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| Low-key kid soiree |
Scooter was feeling all kinds of shitty -- there had been three kids in all but one died (Michael was vague about what happened, but he thinks either it was DOA or Scooter crushed it on its way out). Complications are always a risk when does freshen early or late. The real issue was that she wasn't "cleaning," or expelling her afterbirth and junk from her womb, which can be really dangerous. We kept taking her temperature and she was running a fever. Normal goat body temp is around 101 and she was upwards of 103 -- a small but notable uptick. After 24 hours and no cleaning, Michael decided we ought to administer Oxytocin, which is used sometimes if an animal ma isn't letting down her milk right away and otherwise kick starts the hormones to do their jobs. With Boss and Helen advising me, I administered my very first intramuscular shot. Luckily Scooter didn't put up much of a fuss, as she had bigger things to think about (where the fuck are those things I just pushed out of my body?).
The cheesemaking schedule, thankfully, got readjusted due to a situation with our cow's milk supplier, so we had all Tuesday to focus on Scoot and her two bebes, whom I kept suggesting names for (Sputnik? Schiava?) and getting the old veto on. The crowning joy of the day had to be when I bent over the side of the pen wall to feed bebe boi and his jealous and hungry sister began suckling various parts of my face in search of food. Little goat kisses, man. Highly recommended.
Things continued apace Wednesday, and some of the girls who were showing signs of freshening were closely monitored -- Crabapple is evidently from a genetic line that bags up sympathetically, so she was hauling around a full udder with no other obvious signs that she was ready to pop. In the cheese room, I came in late to help Helen hoop and decided it was high time I attempted to do the evening out of the cheeses at the very end -- which requires eyeballing them to see which are obscenely big or small and then cutting a bottom piece of curd from the oversized ones and placing it at the bottom of a smallfry cheese. Over the winter, Helen and I have mostly been trading off who comes in early to culture the vat and cut the curd, though I requested a bit more time doing it so that I could really get the hang of things. Then one or the other of us comes is to help stir and mold the cheese and splits up the other tasks (cleaning versus evening). Since I hadn't done much evening out, I figured I could use some practice.
Indeed I could. Thursday morning in the cave, Michael came down and pointed out the widely diverse weights of the batch, which should really not span more than about a 10% range of variation. We're aiming for about a 2.5 lb green cheese for Crawfords and I had some weight out at 2.3 and others in the high 2.6s. Doesn't seem like a big deal, but it affects the way the cheese ages and ripens, and while consistency is by its nature elusive in farmstead artisan cheese due to things like milk composition, overall it's our aim, within those constraints. Boss was nice about it, and said that he didn't expect me to be an ace at this sort of thing right off the bat since I've really only done it 2 or 3 times (true). And he followed up his critique with an unexpectedly effusive comment about how much he appreciated me helping to sell all of our doelings, saying that never in the history of the farm had they managed to pre-sell all of them, and that it was a huge load off his mind.
Earning my keep, one Craigslist post at a time.
Thursday was a chill day of putting together orders and moving hay bails. My lack of proficiency with the tractor had been bumming me out, so with Helen's guidance I did some practicing and managed to spear a round bail and move it into the yard with said device. You have no idea what a thrill it gave me to not be totally terrified atop that thing.
When I left for the weekend, Crab still hadn't popped, so I spent my days off checking in constantly with Helen. Saturday Crab gave birth to triplets -- a difficult birth, as one was dead and was blocking her cervix so that the other two couldn't come out. Michael had to get in there and rearrange some things and said it was probably quite painful for the Crabfriend. And then Minnie popped out a tiny doppleganger -- thus far the only baby to be the spitting image of her ma.
I checked in with Michael Saturday evening to see what time he wanted me in on Sunday and he said 9, subject to change. First thing in the morning I got a text saying Chandler was getting ready to kid and that he had to be somewhere at 6:45 so I should come at 8. "Good luck!" he wrote.
Oh fuck.
As I got dressed and made the drive to work, I talked myself calm, telling myself that the chances that something would go wrong were slim and that I generally knew how to do this stuff and that animals have been giving birth without human aid for millennia and I was really just a goat doula essentially. When I arrived at the farm, Chandler was sequestered in a pen so I got in there and monitored her progress. Pretty much as soon as I got there, she went into labor. I rubbed her haunches and let her give me face licks (an Oxytocin-induced bonding things -- the mama goats lick their babies clean when they come out). The contractions kept getting closer, and Chandler yelped and groaned and sighed for all the world like a human woman in the throes of giving birth. The other recent moms came into the barn intermittently to see what was going on/lend their support/look for their babies, though I like to think they came in solidarity, peeking into the pen to bleat words of encouragement to their sister in arms.
After 40 minutes or so, a translucent bubble appeared -- the amniotic sac I guess? -- but no baby inside. Chandler's contractions kept getting closer and closer, and I eventually saw a baby head, though the hooves didn't make themselves apparent. In an ideal world the goats come out superman style with both hooves up by their head, and it's smooth sailing. Other configurations present varying degrees of complication, with breach, or butt first, being the worst.
With two final grunt/pushes, the baby was out. I wrapped him in a towel and brought him immediately into the nursery where I made sure his air pipes were clear, confirmed that he was in fact a boy (peen shaft was visible) and weighed him. He was huge. This is one of the challenges that two year old goats like Chandler face -- they're developed enough that they can gestate and give birth to very large kids, but their bodies are still rather small. Those two factors combined make for some potentially harrowing parturition. It can be a real strain on the mamas.
Baby boy's umbilical cord was short enough that it didn't need trimming, so I went to mix up Chandler some "goat gatorade" and check on her. She sucked it down in an instant and seemed altogether exhausted by the effort. Unfortunately there was another kid she needed to get out. Push push pushing and soon enough the full head was visible. The baby was just hanging out. I cleared his nose and mouth so he could breath, but time was ticking by and Chandler's pushes lost momentum. Nearly an hour in, and no progress was being made and the baby looked like he was fading. I started to panic. I'd helped to pull babies out at Laini's but hadn't gone in with my entire arm to rearrange the furniture. I was worried I might wind up doing more damage than good. I called in reinforcements. Helen came in 20 minutes and fearlessly stuck her arm in, found a hoof and gave it a little yank. Duly stimulated, Chandler recommenced pushing and within seconds the second baby was out. He was in bad shape at first, having been sort of choked and suffocated for a while on the way out, but Helen used an empty syringe to suck some of the liquid from his nostrils and hung him upside down, and within 20 minutes he was bleating like a pro.
Thank god for Helen.
Chandler seemed to bounce back pretty much immediately and I let her out into the yard and began chores early, as all of a sudden there's about 3 times more to do, what with feeding the babies three times a day, collecting colostrum and milk and cleaning all the equipment. Now that we're milking four does, it makes sense to use the pump rather than milk by hand, but man am I rusty with assembling and disassembling that thing. Michael ran down the plan of attack he suggested -- getting the four moms separated and bringing them up first to milk, then setting aside the milk and cleaning the equipment while I grained the rest of the herd. Of course, multitasking has never been my forte and I wasn't convinced I'd be able to get the pump started cleaning without leaving the does up on the stand for an inordinate amount of time, so I left it all to the end, and then set to work feeding all the babies their various milks. The oldest of the babies only get fed twice a day now, and all but the newborns can drink a blend of milks from all the moms -- it's only essential that the newborns drink colostrum for the first 24 hours.
It's a lot to keep track of, and we're just at the very beginning of the season. I am trying to devise a system or flowchart that might make it easier to keep things organized in my head, but after an 11 hour day, all I could do yesterday was come home and collapse into bed to watch my new favorite thing, the Great British Baking Show (srsly if you haven't watched this shit yet get on the goddamned stick already, it's amazing). As of last night, we had Tickle, Tabitha and Louise on deck, so today may prove to be another hectic one. They're all gonna be hectic from here on out, most likely. Oh well, vacation was nice while it lasted. It's back to the goat grind.
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