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This spring, the Ranch became a nursery for a new group of baby animals! Four goats and a surprise filly were born here over the past month, and they’re adding a lot of joy and some tasty milk to daily life here in the mountains.
Visit the Baby Animal Nursery
As you may know, we made the difficult decision to cancel camp this year to keep our kids, staff and families safe during the pandemic. This has been tough, but the fact that we’ll get to see many of you for Summer Family Fun sessions is making it easier for us to cope.
The presence and antics of our new baby animals has also lifted our spirits quite a bit. You can’t help but be delighted while watching the antics of little May, the little red dun filly born to Flame on May 2nd.
In the pens across from May and her mom, you’ll see two sets of frolicking twin kid goats. That’s right: FOUR baby goats in total! These babies were born to our 4-year-old Nubian milk goat sisters, Toats and Star. The Ranch has turned into a baby animal nursery full of feisty little ones. All five spending their days hopping and jumping, nursing, sleeping, and playing again!
When you come to the Ranch for Summer Family Fun activities, you can also say hi to our resident animals, including the babies! Just ask about them upon arrival and we’ll be happy to introduce you and your family.
Name a Baby Goat!
Only three out of four baby goats have names! Toats’ twins, pictured here, are named Maybe (aka Be) and Tuesday, while only one of Star’s twin kids, Inky, has a name. The fourth, as-yet-unnamed kid (pictured here) is brown with a white face and a darker dorsal stripe down his back, and he is very cute. Send us your suggestions for a name so we won’t keep calling him “the little brown one!” Email your submissions to jojo@coloradomountainranch.com. We’ll pick our favorite and tell you who won.
Plenty of Milk to Go Around
One of Jojo’s many talents is tending to baby animals, helping the newborns get their first milk from their mama until they learn to nurse on their own. She’s also milking the mama goats a little so they can stay comfortable while the kids are still young and have tiny tummies.
When the kids get bigger, they’ll be able to drink all the milk the nannies produce! For now, we’re finding other uses for the goat’s milk. Luckily, Jojo can make tasty homemade chevre cheese for all of us to enjoy, and our dogs, Reina and Ani, have developed a taste for goat’s milk, too! Here are returning staff members Ray and Miranda feeding these pampered pooches some goat milk from a baby bottle!
Doing More With Less
Like many of our friends and neighbors, the Ranch family is currently figuring out how to do more with less. How do we use what we already have to make something new? For us, that’s meant finding ways to turn a problem into a solution. When Josie and Jojo planted the Ranch summer garden last week, they added a new fertilizer into their compost mix: moose droppings gathered from around the Ranch! That’s exactly the kind of problem-solving we need at a time like this. Have you discovered any unexpected ways to do more with less? Let us know!
CMR on the News!
Finally, we leave you with something fun: the Ranch and our Summer Family Fun programs were featured on the local news! Watch the story here.