Saturday 14 May 2011

Goat curry recipes, Star Wars, improbability and fresh air










When I blogged a lot I noticed that if you put 'recipe' in the title of a post you got a lot more hits. So just to save the fury of recipe hunters I should admit now that there are no recipes in this post - but there is important news about a key ingredient.

Kidding has started. Rather late but it has begun. And we've had our first kids born in a field - which is slightly exciting. Although it was a funny sight to see twenty goats surrounding something in the grass - peering quizzically.
Goats give birth to slightly more females than males, unlike humans who give birth to slightly more males than females (because boys are weaker and less obstinate). We've had seven kids so far - and 7 males. Apart from being a lot of curry the chances of this are less than 0.78 % or 1 in 128. Who wants to bet on the sex of the next kid?

This years letter is T. You'll remember that we name goats according to their parentage (Anglo-Nubian have names related to Africa, British Alpine to myths and legends, and British Saanen to flora). The names aren't settled yet but the front runners thus far are: Taureg, Turtur, Tariq, Tablet, Troy, Titan, Triton, Thor, Tintin and Troll. Personally I can see a Star Wars character but that would be the wrong letter.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So when you said there were recipes, you were just kidding?

I'll get me coat...

The Speaking Goat said...

Erm, yep. I think you'd better....

Poppy @ A Life Less Simple said...

Gosh, it has been a long time since I dropped by...

I never knew that about the % of female to male kids. I *think* I have found that goats put to the male after the first day of their season are more likely to have boys