Beyond the Rumen

Time out from June Bug.

Wembley and Froggy were getting ready to kid. They were neither one very big and the farmer hoped poor Wembley wasn't going to pop a big single buck kid because she is a first freshener and first fresheners have enough trouble anyway but the way things go that's what would probably happen, a big single buck kid with a head like a basketball and stupefied the way the big little boys get from just being big and being bucklings and being somewhat overcooked.

Once you are around goat farmers for a while you will understand their sour phrases. If they start talking about kidding season and one of them asks the other, how did your doe do? And the second one says, sourly, "Single Buck Kid," the first one will understand that it is a good time to say no more.

Last year Froggy was a first freshener and she had a big single buck kid, Tadpole, only she is a Terra Belle daughter and Terra Belle has this thing where she launches kids out like one of those medieval boulder throwers and all you have to do is catch them in a towel so they don't go shooting head first into the wall and Froggy was the same way. Even though her son Tadpole was a fine strapping lad he shot out in record time and luckily landed in a big heap of straw because the farmer was watching the tv news because "There's plenty of time, it's only half an hour long and Froggy won't be kidding for quite a while, she just started lying down."

Ok well the race was on and Wembley went to the kidding stall first. Wembley had been upset since she came up to the big barn because she doesn't like going anywhere without her mother Betty and also because she was a first freshener and she was just upset in general and before long the farmer moved her to a private stall because otherwise she was full of complaints. She kept calling for her mother who ignored her and then she started feeling strange happenings inside herself, deep inside beyond the rumen, and she didn't like that one bit so she would alternate between calling Betty and calling on the Great Goat in the Sky to relieve her indigestion. And they both ignored her.

(to be continued)....