Valentine Goats: They're in the Mood for Love Simply Because I Said So

After using up the last of my frozen goats milk, I realized that if I ever wanted to have it again I would need to get somebody knocked up. I dried off Lucy at the beginning of December since her production had gone down to a cup and a half per day, which didn't seem worth the effort anymore. She had a great run though. Usually goats stay in milk for 10 months; Lucy went 15.

This time around, I really want to get Ethel preggers. She has failed to settle (conceive) twice now, once with a buck named Flapjack in Lake County and once with Lucy's son, Fred. In order to boost the girls' fertility, I gave them both an injection of BoSe, a selenium and vitamin E cocktail that is said to regulate the lady goat cycles. I then sent them off to Prundale where Fred now resides.

Remember Fred? He is such a manly man now, I hardly recognized him. Isn't he gorgeous? 

Fred is as wily as he has always been, if not more so. For a period of time, he lived with Pam of Peaceful Valley Farm along with his sister, Ginger, but he kept busting out of all the fences. Pam re-homed him to Leslie's little farm in Prunedale, where he continues his escapades of breaking fences and entering places he doesn't belong, like Leslie's house... and in her bed. Nice, Fred. Real nice.

I wanted to give Fred one more go with Ethel as I thought they would make some cute babies together. Ethel has been acting like she has been in heat for about two months straight and as soon as we arrived at the farm, Fred was VERY interested in her. So interested that he didn't even recognize his own mama. Have you ever seen a goat buck woo? The courtship involves a lot of knickering, tongue waggling, and raspberries (a.k.a. the Bronx cheer) being blown all about the doe's face and neck. Here's Fred off to a good start

By the time I left, Fred had given it to her at least 10 times in less than 20 minutes. Poor Ethel was done by that point, as can be seen here

Can't you just hear her crying "Help, get me away from that sex maniac!"? Too bad, lady. You need to make some babies!

While Ethel and Fred get busy, Lucy's intended is this gorgeous white pygmy (possibly a Nigerian cross), Ozzie. Here he is with Leslie. Is he not the most adorable buck you have ever seen?

The hair kills me. I immediately nicknamed him Ozzball.

Well let's hope the girls make some good love connections. We are desperate. I am now having to *gasp* buy milk from the store.

How Embarrassing!

Awhile back, I was interviewed by *fair companies, a website with a ton of awesome videos and resources on sustainable culture. To tell you the truth, I had forgotten all about it until I received an email from the videographer, Kirsten Dirkson. I think we spent less than an hour shooting, which amazes me that they could turn out such a lengthy video with so little footage. What I love most about it is that it has a much more natural feel to it, in contrast to our more highly produced video for the Whole Food's Grow program. But OMG, I am so embarrassed by the state of my disheveled backyard and messy, cluttered refrigerator. And check out those "There's Something about Mary" bangs! I thought I was being so clever with that kerchief, hiding away the bad hair day. Total fail.

I read through some of the comments on YouTube and a common perception amongst viewers is that we keep our goats in a little prison like cell, which makes me so sad. *sigh* I swear to you, our goats have a good life. Yes, sometimes they get cooped up in the pen for too long, but they get access to the rest of the yard and the neighbor's. I have seen pens in the country with just as small of a space as we use for our girls. Don't forget, aside from terrorizing the backyard weeds and rose bushes, they also go for strolls around the neighborhood and canters through beautiful McLaren park.

Goodbyes Are Hard

Lucy was in a foul temper this morning. That makes two of us. I trotted out to the yard with the oh-so-bright idea that I would attempt milking her out completely by hand, but found myself more than a touch regretful when half way through the squeezing, Lucy planted a poo laden hoof into the milk pail. I leapt off of the milking stool erupting, "You fucking bitch!" I think the gaggle of teenagers at the bus stop (our yard looks over a main thoroughfare) overheard me as I could hear the snickers echoing up the hill "Who's she calling a bitch?" I could have kicked myself for being so cavalier, so presumptuous... so public with my colorful outbursts. Damn it, I knew better. Eh, Lucy did plenty of kicking for me. She coated my brand spanking new, totally awesome "Millions against Monsanto" t-shirt with a slime of crap and milk. I washed it off, but by early afternoon I detected a baby puke odor following me about.

I guess Lucy had a right to be upset; Fred and Ginger went to their forever home this weekend. Lucy's been agitated since they left. Even Ethel was miffed. I understand. We miss them too, even if they were only here for a short while. They're just so darn affectionate and adorable. But they've got great new digs down in Watsonville with Pam at Peaceful Valley Farm.

They will surely be happy there. Pam's got a great plot of land with all sorts of interesting residents, like this bantam frizzle,

these Polish ladies who, contrary to assumptions, are great layers,

this gorgeous roo, whom I wished I could have taken home but for that darn crowing issue,

and these cute-as-can-be turkey poults.

Chickens running around the yard is pretty pedestrian stuff to Pam. She grew up in the San Jose area where her mom always had a flock in the backyard. Her mother, who now lives in Los Gatos, often drops by to help her with the ladies. Pam's got all kinds of interesting breeding things happening. Right now she's working on crossing Ameraucanas with a brown layer (I think she said a Cuckoo Maran) to produce hens that will lay olive colored eggs. So cool.

I was super impressed by the number of onions Pam had planted: 365, one for every day of the year since that's how much her family eats on average. She's really got those suckers packed in here.

And check out this celery plant.

Good god, it's like a bush! The poor puppy could get lost in there. Maybe one day I'll get a celery plant to grow that ginormous. Though I suspect Pam may have some sort of plant crack in the soil. You should have seen the Dino Kale tree. Wish I would have gotten a pic of that. It was so impressive that I begged Pam to send me some of the seed when she collects it.

We wandered around the farm for a good long time, procrastinating on our goodbyes. It's so hard to let go. Fred and Ginger are super special to us. They are our first babies.But Pam promises that she will keep us all posted on their to-doings on her blog. Thank you, Pam, for taking Fred and Ginger into your fold.

Lucy's Birth Story

Dusk was beginning to fall as Ute and I had sat down to do some homework, when the Disgruntled Farmhand shouted from the bathroom,

"You know your goat's giving birth?"

"She is not!" I yelled back. "I checked her right before I started dinner and she was hanging out chewing her cud."

"Well she's screaming bloody murder now!"

Wtf? No warning? My mind raced as to what to do next. "Go outside and check her" was my first impulse, but I knew that there wasn't much time with goat screams like that. So I thought I better call the doula first. But where was the camera? Crap! Locked in the back of the car. Where were my fucking keys? Shit! I was in such a panic I could no longer prioritize. I took a deep breath and called the doula. I needed her here for support. I sent Ute to find my keys and meet me in the animal yard. I then flew down the basement stairs, whisking up the birthing kit on my way out to Lucy.

I found her in front of her dog igloo, on her side, bleating a sound that resembled more of a human cry than a goat's. The head of the first baby was already out and the amniotic sac broken (uncommon in caprine births). I tried to gather my bearings as I watched her through another contraction. I saw the head and one hoof lurch forward, but make no progress. The other hoof was possibly bent backwards. A goat needs to leap from his momma's womb with both hooves forward, otherwise the shoulders are too wide to pass. I stuck my finger in her on the side where I didn't see a foot and immediately the baby came rushing out covered in a thick slime, like a translucent version of the pink gunk that covered the lady and little girl in the movie Poltergeist when they returned from "the other side". The hoof was indeed back, but that tiny bit of added space gave free clearance for the kid to shoot out.

I placed the baby in front of Lucy's nose and she took to her motherly duty of eating off the amniotic sac like a duck to water. I was nervous that she might be one of those disinterested mothers, but she was amazing from the get go. With fumbling, nervous hands, I lifted the kid's leg to assess the sex. It was a boy!

Ute missed the birth of the boy, but made it in time to see a clear bubble pushing out Lucy's backside. Another baby was coming. (A fellow urban farmer over in Oakland, Kitty Sharkey of Havenscourt Homestead, alerted me to the fact that clear, whitish bubbles, the amniotic sac, indicated babies and red bubbles were the afterbirth.) I saw two hooves, but no nose. This one was coming into this world feet first. A perfect kidding position. Lucy heaved this one out with a couple of strong bleats, but nothing like the blood curdling cries with the first one. She was too busy licking. A girl! Fred and Ginger had arrived!

As I dried the kids off with a towel, Ute cooed to the mama, "Lucy, you did such a wonderful job! Thank you for all you've done for us." When I thought I couldn't take anymore of the sweetness of the scene, I felt Ute fling her arms around me in sheer ecstasy over the event and exclaim "I'm so happy!" And not in the way that a child is thrilled with a new toy, or a bag full of candy, but like a dad who is seeing his own child for the first time. It was the joy of witnessing new life springing forth into this world: a feeling truly beyond words for those of us lucky enough to have witnessed it.

Monica, the doula, arrived before the afterbirth. She is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. A marine biologist who has discovered more than one new species of nudibranch, she has also been absolutely everywhere, including Antarctica. AND she has experienced birthing lambs during the lambing season in Ireland. I can't even imagine. Finding someone like that in a city is a real godsend. She spent the next four hours helping me get the babies to nurse.

Oh what an ordeal we put ourselves through trying to get the kids onto the teat.With a lot of coaxing and forcing heads towards the nipple (a completely useless and frustrating maneuver, which I don't recommend), we got Ginger to take to it within an hour or so. Fred was too out of it. He tried to nurse everything else BUT the teat, including my chin. After a while he became tuckered out by his own confusion and began to doze off. We were concerned because you want them to get the colostrum in them within the first hour after birth. Two and a half hours of trying with a sleepy goat baby was enough for me and Monica. I hauled off to the shop for a baby bottle. We were going to have to milk some out for him.

Monica was a milking champ and got out almost 6 full ounces of liquid. But the bottle went over about as well as the teat. Fred was too tired to even suck. It was time to pull out the big guns: the syringe. Though he protested with his kitten-like bleats, we got the milk in him and called it a night. Well more like half a night. I went out to check on them at 1:30am, 3:30am, and 6:30am, fearing that Lucy might roll over on one of her babies out of exhaustion or that one of the kids might get pummeled by Ethel.

Poor Ethel. She stood off to the side and witnessed everything, head cocked, with the most puzzled look on her face. Now she knows what's in store for her next year. I could tell Ethel felt very left out by the family scene. It didn't help that Lucy made a low cow-like bawling sound whenever she came near. She was warning Ethel to keep a good distance from her babies for now. Lucy has amazing motherly instincts. So Ethel slunk off to spend the night under the chicken coop, which at first I thought was rather odd. But at my 6:30am check, I noticed that one of the chickens had been left outside the coop all night. I guess Ethel was standing guard for her. What a good goat. Given the situation, I'm pleased Ethel had a job to do.

The Disgruntled Farmhand and I decided to let Ute take a "personal day" from school so that she could bond with the kids. We stayed home as a family and watched as Fred and Ginger began climbing and scampering in less than 24 hours after having been born. We took pictures, shot videos, held the babies, made sure that Fred got the hang of nursing, which he of course did once the fresh from the womb cloud wore off, and spent quality time with our animals. I can think of no better reason to miss school.

 
I will be selling Fred and Ginger in the next 2-4 months and I would like to sell them as a pair. Fred will be wethered. Having been raised together, they will make excellent companions. While they are here, I will train them to walk on a lead. If you or anyone else you know might be interested, please have them contact me (heidikooy (at) yahoo (dot) com) as soon as possible. Otherwise Fred might end up a Bodhran, like in the Irish song.

I Just Milked a Goat

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Bagging Up

I think we will be having some goat babies soon. We came back from vacation to find Lucy with a seriously swollen utter.



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A Knock at the Door

I was awoken this morning by the doorbell ringing. An odd event for a Saturday morning around here. The DF answered the door in his jammies, hair sticking up like a cat run through a dryer. I went to the kitchen for my morning cuppa, figuring that it was just a neighbor or FedEx delivery. When the DF returned, I asked him if it was someone from next door.

"Nope," he said.

"Well who was it," I demanded.

"Some guy who wanted to buy our goats."

"What? How did he know we had goats?"

"He said he saw one of them from Mission Street, sticking her head up over the fence." Must have been Ethel. She's always checking out what's happening in the neighborhood.

"So what did you tell him?" I asked.

"Well I said no, they weren't for sale. He figured the SPCA would have busted us by now. I told him that it was legal for us to keep them." I'm glad to hear that the DF isn't SO disgruntled that he would actually make a move on this offer. We're making progress here people.

"What kind of person rings someone's doorbell and asks to buy their goat?"

"He was some Greek guy who lives up in Petaluma. He has a contracting business down here. His wife is really into goats and wants to get some. He says they like to make goat cheese." Now we're talking my language. As a cheeseaholic myself, I can completely understand why someone might ring a bell or two to get a line on the source. "I told him he could have the babies since we're breeding them this year. He gave me his card" Hot damn! THIS solves our major dilemma with getting some milk on this farm. We don't have room for anymore mammals of substantial size. And I know this might come as a shock to some of you, but we can't get milk without reproduction. I wonder if this guy would be willing to give me some cheese making lessons in exchange for a goat baby.

In two weeks, we will be sending Lucy off to Lake County for a six week romantic rendezvous with a real stud. Ethel is going too, but won't be bred. We wouldn't be able to handle that much milk, let alone that many babies. I miss them already, but it will give me a chance to spruce up their living quarters.

Miniature Houdinis

Last week we found ourselves at the Cotati Large Animal Hospital... again. It seems that the ladies are perfecting some escape artist antics that they've been working on. Ethel has been struggling to nudge past me at the gate and during one instance in which I blocked her from a new life on the lam, she lost her footing on the deck and poked her eye on one of the stairs. I didn't notice anything was wrong until a couple days later when she was having difficulty keeping her eye open and was laying around in the igloo. I also saw that the iris of her injured eye was cloudy. I made an emergency appointment with the vet and north we schlepped.

We didn't see our usual vet as she was off castrating sheep. Instead, we saw Dr. Harlan who gave Ethel a thorough going over at my request. She seemed to have contracted the same cough that Lucy had and I was concerned about pneumonia, a potential problem with goats of this age. Aside from her messed up eye, she was running a fever and had a bit of rattling in her lungs. The doc loaded her up with all kinds of meds: a super strong antibiotic called Exceed, a triple antibiotic steroid boosted eye ointment, and another round of Naselgen. The docs up at Cotati Large Animal seem to be really jazzed about the latter, having given both goats a dose on their last visit and again at this one. I could swear I saw a strange twinkle in Dr. Harlan's eye when he began to sing the beatitudes of this vaccine. He claims it's the bomb in preventing illness and uses it all the time with organic herds. His love affair with this little nasal spray struck me as a bit odd, but hey, to each his own. I, myself, am completely enamored with my totally energy inefficient Wedgewood stove for its ability to dehydrate anything, make yogurt, and sprout tomato seeds. So I don't judge.

I asked Dr. Harlan to check Lucy as well just to make sure her congestion wasn't lingering about. Her temp was normal, but she still had a bit of crud in the chest. We'll keep an eye on her. And since I had the doc there, I couldn't resist asking him about Lucy's very special body part. Lucy, you see, has a double teat and I wanted to know whether or not that would cause problems with milking. The doc said the extra teat had to go and that it would be a cheap and easy fix on a goat this young. He advised doing it now rather than later. I agreed, but was concerned that there wouldn't be enough time thinking that this would be a bit of a "procedure". OK, so the totality of this "procedure" involved me holding Lucy's front legs and vet assistant holding the rear, the vet taking a scissors of sorts and clipping off the adjunct teat, and then giving the fresh wound a good shot with a spray on bandage. Poor Lucy was so shocked by the pain that she jolted and then went completely stiff as if she had given up. Or maybe she was just doing her best imitation of a fainting goat.

Over the next couple days, Lucy was acting up, being a bit more goaty than usual. I suspect she was pissed about that lopping off the boobie thing. She would nibble at my clothes and shoes... while I was wearing them, of course. And she would make a break for the gate, which had never been part of her normal behavior in the past being the shy one of the two. And then last Thursday, I found her roaming around the yard outside of the goat pen. She was racing about, jumping on top of absolutely anything that was higher than a foot off the ground. I have no idea how she got out. Poor Ethel was left alone in the pen, bleating frantically for the return of her pal. Lucy seemed to be enjoying her freedom a little more than I would have liked to see. Looks like we better get a move on finishing the landscaping, otherwise the rains are going to wash all of our dirt piles down to Mission street and there will be goats running wild through the neighborhood. Oy vey!