Tuesday 21 February 2012

The Billy Goats Gruff

No, despite the title, this post is not the long promised Fairy Tale Friday story (sorry, sorry, sorry for the ongoing delay. It goes without saying that I am aiming for this Friday, but then again I am always aiming for 'this Friday'...)

Anyway...

This is a post about goats. Not the three billy goats gruff but two real-life lovely (non-gruff) goats. Goats that are coming to live with me in six weeks time. Huge excitement!


Gluckskafer wooden barn with Ostheimer goats (and some of Humphrey's hay!)


Obviously they will be joining the crack team that is the Cottontails workforce, along with Humphrey and the runner ducks. I'm not quite sure what their roles will be yet. But if it's based on their skill set it's going to have to involve a lot of leaping, bleating and nibbling. All valuable skills in the online retail sector.

A bit of background... I have always loved goats (not as much as rabbits obviously, such a thing would not be possible) and when my other half was trying to persuade to move to a small holding last year, goats were mentioned.

So I joined the Hereforshire Goat Club last summer to start finding out more about them, and in the autumn agreed to take two kids from a nearby farm community, Canon Frome Court. They kindly offered to keep the kids for us until this spring, by which time we hoped to be moved into our small holding.

In fact, we won't be moving into the small holding ourselves in until the summer now, but the kids will be moving in ahead of us - Easter weekend to be exact.

For months I have been spending Tuesdays at Canon Frome Court, helping with their small herd of goats and bonding with the kids. It's been an incredible learning experience and will hopefully make things a bit less daunting come Easter weekend.

The kids, now nine months old, are a lovely nanny goat called Martha, and her neutered brother Rufus. They are already alarmingly huge... This morning I took Martha for a walk - about 50 yards. It took half an hour and was a truly exhausting experience. And then Rufus ate the buckle off my left wellington boot.

Anyway, I will be uploading photos and telling you all about them in the months ahead, and hopefully sharing lots of goat antics (of which there are sure to be many).

But in the meantime, I haven't been able to resist stocking a few goats at Cottontails....


Ostheimer wooden goat - looks a lot like Rufus!




Ostheimer wooden goat - yes, this is a typical stance



Gluckskafer felted wool goat

They are all available on the Cottontails website, just look in the Tiny Animals - Felt and Wood department.

4 comments:

Crafty Green Poet said...

how exciting, goats have such character!

Charlotte said...

Oh yes, they have LOTS of character!!

Leaff Design said...

Woo! Charlotte! How exciting! I can't wait to see pics and possibly meet them!

Sarah said...

Oh my goodness, I'm excited too and they aren't mine!

Someone I work with has a goat and he has bags of character too.

You must be counting off the days!

Hugs, Sarah x