Goat feet.

There will not be any pictures of this as I don't have 20 hands that can hold a goat and take a picture at the same time.

Every morning when I go feed the goats they hang their little goat hooves over the pen. I could see that they needed to be trimmed up. Today was the day I did it. All on my own. Yes, I was a little worried. I have never done it myself, only seen it done once.

The first step was to move the goat stand so that I would have better light. Where its normally at is in the corner. Well, that was a wrong move. Who knew that goats are so set in their ways? ( Not me!) I put the feed in Maggie's dish and opened the pen. She went to the dark corner and cried maa, maa as her stand and food had disappeared! I grabbed her collar and took her to the stand and showed her the grain and she went right back to the corner looking for it! ( Maybe she is really dumb?) I again took her by the collar and led her to the stand and hoisted/pushed/dragged her onto the stand. Ahh, her grain, life is good for Maggie again.

I put my hand on her back leg, moved it down to her hoof and picked it up, she went "weak" in her other leg and sat on my arm! I elbowed her in the butt and she stood back up. I was still hanging onto the hoof. I scraped all the poop out and started to trim the hoof. The nail was kind of rolled under so I got the trimmer under the nail and cut, cut, cut, off came the nail. Goat nails are kind of bendy and seem to be chewy ( Not that I chewed! ) so it was kind of a sawing/cutting thing. I know the blade on my hoof trimmer is very sharp. I think that it's the nature of the hoof.

I was working fast as I wanted to be done before she was done with the grain. Got all 4 done and she was not half way done so I went back and trimmed some more. Also I was calmer this time. Each time I picked up a hoof she would lean her body wight onto me so I would have to elbow her to get the weight off me. Very hard to bend, hold and cut with a goat on you. When I was all done her feet looked nice and neat, very dainty looking. I think a subtle pink polish would look very smart on them. Nothing garish! Something understated.

I put her back into the pen and got JuJu out. Same scenario! Went to corner, had to drag to the stand,spilled grain, had to push/hoist/drag onto stand. ( JuJu is a big boned goat ) Once on the stand JuJu became a grain whore (sorry mom but she is! ) I think that I could have put a saddle on her and she would have just kept on eating. Being that I just did Maggie, this trimming went smoother. She did try and pull her hoof away one time but I just said NO! and held on firm and she stopped. I think that she would look nice with a bright red on her hooves. Something that would really "pop" and say "look at me"

Now that I have done this I wont let such much time go by. I'm sure it's better for them if I did it more often.

One other thing. It's hard on the lower back to be hunched over. I wonder if I hoisted them up and had their little hooves hanging out? I will make my millions with a new goat hoof trimming apparatus. Off to the design room.