AMOS - PART 5

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMOS!!!

Amos made it to the day he was supposed to be born!  We weighed him, and he weighed 70 lbs!  What a huge difference from the day he was born, when he weighed under 20 lbs! I honestly never thought we'd make it this far!  He has gained a lot of weight, and has thickened up a great deal, but he isn't getting much taller.  When I compare him to our other calves, his front legs are very short, especially from his knee to his ankle.  Those joints are exceptionally large, too.  He is still giving us a hard time about eating his feed.  He doesn't like to drink water either.  He only likes his milk.  Period.  

We did get him a new pen that we'll use in the garage this winter.  It's just a really big dog pen. In the winter, when it gets cold, we're going to mount heat lamps on a board and hang it over a corner of the pen so it stays warm for him.  Thanks to my friend Terry Taylor for that idea! The weather wasn't too bad this past week (before and after Hurricane Sandy, that is!) so we put it up outside so Amos can get used to it.  He really likes it outside, and now he can eat the grass and not get sick, so that's progress!  He also really loves to play with Buckwheat!

He likes to play with Ed too!  

We had to take down Amos' pen in the breezeway.  He's just too strong.  He either pushes it across the room, or knocks it over completely.  Our cat Whisper was neutered this week, so he's been staying in the breezeway with Amos.  Whisper likes to go outside, but I kept him in for a few days so he didn't get an infection.  He and Amos got to know each other pretty well.  He's not afraid of Amos at all!  Amos was leery of Whisper in the beginning, but now, they are good friends!

We kept the sheets on the straw for awhile, but Amos kept kicking them off and rooting through the straw, so we did away with them.  We had to take just about anything that wasn't nailed down out of the room, and Amos checks out everything!  I can tell when he's hungry, because he stands by the kitchen door and looks in the window!

If I don't get to the door right away, he stand there and moos at me! I do take Amos for walks with his goat halter, but he's growing so much that I'm going to actually have to switch to a small calf halter!  Last time we tried one of those, it went right over his whole head!  Amos loves to go for walks through the fields behind our house.  Next time, I'll show you how he runs in circles on the lead!