though she has her dry leg) just in case she is needed for numbers.  I can always scratch her.
I love the State Fair Dairy Goat Show.

It has been a nice day with a slow steady little rain most of the afternoon.  Hubs put out new rolls of sudan for the milkers . Only problem is that they have now eaten half of what I bought for the winter.  Have to purchase more.  Hope the hay man has extra.  Only  have 45 more square bales of sudan under the carport too.  Only used 5 but that is going quicker than I expected too.

Clipped two junior for the state fair yesterday.  One of them won't be going since I feel her feet are not show quality.  Don't know where those awful looking things came from.  I owned her dam and grand dam and neither had that problem.

I ran outside this morning, barefooted in my nightgown to see why the dogs, chickens and goats were going crazy. This is what I saw.  The hog does not have 6 legs.  The black and white legs belong to the Australian type Shepherd dog that was with him.  This is a wild hog but isn't wild.  He is someone's pet and has been castrated.  The dog killed my only Ameraucana rooster so he is not on my good list.  You can see the feathers in the picture. DH checked with all of the neighbors but no one knew anything about a pet wild hog and a companion dog.  Our neighbor helped DH drive them out a gate into another neighbor's pasture and we hope they go home and DO NOT come back. We are not sure how they got in but they could not figure out how to get out. Hence the gate opening and help finding the exit.

We had a nice rain yesterday so I am hoping it rained in Dime Box so the sudan will grow.  My girls are going through my round bales like it is candy.  I will be out of hay before November at the rate they are gobbling it up. Must be good stuff.
I quit buying alfalfa hay after I got my load of sudan.  But I bought a single square bale to take to the Brazos Valley Fair.  When the young man tossed it into the back of my truck I thought he had either been lifting a lot weights or that bale didn't weigh much. I added a square bale of sudan from my stash and off we went.  Just past Dime Box I felt the trailer run over something and when I looked in the rearview mirror I saw my alfalfa flying all over the road.  That bale of alfalfa blew out of the back of my truck.  The sudan was still sitting there and was still there when I got to the Expo Center.  I was right.  That bale of alfalfa didn't weigh much but it still cost me $16.