Tomorrow I am going to buy one more doe. This will bring my herd to 11 does and 1 buck from which I plan to grow the herd to 40 animals and sell meat to immigrant buyers. (Gringo’s don’t understand goat meat so why bother trying to explain it to them.) Probably 8 of the does I have now have been bred by the buck and when I buy 1 more this should give me perhaps 10 kids (offspring) born in the spring. It’s difficult to predict the number of offspring this year because the buck has also been breeding with the yearling does which might or might not be able get pregnant and does which have never kidded usually have less offspring that those who have been bred before. Two of the does that I started my herd with have never been bred while three more that I bought from Steve Shippa have kidded before. A young doe or one that has never kidded before will deliver a single kid while a doe which has kidded before can have doubles or even triples. I wouldn’t call them “twins” or “triplets” because it’s not the same as people. I mean there are not going to all have the same freckles or the same propensity for mathematics or ballet. It’s just an ordinal number we are talking about here.
I had read in the goat instruction manuals—it makes sense to call them that since regardless of their title or whether they are books, web sites, or newspapers they all aspire to the same goal---to never turn your back on a buck for sure one is in the “rut”. Now this concept of “rut” has me a little confused. The old joke for humans—to wit, women need a reason to make love and men only need a place--applies to goats as well. Males the two-legged and four-legged kind are as Maureen Dowd says, “as predictable as a pile of wood”. We are ready to fornicate regardless of the calendar. Given that what exactly does the rut mean? The does come into heat ever 21 days so it would make no sense that the male only wants to breed in the fall which is when the rut occurs. There is a reason that deer hunters pile into the woods in November: this is the beginning of the rut. Any motorist can see this as well as the normally aloof and careful deer male looses his tendency to stay hidden from view and bumbles around the countryside crossing highway and byway completely oblivious to oncoming traffic. When he is looking for love he loses all sense of reason and this is when he is most vulnerable to the hunter’s weapons. The same thing happens to men of course. They lose the ability to think clearly when confronted with décolletage, the sight of a woman’s ankle, an hourglass figure, or the mane of her hair. Plato in “Phaedrus” says love is an illness that heightens one’s sensitivity. Otherwise stoic men become silly putty around women when they fall in love. Their pride is easily wounded and they are prone to sulk. So the “rut” must be the season when the otherwise easily aroused male is aroused all the time.
Maybe this was what was wrong with my buck one brisk day in November when this otherwise docile creature reared up on his hind legs and showed some aggression. The buck had been quite rough with the females knocking them about as he mated with them and lowing loudly but had never shown aggression toward me. But this day he started to rub his horns on the temporary shelter I had built for them and threatened to knock one side down so I moved in to put it back up and then he turned on me. He came at me with his 260 pound girth and shoved me to the ground as if I was an afterthought. I was still unaware what was happening when confusion turned to fright as he pushed me toward the electric fence. I pulled myself out of there unscathed and pondered what to do as he stood between me and the exit.
I don’t think I panicked but I forgot what I had read which is when the bucks starts coming for you grab his beard and hang on tightly. That was sort of difficult to remember as has shoved me around in the dirt.
The more I thought about this the more I realized I could have been seriously hurt. Farming can be dangerous. This same week I had gone to the doctor because I thought I had gotten some fertilizer in my eye. The nurse put die in my eye and found no scratches or dust and then cleaned out my eyes. A couple of years ago I almost killed myself when a tree I was cutting down with my chainsaw fell on me, breaking my jaw on both sides, and pinning me to the ground in below freezing weather. When I had my bulldozer a pine tree I pushed over bounced off the roof of the cab. And finally I had quit climbing trees in a deer stand because I could imagine falling and hanging there in the wind, snow, and rain for weeks until someone came looking for me. So I phoned up Steve Shippa who sold me the buck and told him my problem.
Steve as I have already written is the one who sold me the buck. I admire him for his dexterity with goats. He showed me how to catch the females by squatting down and stretching your arms out wide thus making yourself look larger. Catching the animals is always a problem when you need to deworm them or give them vaccinations. Goats that you milk are generally tame. But meat goats do not get handled by people each do so they are more skittish. So I paid the neighbor’s kid $10 to help me the last time I did this but he just stood there without a clue what to do as he watched me dive to the ground trying to catch all the goats. Steve knows better what to do. He is sort of a wide fellow anyway. So when he stretches out his arms and squats down how he looks like Barney Rubble as he corners and cows the hapless creature. Animals are rather dumb. So the goal is to just make yourself look like a bigger animal. They don’t realize we are humans with all of our doubts, our fears, and our failings. They just look at us as either one of their herd, a passerby, or possible a threat.
This was made clear to one of Steve’s friends when he made the mistake of leaning over and showing his backside to a buck when does I heat were nearby. This fellow was a big man but his buck was even bigger. The buck charged him from behind knocking him to the ground and giving him a concussion. The only bit of luck here was he was farming goats and not some 2,000 pound cow.
Every American kid has seen those television cartoon depictions of the nativity scene where the wise men come to the baby Jesus with frankincense and mur (whatever those might be) wearing shepherd’s clothes and carrying a long hook. It turns out this 2,000 year biblical device actually exists. It’s sort of like the ancient basket wine press: elegant in its simplicity there is no need to change its design over the years however primitive. Steve has a goat hook and I am looking to purchase one. You can use it to reach out and snare the goat by the neck. So you corner them with outstretched arms and then snare them by the neck. In other words a six foot tall human gives himself another 6 feet of reach. Quite effective. This is how you catch a goat.
So Steve I knew would know what to do about my buck which had turned on me. He said none of his bucks had ever gotten out of hand because he had learned rather quickly to grab them on their smelly beard, jerk their head up, and look them in the eye. Goats, he said, are like dogs where pecking order is important. Either you dominate or you will be dominated. I needed to reestablish dominion over the herd. He told me to get a bucket of water and pour it right into the bucks face as they hate that.
This is what I did. I poured two buckets of freezing water into the buck’s face and he backed down. I would say he went running his tail between his legs except the goats tail always sticks up and not down. So this ruse is working and the gently giant has not challenged me since. But I have learned not to turn my back on him. Water works because goats hate water (rain). What is odd is they do not mind snow. One farmer from the Northern Plain states had written that he would look out across his pasture for his goats after a heavy snow and only see little humps on the horizon. He called his goats and up would pop up their heads. Still goats hate rain. Whenever it rains on my farm I can always find my goats in any of the small sheds I have built on the property. The stand together patiently waiting for it to quit raining.
That same week I had to confront the other danger on the farm: ticks. I had read in the newspaper that 20% of the ticks here in
It had never occurred to me that dogs could get lime disease. I spent all my time worrying about my kids when the same week I had fought with the goat my Labrador Retriever Will suddenly went lame. I thought he had broken one leg. He hopped around on three legs and climbed into my bed and lay there no even getting up to eat or drink water. So I took him to the vet and was surprised when he told me the dog had gotten lime disease. He gave me 21 days of antibiotics and some pain medicine. I find it quite remarkable that these bacteria could actually cause an animal to go lame. People I understand have a much harder time getting over this problem.
Sphere: Related Content
No comments:
Post a Comment