Sunday, November 22, 2009

Mood Lighting

So um, I bred my first goat yesterday. I know, I'm a hick. Minnie is a white Lamancha breed. She is also a loud, nervous thing. When she's in heat she sounds like she's getting hit by a bus, it's horrible. She knew something was up when I tried to feed her some grain from my hand holding a rope. She didn't fall for it and in the end we tackled her and tied her up.
So we get her on the truck and to her "date", and the guy with the buck (read: daddy goat) asks me which buck I want to breed her to, I said "a quiet one". I also wanted the floppiest eared goat he had; that goat turned out to be Sid. We get the two together and they are both happy to see each other. I was wearing a headlight flashlight at the time and I thought it might be freaking Minnie out, as everything I had done to her that day was freaking her out. I turned the light from white to red; when I did this Dan (the buck master) said "ooh, mood lighting". Strangely I had no desire to sing bow-chika-wow-wow, it seemed wrong.
Sid does the deed and Dan says that it's a good idea to breed them twice "just to make sure she's full". That is sauteed in wrong sauce. So we have to wait for Sid to get good and ready while Minnie acts like a freshman that got invited to senior prom. I've still got my red light on and as I look at his 20 strong herd of goats it feels like I'm looking at "goat herd of the dammed". Sid goes for a couple of "practice tries" and finally gets the deed done again. Dan says, "ok that's it". It looked the same as the practice runs! How can you tell? He said "I guess after you've seen it so many times you can just tell." he says that if she's still meowing loudly and flagging her tail that I should bring her back tomorrow. I can't wait.
We get to repeat this for Glowbug, but we won't have to chase her around for 30 minutes.

1 comment:

  1. don't you know, shelby? blog posts are supposed to have pictures.

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