The farm is located on 6 acres, conveniently located not too far from our home. One side of the property is broken into nice big pens for the adoptable animals, and the other is a large pasture where the resident animals live.
We started out the orientation with a quick walk-through to give me the lay of the land, and then we got right down to business: manure management. (Holy moley, goats poop a lot!) Fortunately, it was relatively easy to clean, the way the pens are set up- there are stall mats down in the shelters where the animals congregate to eat and get out of the weather (and by default, where the manure piles up.) I think that wintertime clean up is going to be much more involved, when they're not out in the grassy areas as much. It's a good thing I'm starting this in the summer!
The sheep were a bit more skittish; not many of them were terribly interested in what I was doing there. The gal who was training me said that sheep tend to be like that, if they're not handled a lot when they're young. That makes sense to me, and besides, the goats definitely made up for that sheepy indifference with their smiles. From toothy grins to simple smirks, goats have some very expressive faces.
Sadly, there are a number of animals there at the farm who were badly mistreated by their previous owners. If there's one thing that I really don't understand, it's people who intentionally harm an animal that is dependent upon them. Neglect is bad enough- awful, really- but outright cruelty and abuse is something altogether different. That being said, however, I can't think of a better place for those animals to come to rehab, than New Moon Farm. Even the ones who had clearly been mistreated were friendly and wanted to interact with us.
Do you raise goats or sheep? What's the one piece of advice that you think someone new should know?
