Here Come the Lambs

The calendar has said "spring" for over a week, but it's only barely felt like it outside here in Michigan.

This new happy arrival got the lambing season started right:

He's big, beautiful, and doing extremely well. As is his mother (Conundrum). It's definitely starting to feel more like spring here on our farm.

It's Hard Work Learning to Be A Goat

You'd be exhausted, too, when they let you back into the Yeoman Farmer's office building after spending a long day in the barn, figuring out where you fit in the caprine hierarchy.

Shhhhhh. Don't tell Puddles that when it warms up next week, she's going to have to start spending her nights in the barn, too.

Our Gallivanting Goat

As promised in the previous post, I've been looking for a chance to get video of the goat kid's new dexterity.

Turns out, I didn't have to wait for morning. When I took her in for the night, she started gallivanting across the living room. The lighting was very poor, and she was hard to capture on camera, but I did manage to get some footage. This won't win any awards for video quality, but it gives a sense for the remarkable progress she's made:

While in the house, I went upstairs to see if the Yeoman Farm Children were in bed. Wouldn't you know it...the goat kid began climbing the stairs after me! I couldn't get it on video, but it was amazing to watch. She got about halfway up, and then climbed back down. And ran across the living room again at full tilt.

It's definitely time to move her to the barn, before she dismantles everything in the house.

Demoted Back to Goat

Puddles the Goat Kid has begun her transition back to barn life in earnest. As much as I've enjoyed having an office pet, the arrangement just isn't sustainable over the long run. She's already starting to hop onto the couch every time I sit there, and then she proceeds to climb all over me and the arm of the couch. Needless to say, it's getting annoying.

She wasn't happy about it, but we left her in the barn pretty much all day today --- from 8:30am to about 7:30pm. It wasn't terribly warm outside today, but the barn was in the low thirties. Which was warm enough. We put her in the kidding pen with her own mother and the mother of the kid that died early Saturday; we didn't expect her to bond with or begin nursing from either one of them, but the idea was to get her accustomed to being around other goats --- and out of the way of the mature bucks in the main goat area. She seems to have curled up in the corner for most of the day, but it's a start.

The best news of the day was this morning. She'd spent the night in her box by the fire, in the house. When I let her out, she trotted all around the living room as usual. And then, for the first time, she did something we never expected her to be able to do: the "Goat Kid Gallivant." Anyone who's raised goats knows what I'm talking about: it's when a kid puts his/her head down and makes an energetic, half-hop / half-run trip across an open area, springing into the air with every step. It's like they have so much energy (and dexterity), simply running isn't enough. We never thought her legs would work well enough to gallivant like the other kids all do.

In the meantime, we'll probably let her sleep inside one more time tonight; the temps are expected to plunge again, and I don't want to stress her little body too much. I'll have my camera ready tomorrow when I let her out of the box. If I can catch her gallivanting again, I'll post the video to YouTube.

One Up, One Down

Sadly, the goat born late last night didn't survive his first full day. Despite making it through the night, and being up on his feet and nursing this morning, it seems the barn proved too cold for him. We left all the doors closed today, and the lights on, but I guess that wasn't enough. When Homeschooled Farm Girl came out to the barn this evening to milk, she found that the kid had expired in that fresh dry straw bed I'd made for him.

Here he was, this morning:

Lesson learned: We definitely need to invest in a blow dryer. I've been trying to avoid spending the money on a new one, but it's looking like we should bite the bullet and pick up a cheap dryer the next time we're at Wal Mart. Getting the kid totally warmed up and completely dry might have given him a better shot at survival.

But we also have good news to report in the goat department: Puddles continues to thrive beyond all expectation. She's hanging out in my office pretty much all day, and this afternoon achieved a major milestone: she managed to climb/jump onto my couch. She'd been trying for some time now, but had never been able (especially with the slick floor). Today, she put all the pieces together and jumped up to join me as I read a book. And now that she has it all figured out, she makes the jump perfectly nearly every time. I suppose it's only a matter of time before she figures out how to work the remote for the TV.

She enjoys sleeping on the couch, too:

Fear not, we will begin transitioning her to the barn tomorrow. We'd been hoping that the newborn goat kid could be her companion, and that his presence would make her transition to "goat life" easier. There are five other kids in the barn, but they're all significantly bigger and more agile than she. So, we'll keep a close eye on her tomorrow.

Goats Keep Coming

Just a quick post, because it's late.

The temperature plunged here over the last couple of days, and is expected to stay cold through the weekend at least. Thermometer says 23F right now. Which means, of course, that we found yet another cold, wet, newborn kid in the barn when we went to close it up for the night!

The two oldest Yeoman Farm Children helped me towel the thing off, and move him (yes, it's a "him") and the mother goat into the kidding pen. The YFCs made sure the doe's teats were clear, and got him to nurse a bit. He's still not perfectly dry (note to self: we really need to get a blow dryer), but I brought down a huge armload of fresh straw and made a nice dry bed in the corner. It's the least drafty part of the building, and I think he's comfortable in it. Also, we left the lights on for the night; that should make it warmer, and easier for the two of them to find each other if need be.

We'll see what we find out there in the morning.

In the meantime, "Puddles" (I love that name, but it won't stand long term; all goats here get flower names), the formerly Mostly Dead Kid, continues to thrive. Against all odds, she's putting on weight and really getting around nicely. We were going to transition her to the barn this week, but then the cold snap hit. For now, she's sleeping in the house at night and hanging out in my office most of the day. Even the dogs seem to be accepting her as another member of the pack. Go figure.

The warning that one commenter gave about not treating goats as house pets is a good one, and I am concerned about how this goat will ultimately turn out temperament-wise. We've had "too friendly" goats before, and they are indeed a hassle. The one consolation is that she's a female, so will never have the nasty male goat smell. And she may end up easier to handle and get into a stanchion for milking.

But who knows. At this point, I'm just glad she's survived.

UPDATE: We awakened this morning to temps in the low teens outside and ~36F in the barn. And the new goat kid was up on his feet, walking around, seemingly fine! I'll try to get some photos posted later today.

Our Pet Goat

The goat kid we revived from "mostly dead" continues to thrive...but, unfortunately, only in the house.

We did our best to reintroduce her to Thistle, the mother goat. The Yeoman Farm Children put Thistle in the stanchion, got some milk flowing from her teats, and tried to get the kid to suckle. She just stood there and let the nipple fall from her mouth. They tried again. And again. And again. No luck.

The YFCs milked Thistle out, and then returned her to the kidding pen. We tried leaving the kid out in the pen with her, hoping something might click, but she just sat there all afternoon. And Thistle didn't express the slightest interest in this "thing" sharing the pen with her.

So...the kid (who remains nameless, BTW) came back into the house. Where she sleeps in a box in front of the fire, and gladly takes milk when given to her from a dropper. She's put on noticeable weight. Her tendons are doing a lot better, and she's walking steadily all over the living room and kitchen when we let her out of the box. She doesn't gallop around like a typical kid, but she's making remarkable progress and I think her prognosis is excellent.

Except for the whole "bonding with other goats instead of humans" thing. I'm honestly not sure how we're going to work this, or how long she's going to be a "house goat." It's okay for now, but goats are notorious climbers. It's only a matter of time before she'll be climbing out of her box, messing all over the floor, climbing the stairs, and climbing onto the dining room table.

We took her out to my office last night, while we watched college basketball. The office has a vinyl floor, so it didn't matter if she piddled (and she did). Her footing was a bit unsteady, because vinyl is slick, but she got the hang of it soon enough. Before long, she was wandering all over my office like any other house pet. It was kind of fun, actually.

Wilbur was all over her, trying to figure out what this new little creature was. For her safety, we thought it best to move Wilbur outside (which was fine with him).

What happens next? We're not really sure. This is uncharted territory. She's a very nice goat kid. I'm just not sure how long we can continue keeping her as a house pet.

Stay tuned. There's never a dull moment on a farm.

Back from the Dead

One of our favorite scenes in The Princess Bride is when Miracle Max declares that the hero is only "mostly dead" and then proceeds to revive him.

Something similar happened on our farm Tuesday evening. It'll likely never make it into a movie, but I wanted to share it with you.

I went to the barn late that afternoon, to give hay to the sheep and goats. While in the goat area, I spotted a newborn goat kid laying on its side along a wall. It was wet, dirty, and not moving at all. I couldn't even detect its chest rising and falling to take breaths. By all appearances, it had been stillborn or had perished soon after delivery. After identifying which doe had given birth to it, my intention was to go in the house and inform the Yeoman Farm Children that they now had a goat to milk every day.

But I got an inspiration, and decided that first I should give the dead kid a nudge with my boot. Amazingly, it stirred slightly in reaction. It didn't even try to get up, and my first thought was that it was too far gone to save. The barn was cold, and this thing had been abandoned. It was 95% dead, so the humane thing would be to finish it off and forget about it.

Or so my first thought went. As I continued thinking, I wondered if the kid's problem was simply cold. And if we could get it dried off and warmed up, and get some warm milk into its belly, its condition might improve. After all, I had no evidence yet that it had some terrible health issues. I figured we owed the kid a chance, and there was no harm in taking it to the house.

So I did. I dried it off, and laid it on some plastic in front of the woodburner in the living room. The kid whined a little, and stirred a little, but otherwise simply remained sprawled on its side in front of the fire.

And there she stayed. For hours. I turned her over once or twice, but she still gave very little response. That evening, Mrs. Yeoman Farmer suggested we do more to help the kid. We gave her an injection of Bovi Sera, as we did the other kids. Then we sent one of the Yeoman Farm Children out to the barn to milk some colostrum out of the mother goat. In the meantime, we gave a subcutaneous injection of 6cc of Lactated Ringer's with 5% dextrose into each of the kid's shoulders. This is an interesting product, and is commonly used for tiny dehydrated animals. I was glad that MYF had thought to lay in a supply of it.

We let the kid's body absorb the fluids while we ate dinner, then gave her more injections after we'd eaten. Her crying and struggling against the needle were encouraging. We then tried holding her and feeding her some colostrum from a dropper. She struggled a little against the first bit, and then started sucking on the dropper with a vengeance. We put dropper after dropper into her, even though we had to hold her head up so she could take it in.

We tucked her into a box full of old rags, in front of the woodburner, and made her comfortable for the night. Mrs. Yeoman Farmer was up in the middle of the night, and gave her more colostrum. The kid got so much energy, she actually began drinking it straight from the pan.

When I came down in the morning, I was surprised to see her standing up in her box on her own. I fed her more colostrum, and tried setting her on the floor. She wasn't terribly stable, and had some difficulty walking, but it was more progress than I expected.

As Wednesday progressed, so did the goat kid. Her urine began to flow, and she also began producing some stool. We took her out of the box several times, and let her stretch her legs. She began tottering around the living room, exploring. She didn't walk nearly as well as a normal goat kid, but a hundred times better than the one I had to put down recently.

Mrs. Yeoman Farmer hit the books, and began researching what could be wrong with the kid's legs. She came across something called "Bent Leg Syndrome" or some such, and it's caused by weak tendons. These are in turn caused by a mineral or nutritional deficiency in utero, but can be remedied by feeding cod liver oil. Later in the day Wednesday, we began adding cod liver oil to the colostrum, and to our surprise the kid gobbled the stuff down like normal. Her urine flow and stool production continued, and she was spending more time on her feet. Before bed last night, I found her a bigger box.

This morning, she was wanting to stand on her own even more than yesterday. I let her totter around the living room, and her gait was markedly improved. Not good enough to keep up with a normal goat kid, but better.

We're going to attempt to put her in the kidding pen with her mother today, once the temperatures warm up a bit. We really don't want the kid to continue bonding with us, and we hope it's not to late to put her back onto her mother. In our experience, bottle-raised kids (and lambs) never learn to fit in with the rest of the herd or flock.

But we've been very much encouraged by her progress so far. And very thankful that there is indeed such a big difference between "mostly dead" and "all dead."

What Are You Prepared to DO?

That's one of my favorite lines, delivered by the Sean Connery character in a pivotal scene from The Untouchables. It's a question that every aspiring farmer ought to ask him or herself, especially before taking the responsibility for livestock --- and one that I didn't really ask myself until much later, only when I had to.

To paraphrase: "You said you wanted to get goats. Do you really want to get them? You see what I'm saying? What are you prepared to do? [...] You must be prepared to go all the way."

This morning, I had to make a gut-wrenching decision that no person with a heart wants to make: whether a struggling goat kid can really be brought to a position where he can thrive...or only, at best, be consigned to a lifetime of miserable survival at the margins. And if the judgment is the latter...well, what are you prepared to DO then?

As you may have gathered from the text and photo in yesterday's post, one of the twin goat kids Queen Anne's Lace gave birth to was very iffy. He was certainly in better shape than some kids we've had born, and we did get him put on a teat to suckle (some kids won't even do that), but he still had one very big problem: he could barely stand, and couldn't take two steps without his front legs buckling and falling to his knees. When we put him on a teat to nurse, he sprawled his rear legs behind him. One of us had to hold Mother Goat, while the other one held the goat kid on his feet.

We made sure he got a good meal last night. We owed him that, if he was to have any shot at gaining strength. But this morning, it became more clear that it wasn't an issue of strength. There was something seriously wrong with his front legs, and milk wasn't going to cure that. He hadn't gotten up all night, even though we left the lights on and the other five kids in the pen were romping around with each other; at 7am, he was still exactly where we'd left him at 10pm.

Homeschooled Farm Girl helped me put him back on a teat, but he still couldn't keep himself erect. We stood him up, and he kept toppling forward. Critically, even his mother seemed to know there was something seriously wrong with him: she would stand still for his twin brother to nurse, but grew increasingly agitated and tried to run away every time we reconnected the lame one to a teat. She's a big powerful goat, and holding her still long enough for him to nurse (and, remember, someone still had to hold the kid because he couldn't stand) was becoming nearly impossible.

We even rearranged our schedule this morning, coming home after church instead of straight to my father-in-law's house, to give the kid another shot at nursing. Same story, same rejection, and same big problem with his legs.

Now we had a decision to make. Spend the next several months picking him up and bottle feeding him in the hopes that his legs eventually change, or put him down now. If he'd been healthy, and simply a bummer kid (rejected by the mother), the decision would be easy. We wouldn't have been happy, but we would've bottle fed him.

But we've tried to bottle feed bummers with serious health issues before, and they've never ended up healthy. One of them was never able to drink water from a bucket. We literally had to bottle feed him water several times a day until he was old enough to butcher at 7 or 8 months. Another was so scrawny and sickly, even as an adult, he was constantly beaten up by the others and didn't even have enough meat to justify butchering him. (I eventually simply put him down and we threw the body away.)

The children and Mrs Yeoman Farmer and I had a quick conference. Our consensus was that we should give thanks for the five healthy goat kids born this last week, and not prolong the misery of a kid with legs so bad he can't even stand.

But actually pulling the trigger on a cute, innocent, defenseless newborn is quite different from coming to a decision in theory. Especially when the goat kid begins crying as he's taken out of the kidding pen and into the snowy yard. This is where you have to ask yourself, as a farmer or aspiring farmer, "What are you prepared to DO?"

I love my farm. And I love my animals. And this morning that meant putting a .380 hollow point round into a goat kid's head. I wasn't prepared to do that kind of thing when we first got livestock, and I managed to avoid thinking about it until I had no choice. And it's something that on occasion in the past I may have allowed myself to dodge or delay because the little critter was just so sweet and cute, even though I knew in my head that the most humane thing would be to put the animal down immediately.

It doesn't get any easier the more times you do it. It just gets a little less hard. But if I wasn't prepared to DO it, I think I'd have to get out of the livestock business altogether.

He went very quickly. And we are truly grateful for the five healthy kids and all the milk their mothers will be providing for our family this year.

Goat Kids Galore

We were out for much of the day, and on our return discovered...

two more goat kids!

This time it was Queen Anne's Lace, our oldest doe, doing the honors. Both are males. We got them moved from the mucky main goat area (pictured above) and into the kidding pen, which is now getting pretty crowded --- three does and six kids. We also put down an additional bale of fresh straw, just for good measure.

Homeschooled Farm Girl did everything she could to get the weaker of the two kids (the one laying down in the photo above) to nurse, but he's having trouble even standing up. We're not really sure he's going to make it, but we'll do what we can. His twin brother, by contrast, is up and walking around great. And yesterday's triplets are all doing well. Stay tuned!