Goats With Laryngitis

This was the moon last night and today is the full moon.

Maybe that explains some things...

This has been a rough couple of days for the twins, especially Trinity. Actually its been a rough couple of days on the farm hands too.

We finally have had this warm break in the weather and the fields are almost snow free. It was also time for the twins and Layla to join the herd. Actually it was past due, but the cold, ice and shelter situations delayed what should have happened at least two weeks ago.

Yesterday the twins learned about the big, bad world of electric fences. Yes they did! We put up a section of electric netting above the permanent fence so that the goats could get to some ungrazed field. They were all happy to be there although the twins did a lot of yelping as they tried to go through high tensile fence and sniff the electric net. So after thinking that they had learned what was what, we decided to walk Jock around the fields. Just as we had closed the alley gate, Trini started screaming. I took off for the goats while Dave took off to cut the power.

Two heart attacks later...try running on wet fields in rubber boots. Anyway, Trini was caught in the electric netting fence, and until I got to her, got several pulses. She was caught in a square up to her waist. (Actually that is about where she was caught today in the video you can see below). I had to first calm her down and then slowly peel her out of the fence. After that, she didn't stop yelling for a while, and by the end of the day she could only croak.

Today the goats were out in the sun again, and I worked on fixing holes still left from the fence installation, while observing what was going on with the goats. I wanted to make sure the twins memory was more than 12 hours regarding fences. There was one yelp from Neo, but in general everyone was chowing down and enjoying the weather. Things changed late this afternoon. The only reason I noticed that things were awry, was that I saw the head of little Miss Trinity sticking out behind the barn when I drove up the lane. I just figured she squeezed out between the gate, and so I went over to straighten things out. I guess I must have left a gate unchained, because everyone was by the barn door, waiting. Everyone but Trinity. She was stuck between the barn and a gate post. I couldn't get her going forwards or backwards and the post wasn't going anywhere in the frozen ground. I ran back to the house and called a neighbor, and Dave, and got no answers. So I grabbed a camera and went back to the barn.

VIDEO OF TRINITY STUCK BY THE BARN

If I sound a little stressed, I was. What finally worked was moving the rock that she had her front feet on, which lowered her just a little, and then SLOWLY backing her up. Her brother helped by standing on my back. Mom stayed by her side.