This was a really exciting week on the goat farm, but before I get to that, I need to make a correction from last week. My cousin, Jan, told me that alfalfa is not a grass-type hay! It’s a legume-type! That’s why it’s so nutritious, she said. Then how come there aren’t alfalfa beans, I wondered?
Legumes have been cultivated for over 5,000 years, and most of them have pods that contain the beans that we love. However, alfalfa and clover are two types of legumes that do not have pods! Who knew?
Anyway, the big excitement this week was Deanna came to do ultrasounds! She also trimmed the goats’ hooves and took blood samples from all seven of the milkers.
In order to do ultrasounds, we put the goats up on the milking stand, where they get a bucket of grain.
This photo is Mothra on the milking stand. Those bars keep their heads trapped, but the goats don’t really struggle. Usually they’re so delighted by the bucket full of grain mounted on the bars that they munch away, content to let you do whatever with the rest of their bodies. Which, most days, is milking. But, this week was hoof trimming and ultrasounds.
Yeah, I feel as if Mothra is looking at us a little accusingly in this photo. But, we’d just put her in there. A few seconds later she was happily eating her oats.
To do the ultrasounds, Deanna sprayed rubbing alcohol on the goats, on their right side, next to where their udders meet their abdomen. You have to put the ultrasound wand on their right side, because their rumen is on their left side - you won’t see the babies from there.
Goats are ruminants - cud-chewers - so they have four stomachs, and their rumen is one of them. It’s, basically, a big fermenting vat. It’s full of bacteria and other microorganisms that allow them to digest their hay.
The photo above is the ultrasound machine. It looks like office equipment from the early 1970s. The thing that looks like a tiny vacuum cleaner attachment at the end of the cable on top of the machine is the wand that gets pressed against the side of the goat.
We have seven goats who we hope are pregnant. The ultra-sound machine showed clear images of baby goats for Rain, Mothra, Lulou, and Phoebe. In fact, we could see Phoebe’s babies moving around. We were especially happy to see that Rain was pregnant - this will be her first year kidding. The machine showed multiple babies for Mothra, Lulou, and Phoebe.
We’re worried about the goats who have quadruplets running in their family. Mothra, for instance. She only had two kids last year - but that was her first year kidding. Quads are strong in her DNA. Deanna told us that she’d had a goat who had seven kids all at once. Goats only have two teats. Having too many kids is not a good thing.
We couldn’t tell for sure if Lezlie, Delta, and Molly were pregnant. The ultrasound images for those goats who are not quite as far along in their pregnancies were really hard to interpret. Deanna and Jan were pointing to spots on the ultrasound image and saying, “Look! It’s a baby!” The shapes they were pointing to looked like dark spots amid the electronic fuzz to me. Molly, if she is pregnant, is only 28 days pregnant, and the ultrasound is not supposed to be clear until 30 days.
So, Lezlie, Delta, and Molly got their blood sent off for pregnancy tests. I’m particularly hopeful that Molly and Delta are pregnant, because they’re both three years old. If goats don’t have kids by the time they’re three, it becomes really difficult for them to give birth. Their bones are less able to make the adjustments they need to make to deliver the kids. Delta miscarried last year. Goats can miscarry up until the last month of their pregnancy. They are pregnant for five months. All our goats were bred in October and November, so they’re all due in March and April.
This is a photo of Deanna trimming someone’s hoof. It seems like their hooves build up big calluses, and the goats really don’t mind her trimming all that off. In fact, their feet feel better after its been done. I had thought their hooves were solid bone or something.
The blood tests were harder to do than the hoof trimming or the ultrasounds. Deanna took the blood samples from their necks. She would feel for their pulse, and then stick the needle in there. That sounds easy, but it took four of us to get it done.
The photo below is the best I could do to photograph the process of drawing their blood.
You can see Meg in this photo. She was the one who was tall enough to stand over the goats, holding their shoulders in place with her legs. I had to stand immediately behind the goats, pressed up against their behinds so they couldn’t back up. Jan had to hold their heads, sometimes turning them so that Deanna could get the needle into their veins.
Above you can see the blood samples, ready to be sent to the lab. In this photo, there are several vials done, and the needles that were used to fill those vials.
After we were all done, Jan had to package up all the vials of blood with ice packs and send them off to the lab. I can hardly wait to get the results.
I’ve got my fingers crossed for so many things: that Molly and Delta have good babies. That Mothra, Phoebe, and Lulou don’t have too many babies. And that Lezlie has babies. She’s the only one who got bred to Pete, who is the youngest buck. We have three bucks: Jordan, Sam, and Pete. Jordan is Jan’s favorite, but I think Pete is the cutest. But, he’s only seven months old, so he’s a young father.
Pete was just a little over five months old when he got bred to Lezlie, and that’s about as young as a goat daddy can be. This is Pete:
And this is Lezlie:
Good luck, you two!