I’ve been misled by the song, “June is Bustin’ Out All Over”. That song goes on and on about how the entire animal kingdom is made frisky by the June weather:
June is bustin' out all over!
The sheep aren't sheepish anymore!
All the rams that chase the ewe sheep
Are determined there'll be new sheep
And the ewe-sheep aren't even keepin' score!
Or, here’s another verse I’ve always enjoyed:
June is bustin' out all over
The ocean is full of Jacks and Jills
With her little tail a-swishin'
Ev'ry lady fish is wishin'
That a male would come
And grab 'er by the gills!
I thought all animals bred in June, based on this song. It turns out that only small animals, with short gestational periods, mate in the spring. Large animals more often mate in the fall so that they can give birth in the spring. Everyone wants their babies to have good weather.
All this is regulated by the length of the days (to which the hypothalamus responds, flooding our brains with hormones). There are short-day breeders (animals who mate when the days are getting shorter) and long-day breeders (animals who mate when the days are getting longer). Goats, deer, wolves, and coyotes mate in the fall.
This week our goats are all insane. Does are coming into season one after another, and that’s making our bucks crazy. Here’s Jordan, sitting in his food tub. This is not actually a symptom of seasonal madness, it’s just incredibly cute for this studly buck to be sitting on his hay. His seasonal madness includes that bizarre thing goats do: peeing on their own faces. They do this in order to attract does. I know I’ve written about this before, but, really, marveling at how anyone would think peeing on their own face would get girls just doesn’t get old. With Jordan, during these days of madness, his water bucket is dirty every morning because he's peed on his own beard.
Anyway, we have three does who we’ve sold to a woman who will pick them up in October. She would like to pick them up already bred. Normally, my cousin waits ’til a doe is in season, and then she takes the doe over to the appropriate buck’s pen. As soon as the doe is bred, she brings her right back to the pen where she normally lives.
But, that takes a lot of observation and a lot of skill. With some goats, it’s really easy to tell that they’re in season. They’re flagging (wagging their tail frantically), they’re bleating insistently, often in the direction of their favorite buck. They’re generally cranky. All of that is easier to pick up on with goats we know well. Goats who have been around for more than just a year, or who we milk every day.
For instance, Mothra was in season this week. We know Mothra so well, we could tell instantly. Same thing with Lulou. But, these three does that we’ve sold - they’re all yearlings. We don’t know them as well. And, they live in the back pen, and we live less intimately with them than we do the does in the milkers’ pen, which is closest to our houses.
So, Jan decided to take the two does who will be bred to Sam over to his pen and leave them there until they’re bred. In this photo, Carlotta is on the far right, Casey is the light colored goat in the center, and Sam, the buck, is leering at the two girls from the left-hand side of the photo.
He has spent the last several days following those two around the pen, and keeping Wendell (his wether) away from them. We have spent the last several days checking on them constantly, monitoring whether they seem comfortable in there - we don’t want to be Caprine Ghislaine Maxwell - we want to be sure the does are not feeling harassed or pressured.
Jan thinks Casey is already bred. We’ll leave them in there for a total of three weeks - that’s how long a goat’s cycle is. Then we’ll take them back to the back pen.
In puppy world, my favorite thing of the week also involved the back pen. I took Coco on a walk back there. When we came close to the goats, they came running up to their fence to stare at the bizarre creature I’d brought in on a leash. Coco stood and barked fiercely. The goats stood silently, observing.
Here’s another cute puppy thing: Coco curling up to help me write my blog. She spends most mornings over here at my house. I try to play with her ’til she’s exhausted so I can get some work done.
Also, my niece Kat came to stay for a week. She’s helping me organize my soap business. Also, she helps with the goats. Here she is feeding peanuts to the girls in the back pen. That’s Polly, standing with her hooves on Ray’s back, trying to reach the treats.
Jan’s grandson came out this week to photograph soap for my web-site. He’s studying to be a photographer, and his work was amazing. I’m going to end today's blog with a shot of one of the soaps Kat helped create. We had such a good time taking pictures of bars of soap. Now, if we could just figure out how to put together the web-site!
