Flashlight Farmers
And They Called Her Jesus
Well, you all can color me blond and call me clueless. A couple weeks ago I mentioned to Jim that Mookow was "all grown up now" because she'd developed udders. I thought goats were like teenagers, when fully developed they...you know....develop. He looked puzzled and said something about goats don't get udders until they make babies. That might have been a good time for me to do some research. This very morning I laughed at Mookow because she looked so fat.
At 1:00 a.m. Mookow was outside my bedroom window bleating loudly. I tried to ignore her, hoping she would shut the hell up so I could go back to sleep, but she was persistent. So I stumbled outside in my fleece nightgown to see if she'd gotten her horns stuck in the fence. She was walking around and crying loudly, and when she turned to the side I notice a big lump of something hanging out of her rear end. It was too dark to see what new goat calamity this could possibly be, but I knew it had to be bad so I went back in the house to find a flashlight.
You know how when someone is amazed in cartoons their jaw drops? Mine practically hit the ground when the flashlight revealed a little goat head sticking out of Mookow's rear. I couldn't find my cell phone fast enough to call my goat emergency guy. "Ring, ring. Yes, I'm sorry, I know it's 1:00 in the morning but there's a little goat head and a foot sticking out of Mookow's rear end and I don't know what to do. It doesn't look like it's breathing and she's walking around the yard yelling." Jim offered to come over if I really needed him to, but said he'd just gone to bed and I should help Mookow deliver by pulling the little goat out while she pushed. He said the kid might be all right and if it's breathing to take it and Mookow into the pen in the garage for the night. (The pen I just moved my baby chickens out of and was planning on dismantling Saturday.)
I thought about naming the baby Jesus, since this seemed to be a virgin birth. Then I noticed Baby Goat looks remarkably like Goober, the three-legged billy goat with no ears who died shortly after being neutered. Goats are mature enough to breed at 5 months and it takes 5 more months to grow a baby goat. I went back and looked at my blogs to calculate dates. Mookow would have been impregnated in November, at which time Mookow and Goob would have been about 6 months old. Mystery solved. Heck, goat birthing was the only chapter I skipped when reading "The Goat Care Handbook".
April 2007
At 1:00 a.m. Mookow was outside my bedroom window bleating loudly. I tried to ignore her, hoping she would shut the hell up so I could go back to sleep, but she was persistent. So I stumbled outside in my fleece nightgown to see if she'd gotten her horns stuck in the fence. She was walking around and crying loudly, and when she turned to the side I notice a big lump of something hanging out of her rear end. It was too dark to see what new goat calamity this could possibly be, but I knew it had to be bad so I went back in the house to find a flashlight.
You know how when someone is amazed in cartoons their jaw drops? Mine practically hit the ground when the flashlight revealed a little goat head sticking out of Mookow's rear. I couldn't find my cell phone fast enough to call my goat emergency guy. "Ring, ring. Yes, I'm sorry, I know it's 1:00 in the morning but there's a little goat head and a foot sticking out of Mookow's rear end and I don't know what to do. It doesn't look like it's breathing and she's walking around the yard yelling." Jim offered to come over if I really needed him to, but said he'd just gone to bed and I should help Mookow deliver by pulling the little goat out while she pushed. He said the kid might be all right and if it's breathing to take it and Mookow into the pen in the garage for the night. (The pen I just moved my baby chickens out of and was planning on dismantling Saturday.)
I thought about naming the baby Jesus, since this seemed to be a virgin birth. Then I noticed Baby Goat looks remarkably like Goober, the three-legged billy goat with no ears who died shortly after being neutered. Goats are mature enough to breed at 5 months and it takes 5 more months to grow a baby goat. I went back and looked at my blogs to calculate dates. Mookow would have been impregnated in November, at which time Mookow and Goob would have been about 6 months old. Mystery solved. Heck, goat birthing was the only chapter I skipped when reading "The Goat Care Handbook".
April 2007
