Smokey Mountain Breakdown

I was still asleep when she started hollering. But I'd left the balcony door open for just such a reason, so she woke me up. It's her first time freshening so she was pretty indignant about it.

So, Rose Goat ends up having this hugantic buck. He's basically Leonard with a white topnot. He did absolutely nothing to help--I did have to give a few tugs to get his enormous head out. Betsy stayed on the phone with me to talk me through it, since I sort of thought for a moment there that we would have a hard time of it.

But everything was okay. He's got all his parts. Rose has plenty of colostrum and he's been filling up. It was a nice morning for a kidding.

Since I gave you such a crappy unsatisfying rant today...

If you want to relive the horror that was my kidding season...just kidding...it was a joyous occasion....really it was.

My latest recruit to The Cabal of Goats(and Sheep, too!), Hidden Haven Homestead, is experiencing a blessed event any moment now. Do check on Peggy's blog for updates of her doe, Diva's kidding. I've seen the pictures...looks like multiples to me!

She's also taking suggestions for names for the little buggers!

This will be the last "kidding" post for this year. All of my girls have now delivered.

Today was difficult. If Betsy, the Goat Yoda, had not come by at exactly the right time, Nod would have died and taken her kid with her. I am still relatively clueless as to the practical matters of difficult kiddings. It's one thing to read all the books and know all of the types of things that can go wrong as the kid is entering the world and what to do about them.

But it's quite another to reach your arm up into a goat's uterus and fix the problem. Hell, it's quite a thing just to reach your arm up into a goat's uterus. I mean...they are about the same size as a person, even if their "lady parts" are a little bit bigger.

I knew Nod was going to deliver this morning. She was very vocal on the back porch when I got up. Everything seemed okay and Nod sort of freaks out when people are around. She hates to be touched. So I watched her through the window. As soon as she started to have mucous come from her rear, I knew she was about ready.

I've now seen a few of these. I'm not nearly as nervous as I was with the first one.

But Nod doesn't seem to be successful in pushing the baby out. She's screaming and grunting and pushing, her legs scrambling for something to push against. I try to help but she won't let me. I leave a message on Betsy's cell phone about it. Nod's grinding her teeth in pain. This goes on for about 30 minutes before she finally seems to stop pushing. It's like she's giving up the fight.

I know I should wait an hour before reaching inside her, but I've never done it before and I'm really nervous about trying. I'm suddenly unsure of how I will do this thing without someone else to hold Nod...since Nod doesn't like to be touched.

Silly me. I've been reading all these books with the assumption that any goat in trouble is just going to lie back and say, "Oh sure... please DO go ahead and thrust you arm up to the elbow into my uterus...I'll stay quite still for you!"

Betsy drives up just at the right time. She has come to pick up Lucky to go to his new pet home. She was supposed to come last night but rescheduled for this morning. We sit on the pew in the kidding stall and watch Nod make a few half-hearted attempts to get the kid out.

I'm wondering, since I've already seen two really big buck kids come out of the more experienced does if that might be the problem. Or breach, or one foot back, or two kids stuck at the cervix...there is a whole list of presentations that could be the problem. Or a kid just too damn big to clear her pelvis.

The "miracle of life" can become "the miracle of death" in a skinny minute. Don't ever subject children to this with any animal unless you are damn sure you know what the outcome will be. And, of course, you never can predict what will happen. It's much better to go to the animal shelter and see all of the little miracles of life looking for a home.

At an hour and 15 minutes, I give the go-ahead for Betsy to "go in". We have the meager supplies I've been able to gather. Hot soapy water, towels and some ultra-glide. I hold Nod's head in a vice grip with my knees and hold grip elbows. Betsy reaches in.

Betsy has to close her eyes while she does this so she can visualize the inside of Nod. Nod is squirming and understandably not happy about this but eventually calms down. Betsy tells me when she finds the front legs, and then the head. The kid is enormous. The head is huge. It's bigger than Kidzilla.

Oh, crap, I think. Another huge buck kid.

Betsy's really up in there. I'm frankly in awe of this entire procedure. It's the sort of thing I've only seen watching "All Creatures Great and Small" and they usually tastefully shoot over the animal's shoulder. It's really different watching it in person.

Suddenly, Betsy has two legs out. I can tell how big they are for a newborn.

"I think we've lost the kid." Betsy says.

The legs are limp and floppy, like dead things.

"That's probably why she stopped pushing." She says.

This is sad, but part of raising farm animals. They really are very delicate creatures. A great deal of work goes into making them robust and healthy.

Betsy struggles to pull on those limp little legs. This is not going easily and she struggles to keep them from being sucked back inside.

"Do you need a kid puller?" I ask stupidly.

"Do you have one?"

"Uh. No."

I'm wondering if we are going to have to do something drastic to free Nod of this kid. They use tractors sometimes to pull stuck calves out of cows. I really don't want to do anything like that.

"Wait a minute....I feel a head coming."

It is suddenly all over with. With a wet squicking sound the entire kid slides out onto the towel we had placed there.

And amazingly, I see the dead kid gasp for breath.

"It's alive!" Both Betsy and I say in unison.

We rush into action now to do the kid "snatching". I keep Nod from seeing the baby. She's never kidded before so, unless she sees the kid, this will all be like the bellyache from hell for her. Betsy pulls the baby up by it's back legs and swings it to clear its nose and throat.

An incredibly loud and lusty goat wail is heard from the baby.

"It's a doe!" Betsy announces as she hands me the kid completely wrapped in a towel. I rush inside with the kid while Betsy tends to Nod.

I open up the towel and am met by a very indignant, very much alive little soul. She continues to berate me for dragging her from that comfy warm wet place she was enjoying. I feel her eye fall upon me and I experience that moment of imprinting. It's a rush. I feel myself returning the imprint. I'm the first living thing this baby sees. I am now somebody's mommy.

She immediately starts head butting my abdomen demanding something to eat. Her bleats change from indignant to a demanding, staccato of short little "blat, blat, blat's." I give her the bottle and she is a greedy little thing. The rest of my babies took a while to find their first meal. This one wants food right off the bat.

She's so big because it looks like she is late. And she does seem a bit lazy about anything that doesn't involve food. And extremely demanding and bossy. If I leave her eyeline, she cries very loudly and repeatedly. I've got her dressed up in diapers and onesies.

Betsy is yet another amazing person who has been laid in my path. I always tell the story of how our vicar showed up at my mother's hospital room mere minutes before she died. I've been hugely fortunate in having lots of people like that in my life. Some people are just more closely attuned to the needs of others and answer some sort of call that comes from I'm not sure where. They just mysteriously show up at exactly the point at which they are most needed. Betsy is one of those people for me. For Nod. And for this yet un-named little goat person.

And she does seem to see herself as a person...not even being a day old yet.

Naaaa...I'm not attached at all. Completely objective, I am.

The day started out leisurely enough. I finished reading Ralph Steadman's Joke's Over that my best friends, Therese and Lorna, sent me for Christmas. It's about his forty-five year collaboration and friendship with Hunter S. Thompson. I cried at the end. I really miss knowing that HST is still roaming the planet being reckless with firearms and writing while intoxicated. Mostly, I loved their relationship. I loved how Steadman described it. They really loved each other in the way that people do over decades. Not everyone in this world was cut out to be HST's best friend.

That was the last intellectually stimulating thing to happen to me today. And that was at 9 AM. Since then, I've been thoroughly slimed with afterbirth, baby goat pee, more afterbirth, colostrum...you name it. There isn't a bodily fluid a goat is capable of producing that I haven't had smeared on me.

I had a doctor's appointment today. I got all dressed up to go out. I went up to the shelters to check on the babies. The three doe kids were all accounted for, but Maggie's freakishly large kid, who I've started thinking of as "Kidzilla" is gone. Maggie knows he's gone and is baaing most pitifully.

She follows me as I walk around looking for him. We even go back in the woods. He's no where.

I'm pissed at Maggie and keep a running commentary on her sucky mothering skills as the two of us search.

"I knew I should have taken him from you last night. You were dragging him all over the damn farm and him not even a day old. What were you thinking, you inconsiderate frickin' cow?"

It's evidently a great and terrible slur to call a goat a cow.

"Blaaaah." She says. I can hear the guilt in her voice. Damn straight.

She even goes the extra mile to look even deeper into the forest for him.

Normally, if he were stuck somewhere he'd bleat for help and I could find him. But Kidzilla is nowhere. I resign myself that some wild beast has taken Kidzilla off in the night while Maggie was out drinking and whoring at whatever the goat version of a crack house might be.

So I trudge back down to the house to get my keys and make off to town. As I'm heading down the driveway, there is Pearlie. She has a three foot long rope of mucous hanging out of her rear end.

I turn the jeep around and run into the house, stripping my dress off as I hit the porch. Call the doctor to reschedule and throw on my turtleneck and sweatpants. By the time I get to where I saw Pearlie, she is no longer there. Great.

I trudge back up to the shelter. No Pearlie. I start calling her and she answers back. She sounds really frantic.

She has found a spot over by one of the wood piles that I burned out last year. It's covered in nice soft leaves and is sheltered. It even has a log for me to sit on.

She has just dropped a freakishly large buck kid to replace the one we just lost. Super great, damnit. He's the spitting image of Leonard but a wee bit lighter. I help clean him up and get the mucous out of his nose and mouth. I didn't bring a towel with me so I'm using the sleeve of my turtleneck.

Then Pearlie starts to groan again and plops down. Another kid comes sliding out. This one is jet black with tan points and thankfully is a little doe. She's covered still in the sack she came out in. There seems to be an awful lot of slimy stuff. I break the sack and let her gurgle her first breath. Again I use my sleeves to wipe the copious amounts of slime from her little face. It's a real mess.

The little boy is already struggling to his feet at this point. He's emerged with a thick luxuriant coat. I pick up the little black doe out of her puddle of mucous and bring her around to Pearlie's head so she can finish the licking off part. No way am I going to do that.

The entire herd has gathered to watch. Maggie is still up there blah-ing away guiltily. Betty-Goat, who lost her kid, watches almost hungrily. She really wants to be a mommy and every time a kid comes near her, she gives it a good smell to see if maybe, just maybe, this is her baby.

After the two kids have their first drink of colostrum, I pick them both up and we all trudge back to the house with the entire herd following us.

I wasn't expecting Pearlie to drop first. I had her on the porch but after checking her tendons, I let her back out and brought Nod up here. Nod is most certainly very close. I may be up all night waiting on her.

Back at the house, I get Pearlie a nice warm bucket of molasses tea which she drinks all the way to the bottom. I get her some alfalfa. The babies are wobbling around in the sunshine. It's warmed up quite a bit from the teens we had this morning.

I milk Maggie, then worm her and vax her. I take all of her milk since she no longer has Kidzilla. I help Pearlie up on the milkstand and draw off some colostrum. I'm going to need that for Nod's baby who I plan to snatch. I worm and vax Pearlie while she's up there and give her a good feed of milk ration. The babies get their navels trimmed and painted with strong iodine.

I'm pretty damn tired about now. It's five o'clock and I haven't had anything to eat. But I go up to the shelter to check on the triplets. They are fine and I'm shocked at how strong they are now. They are still sleeping a lot, but are really lively and prancy. And can almost get away from me now.

I go back down to the house and take the babies inside while I get the dogs fed. I look up toward the shelter and there is Kidzilla with Maggie. She has done nothing to find him...he's just come home on his own.

Where the hell does a two day old baby goat go when he runs away from home? Where has he been all day? Is there some sort of Chucky Cheese's for goats that I don't know about? Did freakin' Maggie drop him off a daycare?

He's really hungry and that is just too damn bad since I've milked Maggie out. I'm sure she'll drop more for him now that he's back, but that was just the damnedest thing.

So, it's getting really cold tonight. We will have snow and sleet Saturday night. I'm hoping to get Nod's kids delivered by tomorrow. The new babies are spending the night inside the house....with diapers on. Pearlie is hanging out outside. They are the eating, sleeping, pooping, peeing things that all babies are.

But while I've been writing this...one has been asleep on my lap. And that's really sweet.

I got that term from my Goat Yoda, Betsy. Basically, it's when all the does start to drop at the same time. Mine has officially started.

I walked outside this morning and there, up at the shelter, was Maggie, one of the Saanens. She had an enormous baby with her. I still have Blinkin' and the three doe kids on the back porch at this point.

I eagerly go up and pick up the baby.

Damn. It's a buck.

I look at Maggie...I look in the shelter.

"Is this all you have for me?!"

She looks at me with those half-closed eyes. She looks pissed off that I have asked her this. As well she should be...she's exhausted from pushing this little monster out.

Maggie was every bit as big as Blinkin'. She was huge. And all she had in there was this freakishly large little boy. I'm disappointed since, while Maggie is a bitch of a goat, she is a really good milker. Even if she needs goat bondage to keep her from sticking her foot in the milk pail. I was so hoping to get at least one doe out of her.

I take the little stinker up to the house to paint his navel. He's actually quite beautiful. He's white with cream and gray spots and has dark stockings on his back legs. I would have loved to have had a doe kid with these markings.

Evidently, Leonard and Beacon's Doe-Fu was no match for Maggie's Bitch-Fu.

So far, I have no registrable doe kids. We unfortunately lost the preemie that Betty-Goat delivered early. She would have been registrable. Blinkin's babies won't be registrable, but their kids will be.

Next to deliver is probably Nod, Blinkin's daughter. I'm planning to snatch any doe kids she has and bottle raise them. Nod is so unsociable and I don't want her passing that behavior to her kids.

Pearlie, my other Saanen, is now in the kidding stall. I do want to make sure that her kidding goes well. She will probably kid this weekend, if not sooner. Pearlie is my favorite. Both she and Betty-Goat are my little girlfriends. Both are very sweet girls.

I talked with Betsy tonight and she says Harper and Amyline are going to kid this weekend also. Both of these girls spent part of the summer here and got knocked up by Leonard and Beacon. Betsy will let me buy the doe kids from those two...so yay! I may have some more registrable does.

Harper is coming here in exchange for Maggie...who needs to go because she jumps the fences. Betsy has found a pet home for Lucky. This is good news since I was ready to shoot him today. Nod will be leaving the farm this season. I probably should get rid of both Blinkin' and Winkin' as well, but I'm a bit attached to the two of them.

The color being thrown out on these kids is spectacular. I didn't think that Beacon had gotten much action so maybe Leonard is throwing color as well.

I need to keep Friend Scott from getting attached to the little boy. Unfortunately, the boys end up as meat unless someone gets them as pets or pack goats. It is the way of dairy animals. I was most happy to learn that Scott's current temp job has many Hispanic employees. I'm not sure if he understood why I was happy to hear this.

Blinkin's babies are now out in the pasture with her. They immediately recognized that Nod was their big sister and have been bouncing up to her to play.

I'm really exhausted. I went to town and got two 75 pound compressed bales of alfalfa, 100 pounds of goat milk enhancer and two bales of straw. I went to Walmart to get some new socks and underwear. One of the cocker spaniels, Max, has an underwear and sock fetish and I'm tired of picking up underwear out of the laundry to find them crotchless. And I love heavy wool socks. One can never have too many pairs of Woolrich Merino Wool hunting socks.

I'm walking through the sporting goods aisle at Walmart and I keep smelling something awful. I realize it's me. I smell like goat.

I hurry home to take a nice long hot shower.

After unloading the feed and straw and cleaning out and disinfecting the kidding stall so Pearlie can have some nice fresh afterbirth-free digs, feed the dogs and the goats, milk Betty-Goat, give shots and worming to Blinkin' and Betty-Goat, refill all water tanks with fresh unfrozen water.....

E-I-E-I-fricking-O

Well, she finally did it!

Blinkin' just gave birth to three lovely doe kids. One is a lovely dun with points, one is spotted (a little Beacon in the woodshed, no doubt) and one is really dark bay or black with a big white blaze on her side(perfect combo of Blinkin' plus Leonard) . Each has normal, non-forked udders...unlike Blinkin' whose udder is forked and not so good.

So it looks like my boys have both good Doe-Fu and Udder-Fu.

Number One Daughter



Daughter Number One with Daughter Number Two



Daughters One, Two and Three


Looks like Mizz Blinken' is going to be really really busy! And me too, probably!

Mild with a slight drizzle and an 80% chance of Blinkin' having her damn kids!

Hopefully, she's not "just kidding" this time. She's just started "streaming" so I'm expecting to have a busy night.

Well, this was taken at midnight. She's made herself a nice little nest out of the bale of straw I put out there. I originally just put enough down for bedding but she decided to use the entire bale.

I've got someplace to go Saturday so may not be able to blog much tomorrow. Off to bed now. I guess she'll wake me up if she starts to drop.

Since a few of you asked about Blinkin' ...she's fine. No kids as of yet.

I got her up on the milkstand late last night and palpated her abdomen. It was really cool to feel the kids kick back. There are at least two of them in there. Wouldn't it be cool if she had triplets? Around two a.m. she decided she'd had enough of being separated from the herd and slipped her collar so she could go sleep with her grown daughter, Nod.

I've got her on the back porch now with a nest of clean straw. I'm not really worried about her since she doesn't seem to be very worried for herself. I think her milk has a ways to draw down yet. Her udder should get even more full before she freshens. She is starting to make funny goat noises and is nipping at her flanks. I think I could still have 24 to 48 hours until kidding. I'm not sure since I've never seen Blinkin' kid before and I don't know what her usual routine is.

I'm going to try to get pictures of the actual kidding if I can. I may be too busy, but hopefully she'll not need any help.

Needless to say, it's hard for me to concentrate on my writing while I'm in my role of goatherd.

I went to town to get supplies today. My buddy, Scott, went along with me. It was sort of nice having someone make the rounds with me to the Co-op and the Farm Supply. We ate lunch at the dreadful Chinese place. Scott really likes it. There used to be a really good authentic place, but the Chinese buffet is more popular with the locals. They do serve frog legs and I do like a nice frog leg now and again. And it's way better than what they call Chinese food in the UK. I'm not sure what curry on chips has to do with Chinese food. I never got that.

I'm wondering what to name the new babies. Do you think I'd go to hell if I named one "Jesus"?

I wonder how that would look on the ADGA registration if I bother with it. "Old Maid's Aerie's Jesus Marimba". I sort of like the sound of that.

Yeah. It's definitely getting warm in here.

So...I'm getting in the jeep to make my once monthly big market trip when I look down in the pasture and see that Blinkin' s udder has filled out. Oh, joy. Looks like I'm getting goat kids for Christmas.

Blinkin is one of my farm goats that has some meat goat bred into her. But she's been bred to one of my lovely Nubian boys so the kids she has will qualify as grades and in a few generations their kids will qualify as American Nubians.

Her udder isn't great since she's got one forked teat, but she's really hardy and I'd like to pass that trait on to my herd. Blinkin' can almost thrive on air. I've got her tethered and bedded under the back porch so I can keep an eye on her. She's in early labor right this moment. I know she's going to be happy to get those babies out of there. You can't tell from the photo but she's really huge. I'm thinking twins at least.

I've got all my kidding supplies out and am sleeping on the sofa tonight in case she starts to drop in the middle of the night. The Saanans aren't due for another few weeks but it looks like the boys took care of Blinkin' earlier than expected.

Cross your fingers for us that they are doe kids. I gots too many boys right now anyway.

I'm in for a long night, looks like.