My First Goat and the best-selling paperback, guest post by HorsehairBraider
When I was 18 I moved to a small horse and goat farm and began a life-long adventure of learning about goats (and horses, and making cheese). They did not pay me; I worked for room and board, but out of kindness I was told that when one of the does kidded I would get her kid for my very own.
Now how exciting is that? My very own goat, my own milk and my own cheese – I was really looking forward to the prospect. My goat would come from a Saanen doe the farm had. Her name was Zephyr, and she was pure white. Saanens are a Swiss breed. The very first livestock purebred registry in the whole wide world was started in Switzerland, for goats. Zephyr had been bred to a buck for freshening, or coming in to milk. This is not always done every year, because some does will “milk through” or just keep producing milk, but for some their production starts to drop off and so they are sent to a buck for breeding, then milked another three months and dried off for the last two months before kidding (for it takes about 5 months between breeding and kidding). That gives the doe a break and allows her to prepare for her new kids and her next lactation, because of course that milk is really for her kids, not us. We just share.
But back to my first goat.
As luck would have it, I was left in charge of the farm while everyone else went off for a few days, and sure enough, Zephyr kidded one night while I was there all by myself.
My first clue about it was this shrieking noise coming from the goat pen. I rushed out to find a tiny little pure white goatling staggering around and making enough noise to be heard for a mile, valiantly trying to follow her mother Zephyr who was determined to have nothing to do with her. There she was – she was here. This was MY goat, and her mother would not let her nurse!
Now, it’s absolutely vital that a new-born kid get a drink of colostrum, the first sort of milk that a goat produces. Colostrum* is packed with nutrition but even more importantly it transfers vital immunologic defense to the new kid. All the antibodies the doe can produce against local bacteria and disease is in this very thick milk. The kid can only absorb this effectively in the first twelve hours of life and then after that it really does the kid no good as far as immunity goes. Somehow, I was going to have to get colostrum into this kid, who I had quickly determined was a doe kid or doeling.
First I tried tying Zephyr to the wall and holding her as still as I could while the kid learned how to nurse. Watching a kid learn how to nurse exasperates me to this day, 35 years later. Helping does no good; the kid will clamp her mouth shut as tightly as she can the moment you touch her, unless of course she’s decided to scream instead. And just when you get her latched on to the nipple she will immediately let go and bump her nose hopefully against the doe’s hock, or grab a clump of hair and suck on that. Despite these agonizing set backs, the kid finally got her first meal.
Unfortunately by that time Zephyr, who had never had such a horrid experience in her life, came up with the brilliant idea of simply dropping down in a limp heap to the ground. Have you ever tried to pick up an adult goat who has gone limp? It’s like trying to pick up a Hefty lawn bag filled with 150 pounds of water. As an exercise in futility it has few rivals.
As I look back over my years of experience now, I shake my head at my old self – these days, I would have all sorts of strategies to deal with this situation. In the first place I would have realized that Zephyr had had a difficult birth and was in a lot of pain, and the pain was interfering with her natural instincts. These days, I would treat her for her pain. But I did not know this. All I knew was that I had a little six-pound goat on my hands and that I was going to have to feed her, somehow, without the cooperation of her mother.
This was going to be a real problem, I reflected, as I took my new goat into the house. (Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t you take goats into your house?) For one thing, goats never leave their kids alone even when they to go the bathroom… and if you do go to the bathroom, and the kid can not see you, she will immediately leap up and start screaming and crashing into things. Ask me how I know. So leaving her all by herself was out of the question; I was certain she would kill herself in her frantic attempts to find me if I left her. And that was a real problem, because the other thing was, I needed to go to the store to buy things like a baby bottle to feed her with, and I was real sure they were not going to let me bring a goat into the store.
I was pretty stumped; here I had this tiny live thing, who I was determined to keep alive, and yet society had decided I could not just bring her with me. As I stared at my very own goat, my very first one, I desperately wanted her to live. That’s when her name occurred to me: Zoe, which means life. I wanted Zoe to live.
This farm was situated on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah, which some may know is the home and heart of the Mormon church. The local Mormon women at this time were all quite fecund, so I was bound to be able to find a baby bottle at just about any store. In fact most young Mormon women at that time were all pregnant and had a toddler or two. I sort of stood out, because most young women my age were already pregnant.
Aha. The light went on.
I hitched up the horse (oh yeah, see, back then I had to drive a carriage because a driver’s license for a car was still six years in my future) and found a box to hold my new little goat next to me, and I drove to the store. I went over my plan in my head, took a big breath, and put it into action.
Not one person batted an eye as I walked into the store holding my new baby goat. In fact I drew admiring smiles, because I had very carefully first wrapped her up in a beautiful pink baby blanket, with the flap folded down over her cute little face to signal that she was asleep. Holding her tenderly in my left arm, I pushed a shopping cart around the store with my right, while gathering up the various items I would need to take care of my goat. Luckily Zoe was still pretty full from her first meal and was happy, although probably a little puzzled, to rest in my arms in this very strange position for a goat. She did not make so much as a peep.
I have to say I was feeling pretty smug as I pushed my cart up to the check-out line. It was starting to look like I was going to get away with this. But suddenly Disaster loomed in the form of a sweet lady bearing down on me, head cocked to one side while she said “Awwwww…” There was nothing I could do. She lifted up the flap of the blanket.
You know, I did not realize a person could turn that color. I was also pretty surprised at how far a person’s eyes can go out. Right at the time though I was busy inflating my chest with air so I could explain… something… or… I really had no idea what to say. No idea. Because, where do you start?
But luck was still with me. Without saying a word, the lady dropped her hand to her side, turned and walked swiftly out of the store. I nearly collapsed with relief. To this day I have no idea what was going through her head, but if she happens to read this, I sure hope she accepts my apologies. The fact that she did not scream or tell anyone I had a goat meant that I got the stuff I needed, and eventually got my goat raised up into a beautiful adult.
Now I tried very hard to look up this next thing but my Google-fu is weak, and I can’t find any confirmation for this. But I could just swear… I mean, I know it was not written that year, but that would have been the hard back anyway, and this was a paperback, and so that would have been a while later. I can’t say for certain, and I know my memory could be playing tricks on me, but still I’m pretty sure… that the best-selling paperback book in the racks at the check-out counters was “Rosemary’s Baby”.
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* Everyone almost certainly already knows this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colostrum The point is that most mammals produce colostrum but some animals, including the standard farm animals, DON’T pass any immunological defense through the placenta (as humans do) so it is EVEN MORE CRUCIAL that something like a goat gets its colostrum.
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