It's been a while since I've written about the farm and our goats. There are several reasons for this but I am hoping to write more often now.
The big news on the farm is that my son is now married and they are expecting a baby.
The other big news it that now there 95 goats.
"How could that be?" you ask, "There were only 30 a few months ago!"
We didn't have some miraculous high-speed multiple births all of a sudden. :)
There is a well-off man from Antalya who started a goat farm near ours as a kind of hobby, and after a while he found out that goat farms, just like all farms, require a good deal of attention. And he doesn't have anywhere to graze the goats.
He understood that he couldn't devote the time and energy needed for a lot of young goats so he asked us if we wanted them because he was planning to get a few cows - he thinks that taking care of them will be easier.
He's a nice man and likes the fact that my son is really devoted to farming and takes as good care of our goats as he can, so he sold 66 young Aleppo goats - from six to eight months old - to us for a very reasonable price.
The problem was that many of them were ill, some sort of lung infection. I think that this was caused by his having kept them in a closed stuffy barn.
We have spent quite a lot of time and effort getting them back to better health and lost only one. But four are still in the "intensive care" pen.
My son takes them out to graze a lot and they have begun to perk up and frolic around in the fields and behave like young goats.
And I've learned something new in the past month.
I always thought that young male goats liked to butt heads, but oddly enough it is our young female goats who do most, if not all, of the butting these days!
I hope to put up some pictures soon.
We've got lots more really, really long ears. :)