So incase your not aware, FL is getting a little rain...and I think it is not just the humans that have cabin fever....I just came home from running errands in town and my wether Boots is standing out in the pouring rain happily grazing away....I checked and sure enough they had eaten 95% of the hay I gave them, but REALLY BOOTS? you are not that starved you need to be out in the rain when you have access to a perfectly good shelter...Seems Deenie agrees with me because she was standing inside the pen watching him like he was nuts.
Soooooooo I know wet goats are not a good thing...should I panic about this soaked to the skin goat and what can I do to prevent him getting sick?
He is back in the shelter now with 2 leafs of hay, which one would hope would be plenty to keep 2 little goats from starving to death.
Blessings Kelsie
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I don't need to watch swamp people lol. I just need to walk out or look out my front gate and there they are lol. Literally. Let me tell you some stories about the folks on my street sometime, WE should have our own reality show.
I have the Premier poultry net electric fence and the 280 solar charger. I have been shocked by it under normal circumstances and it doesn't have much bite. When my dogs tried it out they didn't even yelp or jump, they just kinda pulled back and looked at it like "huh". I don't think the net itself would do you any harm.
Now my real hotwire on the other hand, has knocked me literally senseless. I sat in the mud for 5 minutes incoherant, able to hear my husband talking to me as if through a long tunnel and unable to speak. That was when I bumped the wire with my sweaty forhead. That's off a Zareba 10 mile charger. My animals sure do steer clear of this. Knock on wood no predator losses either, despite that we live in Jurrasic Park down here. Have lost chickens to hawks, but anything that comes sniffing or climbing has never made a kill. The stalls where the goats go at night are reinforced with field wire & barbed wire up to about 6' to discourage jumping (open air barn) and then a strand of the crazy hotwire at top and bottom to keep climbers and diggers away.
I will try to get a shot of Miyagi slopping around in the swamp with the horses. He's a funny boy.
I would love to see Miyagi wading too! That has to be so cute!
I am curious, about the electric pen being shuffled around. Are those things dangerous when it rains?
Will they electrocute you?
Do you watch Swamp People on T.V.?
I am grateful to just have SOME high ground...there is just enough for everybody to be able to stretch their legs without getting their feet wet- and I have a moveable electric pen that I shuffle around to any dry areas for the girls to graze.
We are so lucky to live on high ground, we did not even have standing water while it was raining aside from a few small puddles much to the disappointment of the ducks.
You should get some photos of your wading buck...how funny
I wanted to chime in another Florida & water story: My bucks are out on five acres with a trap door to run into a horse stall when they please. Like many Florida pastures, their 5 acres is probably 50% underwater after Debbie and the thunderstorms since. Six inches in places. Now, my goats NEVER stand out in the rain if they have a choice, but my buck Miyagi did learn to wade in it it to go get his greens while the sun is out. I saw him slopping around out there up to his knees a few times happily munching his fresh salad from the tall plants that are still above water. Try getting my spoiled does to do such a thing! But Miyagi is pals with the horses and probably learned it from them. They even have a special way of "snorkel grazing" where they will stick their noses underwater to rip up grass to eat.
Ah, LOVE living in the swamp!
as as side note, Penny's babies last year got caught out in a rain storm and I saw them trembling so I did towel them good and feed them some hay (hay warms horses up, don't know about goats) and they were fine.
Mine would usually head for shelter at first rain drop, but cabin fever certainly did take it's tole on all of us during the TC.
The other thing that sends them back to their pen is every afternoon just after lunch time they head in and take a mid day nap...Can't blame them with the heat in FL during the summer, but since I can see into their pen from my kitchen and dinning room windows it always gives me a chuckle to see them snoozing in their beds at midday....wish my 4yr old would do the same thing hehe
I think part of it is that the two older ones were so babied at their former home and had a lot of indoor space and hung out there a lot. Sometimes they have headed inside when there was not even a drop of rain on the walkway (ballast stone so rain shows up immediately), then sure enough there would be a few drops appear two or three minutes later. Hadn't thought about what great shape they would be in from heading for shelter at every raindrop here in southwest Washington. <g>
Wow! Really? They must be in great shape in the winter and spring months running in and out of their shelter:)
Glenna Rose said:
That's funny , Suzanne. And mine run for shelter even before I have felt the rain droplets. They are such characters, these little goats.
I'm from Oregon and if my goats didn't put up with the rain, they would be in their shelter about 60% of the year! I always laugh when I see them grazing in the rain, I think to myself, "goats in the NW seem to go against the goat rule of not liking the rain". I guess they have to! I haven't had them get a cold or respritory infection in the two years that I have had them either. I wouldn't worry, I'm sure they are just getting cabin fever like you said.
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