Smiling Heidi, Resident Teacher

Heidi, our adult Livestock Guardian Dog (LGD), has the most winning smile and is a patient teacher. When Heidi is lying down and on the job (a state not to be confused with “lying down on the job”), she smiles with her eyes. Narrower than Luther’s or Molly’s, Heidi’s eyes perpetually hint of her smile and generally deprive her of the soulful, round-eyed expressions the pups favor. When Heidi is up and working, her smile is an acknowledgement of the person with whom she is communicating and extends into her spine. One can see that she feels the smile throughout her being.

My favorite Heidi expression is the “welcome” smile she gives me after we’ve been separated for a time. Even the low-key version of her welcome smile incorporates her tail and front legs. But it’s Heidi’s full-on, charming welcome smile that makes one feel good all over. As pictured, this smile incorporates the full dog: her eyes squint, her nose crinkles and her tongue may appear, her paws & legs dance, her spine twists, and her tail wags from the tip of her nose through the last hair on the end of her tail. Heidi’s smile says, “Hello! I’m glad to see you and I’m happy that you’re here—even though I won’t get close enough to snuggle up and say as much.”

Heidi’s smiles are much cleaner than the pups’ sometimes-muddy welcomes. Molly is still learning to keep her paws on the ground—and off of the person she wishes to embrace. And while Luther manages to keep his paws off of people, his perpetual involvement with the environment often carries consequences: dust, mud, and/or freely-wandering ticks. The pups extend physical, tactile greetings; Heidi’s greetings may be gymnastic but they rarely involve any physical contact, and when they do the contact is slight and fleeting.

I try not to imagine the circumstances that Heidi endured as a youngster, those which keep her an arm’s length from human contact most of the time and a hand’s length from being petted at all times. By now I believe she trusts me. If I hold open a gate and stand back or turn my back to her, she’ll now pass through it without waiting for me to vacate the opening. Indeed, I even encountered her sleeping in the hallway of the barn last week—a highly vulnerable position due to the still-crowded conditions of our box-filled barn. (We moved far too much stuff with us when we came and have left a trailer-load of inconsequential items in the barn awaiting an expansion of floor-space. Boxes of pots and pans, jars, books and office supplies, clothing, and even paintings and mirrors spill from the platforms our operations manager built. The platforms are fine, but having goats who love to play King of the Mountain can send packages cascading across the corridor—much to the delight of whichever goats have caused the avalanche.)

When I encountered Heidi sleeping soundly in the corridor I stopped and spoke her name before gently passing her. I daresay I could have touched her at that moment, but only at the expense of the trust I feel we’ve built so far. I’m wondering if her “condition” is causing her to demonstrate nesting behavior; by now she must be halfway through her pregnancy and she may be beginning to feel its demands on her body. (What?! Heidi’s pregnant? Yes. More details below.) I need to spend some time just sitting in Heidi’s territory over the next month, to see if she might just not cross over that last invisible barrier and incorporate me physically into her inner circle.

It’s good that Heidi’s teaching has come to fruition of late because I imagine she’ll be off the job of guarding livestock when she has little ones to mind. I’ll admit I had doubts last month. After the perimeter fence was completed but before the top and bottom strands were electrified, Heidi took to roaming one day. She apparently wiggled out beneath a gate that provides an ample gap (until the wire just below it is charged). Since she appeared down by the house at about the same time that the little gray goat Gretchen slipped out of the home pasture, I praised Heidi for working when I encountered her. Gretchen was routed back in through the pasture’s lower gate, and Heidi followed after I had retreated a safe distance of maybe thirteen yards.

The next two days Gretchen and Heidi repeated the adventure. Unconcerned about Heidi’s being a flight risk, I encouraged her guarding behavior—until puppy Luther wriggled out to join Heidi and the pair romped off to explore. They checked out the front acres, its little wooded patch and the stream, then Luther trotted down the driveway and out onto the highway, crossing over the stream and venturing beyond. Although he stuck close to the highway barrier, I was scared that his lack of road sense coupled with the traffic that sometimes speeds by presented a recipe for disaster. Heidi watched Luther’s silliness, then she crossed through the stream, ducked under rusty barb-wire, and joined Luther in the neighbor’s hayfield.

The pair romped for hours. I stood at the roadway entrance to the neighbor’s hayfield for close to an hour while they studiously examined this new area. Grey mist fell steadily seeming to blanket their adventures in a weather-made cloak. When they turned and headed back towards me, I walked along the field’s inner edge, climbed over the barb-wire, and turned to see if the dogs were still following me: they were not. After waiting a bit longer, I returned to our farm and trusted Heidi to get Luther home safely.

The next day the pair repeated the adventure. I was chastised for allowing such an investment to wander unsupervised and unprotected. (I paid as much for each of those dogs as I did for Lucy because their initial cost was raised by 50% when I bought the right to breed them at a future date. Even though Heidi is unregistered—a result of her having been a rescue dog—her status as a learned adult justified her cost. The expense of the dogs collectively was somewhat mitigated by the break we got for accepting Molly at the last minute in order to maintain the bond she and Luther had built as littermates. At a third of what we paid for each of the others, Molly was a purebred bargain and the breeding rights came free!)

At one point on a Saturday in late April I saw Iben, the gentleman who’d been hired for the weekend to help on the farm, approach Luther (who had soloed this time) out by the highway barrier. When I saw him stooping to affix his belt to the dog’s collar as a leash, I took off down the hill trying to warn him that Luther is no ordinary dog and I’d rather he not try to lead him anywhere. Luther, being the unusual dog that he is, communicated his unwillingness to work on a leash quite nicely without my help. His perennial response to having his collar attached to any lead—my hand, a bit of twine, a lead rope—is to lie down and present his matted belly for tickling. This maneuver is very effective and often results in Luther’s being excused from whatever move I had had in mind. When he’s vertical, whether it be on his belly or on his paws, I can pull beneath his chin and use his collar to inch him forward by dragging. As might be imagined, this method of movement is greatly hindered by the pup’s efforts. When I do outwait him, Luther will travel on a lead with me for a distance until we approach an enclosure that could be used as a time-out for him. I think he overdoes the resistance act, especially since he’s adept at escaping enclosures when he determines that I may have forgotten him. (Smart dog. I have a mind like a sieve and the memory of a gnat.) At times of human-canine struggle Heidi is noticeably absent from the scene.

Little did I realize that these two days of romping abroad, uncharacteristic behavior for Heidi, coincided with her coming into heat. Beyond the unusual behavior, I saw no evidence for this until I found Heidi and Luther stuck together (in that way of dogs) one afternoon. Although I had noticed Luther mounting her once or twice that was the first time I’d seen them successfully mate. Thereafter for the next few days they remained in close physical proximity much like a pair of love-struck adolescents. (Later I consulted my Master Gardener friends about the canine gestation period and was promptly informed by Kathleen that it’s 63 days. Heidi’s pups are due to arrive at the end of June.)

Molly meanwhile remained faithfully at home when they roamed and then became even needier than usual for attention when she was effectively shut out of the couple’s little world. Indeed, Molly always erred on the side of caution and took care to be “good.”

Very recently, when I had begun escorting the goat herd downhill to the front, Heidi again slipped out to work. Since she stayed on the job, I appreciated her efforts. On the second day I invited her to exit through the main gate with the herd. I was less enthusiastic when on the second afternoon Molly shot out through the main gate when I was in the process of swinging it closed. I grabbed at her coat and she lay in place for a moment, then wriggled free and went directly to Heidi for instructions. In short order I realized that the perceived escape was actually a teaching moment between Heidi and her student and I left the dogs to their work.

The following day when Luther joined the gals, I was leery for a bit until I saw that he, too, was on the job. By afternoon, though, he became bored with the goat-watching and ventured into the neighbors’ yard. I noticed him approaching a fenced-in watchdog some three houses over and he allowed me to slip a bit of twine onto his collar and accompany him home. Timeout that day was served twined to the truck’s trailer hitch where he could watch goats without wandering and I would be ever-cognizant of his restrictive condition.

We’re learning together, the pups and I. Heidi teaches us both individually and collectively. Likely I am the slowest of her students, but she does not appear to hold that against me. In fact I actually touched her back yesterday! She’d come smiling up to me without being cut off by the pups and came close enough that I could lay a hand on her back momentarily. I have hope that she will be more approachable than she has been by her due date.

I wonder which, if any, of the pups will inherit Heidi’s wonderfully expressive traits.

The Fungus Among Us

Last week while I was at the Farmers’ Co-op I asked about fly prevention and one of the sales clerks told me about Equys products. Each of the all-natural, organic line of horse products is labeled for both human and animal use; in fact, she uses the mane detangler, which is a leave-in spray, on her daughter’s hair and loves it. Plus, she told me, they smell good. One product she mentioned three or four times for its efficacy in treating skin conditions and said that sometimes horses get a scabby condition that responds well to the natural product. Since that wasn’t my concern of the day, I filed the information in that sieve I call a mind and hoped that a smidge of the important information stuck for future use.

That afternoon the sun had been shining strongly for the first time in many days and I noticed that Lucy had soft, flaky, scabs around her pink muzzle. I wondered if it might be sunburn. Janet, I noticed, also had some little bumps around her muzzle but they weren’t peeling like those on Lucy. Janet also had a strange hardness to parts of her baby-soft coat. On her neck it felt as if she had some old cracked hide beneath her pretty spots. She seemed to like it when I’d rub those places, so I did.

On Friday and Saturday I noticed what appeared to be cuts on both Lucy and Janet. As time progressed, so did the number and severity of Janet’s “cuts.” I could not imagine how she had split the skin along the outside of both hocks and atop one elbow, and searched the paddock for dangerous spots. I found none. I tried once to communicate my concern to our Operations Manager, but we weren’t communicating on the same wavelength or something at the time. When she saw the filly on Sunday the poor thing was such a mess that she told me, “That animal does not look healthy.” We agreed that I would bring my concerns to the Co-op on Monday. Although I was urged to move mare and foal into a horse pasture—away from alpacas and goats—I chose to instead move the last of the goats out of the barn and give Lucy a stall of her own. Strange as it seemed, I had gotten used to having each horse in her own pasture.

Then Monday morning I was relieved to realize that Janet’s “cuts” were not cuts but rather patches of skin left after clumps of hair in soft scabs had peeled free. This was better than having so many injuries, yes, but once I related the peeling scabs to the leathery feel that now covered much of the filly’s body I was again alarmed. I took pictures of Lucy’s scab-free but now spotted muzzle, the filly’s scabby muzzle, and some of the more gruesome balding patches then set off for the Co-op in search of answers.

Surprisingly (to me) I recalled the mini-lecture about Equys products and was able to locate the product for skin conditions. The same clerk was available at the sales counter and she told me that the condition was bound to strike every horse in Wilson County at one time or another, and that it is a fungus that appears after rainy spells and in long wet grasses. Well, the home pasture is as short as possible without being denuded, but the rain we’ve certainly had, so I shelled out $25 and headed for home.

After spraying the exposed areas f skin, I reviewed the directions (Did I mention that I’m an idiot?) only to realize that one ought to bathe the horse with a medicated shampoo before misting the coat thoroughly with the product, then repeating it two or three times daily. Well, Janet has yet to wear a halter and I cannot see her standing still for a bath just yet unless I have help, so I finished spraying her coat and made a mental note to pick up a small halter. Yesterday I did have her wearing a cord around her neck for a time which she did come to accept, but all the touching we do is done on her terms—and she’s free to step away anytime. She always comes right back, but she’s not yet standing on request. In fact I would not have managed to spray her except both she and Lucy were in their stall and I sprayed her each time I could reach spots as she continually circled her dam and distrusted the spray.

So the fungus is among us at this time. I’m told it’s highly contagious among horses and sharing saddle blankets or brushes is a no-no. Brushes may be dipped in bleach before moving to another animal, but it’s best to have separate grooming tools for each horse. At least our girls are all in separate pastures’ I guess they’ll stay that way for a bit. And although I got the message that this is an equine problem, I’ll double-check tomorrow and ask if alpacas or goats are known to pick it up at all. (I hope not!)

Separating Boys from Girls

Space is at a premium until the farm is fully fenced and cross-fenced. The acres of lush grass (potential pasture) extend beyond the perimeter fence erected to date. The land within the perimeter fence has limited cross-fencing on it. Each morning I must perform the mental shuffle: how shall I separate the goats, alpacas, horses, dogs, geese and chickens today?

For the most part, the chickens manage themselves. I provide scratch grain in the morning to the free range birds and keep Mama Hen supplied with layer mash and water. The chicks have outgrown their garaged dog kennel and now have a base in the larger wire kennel near Mama Hen; I only provide chick starter and fresh water. They have begun flowing out through the chain link, maintaining cover under the orchard’s pots, a nearby rock outcropping, or simply the tall grass. Mama Hen has her one chick whom she mothers, and is busily brooding over a new clutch of guinea hen eggs—collected from our hens. Thus, the chickens take practically no thought and little time each day.

The geese have come to an agreement with me. During the day they roam free through the back acreage, and in the evening they report to the outside kennel in the woods to receive cracked corn and a safe (locked-in) space for the night.

The dogs have settled well within the perimeter fence. Usually they roam free of the home pasture, but once in a while they prefer it. During long rainy stretches, Molly likes the home pasture for its easy access to shelter in stalls. She seems to like lying in the straw or shavings with little goats around her. Luther prefers to excavate the barn’s inner corridor—especially spots supporting the legs of large furniture items stored there for now. Heidi roams outside, coming into the shelter at the far end of the barn only to eat. She may seek shelter beneath the storage trailer in the heat of the day, but she’s usually close on the heels of her charges and she pays extra close attention to the smallest goats.

The goats were long split between residing in the barn (Nigerian Dwarfs, Little Uns, and new mamas and their kids) and out by (or beneath) the storage trailer. After Mother’s Day weekend, Lucy and Janet have been given the center stall and all goats are now relegated to the more spacious enclosures under the trailer. For pasture the boys generally work down front, tackling the grassy acres to little avail at an ever-increasing (that is to say, they are losing the battle more and more quickly). Big fainter girls roam within the perimeter fence and browse the woods. Smaller goats and those with kids are relegated to the home pasture. Since Nigerian Dwarf goats seem to take pleasure in problem-solving, they have been well-entertained by the sloppy divider fence I slung up when the alpacas arrived.

The alpacas, on the other hand, are willing to be contained by my feeble efforts—usually. At times, after the goats have again demolished my fence by climbing over it until it lies nearly flat, Spencer will hop the “barrier” and go play with the boys. For a time I even let the boys and girls mingle. After all the girls are pregnant, so what could be the harm?

The harm, it turned out, is that Romeo is true to his name. One afternoon when I had the genders mixed together, I thought to stable them all side-by-side in a stall divided by a sturdy goat panel. Romeo refused to be enticed in with the boys. After I had (stupidly) allowed him to enter the girls’ stall, Goldie exploded out of the door with Romeo in hot pursuit. Wholly enamored, he gave serious chase for several minutes, then Hamilton boiled over the goat panel divider in one easy move (for such gentle creatures, they are amazingly athletic). Later, after the boys were settled again two stalls away from the girls and Spencer, Hamilton showed off for me again, leaping easily out into the pasture over the stall door meant to contain him.

For today, the boys have a goat panel grate over the top portion of their stall. Tomorrow, of course, will bring more changes to the pasturing dilemma.

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.

World's Most Amazing Neighbors

When we left our old neighborhood last fall I shed a few tears. Not only would I miss the people who had been in my life for so many years, but also I didn’t see how we could ever hope to ever have such kind, understanding, and helpful neighbors ever again. Boy was I wrong!

On Tower Road, our last address and the one at which I was born, people knew our idiosyncrasies (and worse) and loved us anyway. Plus, we had pajama-clad neighbor boys who would run down the street mornings when we were away just to make sure that Puddycat got fed promptly. If the boys were away or busy, someone would always provide cat care, package collection, and just general neighborhood watch. Little did I realize I’d be asking for so much more.

In the eight months we’ve lived in Middle Tennessee we’ve grown this farm from just a lovely piece of real estate into an ever-changing farm where no one day is like another because something always happens to change any plans we’ve made for a day. At first when we went away, Puddycat would shift for herself; she discovered that the self-proclaimed Cat Woman next door feeds her strays far finer fare than any dished up here. (I always figured that if the cat wanted a warm or wet meal, she could catch it herself. When I had the opportunity to feed the cats next door recently I understood why our Sissybelle always seemed to appear from the neighbor’s yard when I’d come out or arrive home. She feeds meaty chunks in gravy served from single-serving envelopes, and that’s just for starters.

Now, Puddycat, a.k.a. Sissibelle, a.k.a. RastaCat is gone. She vanished a couple of weeks back one night when the coyotes were particularly active and close. All we have left that require sitters for us to leave them are the geese, chickens, goats, horses, and alpacas. No more simple “Please feed the cat” notes. No. Designing a workable plan for weekend stand-ins was as challenging as writing the first Substitute Plans for a school year.

When I’d mentioned that we wished to go away for Mother’s Day, the World’s Greatest Neighbors said, “We’d love to” mind the farm. And yes, I love what I do here, but it takes hours each day, so I wondered … what neighbor wants to spend that kind of time looking out for the folks next door? But on Friday they agreed to come over twice: once in the morning to review the plans I’d written, and again in the afternoon for a dry run-through of the tasks.

Since Heidi is fiercely protective of Lucy’s new filly, we arranged it so that the neighbors would have no contact with the Livestock Guardians. That cut out the geese, the billygoats, and the big fainter gals. And the chickens are self-sufficient, so they didn’t need watching. That still left the World’s Best Neighbors with nine separate areas of animals needing attention twice daily, including the day-old filly and the six-day-old bucklings—of which the runt is still struggling to survive as neither doe is willing to feed him voluntarily. “No problem,” they said and meant it!

When all was set and I reminded them that we often leave later than originally planned, they urged us to be “on vacation” beginning Saturday morning even if we didn’t actually leave at the crack of dawn as planned. Since we didn’t leave until late afternoon, that allowed me a full day of “staycation” time, and I finally understood the importance of respite care for beleaguered caregivers. What a glorious feeling!

Over the weekend we received one simple question via text message. No emergency calls. No emergencies. For all we could tell life on the farm was running as smoothly as we’d planned.

This morning we pulled in sometime after 2:30 a.m. and when I went to the barn to check on the animals I saw what challenges our fabulous neighbors had faced without a peep. The alpaca boys had stormed the fence and encroached on the females’ territory. The goats’ behavior had warranted the addition of wooden door-jambs to multiple doors. The furious rains had washed gullies into the gravel drive, maintained the water level in the run-off buckets, and left animals huddling together to stay dry. And, oh yes, the dogs had done something to warrant their dinner being taken up during what are usually their free-feeding night hours. (I learned in daylight that the food had been removed because the big fainter girls [left roaming freely for the weekend within the perimeter fence] had challenged the dogs for their food causing a goat to be attacked. Whichever goat that was, I’m glad to report that she’s fine. I see no evidence of damage on any of them.)

So, what makes this couple the World’s Greatest Neighbors? Well, not only did they successfully manage the farm with all its unexpected challenges, but also Theresa reported this morning, “We had fun!”

We are never moving again.

Thank you, Amazing Neighbors!

Lucy's Janet

On Monday afternoon Lucy’s behavior changed. I caught her lying down in the pasture while surrounded by fine grazing on more than one occasion. When I’d approach her, she’d slowly stand to greet me on four hooves. That evening I brought her into the safety of the home pasture—with its smooth grassy floor and dog-patrolled electric fencing. By Tuesday her foal had dropped, causing her to look big in the belly while emphasizing her hip bones and spine. For three nights I kept a close eye on her, padding out every so often and shining a flashlight when the cloud cover made her less visible. A fellow Master Gardner (trainee) predicted that Lucy was waiting for a full moon to deliver stating, “They always wait for a full moon,” sharing the wisdom of her grandmotherly years. The moon waxed to full and despite the numerous times I looked out Lucy managed to wait until her humans were either asleep or off working.

When I went out to begin feeding on Thursday morning, there stood Miss Lissamy Lucy with her brand-new, not-yet-dry little filly: Janet. With a bold red-and-white coat and strongly blue eyes, Lucy’s newborn reminded me of a fiercely patriotic friend from “back home.” Plus the little gal was (is) bright-eyed and spunky, much like her namesake. Born on the numerically auspicious date of 5-7-9 (another date with consecutive odd numbers won’t be realized until 2013, or thereabouts), the foal may also be followed by luck. (Her namesake has “the luck o’ the Irish,” although it’s not always good luck that strikes that Janet’s world. If filly Janet can “inherit” just a smidge of her counterpart’s optimism, all of her luck will prove to be good in some way.) All-in-all, I was quite pleased with “our” new little Janet who was a bright young thing with long, spindly legs and intelligent good looks.

Lucy carefully and continuously shifted her body to place herself between me and her foal, so I made no move to touch the little gal at first. Come my second trip to the pasture, Lucy relented and I got to touch the silky coat when little Janet walked over to investigate me. For the most part Lucy accepts me now, but occasionally places her body as a buffer. Heidi, though, is fiercely protective of our newest arrival—barking at anyone who approaches the fence, coming very close to those “strangers” I bring behind the perimeter fence with me and not backing off until I wave at her. She even barked at me last night when I stood by Lucy in the dark pasture; I guess Heidi was ready to have even me gone from “her” foal’s world.

A Sunday Surprise

On Sunday morning, May 3rd, I walked up to the barn with minimal expectations of a new birth. Both Sarah Bernhardt and Caitlyn seemed so determined to stay pregnant that I was a bit surprised to hear the cries as I entered the barn, cries indicating that one had finally kidded. The middle stall was still sloppily divided into two portions: with the big fainter does (and Raymond) on the inside portion and Numbers One, Two, Three; Gretchen; and Sarah Bernhardt (formerly Number Four but renamed by a clever teen in Seattle for the famously-swooning actress) on the side opening into the home pasture. Upon examination, I found that Caitlyn had borne twins—a ruggedly handsome tan-and-white, blue-eyed buckling and a little brown-and-white guy whom she had not even bothered to clean off—and Sarah had delivered a fine little black-and-white buckling. Having three newborns was an exciting start to an otherwise-usual day.

The morning followed the usual pattern: wake and head out with a plan for the day (we had had plans to go visiting that morning) only to rethink the plan upon meeting reality. Immediately I emptied the stall of extraneous goats, with four piling into the pasture and a half-dozen trampling through the barn to browse in the woods, then set about reconfiguring the stall. The divider was pitched at an angle of maybe 60-degrees because the big fainter girls continued to climb the once-straight wall in pursuit of the food set our for the Little ‘Uns. I cut the ties binding the divider to opposite walls and struggled and strained until I’d managed to free the piece of fencing that had been securely anchored by a couple of rocks wedged at its base—wedged in, covered with hay, and long-forgotten until necessity unearthed the effective anchors.

The new mamas needed fresh water and a sweet, warm treat, but first the littlest kid needed to be cleaned off and fed. Caitlyn had made no move to tend to him. The placenta clung to his coat like glue, refusing to be wiped away, and Mama was not eager to take the kid to her teat, so I bundled him up and made a dash for the house. Once inside we cleaned him up in the bathroom sink, scrubbing at the placenta with a washcloth while the kid reclined in a warm bath. In the kitchen we set about hunting for the bag of Kid Colostrum that had been put away a bit too safely—even after consulting with the angel who had recently managed to instill logical order upon our kitchen the bag never turned up. So a can of goat milk was opened, milk warmed, and a bottle prepared but our little brown-and-white guy was less that enthusiastic about nursing from the bottle.

Back to the barn we took him, where he managed to nurse from Mama’s teat after we’d chased her down and forced her to stand in place for the duration. Once the little fella’s belly was rounded and full, we released Mama; treated the new mothers to warm oatmeal with Karo syrup, raisins, and slices of fresh pear; added fresh hay and bedding to the now full-size stall; and bowed out. Or ought I say butted out?

That was some six days ago and the runt has yet to be welcomed by either mama. Indeed, both butt him away vigorously; one day I even found the little guy in the water bucket: someone, Caitlyn I presume, and butted him so strongly that his little body flew up and came down in the water bucket. Luckily the water level was low and he stood tall enough that his nose was reaching over the lip of the bucket when I found him. He survives because both mamas will allow me to hold them still while they eat so that he can suckle. The stillness soon turns to a wrestling match and the mamas are freed as soon as the runt has gotten a modicum of milk into him. The little scrapper is a survivor and, while he’s not growing nearly as fast as his hulky brother, will manage to live long enough to switch to solid food that he can forage for himself.

Yesterday the boys finally received names, again courtesy of the young woman in Seattle; again we have goats named for movie stars. (Oh, I ought to add that we did receive movie-star names for the four fainter girls previously known by numbers, but only Sarah was named because Number One, Number Two, and Number Three fit so well.) The runt, who turned out to be light cocoa colored with blue eyes, bears the name of George Clooney. (I call him George, and his diminutive size and round head remind me more of George Burns.) His twin, thrice his size, is called Brad; named for Brad Pitt. And Sarah’s little one—who is maturing well, but more slowly than Brad—is called Hugh, for Hugh Jackman. (My cultural illiteracy spreads far enough that I cannot even match a face to that name.)

Hugh has floppy ears and a slightly rounded face, leading me to wonder if his daddy might be a full Boer or a Boer-percentage goat. We have few photos of him because, although he’s quite pretty with white speckling at the tops of his ears and a little patch of pink-and-white across his muzzle, I cannot see him clearly enough in photos. (Having dropped my camera some three-too-many times, I’m reduced to camera-phone images while waiting for a new camera to be delivered.)

I like that all of the kids are quite personable and will seek out human attention when I ignore them. Even skittish Sarah will stand to be petted—lightly and briefly. And Caitlyn now accepts that feeding George is part of the deal when she enjoys a meal placed before her. (All of our goats are as motivated by food as am I.) What the farm will do with three more bucklings is beyond me; only Brad appears to be stud material.

Sting or Casanova

Bully’s fine little buckling, Sting (who also answers to Spike), is a chip off the ol’ block. At less than two weeks of age, he began mounting other goats. At first I thought he was simply climbing up to “ride” atop others, as little ones are wont to do, but his actions are clearly of a reproductive nature. Indeed, he will avidly pursue the Numbers about the pasture or the stall, with the determined ardor of his father. Although we’ve already agreed to sell him back to the family who brought Bully, Cocoa, Jennifer, Thumbelina, and Leo into our lives, I’ve begun to wonder if they might not be willing to take George and/or Hugh in his stead. I believe they’re looking for a pet and we could use another handsome, vigorous, practically-proved Nigerian Dwarf stud on the farm. (Technically one is proven by successfully producing offspring, but this little guy has the mechanics down so well that he’s already half-proven himself to me.)

Say what? Is he getting any? Puh-lease! No. Our little Casanova is still shorter than the shortest Number (and the Numbers threesome are known as the farm’s Little Uns). He’ll hotly pursue a Number at a run, leaping up to latch on whenever he’s close enough, only to slide off as she continues running—or to flip over backwards because she’s so much taller than him. When he reaches an age to successfully breed, he’ll be living separately from the Little Uns, from any of the fainters for that matter.

At three weeks of age, Sting still readily slips through fences—flowing freely into and back out of the female alpacas’ stall section. Gregarious, he’ll romp up to and away from anyone—human or animal—on a lark. Unfortunately I’ve attended to others more in this past week, and Sting has switched from willingly cuddly to adamantly struggling to get away from the terrifying human. He’ll scream and carry on, making him difficult to hold effectively. No larger than was Jessica Lynne on the day she was scooped up by a swooping hawk and disappeared, Sting is relegated to the safety of the home pasture while his mother, Jennifer, has taken to browsing the woods with the big fainter girls for hours at a time. When he finds himself alone in the pasture (abandoned by Nigerian Dwarfs but still in the company of horses and/or alpacas), he’ll carry on at great length fueled by a seemingly bottomless supply of energy.

He’s a fine little dude and we’re very glad to have him here on the farm.