Wingnut Farms' newest equine

On Sunday, July 20th, around 5:30am, this gorgeous little filly was born:

Rose and Metal's daughter, just born.

Her sire is our Arabian stallion, CF Precious Metal:

Our stallion Metal, with me aboard.

Her dam is our grade Belgian mare Rose:

Rose, a week before foaling.

Wingnut Farms Dairy Goat Herd will begin to use AI

If all goes as planned, this coming Saturday our dairy goat genetic pool will increase by 11 bucks. But not live bucks.  We are buying a frozen semen tank with 93 straws of semen and an AI kit. Just in time for the Fall 2014 breeding season, too. 

+*B Amberwood Jack Frost Northwind N0576493 2 straws
++*B Amberwood Jedi's Winter Frost (FS-91) N0784964 4 straws
++*B Cold Comfort Dutch N0393420 14 straws
SGCH ++*B Copper-Hill Alginons Breakaway (FS93) N0967801 2 straws
LeBasque Salene's S'prise N0784337 10 straws
CH Old*Glory Bolero's Ravel N1063736 5 straws
+*B Patch-Quilt-Farms Encino N0903075 5 straws
GCH ++*B Pine Land's Squanto (FS92) N0365659 7 straws
GCH +*B R&J Beau Jangles N0483803 6 straws
*B Walnut Fork Bonzai Spirit N0768263 8 straws

and 30 straws that were poorly collected, that the seller is giving away with the tank but asked that the buck not be revealed. But he's from a very good herd and I plan to use those to practice with at first. Won't hurt my feelings if all the attempts result in conceptions. 

Some very good old milking lines stored in that tank, looking forward to seeing what happens with our first foray into artificial insemination!

William catches his first fish

Thursday, July 3rd was an unseasonably cool, pleasant morning, so I decided it was the perfect chance to round up William and Daddy and our fishing tackle and head to our pond for some fishing.  Our neighbor had mowed a path from the gate to the pond for us, in exchange for permission to take his 2-yr-old son fishing in our pond sometimes.  This made it much nicer to hike to the pond from the driveway!  The fishing tackle hadn't been used for awhile so it took some repairing before we could actually fish.

William waits for Daddy to put a new hook on his fishing pole.

We had dug worms for bait earlier, so once the fishing poles were back in good order, it was time to try to catch some fish.  Our pond isn't very large, but it has bluegill and sunnies as well as a trio of huge carp and a few large mouth bass the above-mentioned neighbor released in it years ago.  

Our pond.

Before very long, I got a bite and pulled in a decent-sized sunny.  We weren't fishing for food but just for sport so back in the pond it went.  Before very much longer William got the hang of throwing the line in and almost immediately got a good bite on his worm.  With a bit of help from me, he pulled in a little bluegill!  He was so excited he almost dropped fishing pole, with fish still hooked into the pond.  

William caught his first fish!  It's a little bluegill.

That was the very first fish William had ever caught, so it went in a freezer bag and into the freezer instead of back in the pond.  He wanted to show it to Grandma and Grandpa the next time they come over.

And that is the story of William's first time ever catching a fish!