Diary of a Transplant: The Goat Chronicles

  |  January 3, 2013


There’s nothing like getting up at 5 am to make you feel like a real farmer. Although I don’t think real farmers are as unwilling as I was the other day. They’re certainly not just following their children’s bidding, as I was, dragging myself out of bed in the dead cold of a December night just because my son was tapping me urgently.

“I have something to tell you that you’re not going to like,” Ernie, 13, had said to me the night before. “Remi’s in heat.”

Goats go into heat once a month, usually just in the fall and winter, for as little as 12-24 hours. Our favorite goat breeder lives a 90 minute drive away, down by New Paltz. The first time we made the drive for breeding purposes, we arrived only to find out the goat was no longer in heat. The breeder gently scolded us for not coming sooner. “Next time, as soon as she shows any signs, get in the car and start driving,” she said. “Call me on the way.”

We understand that now, but Ernie’s telling me this at 6 pm, as thoughts of dinner and wine and knitting and bed have already issued their nightly takeover of my brain. I reluctantly agreed to leave early in the morning. But not that early, right?

“Four a.m.,” Ernie said.

“Four a.m?! No way. Six.”

“Four-thirty.”

“No! 5:30.”

“We’ll get up at five. We’ll leave at 5:30.”

“Fine.” Wait, how did I agree to that?

But we did it. Ernie actually got up at 4:30 and started the coffee and checked his email. This boy could be a real farmer.

I got up at five. We grabbed coffee mugs, loaded the truck with hay, fed the sleepy horses, almost got stuck in the frozen mud, loaded Remi and Annie (to keep Remi company, and to show her off to the breeder), and were on the road by 5:30, still in complete darkness.

 

We were a week or so away from the solstice. I am inconvenienced by the short days, but I love the freakishness of this time of year. It is just so awkward and messed up how few hours of light we have. Our chickens aren’t laying eggs because it is so dark, and the horses start begging for dinner around 3 pm. We’ll often finish the evening chores and come inside ready to hustle up some dinner and get to bed, and realize it’s only 4:30.

So of course we were driving in the dark for most of the way. We got to Lynn’s at 7 am, and it was just getting light. Her birds were still roosting in the trees.

We love going to Lynn’s because she has so many animals. She is an award-winning cheese maker and goat breeder. You’ve probably seen her cheese at Union Square Greenmarket. Her goats are well-known in the goat world. Whenever we tell people that we have Lynn Haven goats, if they are Nubian goat people, their eyes light up. She has beautiful goats, and flies all over the country showing them and judging other people’s goats. Ernie has been emailing with Lynn since he was 11, and at this point she is something of a mentor to him. We can’t afford her high-end show goats, but buying her non-show-quality does and breeding them to her high end show bucks, we have created a lovely herd.

In addition to goats, Lynn has ducks, turkeys, geese, peacocks, chickens, cats, and dogs, and I think she has a horse somewhere. She has at least three kinds of goats. Part of her advice to Ernie is always about how to keep his numbers down. “Look what happens, Ernie,” she’ll say, gesturing to a tent of 90 kids. They have this conversation every time we see her.

We found Lynn inside her house drinking coffee with a befuddled, brand new intern. She has interns come from all over the world. No matter how long it’s been since you’ve seen Lynn, she starts talking like you’re picking up a conversation from two minutes ago.

“Who did we decide on?” she asked, and started listing her bucks. “Jasper died. Beacon’s her dad, and he’s got a hurt leg anyway. Gideon takes too long. He’s kind of old. LIttle Prince’ll do anything that will stand still for 30 seconds — no, three seconds.”

Little Prince is a gorgeous brown buck with white spots and a handsome black face.

 

“If you get spots, you can sell the babies more easily. But then you have to keep them, because they’re so cute.” We were walking past the goat tents by now, crunching over frozen mud, our fingers already numb with cold. Ernie and I pulled Remi from the truck, and had Lynn take an appraising look at Annie, the offspring of our goat Ruby and Lynn’s buck Gideon. And then we brought Remi to the buck tent, nervously hoping that we hadn’t missed our window.

There are a number of ways to tell if a goat is in heat. They wag their tails, they mount each other, they yell and jump around a lot. You can also show them a buck rag– a rag that’s been rubbed down on a smelly buck. You put the rag into a jar to trap the scent. Unscrew, give the doe a sniff. If she’s in heat, she’ll wag her tail, maybe jump around, maybe try to mount another goat, and generally show a lot of interest in the scent. But the number one way to tell if a doe is in heat is to bring her to a buck. If she’s not in heat she’ll have no interest in his eager salutations.

Remi was in heat. She liked Little Prince very much, and he liked her. She even stopped sniffing at a bucket of grain so she could say hello to him.

This is how you breed a goat: You have the doe on a leash, and you stand there. The buck is probably off leash; he’s not going anywhere. He sniffs her all over, maybe he licks her. Rutting bucks are lascivious, lewd, sharp-eyed creatures — there’s a reason the devil is characterized with goat features. The whole thing can get pretty x-rated, which makes it doubly weird, standing there talking about the weather while the goats have sex with varying degrees of carnality.

Little Prince was a straightforward guy, and Remi was interested in him so it was over very quickly. When the buck has mounted the doe three times, the humans wrap up their conversation, a check is handed over, and everyone goes back home. Which is what we did, stopping at the cafe in Gardiner for egg sandwiches and coffee. We were back on the road by 7:30 and home by nine.

Two days later, our other doe, Ruby, would go into heat, and we’d do the whole thing all over, only thankfully just driving 20 minutes to a local breeder who had recently bought a buck from Lynn.

We’re waiting to see if our younger doe, Annie, is big enough this winter for breeding. But with two successfully bred goats in the barn, we are ready for the new year. Come late spring, we’ll have milk, cheese, and of course — kids!

Meanwhile, I’m back to sleeping til 7:30, like a normal person. Wake me up when the light comes back!

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