Kidding time is here again...

We all have one…that goat we just can’t seem to sell even though we know we should. Of course they always kids at night and when it is below freezing. This year we were determined it wouldn’t be so cold so we bred her for Nov. …this year November has been the coldest for several years. Ours problem doe is aptly named Alley. Her udder is around her ankles by the time she kids and so full she literally has to run bowlegged. She looks like Forest Gump in that scene where the braces come off except she’s working around the udder instead of braces. You just want to yell, “run, Forrest, run!”
The deal is even though we’ve had a couple of bottle babies that just COULDN’T find the teat no matter how much she tried to point them in the right direction, not even with our dedicated attempts to help she always raises some of the best kids on the place and so far none of them have inherited her udder.
This time we were determined she would feed both kids, I mean when a doe has a gallon jug of milk hanging down on both sides it is just a shame to be bottle feeding the baby. So we put Alley in a kidding pen the minute those babies were born so we could ensure that both kids had plenty of time to find those elusive teats. Of course it was the coldest day we had experienced since last winter but we were excited and motivated to help her and her two beautiful 10 pounders, one paint, and one traditional. Both boys were born ready to eat and within 30 minutes were up and hunting vigilantly for that milk…of course they were everywhere from her chest in front of her legs to all the way past the back legs but that long low udder just wasn’t a place they had hit anywhere close to yet.
Richard and I decided we were going to make sure they tasted that sweet ambrosia in hopes it would motivate them to keep searching so he held her (Have you ever noticed that problem does are never tame!) and I made sure the colostrum was flowing and then tried to hold each of the kids on the teat. The traditional boy got a squirt of milk in his mouth and even though he lost the teat when I let it go and it dropped six inches he was dedicated to finding it again and immediately resumed the search. The Paint refused to open his mouth when I put him on the teat and each time I would reach up to help by squirting the milk in his mouth the little corker would turn his head away..so he had milk everywhere on his face EXCEPT his mouth. I finally gave up and called for the bowl to milk a little colostrum out and fed both babies a bit with a syringe and then smeared a bit on her teats in hopes they would stumble on it and make the connection…and sure enough within a few minutes the traditional buck had. Not that paint though. I asked Richard if she was standing up when he was born. I thought maybe landing on his head could explain his apparent slowness.
The next day after several attempts at syringe feeding and trying to hold that mama and put him on the teat I decided I might as well fix a bottle and resign myself to another bottle baby. It took both of us to force that bottle in his little mouth and we basically were force feeding him. He was fighting and turning his head from side to side. We got a couple of ounces down him and decided maybe we were wrong and his mama was feeding him when we weren’t looking; either way we figured that would be enough to keep him from starving and maybe he would be more interested in a couple of hours. That little boy jumped right down and rushed to his mother’s front leg, yep still confused, Mom took one sniff and pushed him away and said the equivalent in goat talk of “go to bed boy, you aren’t gonna come over here and try to suck”.
I decided I didn’t care how cold it got I was going to sit there and watch them until I saw him eat or until 4 hours had passed and feed him again.
Two hours later Ally woke up the other kid and fed him then tucked him back down with the paint but didn’t wake him up to feed him.
Sometime after that when I was so cold I couldn’t feel feet or hands stinky the skunk came slinking within two feet of me --all I could do was hold in a scream and hope she kept walking because my feet were way too numb to allow me to run away. Lucky for me Stinky just gave me a dirty look, lifted her head and tail and marched on by, a woman on a mission.
Richard came in when it was time for the next feeding and I told him of my adventures and what a sorry mother Ally was for not feeding that baby when she fed his brother. We got the bottle out and tried to feed him again but he was getting stronger and we couldn’t feed him unless we were willing to tube him so we gave up and decided to wait in hopes he would be hungrier later. I was almost in tears that the silly boy wouldn’t eat and would probably starve to death when I gave up and with a last pat and kiss, set him on the ground back in the pen with Mom….He made a beeline for her and this time it wasn’t to the front leg! That boy ran straight to that teat and fell on his knees, and with the ease of someone who had been there before…latched on to that teat and proceeded to suck, all the while telling his mother about all the indignities we forced him to endure. Mom just gave a snort of disgust and I took my chastised self back to the house to thaw out. Obviously Mom had it under control and didn’t need my inept help.
Oh yeah, …that must be why we keep her in spite of that bag.

You Might Be A Goat Farmer

You might be a goat farmer ...if rain sends you hurrying from a restaurant in the middle of a meal.
You might be a goat farmer ...if your idea of a pedicure involves snips and a headlock.
You might be a goat farmer ...if your idea of recycling means sending your castoff furniture to the pasture.
You might be a goat farmer ...if you think any woman wearing clothes smaller than a size 10 needs a good dewormer.
You might be a goat farmer ...if your idea of romance involves a lot of huhuuing and lip curling.

older picture of Violet with a bottle baby

We have had 22 babies in June! Still have 2 or 3 does left to go and then no more babies till the end of Nov!

I've decided insanity might be a requirement for goat farming...

Being farming folk 10:00 p.m. is bedtime almost any night and especially during kidding season when getting up a few times during the night is just a fact of life. As we were settling down to sleep we heard a light rain begin to fall and since we have 7 babies less than a week old...we hopped out of bed, donned shoes and went out in our jammies to locate babies and make sure they were tucked in the barn. Congratulating ourselves on a job well done we were once more almost settled in bed in clean nightclothes when the rain began blowing in the window I keep cracked during kidding season to hear the calls for help more easily. Richard had gone back to the living room to turn out the light we had left on when the wind started whipping, lightening flashing, and thunder booming!!! It was a fireworks display to rival any 4th of July display at the Wright City Rodeo!
"Are we under a tornado alert?" he called from the front room. That seemed to be the sign the heavens were waiting for! The rain sarted coming down in a driving sheet to add to the fireworks display which was the only thing still visible more than 6 inches in front of your face. We both grabbed shoes and off we went again. Any 6 year old knows one doesn't go out into that kind of lightening but I kept trying to reassure myself that at least I was wearing rubber shoes!
Richard ran to the truck to make a circle and check the outbuilding and make sure no goats were out in the rain. He came back and shouted to ask me if that was goat in the middle of the pasture. I couldn't even see what he was talking about but I could see a cluster of white bodies, our prize year old doelings, complete with one of my last year bottle babies huddled under a TREE of all things. What I couldn't see was the shelter they were supposed to be under!!! I kept pointing my flashlight in that direction trying to make it magically appear. I still can't believe how long it took me to realize that it wasn't there. But realizing that seemed to unfreeze my legs and they took me in a direction I couldn't even believe I was going! I grabbed the closest bucket as a bribe and started off at as much of run as I could go with the wind and rain pushing me along TOWARD the goats huddled under the tree. Richard went to open the gates that would allow them to get to the big barn and then came to assist me in my stupidity!
neither of us could get those goats that will normally do anything for a morsel of food to budge from the perilous shelter of that tree!
Realizing that lightening strikes all around should probably tell us something along with the body of the one poor doeling lying in the middle of the pasture stone cold dead, we eventually gave up but not before our clothes were so wet and heavy my pants were sliding off from the weight! Richard had the flashlight so I grabbed up my bottle baby on the way back to the house!!!!! Yep, it is true that when you are frightened you can do strange things!! That girl weighs really close to a 100 pounds if not over and I picked her up and carried her at least 50 feet! Fifty feet INTO the wind and rain that had helped my journey out to the tree. Blinded by the rain because this was the one night that I had actually taken my contacts out and my glasses were useless! Richard was trying to get me to give the goat to him but it finally dawned on me that I was bonkers so I put her down and dragged her another 50 feet, by that time the poor girl had decided we were crazy and it was closer to the house than back to the tree, so she happily ran with us the rest of the way.
Yep you got it. We really did bring a year old goat right into the house with us. And yes I dried her off before I dried myself!
For a horror story this one does have a somewhat happy ending. As soon as the lightening stopped and the rain let up to just a steady downpour the other girls made their way to the main barn without any assistance except for needing to be led the last part of the way and helped with the barn door and yes I did take the bottle baby to join them in the barn and Richard and I are back in the house making the attempt to get to sleep one more time! And me, well I know that once more we are blessed...
The barn that blew away...it is a mangled mess in my neighbors pasture, although I really don't know how bad it actually is but I suspect that Portahut is a goner ..but who cares...at least all the goats but one made it!
Just another day in the life of the crazy goat woman and her husband.

Dylan drives the tractor

Richard and Dylan went for a tractor drive to check the fencelines and so Dylan could learn how to drive. Tamara says he always wants to drive the truck and they ask him if he has his driver's license?
They had a blast but since Dylan was really doing the steering we had to patch a small hole in the fence afterwards. They were happy to report that the fence was in really good shape all the way around...before they passed by!
It was a small hole though and when Dylan gets his real driver's license we'll have something to tease him about and the patch in the fence to prove it!

Kidding thrills and chills...

My last year's bottle baby is going to kid...just any time.
Yesterday her udder was strutted and she was calling her kid. That should have meant she would kid within 24 hours but I guess her mother didn't tell her how this business was supposed to work....oh wait, that would be me!!!
So knowing that she might be a bit under prepared since she was a bottle baby and spent the first month of her life in my living room and all the other rooms once she learned to escape her crate...I've been checking on her regularly, at least once an hour.
I've decided the old adage about a "watched pot never boils" is true. However, there are still benefits to my attention to her needs.
This just happens to be the day we decided to clean the main barn for the first time since Winter has passed. Now our barn is 40X80 and while much of it can be cleaned by tractor there are the kidding pens, all the edges and small areas that have to be cleaned the old-fashioned way...with a pitchfork, barn shovel, and 2 foot metal rake and since I have chosen not to learn to drive the tractor guess who gets the privilege of manning the pitchfork!
But since I "had" to go spend a few minutes watching Isis, the mother-to-be, each hour to make sure she wasn't showing any signs of labor, I managed to sneak in a short break that my loving husband missed. I think that is only fair since I'm older than he is! :)
Amazing that even with all those breaks my poor old body feels like someone beat me up when I wasn't looking. And tomorrow will probably be even worse! Gotta learn to drive that tractor or potty train these goats!! :)

Heifer International

Okay, I know my posts are usually much more lighthearted but I wanted to share this. Richard and I have actually officially decided to give to Heifer International and made our first donation. This program has always appealed to me much more than more conventional charities because they are not...Instead of sending money each month to "support a child" they advocate teaching the people to support themselves. I find that exciting. Giving people a chance at a better life and at the same time allowing them to pass that chance on to others.
I missed the April Pass it on month but since everybody knows I'm a bit behind...I'll just "pass it on" in May!

Cat Scratch Fever...

If you have 140 goats on 20 acres you are going to have to supplement them with feed. And if you have feed sitting around then you are going to have mice...
So we weren't too concerned when a neighbor moved off a year ago and left us with a mama cat and her little white kitten. It was even cute when she had more kittens a few months later, six this time. After all, the first white kitten had gone the way of any pet you actually WANT to keep--Cat heaven.
We were so proud of her mice-catching ability and glad to see that her kittens were gaining the same prowess until my daughter who is much more knowledgeable about animals than I am, announced that Mama Cat was going to have more kittens, prefaced by, "I thought you were going to have Mama Cat fixed."
"I am," I said, "I've just been busy". Well needless to say she was right and I had waited too long and so Mama Cat greeted us the other day with 5 new baby kittens.
This blessed event happened a couple of days after somebody had dumped three dogs at our driveway so I was feeling a little overwhelmed. This put me over 150 months to feed when you counted the goats, dogs, cats and us.
We decided we would ask everybody we knew if they wanted a dog. Instead one lady said she would like to have a couple of mousers. Well, we could sure fix her up.
I smiled at Richard's need for my superior cat-catching skills when he said he tried to catch one and it scratched him and got away. The secret, I told him, was about feeding them in the big cage we have for transporting a single goat and then we would move the ones we wanted into the small dog crate to deliver.
Food got all the cats in the cage and I smugly opened the door and removed the ones that weren't taking a trip; one at a time. While some of them tried to run away from me since there was still food in the cage, I didn't get a single scratch.
My loving husband asked if we should go ahead and move the two destined for a new home to the smaller crate but they were munching away on the remaining food so I decided, in my great wisdom, that we would leave them in the larger cage overnight.
That was where my plan took a wicked turn. Those cats plotted all night about how to get back at us for leaving them trapped in the cage. I caught the first cat by surprise and popped him in the crate with hardly a hiss and scratch. The next one was a different story...you've heard about a tiger by the tail...well trust me, I think a cat might be just as bad. Not only was it clawing my arms and biting me...I couldn't get it OFF! A leech doesn't have anything on that cat!!!
Needless to say the lady had to settle for one mouser and I had to go to work and confess I had been attacked by my cat!
My friends were quick to point out that cat scratches were very dangerous and could result in cat scratch fever and I should hurry to the Dr. for a tetanus shot which I did, only to hear from the Dr. after she gave me the shot, that tetanus was less of a problem than cat scratch fever...which the shot didn't protect me from!
So now my scratches and bite marks are starting to fade away but at least for the next couple of days I won't be able to forget my less than noble experience because of the sore shoulder I'm still sporting from my tetanus booster!
To add insult to injury instead of getting proper sympathy from my daughter---she asked in true wonder---"didn't you use a towel to grab it?"
...Now why didn't I think of that!!!

King of the Goat Kingdom

This is my grandson Dylan, on his 3rd birthday! He was checking out the new buck!

Feb-Mar Kidding Season Ends

It's sad when even kidding runs behind like the rest of my life. We finished up our Feb./Mar. kidding season April 1st when Vanna White had twin solid white girls! I couldn't decide if she was just trying to be on schedule with the rest of my life or if that was her idea of an April Fools joke. Anyway, the girls are wonderful! Twinkie twins that look like fluffy little furballs.
I am thinking that we should consider having all our kids in Feb. we've had 43 kids this kidding season and I realized when a customer called looking for a Feb. wether that ours are about all sold! It's amazing..they aren't even weaned yet and people have already paid for them. It's a strange thing, we're so busy during kidding that we both stay about 1/2 rumdum but I realized looking at the kidding page that the available Feb. kids are disappearing like snow on a warm day! Good thing I didn't have time to get attached to them or I would be sad. Instead all I can do is heave a hugh sigh of relief that perhaps soon it won't require a tractor and bushhog to feed the goats. Yes, I know that makes no sense but as the number of goats multiplied so did the amount of feed required. We have been feeding 300 lbs of feed a day and after graduating from 5 gal. buckets to 33 gal. tubs that required a dolly to move them from pen to pen...we've finally moved on up to the heavy equipment. We just load the bulk bags on the front forks of the tractor which Richard drives...the 33 gal. tubs...well they make a great seat for yours truly on the bushhog!
Guess I better get going, I hear the tractor starting, don't wanna miss my ride!

Feeding goats

Taking a bucket into a pasture full of goats is a life-changing experience at any time but when we've received 4 inches of rain in 12 hours it is much worse...since goats HATE water they have been inside and haven't had a morsel of food for the entire time it has been raining.
Yesterday evening I was sure that my 16 does and their 30 something 2 month old kids in one pen were probably starving so I was going to be their hero, their savior, and take them a bucket of feed. Of course, as expected, I was immediately mobbed but I had a head start on them since they were having to run from the barn, what a sight to behold! They were spread out like an oncoming army!
I rushed into the feeding pen, ran from trough to trough filling them as I slopped through water and mud up to my ankles, hurrying to finish and throw the bucket over the fence before they arrive because being caught with the bucket is like being a fumbled football..you have huge players attacking from all sides. I was winning...I know I could have made it ...but one of the troughs was set on a small slope...when my shoes hit the ground they just kept sliding...if I'd been a truck It would have required a tractor to get me unstuck but as it was that mud just sucked me down up to my ankles and with the forward momentum halted I was flat of my back in 4 inches of mud before I even knew what had happened...The goats were almost upon me though so I threw that bucket as far as I could...think goodness goats are predictable and they went chasing the bucket that should have contained their feed.
I used that short respite to drag myself back to my feet and holding to the trough like a lifeline to keep from sliding back down that slick slope, made my way safely to the gate carrying a few pounds of mud and a few new bruises with me.
Once the goats realized the bucket was empty they rushed back to the troughs happily munching their way through the bucket of feed...and to add insult to injury, not a single one of them slid on the mud!!!

Taking the Kids to School

It’s a good thing Mary had a little lamb and not a couple Boer kids following her to school. A local early childhood center asked me to bring some goats to visit because the students were studying the letter “G”. They had read a cute story and sang an adorable song about “Gus the Goat”! So, since I was locked in an endless round of bottles with two bottle babies, a girl that was only a week old and a boy that was almost 3 months old, and since they were both well socialized and I was sure they would enjoy being petted and adored by a bunch of children, I said yes. And when it was raining the day we were scheduled to visit I even agreed with the teachers that it would probably be okay, as long as they put down butcher paper to protect the carpet.
But you know what they say, "No matter how good your kids are at home, just get them in front of a bunch of people where you want them to act their best and they will embarrass you every time!"
I somehow had not noticed that my darling bottle boy Redtail who was almost three months old had become quite big and "goaty". All that hanging out with the boys since he's been back in the barn.
A month ago I took him to the vet and he whined to go out every time he needed a bathroom break but put him in a carpeted classroom with 4-year-olds and he forgets that he's supposed to be potty trained. My little darling apparently was extremely frightened of all his little admirers. Now anybody will tell you that goats often have stomach disorders when they are under stress. And we went from goat berries to puddles by the time we were on the way out the door..luckily OFF the carpet!
Now this was not really something he could control and would have been part of an excellent learning experience had he not also decided that they would be VERY impressed by his ability to extend himself! Yep, I mean "that"!! I guess the other billy goats think he is smart and grown-up when he shows them that trick.
Luckily, I put a leash on his collar so I was able to keep him from showing them the other neat things he could do. I tried to hide it by distraction and moving him to another position and the teacher said the children didn't notice or they would have definitely pointed it out.
The little girl was VERY much in her element since she is sure she is a human girl too! Except that she ISN'T potty trained and piddled twice on the carpet of course!
Needless to say I'm praying for good weather next year when I take goats to school so that we can be outside. I guess their misdeeds were much more traumatic to me than to anybody else because the teachers were quite pleased with their performance.
...Just another day in the life of a goat farmer!