The Osboers

I had someone ask me about my Osboer goats, and it made me realize that I haven’t talked about last names in a long time.  My first buck was a three-quarters Boer goat who came with the name Ozzy.  He was named after Ozzy Osbourne, and I changed that to reflect his breed.  He became Ozzy Osboer.

Ozzy Osboer

All of his kids had that last name, and after I sold him, I kept one of his kids, Goliath.

Goliath Osboer

I still have one of Goliath’s kids–Flower.

Flower Osboer

I still have tons of Osboer goats though because I will always have a buck.  After Goliath was Marley.

Marley

The only kid of his left on the farm is Myson.

Myson Osboer

Marley’s boy, Fionn, has given me more kids than any other buck.  Before I lost him, he gave me 229 kids.

Fionn Osboer

In the last few years, I kept some of his girls.  There are quite a few of his descendants on the farm, including a couple of oopsie grandbabies.

Bubbles Osboer

I also have two of his bucks.  The first is Xerxes.

Xerxes Osboer

I’ve already kept a few of Xerxes kids too.

The acrobatic Purl Osboer (Myson looking on)

The second is Fionn’s last buck, Freddie.

Freddie Osboer

I’ll keep Freddie for another year, but his little buck, Frodo, will be used to make my perfect kid.  My hope is that this perfect kid will be a buck.  It will be my 7th generation of Osboer bucks.

Frodo Osboer

In addition to my Osboer bucks, I’ve had several other lines.  I’ll share those tomorrow.

Unbearable

It’s the time of year that the goats start thinking about starting a family.  The girls begin to come into heat and the guys are becoming obsessed with the girls.

Marley and Cutie

It’s also the time of year that earns them their reputations for being stinky.  It’s because when the guys come into rut they really do have an unbearable stench.  They can’t help it; they’re wired that way.  It’s what causes their life expectancy to be significantly lower than the girls.  It’s very stressful for them to be in rut.  It’s also a good reason not to keep a buck unless you have a fair number of girls for them to breed.

Marley

We’re starting to see some obvious signs of coming into rut from Marley.  Take a closer look at that face.  His cheek and beard are wet.

He has a very strong urine that he likes to get all over his beard, face and even the back of his front legs.

Another characteristic of the buck coming into rut is his tail.  He has it plastered against his back.  I mean all the time.  I don’t know how his muscles can do that.  That’s part of what makes being in rut so stressful.

Marley’s just getting a good start at coming into rut.  These behaviors will continue all fall and winter.  I must say, his dad, Goliath, was really unbearable when he was in rut.  He would normally look nice and clean (except for the slight permanent stain in his beard).

Goliath

Come October, he was well into rut.  That means, along with the liberal application of his “cologne,” he would have other behaviors like stomping his foot at the girls, talking, nibbling on their ears, and curling his lip when he gets a good whiff of those ladies.  It’s the time of year I hope I have six inch staples holding the panels in place and super strong gates.

At times like this, I really wish the boys lived a bit farther away from my house. As long as I’m confessing things, I’ll admit that when my son was younger (like 16 – 17), I did once make the comparison between him and the billy goat.

Hey!  If the tongue hanging out fits…

Be sure to visit Jenny Matlock for more U posts for Alphabe-Thursday.

Bottling Wine

Last weekend, my mother made homemade chicken and noodles.  That’s a sure way to get family to show up!   Since my nephew Brandon went to Greece, it’s not as easy to get help with the wine. We had my sister and her boyfriend, my and his girlfriend, my son, my mom and me for dinner, so we dragged out the bottles and corks and autosiphon and started bottling!

Since Brandon wasn’t here, we gave his job to Jackie!  She handled the autosiphon like a pro.   I’m not sure what Ron finds so amusing, but we do have a lot of fun.

My sister took pictures so I could prove that I really do things on the other side of the lens occasionally.  I had my usual job of running the bottom half of the autosiphon.  This is a very difficult task.

I have to be able to keep an eye on how full the bottle is and squeeze my little shut off valve, so the wine does not overflow.  To help out, my mom kept switching out my full bottles with another empty one.  The bowl is for the rare occasion I might allow a  half a bottle single drop to spill.

I ran out of fancy glass carboys, so we had to use the old standby for some of the wine.  This is the dry apple wine we named Goliath.

While Jackie and I filled the bottles, we had Jeremy and Caleb corking.  Here it takes both of them to get the cork in the corker.

They are doing the pumpkin wine first.  I love how clear it looks!

It really is a two-man job.  I think someday I need to find a better corker (machine, not help) that gives more consistent results.

By this time, we were starting to bottle our third wine of the night.  It’s a good thing we didn’t have a bigger carboy, or we’d have had to find taller help.

This is the sweet cherry apple wine, Chapel.  This is one of my personal favorites.  Of course, Jeremy tells me that people who don’t drink wine like the sweet wines, while real wine drinkers prefer the drier wines.

All together we had twenty-six bottles.  After sitting two days, they get placed on the rack until they are ready to drink.

Personally, I think we do a pretty good job with our wines.  They are nice and clear.

Goliath, Chapel, Madalyn's Delight

Now, I think it’s time to sit back and relax with a nice glass of my sweet wine.

This is linked to Farm Friendzy Friday, the joint blog hop of  Farm Friend Friday and Farmgirl Friday.