Secrets from Chuckling Goat

by Shann Nix Jones

  The second thought, following close on the first, is that you’d only carry water if you had to. It’s not one of those things that you do for fun. Carry a bouquet of flowers, maybe… carry a lace handkerchief, carry a cuddly toy. But you don’t carry water for a laugh.

  You carry water because if you don’t, something will die. You carry water in the desert, where it’s hot and dry, because you don’t have water where you live. You carry water to animals when it’s cold and frozen, because they’ll perish if you don’t. It’s always a matter of life and death to carry water – as urgent as anything could possibly be.

  But it’s also slow. Most urgent things can be accomplished quickly. But carrying water is something that you necessarily do at a plodding pace. Try to rush, and it spills everywhere and you arrive at your destination with cold, wet legs and an empty bucket.

  And then, abruptly, my mind clears, and is filled with stillness. There’s no point in railing at the ice, the bucket or the thirsty animals. There’s no-one to blame, and no-one to argue with. There’s only the clear, bright path from the tap to the barn, the frozen air, the weight of the bucket, the endless blue sky and the silence, broken only by a single dog barking somewhere over the mountain….

  When Rich asked me what I wanted for Christmas, all I could think of was two more goats. I know, kind of crazy!

  After all, what else would a girl want? I honestly couldn’t imagine. I’ve never been in the position before where my avocation is the same as my vocation – where my passion is also the way that I make my living. It’s an eye-opener, I must say. We do eat, breathe, sleep and dream goats – and so that’s what I asked for as my Christmas present. Two more goats.

  Not just any goats, though. Looking ahead and poring over the big wall calendar, we could see that there was going to be a long dry period in February. Most of the goats would be dried off, as they have to rest for two months before kidding. And where would all our milk come from then?

  I began to panic about the dry spell. Our infant business, less than a year old, depends on our being able to supply our customers with goat’s milk whenever they want it. So the goats I wanted were ones due to kid in January, that would be ready to milk in February, guaranteeing us an ongoing milk supply.

  We found some that fitted the bill and had driven to England to collect them just before Christmas, a five-hour drive each way. They were delicate as deer, young and white, little more than goatlings. But they were beautiful, they were in kid, and they were mine. Merry Christmas!

  We watched the new goats grow bigger and rounder day by day, unsure as to when they would kid. They came from a large commercial herd, where the due date of each individual goat wasn’t kept.

  Then one day Joli came racing into the house. ‘Kidding, kidding!’ she gasped out. I was already pulling on my wellies and waterproof trousers, shouting for Rich: ‘Kidding!’ I raced out behind Joli, pulling off my wedding ring. I cursed when I realized that I hadn’t cut my nails – usually, during kidding season I always keep them extra-short, just in case.

  When we got to the stall, the first goat, Wandi, was bleating and looking confused. Out of her backside protruded a swollen, dead-looking goat kid head – just the head, nothing else. The eyes were closed, the tongue protruding. Joli and I stopped, shocked.

  Rich pounded in just after us and let himself into the stall. ‘Is it dead?’ I asked.

  ‘Goodness knows how long it’s been stuck here,’ he said and felt the head. ‘The head is cold, anyway.’

  I shivered and gripped my elbows, but after three years on the farm I’ve seen some amazing things. Life is powerful and not to be denied – many a lamb that looks dead to begin with can revive and be skipping around a day later.

  Rich knelt down and started to explore the goat’s back end. ‘Both legs back,’ he announced. A goat kid ideally comes into the world headfirst, like a diver, two tiny cloven hooves tucked neatly under its chin. Once the head and the two front legs emerge, the rest of the body follows.

  But on this one, both legs were back, rotating the shoulders into a wide blocking position, and only the head had come through. Left on its own, it would die. If it hadn’t already.

  I took a deep breath and let myself into the stall to stand beside Rich. He was cursing softly, trying to wedge himself into the small space.

  ‘I can’t get to it,’ he said.

  ‘Let me,’ I said. ‘My hands are smaller.’ It’s not something I would have said when I first arrived on the farm. Then, I panicked when Rich asked me to help. It seemed an unbearably heavy burden to take on – the responsibility for an animal’s birth resting on me. What if I did something wrong? What if I hurt it? What if it died, and it was all my fault? How would I know what to do?

  I have, since then, taken a lambing class (which seemed remarkably uninformative) and watched Rich ‘pulling’ lambs. But none of this seems to really help in the moment when something needs doing. Then, everything is stark and spotlit and very clear.

  There were only the five of us here – Rich, Joli, me, the goat and her kid’s head, with its dead-looking tongue sticking out of one side of its mouth. Rich’s hands were too big. I couldn’t ask Joli, at age 13, to do what I wouldn’t do myself. Wandi the goat couldn’t help herself. And by the time anyone else showed up, the kid would be dead.

  And anyway, suddenly I could see inside my head what needed to be done. I could picture the kid, with its front legs trailing back behind it. I could imagine just how it looked, inside that dark womb.

  Rich moved aside and let me kneel down behind the goat.

  ‘I forgot the lube gel,’ I said.

  ‘Never mind,’ he replied. ‘We haven’t got time.’

  I worked my hand around the cold kid’s head, around the tightly stretched rim of the goat’s birth opening. I closed my eyes, the better to pay attention to the picture that was in my head. I followed the kid’s neck down – there was its shoulder, there was its leg, and yes, the foot, with the small, soft hoof on the end. I just needed to cup my hand around the hoof – there – and bring it up.

  ‘Yes!’ said Rich. ‘That’s it!’

  ‘Other foot?’ I said.

  ‘No, it can come with one foot out. Now pull.’

  I looked for a place to pull. The head? The neck? The leg? And somehow I was pulling, and the goat kid was sliding out, in a long, steady rush. It lay on the straw, looking extraordinarily lifeless.

  I grabbed a towel and started rubbing it gently. ‘Come on, little one,’ I said. ‘Breathe.’ It took a gasp, and then there was a long pause. Then another gasping, rattling breath. Its head was swollen from the long time outside the womb, making it disproportionately large compared to the body.

  Rich checked between the kid’s long legs. ‘A boy,’ he said. We all groaned in unison. For us, a male kid is not a reason to rejoice. We can’t keep all the males, or we’d soon be overrun.

  Newborn kids are left with their mothers for four days, nursing the thick, creamy colostrum that their mothers produce. That helps the mother’s milk come in properly, and the kids get what they need from the colostrum, which is rich in vitamins and antibodies.

  On day four, the female goat kids are taken away from their mothers to be de-horned at the vet’s. When they come back they smell strange – of the vet’s office and the bright blue spray that decorates the spot where the horn buds used to be – and they’re hungry. A perfect time to wean them onto the bottle, and separate them from their mothers.

  The mothers get turned into the milkers’ pen, where they club around with their other milker pals – goats are, first and last, social animals – and are stroked, fussed over, fed and milked morning and night. The kids are bottle-fed five times a day at first, then four, then three, for about nine weeks.

  Bottle-feeding gives us a chance to handle the kids, so that they’re tame and friendly and imprinted on human beings. This is important because a goat that can’t be easily handled by humans is nearly impossi
ble to milk. A goat kid raised only by its mother can be as shy and wild as a wood deer. So the system works for everyone.

  With luck, a female kid will grow into a replacement milker, to be kept or sold. If we decide to keep her, we enter a relationship that’ll last the whole of her life. We’ll see her and feed her, stroke and milk her every day, twice a day.

  We’ll come to know her intimately: know her quirks and foibles, know how much she eats and what treats she prefers; whether or not she kicks; whether she sheds. When she’s old enough we’ll mate her to the billy, and watch her bear her own offspring, generation upon generation. Or we’ll sell her, for a handsome fee, to someone who values her pedigree and will treasure her as a productive milker.

  The tough calculus of the farm means that you only need one male for every 20 or so females – males are harder to find places for. But I work over this one, rubbing him with the towel, talking to him, trying to get his body going. Slowly, his breathing becomes more regular. His mother prods him with her nose, licking him. His gasping breaths steady, his eyes flicker open. Amazingly, it looks as though he’ll survive.

  We put in fresh straw and a bucket of warm water and leave them for the night.

  And then, some good luck for the newborn male! Margaret and Ian Grant phone and say that they want the little male goat to stand stud at their farm. They’ve been researching his pedigree, and have come to the conclusion that his bloodlines are good enough to warrant taking him on. They’ll take him to foster, and he’ll serve their goats as soon as he’s old enough. Then he can come back to us, and serve our goats. Because his mother and father both came from the outside, he’s a fresh bloodline.

  I go to bed that night rejoicing, my heart ridiculously light. If the new little male is going to be an honoured stud goat, then he deserves a proper name! We decide to call him Hoffnant Boston. Hoffnant because that’s our herd name – from Brynhoffnant, the stream that runs by our house. And Boston, because we name our goats after American place names, to honour my American bit of the equation.

  Hoffnant Boston. It has a certain ring.

  In the morning we all rush out to see how Boston is doing. He’s up – he’s alive! Staggering around, looking a big bleary, but definitely alive, gaining and nursing. A victory…

  12 March 2012

  We were on TV! Very exciting. The team from Heno, the Welsh language programme, came out and filmed a sequence about us that aired tonight on S4C – a beautifully cut piece that had the goats, the milking, the bottling, Benji and the soaps. It was so strange, watching ourselves out with the goats, rambling down the hillside. I didn’t talk at all, as I still can’t speak Welsh – but Rich and Benji carried the day. I was tremendously, fiercely proud of our little business and our Hoffnant herd.

  14 March 2012

  The other end of the equation to the triumphant birth of Hoffnant Boston: we just had to send Paris away – wise, kind, dignified old Paris, the Anglo-Nubian stud male. He was balding on his back, and had an abscess on his cheek. But he looked at us with large, liquid eyes, and there was intelligence there. I loved him, loved passing his stall and feeding him a treat. But his time had come, and he was old and ill.

  Benji and I took out a banana skin to give him, his favourite treat, and stroked him. We watched as the horrible little man in the dark hat loaded him into the van. He jumped so willingly, so trustingly. Then we came inside and sat in the big armchair with our arms wrapped around each other, and cried. Poor Paris. Sometimes farming breaks my heart….

  16 March 2012

  Rich has just driven off to the hospital.

  We’d kept his ulcerative colitis in remission for a long time – 14 months – with the goat’s milk kefir and meat broths, but then it all started up again. He tried steroids, which didn’t seem to work, and went back to the doctor, who has run out of solutions. It seems to me that at the end of this road is the dark, looming prospect of an operation and I’m very nervous about it.

  Just yesterday, we pulled out Dr Campbell-McBride’s book and looked again at the diet. What she recommends for someone in an extreme situation – which, let’s face it, is where Rich is now – is a diet with no fibre at all. Just meat broth and probiotics, until the lining of the gut heals and things calm down.

  We decided to do it together – I would eat whatever Rich did, to keep him company. I made a huge vat of lamb broth. I ate it with him this morning, and it was delicious – lightly salted, warm and soothing. We drank it out of mugs, and followed it with some of our homemade goat’s milk kefir.

  Then the hospital called – a bed had become available, and they wanted him in right away. Why, we’re not sure; they’ll do some tests, the secretary said vaguely. Maybe give him some more infliximab – a drug that worked for him once, long ago, and then stopped working.

  I was on my way to town to drop off a goat kid at the vet for dehorning, and make some milk deliveries, when Rich phoned to say that he’d be going into hospital. More than anything, I wanted to go with him. I’ve always been with him for his hospital visits. Just an instinctive, primal thing. If he’s there, I want to be there with him.

  But I can’t this time. There are goats to be milked, and one due to kid any moment. The sheep are lambing, and need to be fed and watered and given hay. Joli and her friend need to be picked up from school, and the goat kid needs to be collected from the vet. Joli and Benji, and the increasingly frail Taid, need to be fed their supper, and it’s fish and chips night.

  Children and animals and old people all need tending, and there’s only me to do it. The farm and its duties descend on me like a hammer blow – I have to stay here, when all I want is to be with Rich.

  17 March 2012

  I had an interesting experience yesterday, as I struggled to adjust to doing the work of two people, on my own. I found that the ritual and the routines of the farm, far from weighing me down, actually supported and sustained me. The milking has its own routine, and once you enter the beginning, it carries you through it, like a dance, under its own power.

  Switch on the water heater, turn on the radio, hook up the milk machine, put the food into bowls, put the first goat up on the stand – the beat of the milking machine, the music on the radio, the contented noises of the goats as they wolf down their cake. These things are familiar, and sustaining. Hay, straw and water the goats. Every morning, every night. It doesn’t need thought; it just needs doing. It’s comforting.

  And as it was a Friday, it was fish and chips night – as always. When we were ploughing every penny into the business, and couldn’t afford to go out any more, Friday remained fish and chips night. We bought the fish from the shop, and Rich made homemade chips in the deep fat fryer.

  And yesterday, though Rich wasn’t there to make the chips, it was still fish and chips night. I bought the chips from the Bowens, and Ceris reheated them in the oven. The tradition carried me along.

  One of the goats kidded last night – among the things that I’ve been worried would happen while Rich is away. But it was easy – I walked in, and the kid was already standing, white fur fluffed up, mother licking it contently. A girl! Big, and strong and healthy. Couldn’t be better.

  I sprayed her umbilical cord with iodine, and squirted some Kick Start into her mouth, milked out the mother goat and gave the colostrum to the baby in a bottle. She took it, eagerly. Liliwen, the mother, has a gammy foot that we’ve been waiting to treat, not wanting to hassle her while she was heavily pregnant.

  She kept kicking the kid away when it came too near the painful foot. So we separated out the kid, put it in the crèche with the other kids, on their nice clean straw under the heat lamp. And we got on with the milking because it was time to milk.

  On the farm, there are times to do everything. And even in crisis, the wheel moves on, demanding that I move with it. So I can surrender to it, and it carries me along, despite worrying about Rich in hospital.

  I’ve discovered something else, as well. Exhaustion is menta
l. I don’t mean that it’s all in my mind, and doesn’t really exist. Exhaustion is a real thing, no doubt about it! What I mean is that, for me, exhaustion is rarely physical. It’s rare that I’m doing something that taxes my body to the physical breaking point. Although on the farm that happens too… but it never used to in the city, and I experienced exhaustion so many times there.

  What I mean is that exhaustion for me comes from mentally racing ahead, from being overwhelmed by how much there is to do. Looking over the various mountains that have to be climbed during the day, and feeling worn out before I begin. Whereas, of course, all those tasks never have to be done at once. Only one thing at a time has to be done.

  Under crisis, I’ve decided, I need to shrink my focus. The more intense the crisis, the smaller the focus. When things are really bad, I can focus just on the next thing I have to do. That much, surely, is do-able.

  It’s not hard to milk. It’s not too difficult to eat breakfast. Easy, in fact. Pips, as Benji would say. It’s not a strain to put the dishes in the dishwasher. It’s not difficult to get in the car and drive to Swansea, to see Rich in hospital.

  If I stay in the moment, simply moving through each second as it arises, I’m fine. It’s battering myself mentally against the idea of everything I have to do that causes the sensation of exhaustion. One foot in front of the other… steadily, evenly. And if it gets worse than that, I can always shift the focus again. Even smaller. Just down to the next breath. Breathing in… breathing out…

  22 March 2012

  I’ve been running the farm on my own now for six days, while Rich is in hospital. On the first night, Joli came in to tell me that a sheep had died. There was a long moment when I wondered why she was telling me – what was I supposed to do about it? Then I realized that I’d have to do something and that if I didn’t, no-one would. It would just stay there and rot, I suppose. In the middle of the pen of other sheep, who are busy lambing. That obviously wasn’t a good idea.