Hello, Friends!
Look at this bell:
I found it on the dining room table. It’s so pretty - my kind of bell. I asked Jan what it was for, and she said, “Oh, that’s for wethers.”
A wether is a neutered male goat. Just like male cows can be steers or bulls, goats can be wethers or bucks.
Look below at the next two photos. Wendell the wether is pictured here:
And, Sam the buck is here:
Wendell is four years old, and Sam is only nine months old, but they’re the same size. But, to me, what’s really dramatic is how shaggy Sam is. The goats don’t get shaggy without testosterone, so the bucks look really . . . macho!
Anyway, Jan explained that you can put that cool bell on a wether and he’ll lead the does (the female goats) off to graze someplace, and at the end of the day he’ll lead them back. He’ll even break up squabbles between the does. If you have several wethers, the wethers themselves will decide who’s the leader, and he’s the one you put the bell on. And the bell lets you know where the flock is, even if they’re out of sight.
This lead goat, because he gets the bell, is called the bellwether. WHOA! My brain exploded! Who knew that’s where we got that word! I am in some sort of convulsion of delight! That word comes to us from Middle English. When Jan explained this to me, it was like a John Ciardi moment in our own dining room.
In other news, we took Molly out of Jordan’s pen this week. (That’s Molly to the right). She was in his pen in order to get bred. It was pretty easy catching her - that pen has a shelter that’s about two feet away from the fence, so when Molly ran into the gap between the shelter and the fence, Jan came up behind her, and I came around the other side - the side where Molly was facing - and grabbed her collar and led her out. I was feeling pretty proud of myself, thinking I was really a good goatherd!
We led her into the outer pen, and snapped a lead rope onto her collar. Molly was just following sweetly along. I asked Jan, should I take her to the pen where we have the pregnant does and the milkers? She said yes.
So, I wrapped the lead rope several times around my hand and headed toward the milkers’ pen. I was thinking, wow, I’m a natural. I am doing so well at this. Just as I was thinking that, there was a ginormous jerk on my hand where I had the rope wrapped and I was knocked completely off my feet. I had no idea what had happened, but I was being pulled along the ground - fast! The lead rope had tightened and I didn’t know what to do! Molly had bolted, and taken me with her! She kept running, around and around, dragging me behind her, over mud, goat poop, and leaves. Jan was yelling at me to let go of the rope, but it had tightened and I couldn’t figure out how to get it off my hand! Molly swung wide, and suddenly I was heading towards the water pump, and all I could think was that I was going to get killed slamming into that thing - there was no way this was going to end well. Then, suddenly, Molly changed directions. I don’t know if Jan headed her off, or what, but her change in direction allowed the rope to go slack momentarily, and I was able to slip it off my hand.
Jan came running over. “Why didn’t you let go?” She asked. "I had the rope wrapped around my hand - I couldn’t get it off.” “You NEVER wrap the rope around your hand!”
But, Jan didn’t learn that elementary farming rule on the farm, so it didn’t register to her as a farming thing that I needed to be taught. It didn’t, in fact, occur to her that it was something I wouldn’t know. Jan is a hot-air balloonist. Not wrapping the rope around your hand is one of the first rules of hot-air ballooning. Because, with the ropes on the balloon, if your hand is wrapped and the balloon goes up . . . well, you can DIE!!!!
All I have to say is, I’m really glad I learned this lesson from Molly the goat and not on the balloon crew! I mean, I was embarrassed that Molly had dragged me, just when I was all puffed up about being a natural goatherd. But, I was fine. No big deal. Lesson learned.
And, really, is there such a thing as a natural goatherd? I mean, I adore the goats, but I truly don’t know anything. Farmers know a ton of stuff that keeps them safe, and I don’t know any of these things. I learn a bunch of new stuff every single day that farmers probably don’t even know that they know, because their knowledge is so deep - really generational.
Anyway, Molly was too freaked out to catch at that point. We didn’t want to stress her, especially because, hopefully, she’d just become pregnant. And she was fine for the morning in that outer pen. We closed the gate and waited for the young man who comes once a week to do heavy chores. He was coming later that morning, anyway. When he arrived, it was really easy, with three of us, to get her cornered, and then Jay grabbed her and lead her to the milkers’ pen. Jay is about the size of me and Jan put together.
It took a day or two, but Molly has forgiven me and now eats peanuts out of my hand like the other milkers (see photo below). And she’s adjusting to her new pen. So, all’s well. And I’m a wiser person in return for the few bruises I got to my shins and my ego.
