George Clooney's Demise

George was destined for failure from the first breath he drew. When I found him in the stall on the morning of his birth, still encased in placenta, I saw that Caitlyn was not caring for him; however, I expected that would change. After all, mom was likely tired from birthing twins, I thought. The runt, not yet named, not only had to trek to the house with me to be cleaned up. There we looked for the bag of kid colostrum that was put safely away, but it had been put away too safely and eluded our detection. The runt was going to need Mama’s milk in order to survive. (Colostrum is available in mother’s milk for the first few hours following birth. It provides necessary antibodies for the newborn’s as-yet-unformed immune system.)

When we brought him back up to the barn, Caitlyn showed no interest in her second kid.The first born was dry, and appeared strong and alert; she seemed to have sentenced the runt to death without ever really giving him a chance. Although I thought about the wisdom of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” theory, I chose to intervene on the runt’s behalf. Thus began ten days of feedings under duress. On that first day I made sure he got Mama’s milk by tackling the recalcitrant doe and wrestling her still by her horns. The runt, placed directly facing the teats, managed to suckle a bit of nourishment before Mama put up a renewed struggle and broke away.

Over the ensuing days, we repeated this charade numerous times in a day. Caitlyn became more tractable—no less willing, but she consented to stand much of the time if food was placed before her and I kept a light hold on her horns. Sarah Bernhardt was successfully pressed into service once or twice a day as well. I had to bend over her body and hold her by a haunch and an elbow. After a few days she tried to perfect the art of escaping by just sitting down, making her teats inaccessible to the runt until I could force her back into a semi-standing position.

On the bright side, both of the does became less frightened of me with this repeated handling. I much preferred their considered evasion techniques to the blind running from fear they had previously displayed. (Sarah especially.) We even reached an unspoken agreement: so long as I put down small bowls of the concentrate feed for each doe, they would allow themselves to be pressed into service for the duration of their dining experience. When the grain vanished, so did their willingness to nurse the runt.

Left alone with him, the does would butt him away and even bite him in an effort to discourage him, but the runt was a true scrapper. (Blur in adjoining photo is Caitlyn butting away her runt.) While his twin bulked up and began to romp within a day, and had a willing playmate in Sarah’s offspring within the week (Sarah’s boy was weaker to start, but he caught up in short order), the runt continued to retain his newborn proportions—big head, stubby legs, skinny body. I made sure that he was nursing enough to survive, but not to thrive. Presented with warm cow’s milk in a bottle, the runt continued to reject the plastic nipple. By the end of the week I could force him to accept a swallow or two inadvertently, but he never took to the bottle. This concerned me because the does’ rejection had become more vehement by the day; one afternoon I actually found him standing in a water bucket. As he was far too small to get himself in there, I can only imagine that Caitlyn knocked him into the bucket. I resolved to keep the water level after that incident.

On Saturday, when the new bucklings were a week old, we went away. Our amazing neighbors stepped in and took to the farm chores with pleasure. In fact they considered bringing the still-nameless runt down to their house to nurse but decided against keeping a bleating kid in their home for the duration.

On Tuesday I believe the runt had his rear leg quickly stepped on by Shawn, the alpaca. Since the little guy had been hanging around the goat jungle gym while alpacas and goats consumed the hay piled upon it, he had been asking for trouble. Shortly after this incident, the runt stopped using that foot and held the leg up off of the ground whenever he moved.

Around this time we received the names bestowed upon the buckling trio by our Seattle connection. The runt became George Clooney, even though with his round head he reminded me more of George Burns. His twin became Brad Pitt, and Sarah’s offspring became Hugh Jackman. (I’m so culturally illiterate that I didn’t know who Hugh Jackman was. Now I know him as a black-and-white goat kid.) Addressed by their new first names, the boys gained something in the identity department—I cannot articulate exactly what the something was, but I did note a change. (Yes, the change was most probably in my perception.)

For two days George hopped and hobbled about on three legs until on Thursday I had had enough. Following my Master Gardener volunteering stint at the county fairgrounds, I stopped at the Co-op for some Kid Milk Replacer and a package of Pritchard teats which are smaller that the one I had been using and might be better received by the kid.

After a gloomy morning, the sun shone when I walked the bottle up to the pasture. I enjoyed watching the goats and kids romping but soon noticed George’s absence. With increasing concern, I quickened my pace. There lay George, stretched out beside the goat jungle gym, not moving at all. When I reached him, rigor had set in.

I cannot say for sure what happened to him, but since he was merely existing on the bouts of nursing (by this time even Jennifer and Cocoa were contributing to his feeding periodically), and since the adult goats targeted him for hard butting seemingly every chance they could get, well I gather they finally succeeded in killing him. Goodness knows that Lucy didn’t step on him (otherwise he’d have been flattened in a hoof shape); however, George’s mama’s attacks had been becoming increasingly violent so I attribute his death to her actions and those of her fellow goats.

George’s death knocked the wind from my sails. I sat with his body for a while and tried to encourage any passing kid to nurse from the bottle when they passed by. (Why I’d opened the $18 bag of powder and mixed even half a batch eluded me; I really ought to have checked on George first.) Although Hugh showed a little interest in the bottle when I held it against a corner of the jungle gym (mimicking the teat protruding from beneath his mother), he never took the teat into his mouth. Resigning myself to having both a dead goat and a wasted bottle of formula, I trudged out of the pasture to bring the news down to the house.

Any loss is saddening, of course, and I had seen that George’s long-term outlook was not good, but I had begun to envision him as some child’s pet. After all whenever a person came near, he made a beeline for the ankles—making it easy for the person to pick him up and place him by a teat. And as concerned as I was by his failure to thrive, he certainly had ingested enough of Mama’s milk before I left that morning to survive. I had hoped that the formula and the new teat would give him the necessary opportunity to thrive, and had planned to find him a gentle home in about three months.

Sad as I was, I hated to break the news to our neighbor and I wimped out by informing her of his demise via text message. She was devastated and declared that she could never be a farmer (which I took to mean that she wouldn’t get used to the number of losses one could expect on a farm). I, too, needed distraction and called Millie up from her pasture. She seemed to like the attention of being groomed, and I managed to mount into the saddle on my second try. (What was a simple procedure in my youth has become a challenge in middle age.) We walked and trotted around the front yard for 30 minutes, until the ache of losing George and of feeling responsible for his death had subsided.