We waited a few days until we had a nice sunshine and warmish day to give Dreamweaver his haircut. He really really needed it. Poor thing… he was bound up in dreadlocks all over, in fact it was making it hard for him to run around and jump. So Jessy and I went in the ram field paddock and caught him…. it wasn’t too hard, he was wary but we had cookies. In the end, cookies won.
He was really pretty docile about it all. Jessy did most of the holding and I did the cutting and trimming. We do have a nice cordless trimmer but it’s designed for horses and doesn’t do a great job on goats and sheep in full fleece. Nice wool shears are pretty expensive! At least $300 to $400 for anything decent. And you want decent shears or you will cut up and hurt your livestock.
But since we don’t have any and Dreamy really needed some barbering, we just got out our little haircutting sharp scissors and started at him. The goal was not a complete shear down, but more of a half haircut to just relieve him of the dread and nasty bits, get his coat open and keep him warm for the winter.
Another one of those dirty little farm jobs… angora and pygora goats, especially the boys, need to have fairly often clean ups under neath where they potty. When their fleece gets particularly long, the urine collects and soaks in making this hard nasty dreads that can give them painful rashes and just are fairly unpleasant. The girls squat to piddle in the back and will make their back area pretty much the same.. Thankfully, if you keep up on it, it doesn’t get as bad as this. And this was really really yucky.
We found a great use for the old recliner in the pasture! It was perfect hieght and comfy for our barbering victim… er…. client! Actually he was really comfy and calm about it all. We just talked nicely to him and Jessy pet and scratch the areas after I got done trimming and I believe he was just so relaxed and enjoying it all, he would have laid there all afternoon!
After us trimming and cutting and scratching and pulling, he was done in about oh an hour and a half or so. He looks soooo much better and so much more comfy. He had a bit of a rash in his nether regions but I think that will heal up now that it’s exposed to the air and can finally get dry. I checked him a few days later and it was much improved already. I think we left enough on him to keep him warm… it was pretty chilly one morning and he was sitting next to the hay rack waiting on breakfast like it was nothing.
What a handsome little fella underneath all that yucky fleece!
I wanted to try and save some of it, hoping it might be worthy, but to be honest, most of it was so nasty, it was just a lost cause. Too bad, because some of the nicer locks were over 8 inches long! And he is a type A fiber pygora… Type A is a long fiber, averaging 6+ inches in length. It drapes in long lustrous ringlets. It may be a single coat, but a silky guard hair is usually present. The fiber is very fine, mohair-like, usually less than 28 microns. The handle should be silky, smooth and cool to the touch.
Which is awesome because I love the Angoras with this fiber. He is like a mini-Angora! Perfect for all our plans! I can’t wait to see what his babies will look like from our milk does! Will be interesting for sure! Hopefully they will get some of the type A fiber too, perhaps soft little curly coats. That would be adorable, wouldn’t it?
I really expected him to get done and clear outta our presense. Most of the sheared animals would like nothing better than to run off and be done with the whole experience. But not Dreamy… he just stood there for a bit, shook himself with a HUGE big shimmy and then waited. He was waiting for his cookies. He was promised cookies. And after almost two hours, I think he earned them big time!
Look at all that fiber that came off him! My gosh… I don’t think he was every trimmed. Kind of makes sense I suppose, since he wasn’t really a fiber animal, but a roping trainer, they probably didn’t really think it was important. But it is, because too much fiber on these animals can get unhealthy for them. Pygoras and Angoras for the most part have been bred by man to increase their normal tendencies of fleece to over-grow their wool. In the wild, goats would also wear off their coats a bit on bushes, trees, etc., a lot more than domestic ones in a pasture do. And some fiber animals, like my Shetland sheep, will naturally shed some of their fleece if they are not sheared. But it’s still not the best thing to just let them go wild. This is not the wilds of the harsh Shetland Isles… it’s Ohio.
Otis and Travis finally came over to see what we were doing to Dreamy… they stayed pretty far away when we were doing the haircut. But now that cookies were involved??? Oh yeah, they were there. Our gang loves animal crackers for their treats. We don’t over do it, 20 animals share one bag a week. But everyone loves them! It’s fun to pass them out. As you can see, Angus and Fergus are waiting patiently on the other side of the fence. It’s a rare shot of nearly all my boys together!
Shadow is doing fantastically… he’s really become a sweetheart. More about him soon… he loves cookies, now, too! At first he was uninterested but Cody taught him that they were fantastic. Now he shares the same thought process as everyone else! Yum!
Look at flirty Miss Buttercup. She really likes Dreamy. She was nuzzling him and just pretty much sharing her innermost naughty thoughts with him. I’m not sure if he knows exactly what to do with that information as he seems a bit interested, but still a little shy. By her little smile, I’m pretty sure when all is said and done, he’ll get the hang of it all. Another week or so and we’ll let him loose in the middle flock to hopefully spread his genes about the place.
Rana thinks he’s pretty interesting as well, and hopefully, if there is a will, there will be a way for them to get together as well. We’ll just have to wait and see I suppose.
The next morning, as I was going off to the feed store, I saw the true joy in our labor. Dreamy and Travis were playing on the recliner. Jumping up and off the side, head butting each other as they played King of the Recliner. And at one point, they both ran off to the corner of the paddock in wild abandon! From the super goofy goaty behavior, I believe that Dreamweaver was really enjoying his new freedom from his binding coat! I called them over to the fence and he was the first one there! Just full of piss and vinegar, I think. Well, hopefully a lot less of the piss, part! (gg) I’m sure he’s much happier to not be peeing all over his nasty crusty dreads underneath there! Now he can concentrate on his peeing on his beard and all to impress the ladies of Windhaven.
To a goat doe, that is a pretty special thing! hahaha….
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