I can't keep Storm Cloud. He is the most beautiful goat on the face of the earth, but I can't. Bucks are just too troublesome. Even if I could use him to service all my does, which I can't, he still wouldn't be worth the trouble.
Bucks can't be left to run with the does year round. They must be separated for a good part of the year: separated from does which they aren't allowed to breed during breeding season, and separated from any pregnant or recently kidded does. If allowed, they will breed pregnant does, possibly causing abortions, and if allowed, they will breed does who have recently kidded, possibly causing injury and infection. They will also breed does who are too young to safely carry a kid to term. In fact, they will breed just about anything, anytime, anywhere.
To accomplish their evil aims, they will go over, under, around and through well-built fences, much less the teetery, tottery, tilted fences we have at our place. A healthy buck would destroy every fence on our property in short order.
Housing a buck separately would mess up the worm plan, effectively reducing my pastures from three to two.
Bucks stink, in season. If you have never inhaled the incredibly potent aroma of rutting buck balls, count yourself lucky. The smell clings to your clothes, your hair, to the very crevices of your brain for hours. I already walk around town smelling like chicken shit and horse sweat: do I really want to add another layer of funk to my personal perfume?
And the final nail in the coffin: while in rut, bucks will taint the milk of my lactating does, causing it to take on a faint, funky shadow of their own stench. Lest I forget, let me remind myself that milk is the whole point of this operation. Cheese. Yogurt. Kefir. Delicious, creamy, pure-as-the-driven-snow white milk.
I can't keep the world's prettiest goat. I'll have to just enjoy him while he's an adorable baby and try to sell him to somebody nearby, so that I can use him to breed back to next year.
4 comments:
What about eating him?
Mention that one more time and I'm coming through the computer to eat YOU.
It was actually an honest question though: aren't you planning to eat some of the goats? You've talked about meat goats. Or are those just to sell the meat? I mean, you could castrate him, let him grow to a good weight, and have meat, right?
Am I missing something?
You haven't been reading the blog. I've been wringing my hands about eating the goats for weeks now. We are definitely eating goats. I have four babies: two of them have already been designated as meat and everybody knows it. Another one might be meat, although I'd probably have to hide it from the kids because they watched him be born and are extremely attached to him. The last one - this one - I'm going to try really hard to sell as an intact buck. If I can't, I might actually keep him just for his sheer beauty. Homero offered to build me a separate buck pen. We'll see.
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