Hooves and Stalls and Walls, Oh My!

Gabriella helps with stall cleanup.

We had a busy day today.  Mom was home, so she and I were able to work on trimming the goats' hoofs.  With all of the moving in the past couple of months, they had unfortunately been neglected and were in bad shape.  I did the holding while Christy did the trimming.  We managed to get all sixteen goat feet trimmed back to where they should be.  We'll now be able to get them back onto a routine care schedule.

Another task accomplished today was cleaning out the goats' stall.  The goats are fairly tidy, but changing out the shavings and straw in their stall every so often helps to keep down odors and pests.  While I raked out the stall and made a discard pile outside of the barn, Gabriella filled buckets so that we could move the pile outside of the fence.  Once everything was cleared out, we all helped put down some lime and new shavings.  The goats, who were outside of the pen eating down the brush around the barn, were very happy to come home to a clean stall.

The exterior of the barn also received some love.  My father-in-law had been working on putting up barn board along the exposed wall.  Later in the night while he was away, I was able to add some more.  The animals should have a nice warm barn before winter hits!

Base boards in place.

Outer boards in place.