Pay attention to Your Herds

Know well the condition of your flocks,

And pay attention to your herds;

For riches are not forever,

Nor does a crown endure to all generations.

When the grass disappears, the new growth is seen,

And the herbs of the mountains are gathered in,

The lambs will be for your clothing,

And the goats will bring the price of a field,

And there will be goats’ milk enough for your food,

For the food of your household,

And sustenance for your maidens. -Proverbs 27:23-27

That's some sound advice from the book of Proverbs.  I'm telling you, you can spend as much time as you want in Barnes & Noble, but the best self-help book of all time is - The Bible.  We have been reading Proverbs over and over.  We have to read it real slow because there is just so much there to be gleaned.

We pray every morning that God would enable us to be good stewards of the animals and the land that He's entrusted us with.  We try to do as verse 23 above states and know the condition of our flocks.  We pay attention to our herds.  In fact just yesterday I was in the pasture and was checking up on Annie, our Nubian momma goat.

To be quite honest, I think having triplets is a little more than ol Annie bargained for.  I noticed that she left her kids out in the pasture and she 'high-tailed it' away from them the first chance she got.  She was enjoying eating hay around the round bales for 30 minutes of peace without the kids.  All of a sudden, it was if she remembered, "Where's my babies?"  She began 'baa-baa-baaing' and soon I saw three little heads pop up out of the grass way out in the pasture where they had been napping.  Then in their best imitation of Secretariat, ran full-throttle to momma!

Photo finish?

Happy to be next to their mother, they swarmed her, getting all tangled up in her legs.

Happy Kids

With the reunion and greeting out of the way, the three found what they were looking for - a late afternoon snack!

Goat milk - it does a body good

The only problem, as we discussed before, is that the math doesn't work out.  With 3 kids and a goat only having 2 teats, there's always someone left out.  I guess I should tell you that we finally named the three kids.  We have one buckling and two doelings, so it seemed appropriate to name the little boy, "Buckwheat."  Staying with the Little Rascals theme - and they are little rascals, we named one of the little girls, "Darla" and the other "Jane".

Buckwheat, Darla, and Jane trying to not be the 'odd man out'

Somehow, they are all thriving.  When we put them in the barn at night, we pick them up and they all have fat little bellies, so we know they are getting plenty of milk.

Learning to Share

There's only one problem - for us, that is.  Back to verse 27 from Proverbs above, it states that, 

"And there will be goats’ milk enough for your food,

For the food of your household,

And sustenance for your maidens."

Until we wean the kids, there won't be enough goats' milk for our food, the food of our household, and sustenance for our maidens.  Fortunately we have plenty of cows' milk to satisfy that need.  Until we wean the three hungry little kids, we'll just have to be patient for the goat milk!