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| My forever friends |
But today was a reminder of a sad recurring thing that happens in January. January is when we do our preg tests, and see who has been successfully bred, and whom we will have to cull. As you'll recall, this happened last year at Lazy Lady. It was my first experience with culling, and it was a rough one. It was January 19th, the day of my parents' anniversary, when Elizabeth and Rigby got driven to the slaugherhouse. The night before, I cried and hugged sweet Elizabeth around the neck and tried my hardest to process what was happening and find some solace in this inevitable reality. The next day I very nearly considered taking Elizabeth home with me, but Laini said that the very large sheep that shared my residence at the time would have battered her to death and that it would have been crueler to try to keep her. On my lunch break I went snow-shoeing around my house and breathed in the clean air and tried to comfort myself, to no avail.
As I've stated before, the culling process at Twig seems pretty intense. For starters, it's a more than once a year event, and the girls who are selected to be shipped are determined using a rather complicated matrix of factors, including their overall milk production, their age, and their tendency to have high somatic sell count, which is an indication of some sort of inflammation or shedding in the mammary gland. (The state milk inspector only allows a certain number of somatic cells to be present in milk for it to be considered clean and healthy enough for use, so it's critical that this number be kept as low as possible, though at the beginning and end of lactations, the number usually spikes.) And of course, whether or not the goat has been successfully knocked up. Because I'm not sure whether you know this or not, but in order for an animal to produce milk, it has to get preggo. #doy
Last week, Boss man mentioned that he didn't think our Tracy had been bred successfully, and in light of the fact that she had been consistently exhibiting a particularly high somatic sell count during milking, it seems that it all but spells doom for the poor darling. There will be others I'm sure.*
As if to drive home the point, I got a missive from Laini today (a quasi-response to a rather lacrymose email I sent her a month ago, which she was forced to reply to because she needed my address for tax purposes). When I saw her name in my inbox, my heart jumped, the way it might have if it had been from an ex-boyfriend I was still in love with. I felt excited, nervous, melancholy, angry and pine-y all at once. In typical Laini fashion, the email was prefaced the with an admonition that it would be brief because she had to get back to the thousand and one things she had to do in the cheeseroom. The note then proceeded as an itemized (as in NUMBERED) list, each number a short paragraph touching on a different topic (her upcoming bunion surgery, the fact that she needs to hire someone new by February, etc.) In amongst the other items was the news that neither beautiful beautiful Chuli, she of the Navajo horse blanket markings, nor my most beloved Spicy one had been bred this season.
"This will be a tough decision," she wrote to conclude item two.
I read this whilst preparing to take our does through the milk parlor for their daily allotment of grain and was so flummoxed and befuddled that I slipped and fell on the ice, and broke an egg that I'd been carrying in my pocket (don't ask). The emotional grip of Lazy Lady has not lost its power.
I've let my mind wander to the girls in Lazy Lady's herd only as frequently as my soft heart can bear, because as much as I'm becoming attached to the Twig girls (GARY WHUT), you never forget your first love. I swear the whole Lazy Lady affair felt like just that -- a tumultuous love affair. I found myself drunkenly scrolling through the LLF herd catalogue one night a few weeks ago, looking at pictures of my old friends and departed pals (due to the rarely-to-never-update state of things on that website, my best girl Shifty is still listed, and seeing her cute little face really sent me into hysterics that fateful night. I MEAN HONESTLY WHAT IN THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME?)
I vacillate back and forth between wanting to know what's happening at Lazy Lady and wanting to keep it as far from me as possible. Part of what made it so emotional for me to leave -- possibly more difficult than when I left New York -- was the sinking suspicion that I'd never really be able to go back. Not to say that Laini woudln't allow it, but it was such an intense, loaded experience for me, and my relationship with Laini was so fraught (again, it seems clear that this was on my end exclusively) that I felt it would be a good long time before I really felt I could return, if ever.
It's especially devastating to think about Spice, who was on the brink of death last kidding season back when a bunch of does were going septic from bad hay and fought her way back to health, only to be on the chopping block this winter for not getting knocked up. It really fucking feels like some cruel joke. Evidently this sort of thing happens all the time on goat farms. It's a constant cycle of ebullient life, near-misses, and deaths. The highs are high and the lows are ever so low. It must start to seem normal at some point. But from my experience, to say nothing of Laini's or Michael's, I don't think it ever stops being painful.
And on that cheery note I'm gonna go mainline some fish oil real quick.
*BTW if you or someone you know is in the market for some wonderful adult goats with questionable milking capacity (ie might be better off as pets), please holler at me. Keep in mind that goats are herd animals so they don't do well on their own, ie two doe minimum. I will be putting out a more formal add for some baby goats that will need to be placed during kidding season as well. Keep your eyes peeled.
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