Month: December 2014

A while back I wrote that free cats were hard to keep.  That hasn’t changed.  Since that post, we’ve had another three to four cats go AWOL.  All of them quite friendly, dedicated, and effective at keeping the mice under control.

Our most recent mouser (Cocoa’s friend seen above) lasted only a few weeks.  At this point, I can’t even remember it’s name because we’ve been through so many.  Needless to say, it was named for some Shakespearian character (Guildenstern maybe).

The unfortunate thing about cats around here is that they are just about meal-sized for coyotes, and they don’t respect fence-lines. While the goats and chickens stay inside the fence for the most part, the cats like to hunt off-reservation.  The unlucky part for the cats is that so do the coyotes.  I recently read an article claiming that most of their diet was made up of cats.  That article was focused on urban coyotes, but it seems the same problem exists here.  We’ve been through nine cats since we brought the first one home and are now totally cat-free.  I never thought that kind of statement would bother me, but I don’t relish a repeat of the snake in the garage incident.

We do still have some form of semi-effective pest control though…  When we first moved in, I was killing a handful of scorpions every night.  As soon as the chickens started wandering the yard, that stopped.  I haven’t seen a single scorpion outside in months.  However, it appears at least one of them got smart and decided to hide-out in a laundry pile Sydney had left in the bathroom.   No chickens in there.  Welcome to Texas!

The coyotes seem to have given us a break recently.  Between permanently moving Thornton outside and doing a better job making sure the electric fence isn’t shorted out, we haven’t lost any animals to predators in a few months.  So what do we do to celebrate…  get more animals I guess.

Nippa the milk machine had a pair of very nice kids last March.  Rex, the boy, has found a home with Linda’s (the lady we got Nippa from) neighbour,  but Linda figured Nippa could use some company and sent Cocoa our way rather than continue to spend money to feed her.  Meet Cocoa.

So, how does Nippa feel about having her daughter around to keep her company?  Let’s ask…  Are you happy Nippa?

That’s a resounding YES!

Both Nippa and Cocoa have been bred and will be kidding sometime around the first week in March.  Nippa has a track record of throwing two kids each year, so if Cocoa has two we could have up to six goats within a few months.  Not quite like rabbits, but still pretty awesome.  More milk and some cabrito assuming we end up with a male or two.

On the flip-side, since Thornton has been banished outside to discourage coyotes and for tracking in unacceptable levels of mud and other dirt, he has become very lonely and somewhat depressed.  I think we’ll get him a friend next.  It’s almost disturbing how quickly animals multiply here (unless it’s a cat).