kidding season - part one

I wanted a trouble-free kidding season this year, and I got it. Sort of. We've had better. I am sure we've had several kidding seasons over the years during which there were zero calls to the vet or to fellow goat owners, but like a lot of non-events, I don't remember them all that well. This year we had a couple of calls to the vet and several to a friend with goats, and several more to feed stores. However, there are no dead kids and not one anxious trip to the vet with a goat stuck in labor in the back of the truck. What a relief! Once you've had a really bad kidding season, even if it was two years ago, minor problems such as one weakling kid and every goat having lice seem like nothing much.

Lice? Yeah. Guess that handsome billy whose photos grace the first posting of this blog had a seamier side to him. Goat lice, like human lice, don't just spontaneously generate, so our girls had to have gotten them from somebody. He's the only somebody they've been in contact with. In the future we should check prospective boyfriends for lice before letting them on the property. At least for the goats.

We're treating all the goats, and there will be another post about what remedy worked. I was in favor of the nuclear option: a product called Cylence (gotta appreciate those coy drug labels), the goat version of Qwell. But then I had to take off for Cleveland, leaving Matthew with a ton of chores and the option to do things his way. He's trying out some herbal oil-based thing - and, damn, he doesn't have the camera to take any pictures of our greaser goats. He did say that he applied it along their back two days ago and yesterday they were covered in oil. May the lice suffocate.

Back to kidding season, as opposed to its aftermath. Venus dropped her kids first. In the night. I was letting everyone out of their stalls in the morning and - whoa - there the two were, already dry and standing up. Ronan named them Moo-shi and Diego. I tried to move Ronan to a food name for the boy, like Pu-Pu Platter, but no go. As for Moo-shi, she's a girl, so we're not as likely to make mushu goat out of her. Although we do have way too many goats now.

At right is a picture of Ronan and Moo-shi. No, goat lice do not transfer to humans.

I'm going to cut this post short because I recently changed the settings to have the blog sent to the new fujikofarm google group. I want to see if it works. However, I have noticed that when the blog postings are sent directly to your e-mail for your convenience that the pictures and text get rearranged. If you want to see the blog as it is supposed to look - more or less - you should bookmark it and just use the e-mail post as a reminder to check the bookmark. Also I think that the subsidiary blog info, like the comments and "currently reading" is not in those e-mails ... just in case any of you want to get into any discussions about books or music.