A Chance Meeting....

Sometimes people come into your life and instantaneously change it. That's what happened when we were at the "Kiss a Llama" event that we took Blossom to. A young man named Josh approached us - he introduced himself and explained that he has been farming a long time (he's only 18...but he's lived or worked on a farm nearly all his life). He's not happy with the movement of less farms, more developments so, he's working to use his knowledge to teach others, not for profit, but to support the community he lives in. He asked if he could come to our house and look over our animals, do a pregnancy check on the goats and generally help us out, in any way. I reached out to him on Saturday and even though he had appendix surgery on Friday - he decided to come out to the farm on Sunday evening (last night). He went through each animal with us and offered suggestions on how to care for them even better than we already are. Here is how Josh is going to be helping us over the next few weeks.

• He's going to band the testicles on our sheep - this will hopefully decrease their sexual drive and make them less likely to mount the female goats. It will also increase the quality of their fiber. (..and saving huge amounts of money for us)
• We've been giving Sub-Q shots to our goats, but since we've never been formally trained, he's going to demonstrated both Sub-Q and intramuscular for us. 
• He discussed the feed for the pregnant goats and that we likely need to increase the protein in their feed and discussed CDT and Vitamin B Complex with us. 
• He has a hay provider that is significantly less expensive than the two that we've been using thus far. For us, it's always good to have a variety of hay suppliers - just because we can't purchase in large quantities, so we aren't really a priority for growers. BUT saving money on hay would be HUGE for us (I'm talking...like 1/2 price)!!
• We have one dairy goat that seems to be having an issue with bowlegs - her hooves seem to be the issue - he's going to help us work her hooves in a better direction and hopefully correct her legs. 
• He's making dandelion wine, as soon as the dandelions come out in early Spring. He's offered to help us with making honey mead, when we are ready.
• We talked about how we want to tap trees this Spring, if we can find some taps for a cheap price. He knows how to make taps out of wood and is planning on showing us how to make a few tomorrow afternoon! HOMEMADE MAPLE SYRUP TAPS!?!?!?!?!?! 
• He gave us a list of items we should have available for when our goats give birth. (Towels, towels, towels, water, coffee GOT IT!)
• Finally (at least, for now) he gave Mabel and Flora (our two dairy goats) a good once over and gave us an idea of what he thinks we can expect with their pregnancies. 
• Mabel - he feels that Mabel is VERY close to delivery. Her bag is filling out well and one udder is producing a beautiful gold colostrum for her babies. The other udder had some liquid water/milk combination - he drained that and wants to take a look at it again on Tuesday. He thinks that there are 2-3 babies in there (imagine 2-3 baby Mabels running around the barn yard!)
• Flora - he feels that Flora is pregnant, with 1-2 babies. She likely has a couple weeks before delivery, but seems to be coming along fine. He'll recheck her Tuesday - just to make sure she is progressing well. 
• Itty and Frankie - he's not sure that they are pregnant (which is fine...we know they were exposed to Chip, but whether they got pregnant or not wasn't a huge priority to us).

So it looks like we'll be having some little goat kids romping around very soon!! :-)
So imagine how excited we were after his visit! I wonder if Josh is up for adoption???