Breaking News: Dark Horse Wins Cookie

Well, now that all the big milkers are on milk test the farmer has gotten a little obsessive and weighs all the milk twice a day every day - not just on test day - and then congratulates the top milker, which is a little monotonous, because it means every day that the farmer says, "Congratulations, Winnie, once again you are the top milker."

The only variety will be: "Congratulations, Winnie, today you milked 14 pounds." Or, "Congratulations, Winnie, today you milked 13 pounds," or "Congratulations, Winnie, today you milked twelve pounds."

Then Winnie the ayatollah gets an extra cookie and goes flouncing back out among the general population and t-bones anyone who happens to be standing there, unless it is Brandy or Wronny both of whom she is deathly afraid of, just to show that she is the top milker and expects to be treated like the Queen of Sheba.

This has been going on for weeks in a tediously repetitive fashion except for the week where Wronny pulled neck and neck with Winnie but then dropped back at the finish line ending up four tenths of a pound behind.

But now we have gotten to the point where Winnie has already been milking for several months, and she finally dropped under eleven pounds a couple of times, especially during the week when we had the most awful stemmy alfalfa that she wouldn't eat, although she was still the leader. It had gotten to be quite a bore, no one was even one iota interested in it, especially not Boo, who has never milked worth a darn in spite of being the biggest goat here if not the brightest.

Anyway the farmer harbored only low hopes for Boo, especially since she had twins this year when we all thought she would have quadruplets. But the line Boo comes from is known to be slow maturing - if in fact they ever do mature - and yesterday the most astonishing thing happened.

Boo only kidded about a month ago and even though she only milked about five pounds when she first freshened, since then she has been creeping up up up the milk chart. And yesterday when the congratulatory cookies were handed out, Winnie had to stand there with her mouth open and a look of horror, because the farmer came to the gate and said, "Congratulations, Boo, you are the top milker today with 10.7 pounds, here is your cookie."

Boo heard all this like everybody else, but only understood two words: "Boo" and "Cookie."

But sometimes two words is all you need to understand.

Walking the Walk (And Trotting the Trot)

Well I notice lately there are a lot of people talking about the carbon footprint, which used to be one of Wrusty's favorite topics before he got his cojones removed. Now he mostly looks for pretty flowers to eat. Anyway, a lot of people talk about reducing their carbon footprint, and how they bought a Prius and they don't care how much it cost because what really matters to them is saving the environment, and they plant lettuce and chives in a post-consumer pot on their windowsill, and they compost their eggshells and espresso grounds, and on weekends they save the world and so on, and they cluck their tongues at the poor shmos driving around in old gassy farm trucks, like anybody wants to drive a car that gets 8 miles to the gallon, but anyway there you are.

And then you get a postcard from them and they are in Brazil on vacation and of course they got there by burning a bazillion gallons of jet fuel. Or they decide to take a job selling solar panels all along the West Coast and their frequent flier miles go through the roof. Even Al Gore preaches his inconvenient truth gospel from a first class seat; he has circled the equator more times than anyone would care to count in service of urging people not to use up so much fossil fuel.

So there is plenty of talking but there is not a lot of walking. We only know one individual who totally eschews fossil fuels. Why yesterday he even humbly begged not to be loaded into a trailer because it was going to be pulled by a fossil-fuel-burning truck.

"No, no thank you," he politely declined. "I would much prefer to walk. Or perhaps I could just stay home."

And that is why we are nominating Willen to be the Greeny of the Year. He is a true and humble Greeny. You will never get a postcard from him in the Canary Islands. If he goes down the road, he will walk one footstep at a time. And if he is in a hurry, he will trot. And if you have some carrots, he may even let you hitch a ride in his zero emission Pioneer forecart.

Pot o' News

I showed a picture of Rocky but forget to mention that he got born. Rocky is my daughter Blue Umbrella's son. He is a doll.

His mother has broken with the family tradition of laissez faire parenting developed by me and refined to perfection by my daughter Hannah Belle. Blue follows Rocky everywhere, bleating and squeaking in consternation if he gets more than three feet away from her. Luckily it isn't stifling him - he goes where he pleases.

Also, Xie Xie's kids got born and since they are almost the last of the big babies, they got the worst names because the farmer runs out and just uses any name that comes to hand "until we think of something better." So their names are Buddy and Binky. Often good names don't stick but the bad names almost always do.

Betsy's babies are due any day and I truly feel sorry for them, their names will almost certainly be Billy and Nanny. Whether or not they are a boy and girl. There ought to be a law.

Speaking of crimes against goats, I was shocked to see this video.


I thought it was bad enough here when they tried to make me carry a pack on the trail.

The Wind From the West

Well yesterday it was hot, way too hot. We could tell it was too hot because all of the fat ponies crowded into their shed for shade. They drank two bathtubs full of water between them. Also we could tell it was too hot because Aggie and Xtra Joy were panting with their tongues hanging out. When it gets too hot too fast sometimes their brains shrink and they forget how to drink water. It's sad.

The farmer came down and yelled at them: "Drink some water!"

This didn't make them any smarter so they got sprayed with the hose, which seemed to awaken one or two brain cells.

Anyway it was hot, way too hot, and that was because the wind had turned around and came from the East. The farmer hates the wind from the East. It brings the hot air from Eastern Washington, and sometimes it brings wicked storms and sometimes when the wind is from the East it will all of a sudden stop blowing and then there is an eerie dead calm in the air like the end of the world and the farmer hates that. When we had our big earthquake a few years ago there was a little wind from the East and then it stopped and it almost seemed like Time had stopped with it.

And sometimes the East Wind vacuums up the awful California weather, and that is what happened this time. Anyway, it's an ill wind, and the only good it brings is that it makes the grass grow.

So all day the farmer was grumpy and looking at the things that needed to be done on such a sunny day but really how could they be done when it was so hot.

And then around 7 the wind turned around and began to blow from the West. The blessed blessed delicious wind from the West, our wind, and the marine layer came back and settled over our little valley, and Xtra Joy and Aggie were able to shut their pie-holes, and the horses came back out doubletime to catch up on the grass they had accidentally allowed to grow, and Time started up again.

Thank you, West Wind!

Rocky

My adorable grandson Rocky enjoys some fresh air.

Kids Cannot Live By Milk Alone

On Monday Xie Xie had her babies, a buckling and a doeling. Xie Xie is Big Orange's twin. They are Betsy's daughters. No one had ever seen any babies born in this family because they always came out so fast: Betsy had Big Orange and Xie Xie between two commercial breaks on American Idol.

And even though Big Orange was on a strict maternity watch, she had her babies when the farmer went to answer the phone. So Xie Xie was whisked into the kidding stall at the first cross-eyed look she gave the farmer, and the farmer sat down with a book.

Sure enough, before the farmer could finish reading even one chapter, out popped two kids. Both are kind of odd-looking, with curly hair, and little roan patches mixed with their Lamancha classic black-and-tan coloring. They are very good babies and they sleep all through the night, but yesterday the little girl got upset and cried off and on for hours even though she was full.

These babies are in a new puppy pen, about eight square feet, instead of the rubbermaid tubs the newborns usually go into for the first couple of days. They like it a lot better - they can walk around more, and they can see out.

But it is also easy to just feed them inside the pen, and so the farmer was just giving them their bottle without picking them up and taking them out.

Anyway the little girl started crying and didn't want a bottle and didn't settle down, and the dim-witted farmer said, "uh-oh, another angry baby, just like Tangy."

The little girl kept crying, sort of wistfully, and finally after a couple of hours the dim-witted farmer picked her up. She stopped crying immediately.

"Isn't that funny," the dim-witted farmer said, and put her back down. She started crying again. The farmer picked her up, and she stopped. The farmer cuddled her and petted her, and she immediately went to sleep.

"Oh, I see," the farmer finally said. Duh, I thought to myself.

Now the farmer makes sure to pick them up and cuddle them at feeding time. And they don't cry any more, unless they are hungry.

The Peaches Family, Strolling

Stop Somewhere

Sometimes in life you will lose one of your dear friends. And then for a long time you will think of your friend and you will be filled with sadness.

But then a day will come when you think about your friend unexpectedly and you can't help but laugh.

Yesterday the farmer was angry when all the down-below girls, led by Hannah Belle, managed to get the pasture gate open and stampeded the big barn, skipping and hopping and raising Cain with the milkers.

A Sharks-and-Jets brawl broke out, with the big milkers taking offense at the mere presence of Nigerians and minis in their high-and-mighty midst. Eo (Mussolini) and Brandy (Tony Soprano) went head to head, and Breezy and Winnie paired off, and several others banged heads while Hannah Belle and I scouted the area thoroughly for unattended grain or alfalfa.

Well the farmer wasn't in a mood for it and so there was a lot of yelling and hollering and improbable threats and eventually the farmer got everyone back in except Mabel. Now Mabel is a Loony Tune - you can tell by the way her eyeballs spin counterclockwise when she gets what she thinks is an idea.

So everyone was back in except Mabel, who didn't really want to do anything or go anywhere, just wanted to be contrary. Mabel commenced head faking and putting spin moves on the farmer, acting squirrelly as all get out, even actually pretending she was interested in Wendell the pest, who was running a fifty foot circle around the whole production because he always likes to try to draw attention to himself and his foolish doggy activities.

"Look at me," his little bug-eyed expression said, "don't I look like a border collie? Isn't it clever what I'm doing?"

Mabel pretended to be interested, and turned a smaller circle inside Wendell's circle, but kept an eye on the farmer just to see what would happen, and if the farmer would keep trying to catch her.

But the farmer was fed up and said, "Fine, stay out here," and turned to go up to the barn.

Mabel was terribly disappointed and ran to catch up with the farmer, who wasn't looking at her any more, and by the time the farmer got to the upper gate, Mabel was right behind and stuck her nose in the farmer's pocket.

The farmer looked down at Mabel with surprise and all of a sudden started laughing and laughing in spite of having been in an utterly black mood. Anybody else would think the farmer was crazy, which is probably true, but I happen to know that this little trick was a maneuver patented by Crazy Mabel's crazy mother April, who could never be caught if you wanted to catch her, but who couldn't stand not to be caught if you were sincerely ignoring her.

The farmer patted Mabel a few times, still laughing, and then realized that it would be a good idea to put Mabel back in the down-below pasture since she had basically turned herself in, and reached out - yes, just a split second too late - to grab Mabel's collar.

Mabel went pronging and dancing and bucking away, turning sideways to the hill to make her leaps look crazier, and Wendell re-commenced his fifty foot circle which had been interrupted for a panting timeout, and the farmer started laughing again.

A sad, sad day

Eight Belles. A beautiful horse.

Tangerine

Tangy the piranha sticks her tongue out at the world.

Winnie, Jr.

Winnie, Jr. gets her cast off today. We are keeping our fingers crossed that her broken leg will be mended when it comes out of all its grubby wrappings. Not that having a broken leg has stopped her from becoming king of the babies.

Scarborough Fairgoers

Well, here are some photos of Parsley and Sage, Boo's kids born last Thursday. I don't know, I guess they are kind of cute. We thought Rosemary and Thyme might also be aboard the SS Boo, but apparently there was just a lot of extra luggage in the hold. So only Parsley and Sage came down the gangplank in the end.

Skin Deep

Well, after a few years of seeing baby goats born every year you start to notice the family traits. All of my offspring are beautiful and smart, for example. In Brandy's LaMancha kingpin family, many of the kids have the same habit: they like to stand at the door and grab the sliding bolt with their teeth, sliding the bolt back and forth incessantly so that it makes a clacking sound.

Wronny will slide the bolt until the farmer yells at her to stop. You don't even notice the bolt noise any more until you hear the farmer yelling: "Knock it off, Wronny!" The farmer doesn't even look to see who's doing it. When it goes on forever like that, it's always Wronny.

The Nubians are universally puzzled. Their puzzlement spans all the generations.

In the April family, there is never a generation that goes by that at least one kid doesn't get April's beautiful face. First Mabel had it, then Cammy had it, then Biscuit had it, and this year little pink Hermy has it.

And that brings us to the exception that may or may not prove the rule, although we are starting to think there may not be any rules. But anyway: Big Orange.

Big Orange is tall and elegant and orange and shy and retiring and unfailingly sweet. She is a pacifist, above all. She is the Gandhi of goats. Whenever there is any kind of line she runs immediately to the end of it; she would never think of cutting in front of anyone.

This morning, Winnie, who thinks she is all that and likes to swagger around pushing everyone out of her way even when she isn't going anywhere, came up to Big Orange and stood in front of her and for some reason didn't t-bone Big Orange but instead got a sleepy look.

Big Orange kindly began kissing Winnie's head and cleaning the top of it in a cheerful and solicitous manner, even though 99% of the time Winnie only comes up to Big Orange because she is planning to take her lunch money.

Anyway, Big Orange is a saint.

Now Big Orange had a daughter, a little orange daughter that we are calling Tangerine right now while we mull over some of the excellent name suggestions we have received. Tangerine looks just like Big Orange. She is slightly less orange, and has slightly shorter ears, but really those are the only differences. Any person off the street would be able to walk in here and pick out Tangerine as Big Orange's daughter.

But Tangerine is the OPPOSITE of Big Orange. Tangerine is the angriest baby goat in the world. She is like one of those terrifying human babies that people have sometimes where everyone tiptoes around looking ashen and whispering, "don't wake the baby! Please GOD, don't wake the baby!"

When the farmer goes out in the morning with bucket of milk for the big babies, Tangerine - who is the smallest of the big babies - comes like a BAT OUT OF HELL for the bucket, shrieking the whole way like a fire engine and flinging her body against any obstacle, animate or inanimate, that gets in her way.

Almost entirely because of Tangerine, the big babies are now referred to as The Piranhas. When she isn't hungry, or shouldn't be hungry because her belly is like a beach ball, Tangerine still shrieks like a fire engine whenever she sees a human or any other entity she thinks might be capable of milk propulsion. We cannot figure out why, but she seems to think she can somehow stockpile milk for future use, and that screaming is the best way to make powerful friends.

When in the few moments a day she overcomes her milk monomania, she is gregarious to the point of being annoying, chewing hair, lap hogging, prancing and dancing and making a show of herself. Again, the opposite of her mother.

Oh well. What can you do? Sometimes the orange is truly orange and sometimes the orange is only skin deep.

All Ashore

Well the SS Boo finally limped into harbor last night, late as usual and at the most inconvenient time imaginable. The farmer had surmised from the size of the cargo hold that there might be about 15 kids aboard, but in the end only two "miniature" Nubians toddled ashore.

Both are very pretty, like their mother. Both have frosted ears, like their mother. Both are fat and opinionated, and see if you can finish this sentence.

Anyway in unrelated news there was another Lamancha-Nubian-Nigerian IQ demonstration yesterday. The indoor kids (Winnie, Jr. with the broken leg, Tangerine, Widget, Hermy, Augustine, and Julius) played in their stall, where Winnie, Jr., being the biggest, is the king of the babies, a job she loves. Three of the indoor babies (Win, Tangerine, and Widget) are bottle babies. The other three are dam-raised.

Yesterday the bottle babies made the switch from the tiny pop-bottle nipple to the baby bucket, which has a bigger nipple and doesn't work in quite the same way. So sometimes it takes a while to catch on. Winnie, Jr. of course, being a purebred Lamancha, got it right away. Tangerine, being 7/8ths LaMancha, didn't have too much trouble but had to cry and sputter melodramatically a few times for effect.

Widget, being both a boy and 1/8th Nubian, was rather stumped, and jabbed his head desperately against the bucket, perhaps hoping to knock the milk out. To his credit, unlike a full-blown Nubian, he seemed to know that there was milk in there. He just couldn't figure out how to get it out.

Anyway, that was all about to be expected. What wasn't expected was that the rotund mini-Manchas (half Nigerian, half LaMancha) - Hermy, Augustine, and Julius - would watch for a few minutes, taking some simple mental notes, then scurry over as soon as the nipples were vacated and help themself to extra milk.

Hermy led the way.

Bottle baby, schmottle baby.

Hannah Belle's Baby Blues

Well, my daughter Hannah Belle was never much in the running for the Mother-of-the-Year honors, except for a couple of weeks last year when she doted rather nauseatingly on little Peanut, nudging him along and making sure nobody stepped on him, and never letting him out of her sight, and washing his little head just about incessantly.

"It's clean already!" I told her several times, but she isn't a big one on heeding the advice of her elders. Or anyone else, for that matter.

But once Peanut was up and running she ditched him and his triplet siblings, and went back to her goating about.

This year she didn't bother doting on anyone, since the whole set of triplets was rather strappingly normal, just got them started with a couple of days of milk then split for greener pastures. It was her own Outward Bound program: if the little tikes could find her, fine, she was happy to give them some milk. But if they couldn't escape from their stall or pasture to track her down, then they could just go without. When it comes to milk, her policy was, you have to want it.

They quickly learned many of her escaping tricks: grab the chain on the gate and rattle it with your teeth until it pops off the hook; run upstairs to the hayloft to help yourself to the better hay; huddle down behind one of the milkers then barge out of the stall with your head down low when she goes to be milked.

And many more tricks, including spin moves, head fakes, the patented milkstand pick, and "bookcase baby" which is too complicated to explain here.

Hannah Belle knows them all: if she wants to go in the house, for example, she knows that she can open the back door by pushing down on the handle with her head.

Anyway I am getting off track as usual, the point is that her parenting skills were, or seemed to be, on the lax side.

But this year for the first time Hannah Belle's babies all went home within a few days. And we could not believe what we saw.

Hannah Belle noticed. Hannah Belle noticed very deeply.

She went on a mission. She scoured the entire farm from top to bottom looking for Cora Belle and Filbert, the last two to leave. She searched for them in every corner; she opened the tack room; she ran up to the hayloft; she squeezed through the pasture gate and came up to the front yard, where they had sometimes scarfed up last year's tired maple leaves. She even looked under the porch.

And all the time she called out to them in an angry chuckle. The joke is over, you kids. Come out.

Well, the farmer always says that the trouble with Nigerians is that they are too smart. This isn't true of the Breezy family, but in general I understand it. And there is one perfect illustration of it: disbudding.

There are quite a few not very pleasant tasks in the goat world, and one of them is disbudding the baby goats. The farmer hates it but it has to be done.

So every year the farmer puts each baby goat in a special box and burns out the horn buds with a special iron, a procedure that only lasts a few seconds but hurts a lot. And every year when the farmer takes the Nubian babies out of the box, the Nubian babies look up with surprise and relief from their bawling, as if to tell the farmer - oh, thanks for getting me out of there, you would not believe what happened, it was horrible, thank God you happened along.

Whereas the Nigerian babies give the farmer a black look and for several days afterward scowl and holler when they see the farmer. As if to say: why did you put me in that box? I am calling my attorney as soon as I can get a cellphone signal, and I will see you in court!!

Because they know what happened.

And now Hannah Belle knows what happened too.

After an entire day of searching, Hannah Belle gave the farmer the blackest goat look you have ever seen, and went and stood by the gate to the down-below pasture, which she normally hates. She stood there with quiet dignity, even though ordinarily she would have just squirmed and wiggled her way in. The farmer came down and opened the gate, and she immediately went in and found her baby from last year, the almost-yearling Boxcar Betty.

She has been sitting with Boxcar Betty ever since. And whenever the farmer comes near, Hannah Belle turns her head so she doesn't have to look at the farmer.

Welcome to the Chronicles of Narnia

Here in our corner of the frozen wasteland that is the Pacific Northwest, it is snowing steadily as the sun rises. Well, sort of rises. Peeks through the curtains and then goes back to bed.

Snow is fine and all but please excuse me: it is almost MAY. Some of us have our coats half shed out and now they are growing back. THIS IS NOT A GOOD LOOK.

ENOUGH ALREADY WITH THE WINTER WONDERLAND!!!!!!

Update

Well there has been a lot of news that didn't get into the blog because everything was so busy. Lots of very pretty LaMancha babies have been born, if you like conceited goats with no ears. Their names are Yin (aka Winnie Junior), Yang, Yes I Know (aka Jessie), and You Bugaboo (aka Bugaboo). It is a Y year so all the big babies are getting names that start with Y.

Well, on top of that Peaches the mini-mancha outdid herself and had a set of triplets, all with correct LaMancha ears, which has never happened before. She has only ever had twins, and every year one has nice Lamancha ears and the other has gigantic ten-gallon-Stetson Nigerian ears.

These triplets look very different: one is the usual xerox of Peaches, a big girl with a pretty face and a kind of pinkish-apricot color; the other two are smaller and super-flashy black and white with blue eyes. The pink one is called Hermy, the black and white tiny twins are called Julius and Augustine. I have to say, as far as mini-Manchas go, those two are supermodels.

As reported previously, Big Orange popped out a set of twins, a little orange doe who is currently being called Tangerine (but remember, she will need a Y name sooner or later - we are hoping that Teresa Saum will think of one), and a little black buckling, who is currently being called "the little black one."

After two years of outstanding service, Peaches' charming son Wrusty had his cojones removed yesterday (the largest ones she had ever seen on a goat, the vet reported admiringly) and is recuperating nicely in the barn.

In some upsetting medical news, little Winnie Junior (aka Yin) broke her leg a few days ago and the vet said that it was not healing well in the sub-par splint the farmer made. She will be going down to Olympia tomorrow to get a special splint which we hope very very much will help the leg to heal. Meanwhile Winnie Junior is living in the house with Tangerine and LBO and demonstrating at every opportunity that even a three-legged LaMancha from a family of Goat Mafia kingpins (believe it or not) can sometimes have an adorable personality.

And of course in the most important news of all, my granddaughter Cora Belle and her brother Filbert are going to a new home. It's a good home, so it's okay, but we will surely miss them.

Busy Orange Day

Well it was a busy day with lots of visitors and lots of baby goats leaving for their new homes. Big Orange was supposed to kid in a few days but she started looking starry-eyed late this morning and within a couple of hours, unlike most first fresheners, she popped out a set of twins. One of them is a duplicate of Big Orange, only smaller. Right now we are calling her Little Orange.

But she might need a better name.

The other one is a big strong boy who looks just like his papa (Junior.)

He doesn't have a name either. Maybe Junior, Jr.?

Big Orange was a champ.

Notification of Name Change

Like mother, like daughter.

Hannah Belle's little daughter Blue Belle has had a name change. Her name is now Cora Belle. But why?

Well, she was born on Valentine's Day, and Cora sort of means heart. You know, heart, love, Valentine's Day.

But the real reason is a little different. Hannah Belle as you may know was the world's friendliest baby goat, and as an adult she came to be known as Hannah Belle Lecter because she was so spoiled that she never heard, much less understood, the word "no." And Cora Belle is already showing the family colors. When she sees a person, she comes running. Through the fence, under the gate - she is undeterred by obstacles that would stop an ordinary goat.

She has no respect for boundaries. She wants to be where the action is, and that is with people. And she wants to be fed and coddled and picked up. Boxcar Betty, her almost identical older sister, was not against feeding, but she was never one for kissing and hugging, and would only tolerate it when absolutely necessary.

Not this girl.

So anyway little Blue Belle will now be called Cora Belle. Because some day she almost certainly will be known as Cora Belle the Horrible.

Baby Bert and the Barometer

Well, you have one day, and then you have the next day. And that's how it goes.

On Sunday, one thing is for sure: the barometer dropped. Rain, wind that blew the roof off one of the little sheds, rain, wind, snow, sleet, hail, rain, rain, and rain. Nothing brings on a baby blizzard like the barometer heading south.

After Brandy, Wronny, Bertie and Winnie all decided to have their kids early. Not premature, but just a couple of days ahead of schedule, and one right after the other. Wronny just like last year was a champ and popped out twin does. Winnie, who has never had a doe kid, popped out twin does as well.

They had no trouble doing it, although Winnie as usual gave a few Oscar-worthy screams. But that was for the benefit of the peanut gallery who possibly had not seen last year's performance: she actually stopped in mid-scream to eat a vanilla wafer when one was offered.

When it was Bertie's turn, Bertie got an unmistakable look on her face that was part Nubian (she is Boo's daughter) and part first freshener. It was a stargazing look of amazement and dismay that said: I do not know what is happening, but I think there might be a band of angels coming for me, and my goodness what a beautiful spider web up there in the corner of the stall, who makes those spider webs anyway?

Bertie was in a daze. She had some calcium, and finally she laid down, and she started to push. And she pushed. And she pushed. And she pushed.

And the farmer put on some gloves, which only means one thing. But no, there was no problem: the baby was coming nose and toes, nothing upside down or ass backward about it, Bertie just needed to keep pushing. And so she pushed, and she pushed, and she pushed, and two front feet finally emerged, followed by a nose and mouth with a little pink tongue already sticking out.

And Bertie kept pushing. And finally she looked at the farmer like, why are you just sitting there?

And so the farmer, who doesn't like to pull too much on the first fresheners because they need a chance to dilate, finally took pity and started pulling while Bertie kept pushing.

And my sweet land of Goshen! Finally a ginormous single buck kid popped out. I have had some big kids but I mean to tell you I would not like to have had to push that one out.

Anyway, the farmer was very proud of Bertie, who didn't give up like some does would have. She kept right on, even when she was dead tired.

And Bertie's buck kid turned out to have the sweetest most mellow disposition of about anyone ever born here. We are calling him Baby Bert until we think of a better name. Baby Bert almost never cries, and loves to be cuddled, and in addition he is about the size of a Clydesdale, so the farmer is going to be sure and find a very good home for him: someone who needs a nice pack goat or a cart goat.

If you are looking for a cart goat, or maybe a goat that could pull a sweet chariot, this is the boy for the job. Already he has a lot of experience with pushing and pulling. And he never loses his cool.