The Big Boys

Forgive my absence the past few days, but things are just settling down around here. Although my first night with the bottle babies went well, Thursday and Friday were ca-ray-zy. Remember my sweet, timid little baby goats Oscar and Elmo? They turned into Big Boys overnight. Suddenly they look huge--partly because they really are growing, and partly because they weigh three times as much as the bottle babies. Heavyweight Oscar tips the scales at 17.4 pounds and lumbers over my five pound baby girl Neko. Shy Oscar is not shy at all anymore. I guess the introduction of two new goats to the herd gave him some confidence. He's large and in charge. For two days he tried to head-butt those poor babies to the moon. A baby couldn't walk by without getting checked, hockey-style, into the fence, wall, or water bucket. Poor Grover ran into his doghouse for protection, but Oscar dove in right after him.

Elmo mostly refrained from beating up on the bottle babies, but he'd get in a head-butt once in a while. The goat girl told us that the four kids would work it out and settle down in a few days, so I let them do their thing for the most part. But this required keeping a close and constant eye on the babies and the Big Boys. I did intervene a few times when it looked like a baby was scared. Neko, who is light as a feather and looks like a fur ball, didn't get picked on as much as Grover. She climbed into the hay manger and ignored the scuffles. Today Grover decided he'd had enough. He jumped up on the barrel, stood on his hind legs, did a huge leap with an amazing twist, and went head to head with giant Oscar. By this evening there still were two distinct cliques, but at least the babies were more or less holding their own.