I’ve got a bad cold so mostly what I did today was nap and drink hot tea. I did manage to squeeze in a couple of fun things though. My mom was visiting for the weekend so she helped out.
First, we took Schnitzel for a nice long walk around the neighborhood and met several of our neighbors, including a couple of sweet little girls. Schnitzel loves everyone she meets, even the cat (but the cat wasn’t so sure about her).
She was so good on her walk, even when we had to tug on her leash to get her to leave a new friend or ignore something in the road. We decided to reward her with a special treat- ice cream! So we hopped in the car and went down to Brusters, a local ice cream place that I sometimes take the dog to since they have little bowls of doggy ice cream (and really yummy human ice cream). Turns out, Schnitzel loves ice cream. She was very well behaved on the ride (she sat in my lap while mom drove), perfect on her leash walking across the parking lot and sweet to the people she met on the patio while we ate. After a disastrous visit to Country Boy earlier in the week it was very encouraging to have such a positive visit!
On our way to the ice cream place we had to drive by our friend’s goat farm so we brought Ivy with us and dropped her off on the way. My friend, Mr Savage, had stopped by the day before to let us know he’d gotten a new billy goat and we were welcome to bring Ivy over anytime for breeding. We’d tried breeding her last year but the billy he had at the time turned out to be a bit of a dud. We had immediate success with the new buck, though! I guess Ivy must have already been in heat because as soon as they were introduced he started showing signs of interest and while we watched he started to um, get the job done. We were surprised because goats only go into heat once every two weeks so we didn’t expect her to be in heat that particular day. If a female isn’t in heat, she won’t stand still for the buck to mount her. Hopefully everything “took” today and we’ll have kids around March 11th. We are going to let her stay with her new friend for a little while longer just to make sure the job got done. Ivy is a Nubian goat which is a dairy breed so once she has kids we’ll be able to milk her and use the milk to make cheese. I can’t wait!
WARNING: before you click “play”, this video is a little graphic and you might not want to play it at work or in front of small children, at least not without an explanation prepared ahead of time.
Square Peg Farm 
she already looks pregnant to me. Not missed any meals has she.
Believe it or not she has been on nothing but pasture since last winter. That round belly is just part of the Nubian goat physique!