Oh Henry!

Henry.  When you think of this name, you might think of a candy bar that doesn't especially popular. 

Or you might think of the spoiled prince off of Ever After.  "Henry." "Do not address me so informally, madam." 

But when I think of Henry I think of a goat.  Yes, a goat.  You see the children (you can't call your little ones kids anymore now that we're talking about baby goats) named our newest kid, Henry.  Henry is a lovable baby who will let you pet him and hold him.  That's because of his mom.  We called her Gentle.  Gen for short.  She has a sweet temperament and would always let you pet her.  But her milk bag was swollen on one side.  So her kids (Henry and another baby girl) would only drink on one side.  So one teat (its an animal discussion) got really swollen.  It actually got a tear in it probably from all the pressure.  So seeing this to be a potential future problem, we decided to sell her. And only one of her babies.  

And that is when Henry became an orphan. Poor guy.  Only two weeks old and already an orphan.  But we weren't to worried.  We have another mama goat and she can take him on!  Brilliant idea is you could convince a mama goat.  The other mama, her name is Skid.  Her original name was Skittish because she is so afraid of you and will never let you come close or touch her.  (We're pretty original with names, I know) But then we changed it to Skittles.  Either way, we still call her Skid, for short.  

So we penned up Skid and Henry and her other baby (Charcoal) and hoped that she would eventually take to them.  But that is not currently the case.  So now Henry is going hungry.  Well, we can't have that.  So we thought we could take a bottle.  No luck.  Maybe if he was hungry enough.  But in the meantime, we could hold Skid so he could eat.  Not as easy as it sounds.  She won't let you catch her.  And then when you do, she fights and she kicks and then kicks Henry while he's trying to nurse.  

So we built this...

A Milking Stand! It actually wasn't too difficult to build but we realized after we built it that it's a bit short in length for our goats.  We will have to add an extension.
Now every day, I have a new chore.  Three times a day.  I get to go out, catch Skid, wrestle her by the horns till I get her head trapped in this contraption.  And then I hold her back leg as she tries to mercilessly kick Henry.  Henry doesn't even need us to put him up there any more.  No sooner is Skid up there when Henry is jumping on ready for his meal.  Henry, he cracks me up.  He's like the little ugly duckling that keeps trying to come up to the mama with his happy smiling face, not realizing that she doesn't like him.  She butts him away and he come right back with the attitude, "Awe, you didn't mean that.  Let's try again."  He is perfectly fine with the idea of Skid being his new mom and Charcoal being his sister.

 Henry and Charcoal.  (Char for short)

The Children with Char when she was first born.