25 Dec 2005
Shoat? Greep? WTF???

I'm sure that some of the more urban readers of this humble blog may harbor an idyllic picture of "life on the farm", where "every day's a holiday, and every meal's a feast". Be warned, this post will put the kibosh on those sentiments...

We finally started Christmas shopping yesterday afternoon - and we finished last night! It was a typical, madcap, Haxtonesque shopping spree - not much money was spent, but immediate family all got some small token. Of course, with Kris, that still means about 15 items, so we didn't finish up until quite late, and got home about 11:30 pm.

We had also done our grocery shopping for the feast tomorrow while we were at it, so I told Kris to unload the groceries and I'd go take care of the critters - we'd made sure that they had fresh water before we left at 3pm, but needed to replenish that supply, throw some hay, lock the chickens in and I wanted to get Donner and Blitzen locked in a stall and get them some goat chow.

I'd just let them out on the pasture yesterday morning - I've had the two wethers locked in most of the week, as on their return from the petting zoo Donner had a pretty stopped up nose, and Blitzen was dribbling a bit too. And it was supposed to rain all day today (and it did rain all day, indeed), so I thought I'd get'em back in and bedded down.

To nobody's surprise, they were already in their stall, begging for some attention and some chow! I got them took care of, and noticed our other goat, a little doe named Francie that we acquired from Kevyn a few months ago, was in the other big stall, also bleating for some love and dinner. So after I took care of the chickens, threw the cattle and the horse some hay, and filled the water tanks, I went back into the barn and got her some goat ration and a flake of hay all for her very own.

About this time, Kris had finished up unloading the groceries and came out to see if she could help me get done any faster. Francie turned, for some reason, so her back was to us, and Kris immediately spotted a problem: "What's that hanging off Francie's butt?"

I hadn't noticed anything, but then again, I'd not seen her backside, and sure enough, there was a dark mass, about six or seven inches long, hanging below her tail. It wasn't manure, as goat shit is very pelletized, and this was a single long lump. The lighting was pretty poor, so we got her into the main area of the barn to have a better look.

It was a fetus! And Francie was obviously still laboring to expel ... the afterbirth? a twin? We had no idea she was even pregnant! It was a bit of a mess - the mass was hanging by the umbilical, and Kris managed to get the cord cut and get the fetus off her while I held her still. She wasn't greatly distressed, but it was very important to get all of the afterbirth out of her, to prevent infection. And we weren't having much luck...

I had to figure this out - Francie hasn't run with a buck since last year! How could she have been pregnant? We examined the fetus: judging from it's size and state of development, it couldn't have been much past 10 or twelve weeks. It was also pretty obviously defective - I wanted to put it somewhere where I could have a better look, in daylight, and that meant protecting the body from the barn cats and the dogs (not to mention the coyotes). So I put it under a rock outside the main barn door.

Mind you, this was 12:30am this morning, and we had both been up since 5am. "Tired" doesn't do it justice. And there we were, in the barn, blood, guts and a goat having a miscarriage.

We finally got her calmed down. I put some fresh straw down in the stall opposite from the boys, and we locked her in for the night. She was not happy with this - she missed Hammer (the horse), who she thinks is her big brother, and protector from the evil cattle and other goats. But she settled in, and we came in to try and get some sleep.

This morning, we called Kevyn, and by the time he got over here she'd expelled a twin as well. Most of the afterbirth was obviously well on the way, and we managed to get a urea tablet placed in her uterus. She'll be fine.

Best as we can figure, she'd been in the same pastures with our Blackface ram, when he was breeding the flock. And he mustn't have been paying much attention to such minor details as species...

So that's my Christmas Eve idyll - doing obstetrics on a goat, who'd been bred by a sheep, at one in the morning following a 20 hour day.

Thank the gods I'm a country boy!

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