Little Goat, Big World

...continued


Well Winnie as you know is a member of the Soprano Family of Lamanchas. Like Ronny, she is a Brandy daughter, and all the Brandy daughters are professional goats.

This means that they are not amateurs. They do everything according to the Guidelines and Bylaws of the Professional Dairy Goat Association. That includes kidding.

So after giving the traditional foghorn bellow signaling the start of kidding, Winnie went through the PDGA kidding checklist, which goes like this:

1. Site prep: not to exceed 20 minutes. (Includes circling, arranging straw, nesting, pawing, examining water bucket, hollering for an attendant.)

2. Preliminary test pushing: not to exceed 20 minutes. (Includes getting up and down, open-mouth breathing, warm-up pushing from comfortable sternally recumbent position, hollering for an attendant as necessary).

3. Moderate pushing: not to exceed 20 minutes. (Includes stretching exercises, pawing as necessary, looking behind you to make sure you didn’t accidentally kid already, pushing from lying-flat-on-your-side position, muffled or silent screams optional).

4. Serious pushing: not to exceed 10 minutes, recumbent or standing position as suits the mission. Push with all your muscles and scream if you feel like it. Once the head is through, give the trademark “Soprano” wiggle to squirt the first kid all the way out.

5. Break for grain, cookies, and warm water: not to exceed 10 minutes. Relax a little, then repeat steps 4 and 5 for each subsequent kid.

All the steps were completed on schedule, producing two strapping buck kids. The farmer bounced Winnie and did not feel any more kids.

“Is that all?” said Lori, when the second buckling came inside to the baby nursery.

“Yes I think so,” said the farmer.

“Oh really,” said Lori, and went out to the barn while the farmer started the two bucklings. In a few minutes (not exceeding ten) Lori came back in with a tiny bundle and began barking orders. “This one needs help,” she said. She had a teeny-tiny hamster-size baby who wasn’t breathing.

The farmer took it and started slapping it and gave a few puffs in its teeny-tiny mouth.

“Where is the syringe? Get the syringe!” barked Lori, who had gone into ER mode.

I wonder who she is talking to, wondered the farmer, continuing with baby goat CPR. Lori found the syringe herself and started suctioning fluids out of the baby’s mouth. Eventually the teeny-tiny hamster-size baby started sneezing and coughing.

A few minutes later the farmer flipped the baby over, sure this one must be a doeling.

No indeed. Triplet bucks. For the first couple of days the tiny baby was called PeeWee and Squirt and “the little guy” and Hamster and Gerbil.

Then Wendy Webster came over one day and she said his name was Stuart, Stuart Little, and it turned out that really was his name. His head shoots up every morning when he hears it. He is still tiny but each day he tries to double in size by drinking more milk than you would ever possibly imagine such a small body could hold.

He may be small, but he is a Soprano.

The Accidental Tourists

The first part of this story is really boring so I am going to skip to the middle. This means you will have to fill in Chapter One on your own.

…Just then, the screaming started.

“Goodbye now, Greg,” the farmer said to Greg, who was in the middle of a story about the price of alfalfa, usually a riveting topic. The farmer hung up the phone.

In the barn using keen powers of observation the farmer noticed something amiss. One of the dry yearlings had a pair of tiny feet sticking out of her rear end. She was screaming bloody murder, for obvious reasons. You would too.

(timeout for a goat glossary entry) dry yearling: an unbred doe kid from the previous year.

“My goodness,” said the farmer, and ushered the yearling to the kidding stall. Not a moment too soon. The kidding stall had been prepared for Winnie (bago) who was overdue to kid and looking like the GoodYear Blimp but, much like the US Postal Service in these parts, making no attempt to deliver her packages.

Out popped a gigantic and very beautiful doe kid.

“My goodness,” said the farmer, inspecting her for any family traits which might give a clue as to her parentage on the sire’s side. None were readily apparent.

“This one will have to be DNA’d,” said the farmer mournfully. DNA services are useful but not free. The accidental doe kid was so pretty that the farmer put the pink sweater on her. When it comes to baby goats, this is like the yellow jersey of the Tour de France. Some years no one even gets to wear it.


The farmer got everyone settled for the night and put another “dry” yearling in the stall for company. The second “dry” yearling was friends with the first and they often did things together. Luckily they do not have a Facebook page because I shudder to think what would be on it.

Anyway, the second “dry” yearling was known to be bred but it was not known how this happened. The farmer wondered if possibly the dry yearling had been bred and it not marked on the chart, although this had never happened before. In any case based on appearances she had been penciled due at the end of April.

The farmer went to bed, neglecting to remember that the two dry yearlings often did things together.

In the morning there was a faint, discouraged mewing coming from the dry yearling stall.

“My goodness,” said the farmer, peering in. It appeared that the second dry yearling had just kidded. But there was no kid in the stall.

The farmer grabbed the kidding box and some rubber gloves and some towels and examined the dry yearling thoroughly, bouncing her. There did not appear to be any kids inside her.

“My goodness,” said the farmer, or perhaps more colorful language to that effect.

Again there came a distant discouraged mewing, and not from either of the dry yearlings.

The farmer looked down. There was a kickboard along one wall of the stall to prevent the goats from standing on the stall framing and pushing the plywood out. Inside this board was a three and a half inch gap. Inside this gap was a very hungry and still damp buckling, who was very good at crawling forward but who had no reverse gear.

“This one will not have to be DNA’d,” said the farmer happily, since he would be a wether and wouldn’t need any papers.

The farmer settled the new new baby in with old new baby and returned to the barn, where Winnie (bago) gave the traditional foghorn bellow signaling that she was ready to kid.

…to be continued.

Newsletter

I guess we are going to have a newsletter now although I'm not sure the point of having a blog and a newsletter. At some point isn't it just too much information? Or is there any such thing?

Anyway, if you want to get the newsletter it will be a pdf or something like that and will have info on baby goats, farm news, cheese news, and so on. Right now we are waiting for Winnie the hippopotamus to download her kids. It looks like she has a baseball team in there.

If you want the newsletter just click here.

No Thanks, BUB

After several days on the B.U.B. program, Jammies the sad-eyed mini-mancha decided that Ziggy didn’t really look so bad. She has four legs, after all, and fur. Unfortunately Ziggy has gotten accustomed to the bottle, and can’t quite figure out how a real nipple works. “It’s too lifelike!” she screams, when the farmer tries to latch her on. “It’s warm! It doesn’t taste like rubber!”

She is working on it, though, and there is one ironclad rule of baby goats that always prevails in the end: the hungrier they are, the smarter they get. In the meantime, Ziggy follows Jammies everywhere, pestering her when she wants to sleep, chewing her beard, walking in her food, jumping on her whenever she lies down.

B.U.B.

The weather people said we might expect a holly jolly smattering of snow this morning but it wouldn’t amount to much and it wouldn’t stick to the roads. By six o’clock it had smattered up to my pasterns and by nine it was halfway to my knees. I thought smattering meant something else, as in “here is your pitiful meager smattering of daily grain, Baby Belle, hardly enough to keep a hamster alive.”

Anyway they say we should expect a smattering of wind this afternoon so the farmer is going to see if the generator will start. It usually only likes to start on beautiful calm sunny days, though. You would not believe how well it runs on a beautiful calm sunny day. Like a sewing machine.

Jammies is doing better today but when the farmer tried to trick her into taking Ziggy, a little LaMancha doeling, as her baby, she wouldn’t even consider it. Instead she head-butted Ziggy – pretty nicely, considering – all the way down the barn aisle.

She prefers the B.U.B. program (Big Ugly Baby), meaning that she only wants the farmer as her baby. Too bad, Ziggy is much cuter.

Jammies

Some people think when you have a blog you should only write good news because there is always enough bad news to go around. But life isn’t really like that, especially on a farm.

So I just write what happens.

Anyway, after an ominous low tide yesterday afternoon, last night the barometer dropped like a stone, with a big rainstorm blowing into our area. The wind caught in the trees, and the crows cawed angrily all night as their branches shook.

Little Jammies the sad-eyed mini-mancha went into labor. At 4:30 this morning she gave birth to a stillborn buckling.

Unfortunately when the kids are stillborn they cannot help their mother, because they can’t fight to get out into the world. So Jammies did all the fighting, and it was a long hard night for her.

She is very tired. She has a funny look on her face, like a person lost in a train station in a foreign country, a person who needs to get home right away.

Now and then she gets up, murmuring, and paces the stall. She paws through the straw, looking for her baby. She knows he isn’t there.

When the farmer comes she stands quietly to be milked.

Belated Report from the Birthday Party

Ok here is what happened one week ago today during the baby blizzard.

Around 7 in the morning Peaches begins moaning and groaning and laying down. In between practice pushes she gets up and gazes into the distance or eats the new fresh straw in her stall. Wronny has her breakfast as usual. Lucy nibbles at some hay.

Around 11 Peaches gets more serious. She starts making nests in the straw and babbletalking to her babies. Meanwhile, Lucy gets all glassy-eyed and lays down and then gives a nervous yelp like when you step on the dog’s foot. Wronny has a couple of cookies and scratches her head against the rough part of the stall door.

At noon Peaches accelerates her moaning, groaning, standing, pawing, lying. The farmer goes in and tries to check if there is anything on the way out but Peaches insists on cleaning the farmer and turns the wrong end around every time the farmer tries to check the birth canal. After a few minutes the farmer gives up.

Wronny chews her cud and appears to be thinking about the economic stimulus package. She is skeptical, naturally, but willing to give it a chance. Lucy starts getting up and down. Peaches stops all labor and takes a nap.

At 12:15 Wronny makes a nest, lies down, pushes expertly a couple of times, and shoots out a matched set of perfect little black triplets.

At 12:30 the farmer calls the nice neighbor who knows everything about goats and asks if the neighbor would mind holding Peaches’ head so that a proper examination can be performed. The neighbor kindly agrees.

At 1:30 with the assistance of the neighbor the farmer pokes around Peaches’ ladyparts and discovers that there is nothing on the way out. The neighbor reassures the farmer that Peaches looks fine and is just being a slowpoke. The farmer milks a few squirts of milk out to speed things up.

At 3:30 Lucy starts to push quite seriously, her legs stretched out.

At 3:31 Peaches starts to push quite seriously.

At 3:45 a bubble finally emerges from Peaches. The farmer pops it and feels a foot. Lucy gives a bloodcurdling scream. The farmer hustles over and Lucy has got two tiny feet poking out. The farmer reaches in and sure enough there is a nose coming right behind. Lucy gives another bloodcurdling scream. Peaches gives a bloodcurdling scream. The farmer hustles over and now can feel a nose and a foot but the second leg is back.

“Uh oh,” says the farmer and fishes around to try to get the other foot but can’t get around the big head. Lucy gives a bloodcurdling scream.

“I’ll be right back, Peaches,” says the farmer, and hustles over to help pull out Lucy’s first baby, a strapping buckling. Lucy lays stretched out, completely spent and flat as a pancake, but gobbles a cookie when the farmer puts it in her mouth.

The farmer hustles over to Peaches’ stall where a fat little white and black buckling is enjoying some warm milk. “Excellent,” says the farmer.

Lucy gives a bloodcurdling scream and when the farmer gets back to her stall a second kid, this one a little doeling, is laying in the straw. Oddly, Lucy is still lying flat as a pancake with her legs like boards. In fact, she looks paralyzed. “That’s odd,” says the farmer. When the farmer stuffs another cookie in her mouth, she gobbles it without moving anything but her mouth.

Peaches gives a not that bloodcurdling scream, more of a half-hearted bellow. A second little black and white buckling, this one not quite as fat, is enjoying some warm milk. The farmer hustles back to Lucy’s stall, where she is still lying flat, stiff, and completely motionless. The farmer is not in the mood.

“Snap out of it, Lucy,” says the farmer. Lucy shakes her head like a boxer who has had his bell rung. She sits up.

“Thank you,” says the farmer.

The End.

Update

Ok, Atty performed his annual inspection of babies on their first day outside yesterday. We are still way behind but catching up a little. There are seven. Lucy had twins, Wronny had triplets, and Peaches had two exceedingly fat but extremely cute minimanches - one black and one white - with perfect ears. Lucy's adorable little daughter is at the bottom.

Good News - He Got His Old Job Back!

Keeping both ends clean...

The Kids

Well the photographer did not get here yet so I will just tell you that the new kids (all 7) are very cute. Hope that helps.