Memorial Painting

My memorial painting of Paloma with her sweet, deceased pet baby goat Stormy. I’m not a good painter by any means - in fact at some point during every attempt at painting I am convinced I am the worst painter in all of North America and I want to set my painting on fire and then set myself on fire as well. But my merit as a painter - or lack thereof - is distinctly secondary to any comfort I might be able to bring to my baby girl. 

I hope she likes this painting, and I hope she chooses to put it up in her room and I hope it brings her a little bit of relief from grief. But even if not, making it was good exercise for me. 

Letter to the Vetrinarian

I got the results of the necropsy on Sunshine. Here is the letter I wrote to my vet's office:



To whom it may concern:

On Monday April 11th, I brought in two goat kids to be disbudded. Dr. A* performed the operation. The kids did not respond well, and the following day - yesterday - I called and spoke to Dr. J* regarding my concerns. I followed her advice, but alas, this morning, I found the doeling dead and the buckling quite depressed. I called in, and when Dr. A* was informed she told me to bring in both kids at any time and the boy would be treated and the girl examined. Dr. J* saw my buckling, and treated him with banamine, antibiotics, and subcutaneous fluids. I am happy to report he is doing much better as of this evening.

Dr. A* called me with the results of the necropsy and told me quite frankly that the baby appeared to have died of a brain hemorrhage and it appeared that thermal damage was the cause. She apologized and let me know that my disbudding fee would be refunded and that there would be no fee for the buckling's treatment.

I am writing to let you know that my confidence in Dr. A* is totally unshaken, and that I in no way, shape, or form blame her for my doeling's death. I was present during the operation - as I have been at many others previously - and her technique was faultless. Both kids appeared to recover from anaesthesia quickly and unremarkably. I do not believe that anything Dr. A* did was responsible for my doeling's death - on the contrary, I am sure it was due to some small idiosyncrasy of her anatomy. These things happen occasionally and they are nobody's fault, but simply the result of chance.

I will continue to request Dr. A* as the primary doctor for my goats, and I will continue to recommend her to my friends and neighbors.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Aimee Day

This One Really Hurts (Bad Year for Baby Goats)

Sunshine is dead. She was the doeling from Flopsy's triplets. The prettiest goat, the one we had decided to keep, the spotty doeling I've been waiting for for years.

I took her and her brother in to be disbudded the day before yesterday. Sunshine's buds were still quite small, but her brother's were getting so big I was afraid to wait longer. The vet checked sunshine and decided she wasn't too small and we could disbud her too. All seemed to go well; they woke up from the anaesthesia in good time, were given banamine for the pain, and were walking around and nursed when I got them home.

But the next day, yesterday, they didn't look good at all, especially Sunshine. They were lethargic, trembling, and not nursing well. It looked they were suffering from brain swelling - this happened once before and I recognized the signs. That time, though, the baby had been disbudded by a farmer, not a vet. That is the main reason I brought them to the vet this time, despite the expense. I called the vet back and was given instructions to give her aspirin at 100 mg/kg, or about 500 mg. I crushed up two aspirin (650 mg), dissolved it in a few ounces of milk, and gave her three quarters of the milk, approximately. I very much doubt she received more than 400 mg. I closed her and her brother up with Flopsy in the mama barn, waited until I had seen her nursing, and went to bed.

This morning she was stiff and cold. She must have died in the middle of the night. Her brother doesn't look great, either. I called the vet back, of course, and we decided I will bring them both in and the boy can be examined and treated, and the girl autopsied so the vet can decide if she killed her accidentally or what.

I feel just terrible. The kids are going to be devastated. This one was going to be a pet.

Beautiful, Difficult Day (Beating Myself Up)

This morning dawned bright and clear, with that crystalline sharpness that follows a hard frost. On my way out to the animals, I could see my breath puffing out thick and cottony white. The water buckets were frozen over, and I knew I'd have to fill them with warm water from the house, because the hose would be frozen solid. The mountains were putting on a show, magnified, knife-edged, and blindingly white in the early morning sun.

The triplets had an appointment to get their horn-buds burned off, so I grabbed a big cardboard box and stuffed it full of clean hay. When I walked into the barn, Iris and two of her babies jumped and up and followed me, but the third baby lay limp and still on the straw. It was my favorite one; the littlest doeling with the big white patch on top of her head. I thought she was dead when I picked her up; her head lolled obscenely and her legs were stiff and cold. Then she bleated and began to make feeble paddling motions. Her head was bent back sharply over her spine and her eyes were upward-turned and glazed. To me, it looked like she'd had some sort of major neurological event. It also looked like she was dying.

As I already had an appointment 30 minutes hence, I simply bundled her into the box along with her siblings and set out for the vet. The box full of goats was on the passenger seat next to me; I could see that the healthy babies were trampling their sick little sister. That made me feel ill, so I pulled over and picked up the baby and cuddled her against my belly as I drove. It was shocking how cold she was. She did not have the warmth of life in her at all. If she hadn't occasionally bleated, I would have thought she had expired.

Arriving at the vet's, I explained the situation and sat down to wait while they took her in the back. It was hypothermia. To make a long story short, my little goat had frozen in the cold snap - while her siblings had not- because she was the runt. As the smallest, weakest animal since birth, she couldn't fight her way to the teat as often as the others. She wasn't getting enough calories to maintain her body temperature when the mercury dropped thirty points. The vet fully expected her to be dead in a very short time - he told me her heart was only beating once every twenty seconds. Nonetheless, he bundled her up under heat lamps with hot water bottles on either side of her thin little rib cage, and she kept breathing - twice every minute or so. She just kept breathing. After an hour (during which we burned the horn buds off of the other two babies), he told me she was sitting up on her chest and her temperature had risen to 98 degrees. Twenty minutes earlier her temperature had been too low for the thermometer to register. It goes down to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. She has demonstrated a suck reflex and taken an ounce of milk through a syringe. The vet suggested I name her "Lazarus."

He asked me if her mother was thin - and I had to admit that yes, Iris is quite thin. I have noticed that this year her bag never did really fill out the way I would like. A heavy blanket of guilt settled over my shoulders as I realized that this was all my fault. I haven't been supplementing the pregnant does with as much grain as they need, because it is such a damn hassle - all four goats crowd me and push and shove with such strength that they have actually knocked me over more than once - and I am not a lightweight. What I do is shovel up about two pounds of "Super Goat" grain and set the dish out on the ground and let them shove each other around until it's gone. I don't know who is getting how much, but clearly, Iris hasn't been getting enough because she isn't producing enough milk for three babies. Last year she easily did. The new protocol is to lock Iris and the remaining babies in the Mama Barn for at least another week, where they will stay warmer and not waste a lot of energy keeping their temperatures up. I bought a few bales of high quality alfalfa and Iris has access to as much as she likes for the next few days.

Meanwhile, Lazarus (Lizzie for short) is in a box next to a space heater in our bedroom. I put an ad on Craigslist looking for goat's milk and heard from a kind gentlemen right away who gave me some free of charge. Lizzie is taking the warmed milk 5 cc's at a time through a syringe. I have some nipples and tomorrow I will try her on a bottle.

Here's the thing. Any warm-blooded animal whose heart beat only once every twenty seconds for a couple of hours straight is likely to have sustained quite a bit of brain damage. Indeed, Lizzie is "acting neurological -", pointing her head upwards and staring, yawning, and falling over. The vet was honest with me; he said that he could keep her overnight, pump her full of fluids, do his damndest... but... truth to tell, he didn't think it was worth it. Her chances of making a full recovery were very slight. "However," he said, "I thought she'd be dead six hours ago, so you never know. Sometimes they surprise you."

"I appreciate your candor," I said, "but to be honest... oh this sounds so bad... I'm not in the business of keeping invalid goats alive."

"I totally get it." he said. "Why don't you call me on Monday and if she hasn't made major improvements, I'll put her down for you."

And there we are. I fucked up. I didn't feed my pregnant doe right; I didn't pay close enough attention to how the babies were doing; I didn't read the weather report, and now I have a brain-dead goat to show for it. A perfectly lovely little doeling who was as healthy as a horse yesterday afternoon. Now she will either live or die but never be the same, and her suffering is due to my laziness and stupidity. If she has to be killed on Monday, I will have killed her. If she lives a diminished life, I will have diminished it.

Meanwhile, I am sitting here resenting the fact that I have to get up every three hours during the night to feed her. I am incorrigible.

Gimpy Goat and No More Milk

This is Django. She is one of the original three goats we bought when we moved here, and now she is the only La Mancha I have (La Manchas are the earless goats. Nobody cut off her ears: it's just her breed.). Django has always been a good goat - good mother, good milker, about as easy-going as a goat gets. She did get terribly ill a couple of years ago after getting into the grain, but she recovered and has been pretty healthy ever since. She had triplets this past year.

Yesterday when I went out to do the chores, I saw something awful. Django appears to have a dislocated shoulder. One of her shoulder blades is depressed downwards and if I lay my palm on the place where it ought to be I can feel the bone socket. Her elbow is rather radically displaced - down and to the side. Nonetheless, she is getting around okay. I called the vet, of course, and as I was trying to explain exactly where the dislocation was, Django kept running away from me. As James Herriot said in his wonderful book All Creatures Great and Small, if you can't catch your patient you've probably got little to worry about. She was browsing normally and later on chewing her cud. She didn't cry when I manipulated the joint.

The vet said that he's seen this before, and never had any luck trying to manually replace the bone. He said an operation would be the only option. Well, I said, it's not an option for us... do you think she'll recover on her own? Is this a very painful condition? He said that it was unlikely the joint would "pop back in" on it's own, but that over the next few months she would develop a false joint and be more or less normal. She would look funny and probably never quite keep up with the herd, but once the joint stabilized she would get around fine. It's hard to tell how much pain a goat is in, they are very stoic animals, but it's a good sign that she's chewing her cud. He said it's a good thing it's the foreleg; hind leg displacements are more problematic and could interfere with kidding.

So we aren't going to do anything. This morning she jumped on and off the milking stand just like usual. She is interacting with the other goats and seems pretty normal, except for that weird elbow thing. I'll just keep an eye on her and watch for worsening mobility or signs of pain. If she does get worse, we'll have to make a decision then.

Also, all the goats are more or less dry. I got about a cup of milk from each one, and that's just not worth it. Most likely they are all pregnant and so I'll just stop milking until next spring.

Cheese season is over at last!

Great Goat (Manly Food)!

Yesterday, I made goat for dinner.

Obviously, we have eaten some of our goats before. We have butchered kids two years in a row now, and every time we have eaten some of the meat. But this past butchering was the first time we actually put a whole goat in the freezer. Before that, we sold the kids to people who butchered them on site and then took the meat away for a big party (to which we were invited). See Goat Butchering Party.

Although I cooked a leg of goat on the day of slaughter for the men who were butchering, I had not removed any of the meat from the freezer to cook until last night. I was a little reluctant. It's funny - every time I have eaten goat, I liked it. "Hey, that's not too bad," was my reaction, and sometimes "man, that's really good!" Yet, I never got over the faint distaste I felt when I raised it to my lips and opened my mouth. The thought of eating goat was what I disliked - I'm not sure if it had more to do with the fact of being present for the butchering or with having known the individual animals, or with goat being a "non-food animal" for Americans.

Whatever the problem was, it's all over now. The leg of goat I made last night was probably the single best-tasting piece of meat I've ever eaten in my life. There is one steak from a steakhouse in St. Louis that I remember as being a serious contender, but actually, I think this goat was better.

Goat needs long, slow cooking, I've decided, at least, our goat does. Here's what I did last night:

Braised Goat, Yucateco Style

1 3-4 pound piece of goat (the piece I used was labeled "loin" but I think that was wrong. I think it was actually a substantial section of hind leg.)

Thaw meat if frozen and place in a big ziploc.

In a big mortar and pestle or in the blender, blend together 4 cloves garlic, several allspice berries, several whole cloves, 3/4 tsp cumin seed, ditto peppercorns, 1 tsp salt, pinch red pepper flakes, big pinch thyme, tablespoon olive oil, tablespoon achiote paste, 1.5 cups orange juice, juice of one lime, a half can or so beer (lager) and a tablespoon of cider vinegar. Add a branch of rosemary to the bag (do not blend rosemary in blender). Put marinade in the bag with the meat and let rest 3-4 hours, turning as needed.

No later than 3 in the afternoon, put goat with all the marinade into a large baking dish. Quarter three yellow onions and add to dish. Bake, uncovered, at 325 for 2 hours. Baste occasionally, and turn the meat over once (if the shape of the roast allows this). If marinade thickens too much, loosen with orange juice.

At about 2 hours, test the meat with two forks to see if it pulls away from bone easily. It should be starting to shred. At this point, add to dish (all veggies diced into 1/2" dice) 1 large carrot, one large stick celery, and 1 large potato. Make sure veggies are all coated with juices and leave to bake approximately 1 hour more.

By 6 pm, the meat should be falling apart, the veggies tender, and everyone salivating from the incredible aroma. Serve meat with white rice and lots of fresh hot corn tortillas. This was just out-of-this-world mind blowingly good.

I think I'll try goat ribs next.

State of the Farm, Late Summer

Django eating thistles. The goats do eat thistles, but not with great enthusiasm and not nearly enough of them to make a dent in the great sea of thistles that covers 75% of my pasture.

Marcus says this is fire blight on the pear tree. (I don't why everything is underlined now. I can't fix it. To hell with it.) All the pear trees have it to some degree. I may have to spray. I think Marcus said sulfur. Anybody?

The roses like the hot dry weather. They are blooming for the third time this year.

My plum tree is bearing. First year! I thought the plums would never get ripe, but finally they are turning purple.

Poppy is growing like a weed. She is taller than her mother already. She has learned to walk on a lead. She is the sweetest, most lovable pony! She runs up to me wherever I am and kisses me.

Mastitis

Flopsy has mastitis in her left teat. I'm taking her to the vet today. So far she's had two doses of IM penicillin and two doses of aspirin for a high fever. Can't milk out the teat. I think they're going to have to irrigate it (yuck.). 

Mastitis can be fatal if you ignore it. I'll keep y'all posted.

Cutest Baby Goat in History!

Flopsy's baby, born while I was at my sister's today. Why oh why oh why is it a boy???? 

Goodbye, Nutmeg.

Nutmeg was the very first baby born on the farm. Our first baby goat, by a minute or so, until his sister Flopsy was born. Our only boy, and a beautiful, beautiful boy. Often, after he grew up, we wished that we hadn't had him wetherized (castrated) because he had such pretty color and gorgeous conformation. 

Now we have another reason to regret it. Today, when I got home after picking the kids up from school, I let the goats out to graze. Nutmeg didn't run out with the rest of them, and when I looked at him, I knew something was very wrong. He was standing all hunched up with his head down and neck extended, and when I tired to make him move, he cried and fell over. He was shaking and stiff-legged. I called the vet and described the symptoms, and as I had feared, she said it sounded like urinary calculi.

That's kidney stones to you and me; not so serious in humans, but very often fatal in goats. Castrated males are particularly susceptible. They are not supposed to eat grain or foods high in calcium. We tried not to let Nutmeg have any grain, but he snatched some now and then, of course. I didn't realize that they were really not supposed to EVER have ANY grain, I thought that they just weren't supposed to have as much as the females. 

My sister, bless her heart, came up to help me transport him to the vet. I had only the small car at home and kids, too. We did what we could: the vet gave him valium to relax the urethra and lasix to make him pee, and when that didn't work, she preformed a very small operation. It sounds worse than it is: she removed the tip of his penis, which is the narrowest part of the urethra, and she said that if the stones were in that place, he would instantly be able to pass urine and be better.

But that didn't happen. The operation didn't help, and the only option left was a major operation to go after the stones much farther back near the bladder. That just didn't make sense. Much as I like him, Nutmeg is not a champion herd sire. He's a fifty-dollar goat. And the operation doesn't have an impressive success rate, anyway. And we're talking about money that I would hesitate before spending on a beloved dog, much less a (let's face it) useless farm animal.

So we put him down. He was suffering. 

I feel pretty bad. It's my fault that he ate as much grain as he did; I was lazy about holding him back until the does finished all of the grain. I let him eat some, as a treat. That's what we call killing with kindness. I won't be making that mistake again. In fact, I'm not sure we'll be keeping any wethers at all. Boys may just stay intact until they reach eating age at four months or so. But that's for another day. Right now, I'll just say a few words about Nutmeg.

Nutmeg was funny. He was cute and adorable, as all baby goats are. He made us laugh with his silly antics and he was everything a goat should be: a good jumper, a good climber, a head-butter and a leaper and a great eater-of-blackberries. I wish he had lived a long, healthy life. We'll miss you Nutmeg. Happy leaping and butting in the great green goat hills in the sky. 

Visiting Billy

Just to try and tie up any loose ends, I had my neighbor bring over her billy goat, Kramer. I'll get a picture of him up soon, because he is just the cutest little thing. If I were a doe goat, I'd be all over him like white on rice, but oh no, not my pack of nasty nannies. They butted him all to hell and gone, didn't even let him spend the night in the barn. Whenever I go out there, he tries to hide behind me. 

I'm just going to have to make do with however many goats are pregnant and quit stressing already.

I Hate Breeding Goats

Xana is back in heat, along with Django and her baby Valentine. So far, we've paid $150 in breeding fees and had two failures that we know of and two other does which may or may not have caught pregnant. Theoretically, we get our money back if they aren't pregnant after three heat cycles, but that's the whole breeding season, and then we won't have any baby goats in the spring. And baby goats - and milk - are the whole point of this stinkin' operation.

Digging Out

The mountains are out today, for the first time in well over a week. It's been one record breaking day after another here, temperatures down in the teens, wind chill factors of negative 20, and approximately two feet of snow. It's kind of hard to tell how much snow we got up here, because of the wind. I have bare patches and drifts up to my waist. I can't open the gate to the alpacas, because it's buried in a deep drift which has frozen solid. I'm passing their food and water over the top of the fence. To think, I should be in tropical paradise right now. Well, okay, sure: I should be in my mother-in-law's house in a city which is not on the beach. But it is the tropics, anyway. 
Iris wearing polar fleece. I put polar fleece vests on Iris and Django, my two skinny does, and it seems to have worked great. They have both started to put on weight, finally. I was feeding them hot cooked oatmeal with raisins, and that didn't help until I got the jackets on them. Iris has been bred again, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she took this time. Eeryone I know on Goatbeat (the goat-related forum I've joined) is having babies already, posting photos that just make me so jealous I could scream.
The front porch. 

Failed Goat Sex

Iris isn't pregnant. She is out there "flagging," waving her tail around to send a message to any nearby bucks that's she's ready and willing. She's also turned a lovely seashell pink back there and swollen up a bit... and the timing is right for her to come back into heat, so it's pretty certain she isn't pregnant. Drat. I wonder what the problem was? Avatar definitely did the deed several times, that wasn't the issue. We'll just have to try again, I guess.

Shock Happy

Hooray! The electric fence has been working for three whole days now! And the goats are starting to wise up. At first they were getting shocked right and left, especially Iris because she loves to climb the fences. I was so fed up with them I just laughed and laughed whenever I heard a big

"Ble-a-a-a-a-a-h!!" from their direction. Now I have to train myself not to touch the wire when I lean over the fence to feed them their grain.

Great Goat Escape

Nobody I know has the troubles I do with containing their livestock. Remember the chickens that almost started a neighborly feud? Remember when Xana kicked out a window of the barn and cut herself to ribbons? The piglet in the bathtub episode? 

Well, it's happening again. The goats are escaping. The twins were out yesterday, bleating to get back in, and tonight when I got home, four goats were out. The twins, Xana, and Iris! Iris is not a leaper, which makes me think they must have mashed the fence down somewhere, but it's too dark to see. I'll have to wait until morning. 

For now, I'll have to lock them in the big barn (and hope that Xana doesn't just kick out the other window!). I'm terrified of the highway that fronts our property. It's pretty well traveled at all times of night and people speed along at 65. The goats could all get mashed flat, and not only that, they could cause a dangerous accident. 

The lady who owns the buck I bred my does to this year is sending her husband tomorrow morning to help me get the fence working. Homero gave his consent for me to seek help elsewhere a couple of weeks ago, after a full day of failed-fence-fixing in the rain. I won't repeat his actual words here, but they were along the lines of "frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

Confused about Conception

I'm confused about whether or not my does are bred. Let's see, Xana was bred over the course of four days starting about November 12th. Iris was bred on the 17th, and Flopsy, if she was bred at all, was bred a few days later than that. 

It's far too early for them to be back in heat if they were not pregnant. Well, Xana possibly. It's been 16 days since she was bred. But way too early for Iris. However, they both look sort of like they might be. Xana has a puffy pink vulva, just like when she actually is in heat. And Iris hasa little bit of yellowish goo stringing down from her vulva and a messy tail. Flopsy is the only one who looks totally ordinary and boring under there. 

If they aren't pregnant, I have one more try on Xana and two more on Iris and Flopsy paid for, but why wouldn't they be? The buck is proven; Iris is proven, and Xana and Flopsy are both nice healthy does, no reason to suspect they wouldn't be fertile.

Aargh. Goats.

Funny Farm Fotos

Not much going on on the farm these days. Just keeping up with feeding six goats, three of them pregnant; three alpacas; a pony; and one very hungry pig. It's starting to freeze every night, so pretty soon I'll be carrying warm water from the house and walking back with frozen pant legs. Can't wait. So far the hose is still working, long may it run!

My camera is still broken, likely to remain that way, so here are a few funny fotos gleaned from the collection on the computer.

          Old fashioned toys: the rock and the stick. The kids independently discover the fulcrum.

                        

                                    Portrait of an alpaca. Benji withstands the weather. 

Teaching the goats tricks. Up!

The goats are tired of doing tricks. Give us that grain, boy!

Goat attack!!!!!

Successful Goat Sex!

Yesterday we went to pick up Xana from the breeder, and brought Iris and Flopsy to be bred by the same buck. We hung around for a while talking and watching to see how things went. Iris was definitely in heat. Avatar got one whiff and wasted no time. 

This was my first observation of goat sex. It's absurdly hilarious. Avatar, a manly man if ever there was one, began by striking manly poses. He stuck out his hind legs, twisted his head sideways and froze into place like a Mr. Universe contestant. He gazed intently at Iris and advanced gradually, apparently trying to mesmerize her like Christopher Walken playing that scary European roue on Saturday Night Live. Finally he pranced up to Iris and began "blubbering," that is, flapping his tongue like a drunken frat boy at her ears, legs, and vulva until she decided he was sufficiently macho to father her babies and stood for him. 

The actual deed takes less than two seconds and appears to be rather painful for the doe. Avatar "closed the deal" at least three times in the twenty minutes we were chatting, and most likely we could have taken her home right then and there. However, Flopsy needs a day or two in the presence of Avatar's funky billy goat hormones in order to come into heat, and I thought she'd be happier and more comfortable with her mom around. Flopsy seemed to be in love with another buck, Kramer, but I want Avatar to breed her too. I feel awful about it though. She's so young and innocent and pretty, and I'm letting her be ravaged by this gigantic hairy cabron. I feel like I've just locked up a fourteen year old virgin in a brothel. 

Xana Update

Xana has been successfully bred! Well, of course I don't know if she's pregnant yet, but my friend told me she'd seen the buck mount at least six or seven times, and that Xana was in full standing heat. Now the buck is ignoring her, so either she's bred or has gone out of heat. Breeder says if she didn't take after four days with this proven buck, then she's not fertile. 

She also said "no offense, but that is hands down the most obnoxious goat I've ever seen. I'd definitely have eaten her if she were mine."