We’ve added another animal to our menagerie here: Coco!
Last Sunday, we drove down to Jarales and got her. She is eleven weeks old, and the delight of everyone. She weighs just a little over four pounds, and yet she stands and barks at Clark and Vera (each of them twenty-five times her size) as if she expects them to pay attention to her.
Speaking of Clark and Vera, earlier this week Clark ran through doggie door that goes from the milking parlor (Jan’s back porch) to the breezeway between the houses. He and Vera do this scores of times every day of their lives, but for some reason, on this particular morning, when Clark ran out the door, the door came with him. Our doggie door was kaput.
The big problem with this was that there was now a gaping hole in the wall of the back porch. Normally, we bring all the goats who live in the milkers' pen to the breezeway and let them stand around while we do the milking. Three of those goats have never kidded, but watching other goats getting milked gets them used to the procedure, so that next year, when they are first time moms, they'll have an idea of what goes on.
But, we didn’t want those curious goats deciding that the doggie door was meant for them. That would be a disaster. Before, when the door was actually there, and it wasn’t simply a gaping hole, the goats believed the door was a solid wall and left it alone.
So, for a day, we had to leave all the does in their residential pen, and bring only the ones who actually needed to be milked down to the porch one by one. That way no one would loiter by the hole in the wall and get ideas.
The next day, Jan and I installed a new doggie door.
I was so proud of us! The door looks great, and works perfectly! Because the flap is transparent, not opaque, there is a small danger that the goats will discover that it’s a door. This morning, Mothra was checking the door out. But, she moved on, seemingly deciding that it was solid, after all. Whew! (We move the dogs to a different pen while we’re milking, so the goats never see them using the door).
Meanwhile, our chickens are now hanging out in trees.
Our chickens are at the sublime point where they have their full wing-spans but have not yet reached their full adult weight. I say, enjoy those trees while you can, girls!
Speaking of chickens, my cousin sent me a limerick this morning:
The reverend Henry Ward Beecher
Called the hen a most elegant creature.
The hen, pleased with that,
Laid an egg in his hat
And thus did the hen reward Beecher.
This is sweet and old-fashioned, and written by Oliver Wendell Holmes. I had no idea who Henry Ward Beecher was. I googled him. Not only was he the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe (who wrote the abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin), he was embroiled in one of the most spectacular adultery scandals of 1800s America. The French author George Sand planned a novel based on his affair - for which he stood trial. He was an American Congregationalist Clergyman, a friend of Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. There is a statue of him in Brooklyn.
A couple of days ago, when I went out to take grain to Leroy and Roger, I heard Lulou making a sound I’d never heard her make before. (Below are Leroy and Roger, waiting for their grain).
When I got back to the house, I told Jan about Lulou. She took one look at Lulou and said, “Oh. She’s in season. We’ve got to write it on the calendar.”
Whoa! Poor Lulou. She spent that day and the next pining for her great love, Jordan. She was plastered against the fence that was closest to Jordan’s pen. I asked if Jordan was the father of all her kids (he was the father of Lydia and Leroy - her kids that were born this March). Jan said that, yes, Jordan had always been the father of her kids, and would be again this fall. She mentioned that she was a little leery of breeding Lulou to Jordan again because when you breed a doe with the same buck over and over she will refuse other bucks. This is not the case with bucks. They’ll entertain whatever doe you bring to their pen. Without complaint.
Goats come into season every twenty-one days, so we think that we’ll take her to visit her paramour the first week in October - the next time she’s in season. Another symptom of being in season (and why Jan could tell just from looking at her out the window) is a furious tail wagging that’s called “flagging”.
If we breed Lulou the first week of October, she’ll deliver the first week of March. Goat pregnancies are about 150 days. She’ll be the first to deliver in the 2021 kidding season, just as she was first in 2020. That’ll be good, because the rest of our goats will be first time moms this year. (Below is a photo of Lulou, with Maria standing behind her. Maria will have her first kids in the spring, hopefully).
I have to return to dogs for our final bit of news from this week. Look at this lovely girl, Vera:
The morning I took this photo she stank to high heaven. Vera believes that skunks were put on this earth for her to play with, and she does not mind getting sprayed by them. Never mind that her favorite skunk is Fifi (the skunk who lives under the hay barn - which is the closest building to my bedroom). Never mind that she stinks up the entire milking parlor for days after she’s been sprayed.
The night before this photo was taken, she got into some sort of altercation with Fifi right outside my bedroom window. I was awakened by the smell! How many times in your life have you been awakened by a smell? Not many, I’m guessing. My bedroom reeked for two days.
But, again, what a lovely girl. Such an innocent face. You would never know that her smells brings tears to our eyes.