When you are the only short haired milk goat in a herd of long fibered fleece animals, you are the odd gal out.   Especially, when unseasonable COLD weather hits and you haven’t finished growing in your fuzzy winter coat!   When I milked Buttercup, my sweet little LaMancha milk goat, she stood there munching her feed and shivering so badly!   I knew she was cold.  She needed a little help from some old flannel sheets and a bit of sewing magic.

I measured her and got to designing.  I knew I wanted to make it like a horse sheet or blanket… simple, so she wouldn’t get tangled in it, and yet something that would help contain a bit of her body heat.  I was going back and forth with a few fittings and such and thought, the heck with this and just brought her in.   She’s very well behaved inside.  Heck, she lived inside as a baby for a week!

I love how she was watching me sew and watching the kitty as well.   She has a sort of love hate relationship with kitties.  Lilly had NO IDEA what the heck kind of dog that Miss Buttercup was!!!   It was pretty funny to watch.  

Well, in no time flat, I had a good fitting, nice warm flannel coat for my little diva.   And she loves it.  She walked around a bit and then was like, “Okay, lets go show off!”  and she headed for the back door.

I grabbed my camera from Jess and this funny little Santa Hat we found while organizing…   I wasn’t sure if Buttercup would mind it and to be honest, she didn’t at all!  In fact, she wore it far longer than anything else on the farm.

She wanted to stop and check out the milking stand, just to make sure she hadn’t left any goodies from the mid day milking.   Nope.  All clean.   Darn.

So then she hopped down and we started back to the barn.  She had to stop and nibble a few stray leaves, you know.   Leaves are yummy to a goat.   I guess she’s going to be joining the Scottish Blackwatch clan!  I believe that is their tartan!  I just thought it looked nice and warm from my fabric stash.  

Haha…  what a little photo ham.   She loves to pose for the camera.   Christmas card, anyone?

But pretty quick, the cold was getting colder and she wanted back in the lovely warm sheep barn with the hay!   Bonnie and Rafeka were standing in the paddock and the moment they saw her all dressed up and looking weird, they started to follow her, wondering just what the heck at happened to their Queen.

Once inside, all the ewes were curious and perhaps a bit jealous!   They crowded around to inspect and sniff.  Buttercup could care less, she was there for the hay and the warmth!  

She’s such a little fashion diva.  She can pull off any look with class and ease.  I love this picture of her surrounded with her chubby little fiber friends.   They are all at least 4 inches thick in fleece, or more!   Very warm down in near their skin!   Just poor Buttercup with her short little do!  

Rana shows how NOT to wear the Santa hat.  I tried it on several others and they were not impressed.  And needless to say, I did not get any more cute shots.  Until I tried my buddy Angus!

He didn’t mind at all, but he did mind posing.  He was busy eating hay and so I had to drag his face out of the manger for a quick photo!  Silly boy…

Well, I left the fleece group, content that Buttercup was doing fine in her new coat.  I purposely made the seam in the front of her coat, big and not locked in so if she were to get caught in anything, a bit of struggle would just rip open the coat.  It’s hard to explain, but if you look at the above pictures, you can see that the part under her chin, on her chest, is only about an inch or so of stitching to hold the two flaps together and it’s a real big long stitch, easy to rip in an emergency.   Whenever you coat an animal, or heck, put a collar on them, there is always a chance they will get hung up on something.   She is really good about it, has a collar on and such and never gets caught, but I sure don’t want to take a chance.

I really wanted to sneak up on Ebony and Cheyenne and catch them snuggled and snoring in their big hay nest.   Of course, they heard me coming and met me at the door, being all excited that maybe they were getting an afternoon, unscheduled snack!   Sorry, ladies.  Just me and my camera.

It was so nice and warm in there, no wonder they rarely leave!   Naps, food and rooster pets!

Copper has joined half sibling Raven  and has moved in with the hogs.   Pretty smart roosters if you ask me.  It’s very nice and the hogs are gentle and very sloppy.   You get two square meals a day, warmth, shelter and companionship!   Pretty crazy…

I was so surprised that with all my talking and walking around, that Shadow pony, Mrs. Nosey Bottom, hadn’t come out to the paddock to investigate.   He is ALWAYS on alert and curious to anything going on.   Cody?   Yeah, he’s not that concerned, if it’s cold and he had hay in the barn, he’s not going to come out.   But finally, Shadow could not stand it and poked his head out of the barn through the little slit opening.  He saw that I had nothing but my camera and snorted and turned back into the warmth.   It’s sure cold when even the ponies are not out!!!

I love that they finally learned to not worry about the plastic hanging over their little doorway.   The first day or two, they were a little leary of it…   approaching it slowly and then dashing through like it might eat them if they lingered too long.   Now?  They could care less.  It just sure does help to keep that barn a lot warmer with just a slit open instead of the whole space between the two doors.  I suppose we could shut them up at night and open it up again, but they really don’t like that.  We only shutter them up like that if a really bad ice storm or super duper cold spell is near.   That barn is EASILY 30 to 35 degrees almost all the time.  They are perfectly happy with being able to come and go.  Some day, we’d like to hang white insulating panels on the inside, to lighten the space and also to just really make it nice and snug!  Someday!

 

I love chicken feet in the snow.   They look like little dinosaur feet.  Like raptors all over the yard.   Most of our chickens are locked up, nearly all the hens and roosters.  But we have four roosters and one hen, our Ninja girl…  they refuse to be locked up.   Raven and Copper live with the hogs and Dammartin and Bucka Too live with the sheep.  Ninja usually stays with the boys in the sheep barn. They get feed from their hosts and Maggie brings them a little chicken feed in the morning just to make sure they keep their body weight up and stay warm.  Seems to work fine, they are pretty smart at staying alive.  The chickens in the coop like to come and go outside as well.   I think as long as they have a warm space to sleep at night and somewhere to get out of the wind and snow, chickens are really pretty well adapted to cold weather.  Especially a lot of the heritage breeds.  We rarely loose birds in the winter.  Even last winter with it’s extreme, record setting harshness, we only lost three birds.   And they were all elderly, our very first birds.

That’s all the news that is fit to print from around our little homestead in the winter!  Hope you all are staying warm!!!  We are sure trying!

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