At least it ain't a sheep.....

The farmer came home yesterday with a new goat. I think she has lost her mind. It is a Boer meat goat. What is she thinking?

Here I meeting Miss Ruby for the first time. She's two years old and probably knocked up, according to her previous owner.

I was not impressed by her. This is my disgusted face. If you ever want to know what a disgusted goat looks like, this is it.

The #1 Rule of Goats

You'd think the farmer would know better by now. She's only been raising goats for 10 years and yet she continues to act all surprised when we don't follow her carefully laid plans. I think someone needs to mention to her that our number one rule as goats is that every time you post something online about what your plans are for us, we will read it and do the opposite. You would think someone would have clued her in on that by now. She may not have internet access at the house and has to do all her online stuff in town and she may wonder how we always know what she has posted. Goats don't need iPads or smartphones to keep updated on the farmer's public blog and profiles. The farmer is quite good and muttering her plans to us as she does chores and we are quite good at interpreting the sparkle in her eyes as she gives one of us extra attention as a plan in the making.

Her latest failed attempt at planning came when she put me in with the buck for a few days a while back. The farmer didn't see me get bred but I knew something was up when she started examining my backside very carefully and taking pictures of my whoo-ha. I would have been okay with the visual exams but once she pulled the camera out I knew I had to do something. I knew the farmer was thinking that I was pregnant and that she was going to be posting my goaty-bits on Goatbook for all the world to see. I decided that it was time for a little shake up in the farmer's world. For maximum impact I waited until the farmer was muttering out loud about how I was pregnant and she could get rid of the buck because his job was done and blah, blah baby goats, blah. I came into a roaring heat the day the farmer started talking about future baby goat names.

I stood at the gate and carried on like a mad-goat. I ran to the buck pen and pawed at the gate. The farmer stood dumbly in the farmyard scratching her head and wondering why I was acting so funny. She checked me for a fever and examined my eyelids for anemia. She felt me up for tumors and looked for lice.

"Lucy, there must be a reason you're acting so strange this early in your pregnancy" she said.

"BAAAAAAAA!!" I wailed as I ran out of the barn and to the buck pen.

"I hope you don't have the start of bloat" the farmer wondered.

"BAAAA! BAAA! BAAAAAAA!!" I cried as I stood nose to nose with the buck.

"Well, if you want to be in the buck pen, I will put you in there. I don't think it will hurt for you to be in there since you are already pregnant" the farmer mused as she let me in with the buck.

"BAAAA!!!" I agreed as the buck bred me repeatedly.

About this time it must have dawned on the farmer that I was not pregnant because she just stood speechless watching me and the buck have a good time. "Speechless" is not a description often used in regards to the farmer which is why I think the message I was sending had hit loud and clear. She was also speechless because I think she had just realize that we had pulled the mohair over her eyes yet again and ruined another perfectly planned plan.

So next time you see the farmer please remind her that us goats don't appreciate planning and plans. And we really don't appreciate our whoo-has being posted on the interwebs!

And so it goes....

Well, you can probably guess what I have been up to. I have been doing the same thing I do every fall -- trying to avoid the bucks. The farmer has the crazy notion that I enjoy this sort of thing and that I should get pregnant every year. I have the crazy notion that I would rather not. At least, I have that notion on days 1 - 18. I can't really vouch for days 19 - 21 because I am not in my right mind with all the buck chasing I feel compelled to do. And so it goes, over and over, every year. I go into heat, I get knocked up, I squirt out a few kids (typically twin bucks), I get milked for 10 months, I get dried off, etc. Ah, the never ending joys of being a dairy goat...

 

Even though I was bred only 6 days ago, the farmer is already sure I might be pregnant. She has decided that she can smell when I am pregnant. Sounds totally cuckoo, right?! It might not be entirely nuts. My mom and I emit a very distinct, fruity smell when we are pregnant. The farmer has tried to narrow down why we smell like that. She has tested us for ketosis and other sorts of ailments that can cause a goat to smell weird when preggers. We aren't sick when we smell funny, we're just pregnant. I started smelling funny yesterday so uh-oh, I guess I am pregnant.

Daisy came into heat today and I saw the farmer looking longingly at her. Daisy is only 7 months old but she is built like a brick goat-house so you would assume she is much older. She's almost my height and is definitely much bigger than the petite Primrose (who is also 7 months old). Oh well, I guess that's what you get for being a Saanen. They are such over-achievers! The farmer is trying to decide whether or not to throw caution to the wind and breed Daisy this fall instead of waiting until next year. Normally the goats get to mature to 1 1/2 years old before breeding. This is because the farmer wants us to be fully mature before breeding. Daisy is huge-mongous so the farmer is toying with the idea of breeding her now.

This happens every year around here. The farmer says all summer that she is only going to breed one or two goats. She'll squawk to anyone who will listen the advantages of having less babies to deal with in the spring and less goats to milk each year. She'll tell you that next year will be the big year for traveling and vacations. That she is going to have the least amount of animals on the farm so she has more time to spend off the farm. That she is going to take it easy because it's not worth all the work. She'll extoll on the virtues of not flooding the market with unwanted kid goats and how it is pious and worthy to be a responsible breeder and not overproduce. Well, then fall comes along and all of us girls go into heat, and the farmer losses it and starts breeding every goat in sight! Last year she bred three goats after vowing to only breed two. The year before she bred four does just for fun because she couldn't stop. This year she has sworn up and down that I would be the only goat bred because Gloria is too old, and Prim and Daisy are too young. The plan would be to breed me this year and then breed only Prim and Daisy from then on because she wants to keep the CAE negative goats as the only breeders once they are old enough for breeding. But I have seen her eyeing up Daisy and wandering through Craigslist looking at all the breeding age does for sale. Fall is far from over and breeding season has a lot of time left to it. God help us all!

Fall is coming!

This picture is from June. We don't have tall green grass like this anymore. The leaves are starting to turn colors on some of the stressed trees and I came into heat last week so I know that fall is coming. I wasn't quite ready to come into heat so I made sure that everyone knew it. I used my best "heat voice" to tell the girls to stay out of my way and to let the boys know to get ready for me. The farmer says I will be the only one getting bred this fall. Gloria is too old to breed anymore. She had a great set of triplets this year so it's time to end on a very high note. The other girls, Prim and Daisy, aren't yet a year old so they get to hang out until next fall before the get to go courting in the buck pen. Figaro is a wether which means he doesn't have an opinion on any of this whole breeding mess. That just leaves me as the available one. I don't mind it much. Being bred means I get extra food during the winter and lots of grain on the milk stand come next spring and summer.

The farmer has disgraced the goat barn by housing a group of smelly meat chickens in one of the pens. They weren't so bad at first but now they are 8 weeks old and very messy and there's 10 roosters in the pen! At first there was only one rooster. It was a Polish/Toulban/Frizzle cross rooster that the farmer got from her neighbor. It was supposed to be a hen and was supposed to live with two other chicks that came with it. Unfortunately the two chicks got loose from the hutch they were in and disappeared, leaving just the one. Then the one chick turned into a rooster. The farmer tried to put him out with the older laying chickens but they didn't like him one bit so they pecked all his top-knot feathers out and all the feathers off his tail. He was sad and bald and spent a lot of time in the corner of the chicken pen trying to hide from the big birds. The farmer took him out and put him in the hutch to live by himself. When the meat chicks arrived he was allowed to live with them as long as he didn't try to pick any fights. No fights have broken out but this rooster has taught the 9 meat roosters how to crow so the barn is a cacophony of noisy crowing. The Polish rooster has a normal sounding crow. It's loud and clear. The meat roosters, on the other hand, sound like they are getting strangled when they crow. One good crow followed by nine strangle crows is getting kind of annoying. Oh well, the farmer assures us that all of the meat chickens will be gone on September 15 when the chicken processing equipment rental is available. Depending on how the Polish rooster acts in the next few weeks will decide if he is included on the meat bird list on the 15th. He better stay on the straight and narrow if I were him!

Frothy Bloat!

My mom gave the farmer a scare last night. Everything was going normally for doing chores. The farmer put Gloria (my mom) on the milk stand and put the milk machine on. She was acting normal and eating her grain. Halfway through milking, Gloria peed on the milk stand. The farmer went to scold her for making a mess and saw that she has large gobs of slimy goo coming out of her mouth and nose. Frothy bloat! The farmer whipped Gloria off of the milk stand and started walking her to help move some of the frothy gas out of her stomach. She walked and walked up and down the farm to keep Gloria moving. Gloria spit out gobs of goo and snot. The farmer had to stop every so often to wipe the slime from Gloria's nose so she could breath. The farmer got her hubby to walk the goat while she went to the house and got 1 cup of peanut oil and some baking soda. She gave this to Gloria to try to break the surface tension of the froth so it would stop building up in the rumen. Gloria kept burping and spitting up slime for a while. She started to puff up and get very large. The farmer was worried that she wouldn't be able to stop the gas from expanding and it would hurt Gloria. After a lot of walking and massaging Gloria stopped spitting up goo and her stomach went back to normal size. She is fine today and is eating normally. Hooray for the farmer who saved the day!

Horse Trading

The farmer's friend went to look at a horse who her buddy traded 5 hens for. The buddy said the horse was only 15 years old or so but the farmer's friend said they must have been counting in dog years. And since it didn't have teeth anymore, nobody could tell how old it is anyways. The friend looked at the horse and said it was only about 300 lbs underweight and needed a hoof trimming and should get a special diet on account of the lack of teeth. The friend wanted to take the horse because her buddy didn't have any money to feed the horse or really a place to put it. The buddy said she consider selling the horse for $200. I guess those were some specialty hens she traded it for in the first place. The farmer's friend didn't take the horse. Then the friend's friend needed a horse for her gelding who was mean and wanted to knock down her barn every time he came near a mare, even though he was gelded and he probably wouldn't have known what to do once he got near the mare. So she had him out in a pasture all by himself and he needed a friend. This lady went to get the horse from the buddy and traded her three roosters for it. I think she got the better deal because the buddy spent five hens on him and this lady only had to spent three crummy roosters for him. I guess that would be what you call "horse trading" or maybe "horse for hens and then roosters for horse trading".

The Most Injust of Injustices!

I have been hurt in so many ways.... First, the farmer brings a new goat home without consulting me and showers that new goat with apple treats and hugs to make her "tame". I don't see what the big deal about being "tame" is because I am the tamest goat in the world and it doesn't get me apple treats or hugs. I don't know why anyone would want to become tame if they get apple treats and hugs for not being tame. I think I shall become untamed, whatever that entails.

Second, the farmer took Figaro, Prim, and Daisy to Goat Night at the local feed store. Those three got to ride in the car, visit with all sorts of new friends, and get apple treats all evening long. I had to stay home and eat hay. Figaro, Prim or Daisy do not have their own blog, they don't make delicious milk, the don't have shiny copper red fur and they aren't ME! The farmer said I couldn't come because I was too big to fit in the Jeep with the other goats. Well, that's not my fault. It's the farmer's fault because she should drive a nice goat van so we can all go places with her. The only place I ever go anymore in the Jeep is to speed date in someone's driveway in the fall. That's sure is an interesting time, but I would rather go to Goat Night and get apple treats.

If you feel that I am valid in my cries of injustice, please support me! You can support my fight against injustices by sending large boxes of apple treats addressed to Lucy. Be sure not to put anything generic on the box like "The goats" because the farmer isn't very bright and likes me to share my treats (or give away all my treats when I am not looking) so she might get the wrong idea if the boxes aren't sent directly to me.