On Being Breedist

I struggle with profiling. Not with people. I can meet a lovely person, have a three-hour dinner conversation, feel like we've bonded for life, and walk away not knowing what they were wearing or the color of their hair or eyes. I'll remember what they had for dinner and that their dog loves oranges.

I profile with the goats. Constantly. To be fair, however, a lot of it is learned. I expect LaManchas to be bipolar, super-smart, and occasionally humble me with moments of pure sweetness, and I expect the Saanens to be placid, loving and more or less perfect. (No, I don't have a favorite. Hush.) So what happens when you get an exception? Or when you mix the two?

Take Echo. Echo is a baby Saanen who belongs to my mother. Because she belongs to my mother, and my mother loves her whole family for their irrepressible goofiness and obnoxiousness, I feel no need to educate Echo on the salient points of respectful goat-human interaction. This decision was made in no small part due to the fact that the little smartaleck learned how to duck the hand that comes back to smack her when she jumps on my back. (And then wiggles away as if to laugh at me.) She also has an unsettling resemblance to her late aunt, Zi Zhi, who was also a hellion as a child. So I let her put her hooves on my shoulder and her mouth on my jacket. Or in my jacket. Or under my jacket. The hair's off limits though. Her sister is a bit more subdued, but will still come over for a good finger-chomping session.

There's also Desi. Desi is the humblest, sweetest creature on four brown legs and is a purebred LaMancha. She spent the first two weeks of her life living in my bedroom, though, so she's pretty seriously socialized with people. (I could spend so much time studying imprinting and social behavior. It's so fascinating. And I truly believe it has long-term effects.) Desi is still a Lamancha, though, in that if I go in the pen while they are eating, she'll stroll over to see me, sniff my face, and then go back to eating for a bit. No rush. I'll be around. Just wanted to say hi.

And then there are the SaManchas. (I have a friend who calls them Saanchas. I struggle with it because the double-"A" makes me want to add a syllable even though the root word isn't pronounced that way and by the time I get the word out, I've had a minor aneurysm.) They are a distinctly mixed bag, but most of them tend towards one extreme or the other. Most goats go through a hormonal, bipolar yearling stage - even the Saanens - and most of the SaManchas seem to use this time to get the Lamancha attitude out of their system. Ramoth, Lisbon and Abbey are all half-LaMancha yearlings and all three of them have the "Don't touch me, I'll touch you" attitude going on. They've gotten sweeter as they approach their second birthdays, though, so we'll see. Lily, a 5-year-old, is ALL Lamancha. Her dam was a Lamancha though - as opposed to the others who had Saanen dams and a Lamancha sire - so she learned it early. (And now I wonder if the dam's breed has an effect? Do they pick up on it in utero? Hmm.)

And then there's Chloe. Chloe has the LaMancha energy and the Saanen love rolled up into an adorable fluffy white elf-eared ball of cloven-hooved labrador puppy. She can't get enough of people and is a total ham, happily taking picture after picture with me and occasionally even posing for the camera with a runway-model glare.

She is the reason I want all of my kids to be SaManchas for the rest of my life. And if I ever grow up and start a dairy, they'll all be white and earless.

So yes, I may be breedist. But I have a right to be. And I love them all anyway!

362 days of CDO.

Well I *almost* made it a whole year since my last blog post. I feel so accomplished for having reduced my slaven dependency on the internet over the last year. But considering how bad I was before and how much time I still spend on the computer, I'm not sure how well that worked. You shush.

Life has been life. I spent most of the spring, summer and fall being totally obsessed with my doll of a horse and riding, helping exercise horses, and teaching lessons at a local three-day-eventing barn. It consumed my life almost to the point of excluding all else. Yeah, not so good. Fantastic, but not productive. I am still fighting for balance (and probably always will be) but it feels good to take a step back. Even though I was forced to. But that's okay because I have a new JOB!

Yes. Job. Full-time. Five days a week from 8 to 5. Actually, those were the working hours advertised. Within a week I had started working 7-4 and now since I eat my lunch so quickly it's more like 7-3:30. Except when I work overtime because the place is swamped right now. But I digress. I had an interview on January 10th, was offered the job on the 11th, and started working on Monday the 13th at the UCDavis Mouse Biology Program as an Assistant Animal Technician!

The title is really very glorified. I am a gopher. I have been trained (and am still being trained) to do everything, but my primary function is to be a "supply tech." This means I drive the van three times a day to pick up clean supplies (which are cleaned and sterilized at a campus wash facility and an off-campus lab animal facility, respectively); transport mice back and forth between the two main facilities as well as supplies, feed, etc.; and take dirty supplies back to the wash facility. I also clean and disinfect the van, assemble clean cages within the vivarium, do most of the cleaning and supply prep, and help the other "real" animal techs with husbandry, daily animal checks and so on. And I love it. The initial training period was incredibly frustrating, because I am compelled to be a helpful little elf and my helpful little elf self is utterly useless when I don't know how to do anything. And training is a pain for other people to have to do. They're all great about it. My coworkers are amazing and, as a group, are the best people (and easily the best boss!) I've ever gotten to work with. But when they are switching to a confusing new computer system and a lot of things need to be done NOW, training the newbie is just one more thing to worry about. And so I struggled. But I've gotten on my feet well enough now that I'm feeling much more useful, am able to make decisions and do things independently (like color-coordinating the whiteboard, haHA) and am generally able to keep myself busy and keep my CDO little self very happy. One of the other techs, who has been doing the majority of my cleaning/housekeeping training, also has CDO and we have spent a lot of time bonding over perfectly aligned stacks of cages. (For those of you who don't know, CDO is just like OCD, but spelled alphabetically as it should be.)

The new job does mean getting up early (like 5 am early) and struggling to adjust to a radical time shift, and being exhausted a lot, and somehow I don't mind. I've even occasionally gotten up early enough to run (yay me!) and have succeeded in giving myself shin splints. So no more running at the moment. I continually agonize over the goats and what to do with them but in the meantime they're getting more and better attention than they've gotten in over a year. And they are adorable in every sense of the word, and I love them. My poor horse went from hardcore, seven-days-a-week dressage and jumping to being a stall ornament, but she still gets a handful of grain because she's FLIPPIN' cute so she seems to be happy with the arrangement. If I ever stop being sleep deprived and exhausted I've promised to ride her again.

As a side note: the sleep deprivation has been highly entertaining, especially for a couple of my coworkers. My verbal filter has been sporadic at best - not that I'm using inappropriate language or anything, it's just that my random little thoughts that I usually keep to myself get interjected into the conversation. (Do YOU know why Target is called Target??) In lab meetings my need to be helpful and socially positive has me on the constant verge of hysterical giggles, but so far I've managed to keep them in check. Hopefully more sleep will improve matters. I should probably go work on that. Toodles!

Big-Beautiful-Bouncing-Baby-Boers!

Well, I finally got a bit of a baby fix. I'm still holding out for my dairy goat babies - there is something uniquely charming and squee-worthy about a tiny little earless face, and I still melt for little white ears and pink noses - but in the meantime I have something that is a different kind of UH-dorable. My favorite Boer show doe, Princess, has been waddling around moaning and groaning for weeks, and she finally kidded on February 1st - introducing Charlotte, Tiana, and Big Daddy!

Princess the morning before she kidded, feeling rather rotund

BABIES! Big Daddy in front and little sister Tiana behind him.

Tiana has "running lights!"

The only picture I have of the biggest (and firstborn) baby, Charlotte. She's a big, long, stout, gorgeous girl with a great head - but she was more interested in burying herself in her mama's breakfast!

Baby Tiana was named after the main character in The Princess and the Frog, because she was born with "frog legs." (It was a little cramped in there, and the tendons in her legs are contracted, meaning she can't straighten her knees or pasterns - aka ankles - and tends to scoot around like a little bullfrog.) She'll grow out of it - they're already getting straighter - but in the meantime it's not slowing her down any! She also has one of the prettiest heads I've ever seen on a baby Boer - and I love her little pouty face!

Big Daddy hammin' it up. He loves his scritches.

YAY BABIES!

Baby Fever

Hot blooded, check it and seeee, got a fever of a hundred and threeee....

Okay, sorry. That song's been stuck in my head since the PG&E commercial came on the television yesterday. And now it's stuck in yours, happy birthday!

I DO have a fever, but it has nothing to do with temperature. This kind of disease is a distant cousin of Cabin Fever, but rather than needing space and exercise, I can only be cured with the immediate and thorough application of baby goats. It's the very earliest beginning edge of kidding season, and pictures of babies are starting to flood my Facebook page from all those people who breed their goats this early. Mostly Nubians and LaManchas, for some reason - they tend to be less seasonal breeders than the Swiss breeds do, which I suspect has something to do with it. Most of these pictures are coming from dry, temperate areas like Arizona and Texas, which I suspect has a whole lot more to do with it than any breed differences. At any rate, every time I see a new photograph of adorable little fuzzy faces, I get even more impatient for my goats to start kidding so that I will have my own baby goats to squeeze. I also know how much work it will entail, which is - at least partially - keeping it in check, but every time I go out to the barn I get excited all over again. The first kids aren't due for another month - Lyra, Lark and Bear are due end of February - but that doesn't stop me from daydreaming!

Fuzz Therapy

Anyone who doesn't believe that goats have personalities hasn't spent enough time with the right goats. I firmly believe that anyone who owns animals needs to spend time with them doing nothing every once in a while. Especially dairy goats, most of whom think you hung the moon. Some people call it "coffee time" - just sitting with a cup of coffee and watching the goats and noticing how their day is going. (I could never have actual coffee time - my goats would drink the coffee, steal the cup, and play keep-away with it as soon as the caffeine kicked in.)

While this is, objectively speaking, simply good herd management - taking the time to watch your animals and make sure everyone's happy and healthy - it's a mutually beneficial thing. Taking the time to notice the little details of their lives makes your own little details seem less pressing. It doesn't hurt that you are essentially (and in some cases literally) being fought over because they think you're the best thing since apple wafers. Some of it is plain old cupboard love, and goats like Fortune and Valencia will only stick around for treats and scratches - but others seem to be content just to lean their head on you and bask in your presence, like Talia and Solfege, and one of the most delightful feelings is taking the time to make friends with a skittish baby and seeing them realize that you're actually kinda fun to be around. You learn things about them, too - like how much Lily loves a good back rub, or how Stella doesn't like scratches but will almost fall over in bliss when you run just the tips of your fingers down her neck, or how sneaky Kel can be when she's trying to get a taste of your hair, or how Ramoth will stand disdainfully in the corner until the obnoxious ones leave before coming up to you and demanding her allocation of "kisses."

To be certain, there are plenty of goats who could care less if you ever looked at them again, and even more who think that people are evil goat-eating monsters. (Which, admittedly, is often true.) But with goats that have been hand-raised from birth, who know their names and will even leave a feeder of food to come say hello - they can't get enough attention. Fuzz therapy is free, the goats love it, and it keeps your inner egotistical maniac in check.

Life happens

For those of you who are faint of heart - and really, even if you aren't - please, stop reading now. Just ignore this post. It's going to get pretty ugly. One of the biggest perks of having a blog is being able to write anything you want, and no one has to read it if they don't want to. I'm only writing this for me - it's selfish, yes, but that's the way it goes.

Four weeks ago today, twenty-two of our goats died after a horrific car accident. It was my fault - they were out grazing an alfalfa field, behind a portable electric fence, and they were due to get moved to new feed that night, but after a crazy day I figured they would be okay until the morning. They got hungry and knocked the fence down on the east side, where I had set the fence in the high ground next to the ditch - I thought setting it higher would be a good thing, but the dirt was so soft the whole fence went right down. They were probably out for most of the night, given that they traveled nearly six miles before getting to the busy road where they were hit. A single pickup truck came around the corner and hit nearly half of the goats in the group - the person driving, thank God, was okay. This all happened around 4:30 in the morning, and my dear parents dealt with everything at the scene before waking me up.

Evie, Havana, Zi Zhi, Carly, Panda, Affair, Reina, Etienne, Manora, Nini, Whitey, Sabrina, Kronk, Quiz, Ursa, Sidney, Stuffing, and Dumpling were killed by the impact. Three more had to be put down - Atlanta for a shattered pelvis and severe internal injuries, Corsica for broken ribs and a punctured chest cavity, and Ziva for severe, non-reparable damage to her left rear leg - and Annabelle died later that day from probable head trauma. I usually can't watch when one of my goats has to be put down, but for the first time ever, I was there when my goats died - I held each one as they were put down and kissed them goodbye. I had to - I owed them that much, and I wanted them to know I cared. Having walked the group from field to field several times, I noticed that most of the goats who were injured or killed were the ones who usually walk in the back of the pack - the ones that like to run in front were, for the most part, unharmed. Almost all of the remaining goats were uninjured - a few had scrapes and bruises or were generally sore, Tahoe had a broken jaw, and Patricia had some rib damage with severe edema and lacerated legs. Our wonderful vet was very sympathetic and kind throughout the whole ordeal and we were able to get the goats triaged and euthanized or bandaged up fairly quickly. My father, bless his heart, worked his butt off for days taking care of the bodies - they're all buried together out by the old plum tree on the east side of our field. I am hoping to plant trees or flowers there in the spring.

So why am I writing all this? Mostly, to get it all out. I don't ever want to forget them. I wanted to get all their names down in one place. I also wanted to remind myself of this: my first reaction, after going out to the remaining goats and seeing who was left, was that it could have been so much worse. Was I devastated? Yes. I miss them terribly. I regret that I won't ever get another kid from Zi Zhi or any of the others. I will always feel guilty for what happened, and I still have nightmares. But when I think of what could have happened that didn't, and how much worse it could have been, and how many more could have died, all I can do is thank God for His mercy. Mom and Jesse lost one goat apiece, which was terrible, but I'm so relieved that they didn't lose more and that all of their babies were unharmed. Almost all of the dairy goats that died, although very dear to me, were goats that were problem breeders, or old and retired, or just pets - goats that were costing money to feed with no return, although I didn't regret it in the least. I would rather have them back (in a heartbeat) and there was a reason I still had each and every one of them, but from a purely objective point of view, they were the less valuable animals in the group. I had too many goats, and although I probably would have chosen differently if forced to, the decision was made for me, and in a way it was a relief. It also helped immensely that almost every goat that died has a sister, daughter, or mother who is still here - from a breeder's point of view, I lost comparatively little. I'm so grateful to have the ones that are still here - most of the goats I feel very strongly attached to were still in the barn at home, almost all of the kids survived, and although it was an awful experience, in a way it strengthened my resolve to stick with goats. I'm spending more time with the girls, and the kids who lost their mothers (Gali, Abbey and Cory) have become good buddies. It was hard to watch Tahoe in pain and unable to eat or even scratch herself, but since the initial pain wore off she's enjoying her private sick-bay and daily smorgasbord of soft foods immensely, and loves getting her blanket at night. Patricia may never be fully normal - she still has a large mass of tissue on her lower left ribcage - but she's loving life and back to being as irrepressible as she ever was.

I also write this because I don't want anyone's charity, and I don't know how to tell them that without sounding ungrateful. I don't say these things because I want sympathy, I say them because every single one of those animals deserves to be remembered and I want to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. I'm the only one to blame for what happened. I'm not punishing myself for it, it's just a fact. I don't want anyone to feel like they have to walk on eggshells around me - if you want to know more about it, ask. I want to talk about it, it helps me cope. I don't want more goats to replace the ones that died, because a) to me they're not replaceable, and b) I'd rather do better by the goats I still have. I am so, so incredibly grateful for my parents and all of the friends and family who have been so thoughtful and kind and supportive through this whole ordeal - just to know that you're thought of, by so many people, is an incredibly comforting and humbling experience.

So there you have it. My first (and last, if I have anything to say about it) depressing and completely self-serving blog post. If you've read all the way to here, I apologize. I promise to get back to a more happy topic soon - I have lots of bummer lambs, and almost all of the goats are bred for spring kids, and it's almost Christmas!

Vale, my friends.

Domesticated? Me?

Lately I've been on a domestic kick.

We're not talking aprons-and-cookie-dough domestic. That would be far too simple and pretty and thoroughly Country Living. We're talking pumice-the-toilets, clean-the-grout-with-a-toothbrush, invest-in-stock-for-Bounty-paper-towels, invent-new-recipes domestic. I made a flourless chocolate cake and started a new sourdough culture. From scratch.

I think perhaps the funk I've been in for the last 3 weeks (and the insomnia, and the obsessive-compulsive Solitaire playing) has been due to me feeling like I'm turning into the crazy goat woman. Don't get me wrong, I still love them. But apparently I was feeling a desperate need for some "normality" that didn't involve a barn. The main reason why I still support this theory is that after a few days of madly cleaning, baking, and organizing, I find myself with a work ethic. Oh hello! I've missed you!

It's either that, or the combination of Windex fumes and buck smell have gone to my head. (It's breeding season again. Huzzah.) Only 1/3 of the girls are bred - I hope, we just sent the first group of blood samples off today - so I look forward to the next 3 weeks with grim determination. Here's hoping that my theory is true, and that a little balance will keep me on the wagon!