Goodbye to a Great Goat (The End of an Era)

 

    Iris gives the girls an early sex ed lesson, farm style

My first goat was Iris, a beautiful Nubian about a year and a half old, a first freshener. I bought a pregnant goat because I absolutely couldn’t wait another year for babies. 

Iris (short for Arcoíris, which means rainbow in Spanish) was a very fancy registered purebred from a farm with lots of grand champions to their credit. I really didn’t care about that, I just loved spotted Nubians. But breeding will out, and Iris turned out to be a truly outstanding goat in almost every way. 

The kids she threw were gorgeous, year after year. She almost never needed any assistance, and was a very good mom. She had a beautiful udder, easy to milk, and gave about a gallon of delicious sweet milk a day. She stood for milking, too, and jumped on the stand without fuss. Her hooves were good. She was seldom sick. But most of all, she was smart. 

Iris was one of the few goats that obviously knew her name. She could unlatch gates, be they barred or closed with a hook and eye. We had to use carabiners to keep her out of the feed shed. The undisputed herd queen, she led the herd for a good ten years, remembering which trees on the property fruited in which season and where to find the best new shoots and flowering twigs. She was affectionate and loving. Iris was a wonderful animal and a friend. 

Iris was fifteen this year, which is very very old for a dairy goat. As she got old, the worms which plague every dairy goat started getting the best of her, and she became very thin and frail. No matter how much grain and alfalfa we fed her, she kept losing weight. The other goats began to bully her, and knock her down. 

When we found her out in the field, knocked over and unable to stand up, we knew it was time. In fact if the truth be known I probably waited too long. She was suffering; I just didn’t want to say goodbye. After I brought out the girls to say goodbye, and after I stroked her and fed her some grain out of my palm, and after I shed a few tears, Homero went and got the gun and that was that. 

Iris, beautiful spirit, thank you for all the happiness you brought into my life. Thank you for for sharing your grace and your beauty with us. Thank you for the adorable kids you birthed. Thank you for your milk, which nourished our bodies and nourished my mind too, as I learned to make cheese and grew in my craft. Thank you for being a good goat. I loved you. 

        

                                   Herd Queen 

A girl and her goat in happier times.