K Is For...

Kids...the four-legged variety.  Twenty-Two is just over a month old now and quite full of himself.  He is a stocky little guy and is beginning to give me attitude.  He has the run of the barn during the day, racing in the hallway and doing bank shots off the walls in the play yard.  Difficult to describe, almost from birth there are facial gender specifics in goats...even baby boys look masculine and females appear, well, girlie.  Twenty-Two is all boy.  There is an ingrained trait that goats have that drives me nuts; they insist on going ahead of me and then stopping.  When I'm in the pen, we all go as a herd, and as I'm hauling heavy milk buckets back up the hill this constant stop and start gets a bit irritating.  Twenty-Two does the very same thing; one, it delays the work, and two, I'm in danger of tripping over him and mashing him flat.  Like all little boys, he is reluctant to go to bed, until he remembers that's where he gets his bottles and then he can't get into his stall fast enough.  In the Alpine breed, both sexes have horns and beards.  Scurs notwithstanding, Twenty-Two is the first kid I've allowed to grow horns naturally and I'm surprised at how fast they're growing.  Rambunctious in his eagerness to get to the milk, I have to watch I don't get hooked under the arm or chin as I sit on my bucket seat.  Bottles empty and tummy full, he rests his head against my leg in the evening for a few minutes of stroking and sweet talk until his eyelids begin to droop.  His curly baby hair is still so soft.  It's not a bad way to end the day.