Udder End Farm

Well, it's kidding season- that time of the year when I just wander around staring at all those swollen tummies and udders, dreaming about baby goats. Any minute now the flood will begin in earnest, and the dreams will come true. I’m also having nightmares about baby goats. Some of the nightmares come true. Thursday morning I walked out and found a pregnant doe dead with a broken neck (whacked by a big mean goat), a yearling doe with a broken leg, who had to be shot (whacked by a big mean goat), and two frozen baby goatsicles about a month premature (Mom got whacked by a big mean goat). Maybe that will fill my quota of dead goats for season. If I need another dead goat, I guess I should shoot the big mean whacking goat. Thursdays are rather complicated for me.

With about 65 pregnant nannies eating their precious heads off for 2 or 3 or 4, my tremendous haystack is dwindling fast. Since I’m not about to part with a goat, I should probably sell some horses. More likely I'll just rob the kid's (two-legged) college funds and buy more hay. I can feed about six goats for the cost of feeding one horse, but I probably enjoy a horse six times more than a goat, and there’s no doubt the horses are six times less trouble than a pregnant goat.

Speaking of troublesome goats, I have one strange and perverse creature out there who insists on having 4 babies every year and then trying to kill off two or three of them when I’ve got my back turned. She’s done it 4 years in a row and I can’t I never know where I’m supposed to be because I don’t know what day it is- unless it’s Thursday. On Thursdays lots of people call to tell me it’s Thursday, for which I am grateful, and to ask me if I know what time it is, which I don’t; and if I’m on my way, which I’m not, but I probably could be, if that dreadful goat would go ahead and have those four babies! imagine why she would change her habits now. I keep her around as an object lesson in personal excess, and also because any babies I manage to save are truly phenomenal. In her favor is the fact that so far she always kids in the middle of the afternoon, usually on a Thursday.

If I don’t sound like my usual cheerful self, it’s because I’m in SDT, or sleep-deprivation training. SDT consists of setting your alarm to wake up every two hours during the night, remaining awake for an hour and forty minutes, usually while chasing pregnant goats around the yard with a flashlight, then reclining on the sofa in your long johns for twenty minutes. You can’t simply go on graveyard shifts, because then you wouldn’t be sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation makes me crabby. Since no one in my house likes crabby people, my family has banished me to the barn. The kids keep me out there all day, but Eric lets me in at night to sleep on the couch- for twenty minutes at a time. SDT is going just fine.

There’s no good reason why I should be banished to the barn. Packed carefully in its box in my closet is a brand new surveillance system. It has three wide angle cameras and audio so fine you can hear a goat snore at 100 yards. It’s been in my closet about a year and a half, at least two kidding seasons. I had it out and set up when I first bought it, but the input cables were stretched 400 feet across two goat pens and the herb bed, and in through my bedroom window. I never got around to digging a trench to bury the cables. The weather got cold, the ground froze, and Hubby complained about the breeze in the bedroom. He wasn’t too thrilled with listening to goats snore all night either. So I packed it all up, and there it sits.

As well it might, because a camera in the barn is only going to show what is in the barn. My goats are allowed to wander in and out as they please unless I shut them up in a jug. Here is a little a test: Doe #1 is soft and gooey under the tail; her udder is tight and shiny, her pin bones are so loose she can’t even waggle her tail at you, and she’s been trying to crawl in your pocket all day, talking and complaining incessantly. Doe #2 doesn’t even look as though she got bred five months ago. She has no belly, no bag, and no sympathy for anyone who does. She’s mincing around, jumping into the feeder, jumping fences, and running for the high hills when you appear at 3:00 A.M. with the flashlight. Now, which goat are you going to shut up in the barn? Ha! Of course you’re going to lock up Doe #2! You paid $4000 for her, she’s fertilized with $1000 worth of semen, and the very instant she suspects you have collapsed into some sort of coma, she’s going to run down the hill and drop those million dollar triplets into a snowdrift. You can tell by the gleam in her eye. We all know Doe #1 isn’t going to kid for another 10 days. If you wait around for her you are going to miss out on your social life.

Kidding season wreaks havoc on my social life. Most memorable is the night Hubby bought diamond encrusted dinner theater tickets, snuck off work two hours early to get me there on time, bought a new dress (for me) to wear on said date, and then waited in the car all night for some blessed goat to get on with her business. He hasn’t asked me out since.

Most people are patient with me, but I sometimes wonder if I’m not committing some kind of faux pas. When I show up an two hours late for some doctor’s appointment that I had to schedule six months in advance, and tell the nurse I’m kidding, she just doesn’t think it’s funny. I never know where I’m supposed to be, or when, because I don’t know what day it is- unless it’s Thursday. On Thursdays lots of people call to tell me it’s Thursday, for which I am grateful, and to ask me if I know what time it is, which I don’t; and if I’m on my way, which I’m not, but I probably could be, if that dreadful goat would go ahead and have those four babies!

Here’s an embarrassing little thing that happens this time of year: If people ask me how things are going at my house, I tell them. At church we are breaking a new pastor, and his lovely young wife. By March that poor lady is going to know more about caprine obstetrics than my vet (way more, trust me). Some of my long time friends can tell from across the room if I’m describing a breech presentation or a correcting kid with a head turned back just by my wildly gesturing hands- or maybe by the slime smeared on my sleeve. Good thing they’re my friends!

Kidding season is sheer madness. That is the fun of it. My children become my keepers, my husband becomes my mother, and the goats take over the known world: But in the midst of it all, I know to keep my priorities straight. This year I signed up my 7th grade daughter for basketball, thereby fulfilling her hearts greatest desire. As the coach handed me the schedule, he asked me “Will you be able come to watch any of the games?” I glanced down at the list- practice every weekday from 3:00 to 5:00, games every Saturday morning, all thru the months of December, January, and February. Without batting an eye I told him firmly, “We will be at every game, no matter what.” For this, I’m not kidding.