Ditto Honeymoons at TUH and Duck Update

For years we have needed a way to transport goats.  Kennel cabs are great for toting kids, but if you have to move a 200+ pound buck, you ain't gonna shove him into a Kennel cab...no matter how big it is.  It's just not a goat's instinct to hunker down in a cave!  Now when CB hauled Pete up north, he just rode in the back of the van.  The van was a Kennel Cab on wheels...yes, Pete IS that big.  LOL

This year we had planned the big buck bonanza.  No, not the big buck show that they hold in Central Texas each spring......we were doing a buck swap.  Eventually all the boys will live here, so that CB can focus her efforts making her marvelous cheeses and not deal with stinky bucks.  But not yet.  First the does all have to be bred, and this year the buck for the job is Ditto.  This means Moon had to be transported here, and Ditto had to head north.

So we needed a truck bed cage.  Oh you can buy one, they run anywhere from $200-400, are welded, and have no floor.  But not only do we not have a few spare hundred dollars laying around, I really wanted a floor in the cage....and I wanted it collapsable.  So Bob and I set out to design something that would work for us.

Have I mentioned how wonderful my husband is?  Thursday morning he left for work at 4am.  Thursday afternoon he met me after work at 4:30 pm....at the farm store to buy, measure, cut, and transport the livestock pannels to build the cage.  We finished the cage just after 8pm.  He had an idea for connecting the whole thing together.  Not only do we not have a welder, but I wanted the corners to move so that the cage could be folded for storing.  This is what he came up with...

It's hard to see in the pictures....and I'll do a separate post to really explain it....but we took the end pieces of the wire and twisted them to make a "hinged" connection.  More on that later.

Once the cage was finished, we got it into the truck, and I put down some shock absorbing pads on the floor, and then covered it with hay.  I went into the house a few minutes later and came out to find this....

Aegis was convinced that he'd be going along for the ride.  NOT.  He changed his mind about the time that Ditto did a few of the things that bucks are known to do....and decided to let him ride solo.  The cage was a great fit for the bucks...

Once we got moving, Ditto nestled down in the hay and rode like a champ.  I was really concerned about transporting him since he's never been moved from the property since he was 3 weeks old.  He rode like he'd been doing it all his life, and I swear by the time we got to CB's place he had a smile on his face!

You can see why we call him our black angus bull.  He jumped out of the truck like a pro and even let us get a few pics before he went to meet the ladies.  I love all of my bucks, but I believe that Ditto is the most striking of them all...

Once he was settled in, we loaded up Moonie Man and got ready to head home...

Funny thing, Moon chose to make the ride standing up!  Good thing we made the cage nice and tall!

I am happy to report that both boys have settled into their new accomodations well.  OH!  The biggest suprise of the day happened when I took a look at CB's ducks....a few months ago we sorted some Buff hens out and sent them to her to go with her Runner drakes.  I looked at the flock and realized that one of the 4 Buff hens is a DRAKE.  So we may not be finished with the Buff ducks at all!  We're making plans to bring him and one of the hens here asap.  Also, of the 17 eggs collected after the massacre, it looks like 6 or 7 of them are viable.