Farm Fresh Blog

Life is full of little mysteries. This little goat is one of them. Her life thus far is surely the stuff of a Disney movie.

Last week I got a call from a friend asking if we could take in a little goat that had been found wandering on a 2000 acre ranch. There are no goats on this ranch. This little girl was found with a herd of axis deer.  The rancher watched her for hours, waiting for a mother to appear, but no mother ever came. She bedded down with the axis deer. Eventually, he took the baby and she ended up with a relative as a bottle baby in a subdivision for two weeks. She had a loving family, but they were no set up for goats and so they reluctantly sought out a home for little Patty, so she now lives with us.  Who knows how Patty ended up wandering with Axis deer.  There are Angora goats on neighboring ranches but they are not close. We will probably never know exactly what Patty is, or where she came from, or what happened to her mother, but that's okay. We'll give her a loving home where her Subdivision Family can visit her.

At our house Patty lives in a dog crate in the stall with Archer and his mother.

Archer is a Lacey/Arrow cross:

Soon Archer and Patty will have more new friends because at 6:30 am more babies were born.

These kids are a Feather/Jethro cross.

 Large, lanky buckling

Doeling with a Peacock Feather marking on her side

In a few weeks babies will be ping-ponging all over the pasture, and the little foundling will be as happy as a mountain goat, bouncing along with them. This little kid surely has a backstory that is the makings of a Disney movie, but we'll never know what it is.

All ranchers should choose potential spouses based on whether or not they can back a gooseneck trailer and how big their hands are. That said, it is now mandatory that the grandchildren stay with us for the entire kidding and lambing season next year. They don't have a lot of experience, but they have little hands that fit into dark, tight places, and we can give them the experience. We've already figured out how to put a Beany Baby animal in a box with a hole in it so they can practice. Yes, ranchers think of that kind of stuff.

Kidding season started with a bang. Actually it was a scream. We live in the barn and so it's easy enough for me to check on the goats. I just walk across the breezeway and peek into their stalls. I knew some of my girls were due, but the one due first was showing absolutely no signs that birthing was eminent. I had turn the dogs out into the dark in the wee hours of the morning, peeked at the goats in their little goat huddle, and noted nothing unusual. So I went inside to fix myself some coffee. I was doing dishes when I heard the scream.

Goats can be real drama queens but this was not a 'she stepped on my ear' scream. This sound raced across the hallway and traveled into the kitchen like a bolt of lightning. I ran outside and peeped into the stall again. Everything looked normal in the dim glow of the night light. The goats were still lying in a huddle like a pile of puppies. Then I saw a little head poking out of Lacey's butt. Holy crap on a cracker!

I ran inside to find the head of a cold, unresponsive kid sticking out of a first time mother who had shown no signs of going into labor hours earlier. I roared into the house like a tornado and screamed at Other Half who was snoring into his pillow. Like a fireman, a rancher must be able to shoot from zero to Code 1 as soon as he steps out of bed. Okay, he wasn't as fast as a fireman but he was fast.

So I then ran back outside and began throwing the other goats out of the stall. Normally I would have had a birthing mother in the stall with just one companion, but then again, she didn't look like she was going into labor the night before, so the joke was on me. As it was, I found myself trying to shove sleepy, confused goats into the barn aisle while a panicked first time mother screamed with each contraction. Holding the little baby's head up, I tried to steady the mother and assess the situation. It was bad. It was really bad. Clearly they had been at this a while. I just didn't notice earlier because she was pressed into the goat huddle.

The baby was presented head first. In goats and sheep, and cows, and horses, and other long-legged critters, the front feet should be born first. Ideally the baby is presented like a diver leaping out of the birth canal. Legs complicate things. This baby had been presented head first. Normally we would poke the head back inside, and reached around in there until we found front legs. In his case, the head had been out so long that it was swollen and was NOT going to fit back inside. The baby looked dead. Then I felt a tiny reflexive swallow as his throat lay across my palm.  He was alive but if mother and baby were to survive they'd need more help than we could provide.

I thought about this as I made a pass through the house for towels. When life suckerpunches you, hit your knees. Prayer doesn't take long and a 911 call to God can get help on the way while you're trying to figure out what to do. We'd already seen this kind of scene play out at the vet twice and it was ugly both times. In one case the baby died, in the other case, the baby and the mother died. We had nothing to lose by trying because if we didn't try, they'd both end up dead anyway.

So we did. There was a lot of grunting and screaming from all three of us, but eventually, a slimy baby buckling emerged. But would he live? He laid there on the towel, giving no signs of life. Other Half started cleaning him up, rubbing hard on him, and blowing in his lungs. He objected to the assault. Good. It was a start. We pulled him over to his mother's face and she begin licking him. Even if he died, after a birthing like that, she deserved to see her baby. Her attentions stimulated him and encouraged us.

Other Half set up a heat lamp while I cleaned the stall and Lacey groomed her new bundle of joy. His head was really swollen but his eyes were opening. Things were looking better.

Because he was too weak to attempt to nurse on his own, we milked her and presented him with a bottle. Warm mother's milk is like chicken noodle soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. It just cures everything. With milk in his belly and a heat lamp over his back, he was feeling a little better after his rocky birth.  There was definitely turbulence in that landing, but hey! We're on the ground now!

It was time to breathe. It was time for a shower. Other Half may not have any social skills, but boy is he handy during an emergency. Girls, think about that when you are selecting a spouse. Can he drive a real truck? Can he back a cattle trailer? Can he shoot a snake? And can he deliver a baby goat, or lamb, or calf without fainting?

An hour and a half later the baby was nursing on his own shaky legs.

By the next day the swelling was down and he was bouncing around the stall. Because his father is Arrow, we named him Archer. He is a little miracle, and a reminder to me that even in the midst of an emergency, take a moment to give God a 911 call. Miracles happen every day. It's up to us ask for one, and to recognize it when you get it.

There's nothing quite like tax time to make you realize how much money you spend to keep a farm going. Sometimes you make money. Sometimes you lose money. Sometimes you have to spend money up front and don't see the payoff for a year or two, or more, or never on some things. Sometimes you can diversify and discover your time and talents are better spent in another direction. You're still ranching, but your products are different. You prune things, but the tree of the ranch keeps growing.
 

I was having this discussion with a friend yesterday. As at least one member of every farming family should be, she leans heavily toward the business mindset. Other Half is the business end of our ranching family. The Business End expects to see a profit. The sooner, the better. The bigger, the better. They heavily factor in not only the cost of maintaining a farm, but the effort of maintaining a farm.

It is here that I have to point out that if we factor 'time and effort' into ranching, then it's far better to live in a subdivision and work a 9 to 5er where you have nights and weekends off. You can just pop over to Kroger's for your groceries. You have 1.5 dogs. You are free as a bird to participate in the hobbies of your choice. You are free to travel anywhere at any time.  If the bottom line is about time and money, ranching is not for you, not as a lifestyle, not even as a hobby.

If you have a ranch you can't enjoy a lot of things. A ranch is like a giant child. There's pain and joy, and you get some tax deductions, but it's an awful lot of trouble. Only you can determine if it's worth it. How much of your life do you want to spend shoveling poop and looking at the genitals of farm animals?

Is the financial cost worth it?  The blood, sweat, and tears? Is your life richer for it? Or is it a burden? Do you long for the finer things in life? Manicures? Nice clothes? Parties? Do you long to travel? To see the world? To experience life beyond the pasture? If so, perhaps farming isn't in your stars.

But if you can't imagine a life that doesn't involve picking up poop, hauling hay, and checking butts every night, even if it means scraping out a living with little or no free time or money, then maybe you have found your niche. Not all riches can be measured in the checkbook. If I make just enough money to pay the bills, but live to enjoy the sight of a newborn calf staggering toward her mother in the moonlight, who says I'm not rich?

My world changed when I stuck my fingers in the bag.

Addiction is a funny thing. Some addictions I can understand - horses, chocolate, coffee, and cupcakes. Some confuse me - gambling (too expensive), alcohol (I fall asleep), drugs (I'm not doing prison time for anything short of a chocolate horse drinking coffee while eating a cupcake.) But given the above lists, I still try not to judge someone else's addictions because I'm as helpless in front of a cupcake as any crackfiend behind a convenience store. I know I have certain weaknesses, so it doesn't surprise me if I cave when faced by cupcakes or another dog, but sometimes I'm genuinely tripped up when I realize I've been captured like a moth in a spider web by a new addiction.  I struggle in the snare, wondering how it happened.

Sometimes it's slow, like coffee, so gradual that you don't even realize it's happening, but other times it's like the sweet spread of a smile across a child's face when she gets her first taste of chocolate. That's what happened this week when I stuck my fingers in the bag.

So let's examine the anatomy of addiction:

Start with weedeater goats, move to producing meat goats. Move to raising dairy goats and making goat milk soap. Goats are so versatile that you decide the world would be a better place if every home had a couple of goats and a handful of chickens. Somewhere along with the idea of a Victory Garden, the government dropped the ball by not encouraging everyone to get goats and chickens.

Goats lead to sheep. Start with meat sheep, but decide that the sheep equivalent of the American Bison is the Navajo Churro sheep because it gives meat, milk, and fiber, so in addition to your dairy goats, you want to add Navajo Churro Sheep. Fall into a flock of Navajo Churros by accident. Fall in love. At first you are just happy having them but then you decide to play with the idea of spinning their wool into yarn and weaving saddle pads and cinches. You have no interest whatsoever in knitting, or crochet.

Your interest really is in the animal and getting the fiber into yarn. You like the natural colors of the sheep. Then you discover natural plant dyes. So you decide you'd like to dye some of your own wool. The slide to addiction begins.

You start to look longingly at spinning wheels. Since you don't know anyone who spins, you can't scratch that itch, but then the Fiber Fairy sends you a teacher, who brings her wheel over and gives you a lesson. She also gives you a lesson in knitting. You have no interest in knitting until the lesson. At the end of the lesson you are a child making Jacob's Ladder with a piece of twine, you cannot put it down. Not only can you not forget the knitting, you cannot forget the joy of spinning.
 

You now decide you must have a spinning wheel. You then drive two hours to the Yarn Store to play with spinning wheels and order one of Your Very Own. You walk into the shop and are immediately hit by more colors and textures than an outdoor flower market. You become drunk on the colors. The shopkeeper is keen and takes advantage of your dizzy state.

"Here, put your hand in here," she says as she offers a clear plastic bag filled with gray fluff.

You have no real expectations since you have house dogs and it looks like the stuff you sweep out from under the couch, but to be polite, you stick your fingers in the bag.

And that's when the addiction takes hold.

The fuzzy bundle is pygora, a breed of goat that is a cross between an Angora and a Pygmy. It is the softest, most magical fiber. You want to stuff the whole bag under your shirt and run with it. You are Gollum with The Ring. This fiber is The Missing Link, it completes the circuit for your addiction. No, you don't want to breed Pygora goats. You just want to touch fiber. You want to spin the fiber. You want to, God help you, knit the fiber.

At this point I'm sure my mother who raised a child with little or no Home Economics interests or skills is falling out of her chair with laughter, but she hides it well and does what she always does, she encourages my interest. My new spinning wheel will arrive next week, and I'm trying to resist the urge to buy a Pygora wether to add to my herd of goats. I trying to resist the thoughts that urge me to blend Angora fiber with Navajo churro fiber on my spinning wheel just to see. . .
 

And so that is the Anatomy of Addiction, the route of meat goat rancher to fiber farmer. Can I make money at it? Or course not. If it had been about money I would never have stuck my fingers in the bag.

Spring has arrived. I looked out the kitchen window yesterday and saw this.

The lambs zoomed back and forth, up and down the hill, around the bottle tree and the picnic tables, and from time to time they stopped to check in with the dog.

Why? I have no idea, but that was part of their game. On his end, the dog watched them with mild amusement. He was more interested in the vulture circling overhead. So caught up in the antics of the lambs, I wouldn't even have noticed the bird if not for the dog.

The sun was beginning to climb down out of the sky but the lambs weren't ready to come into the barn yet. The fun had just started. With three Livestock Guardian Dogs on duty, I left the lambs to their play just a little longer. The dogs gave me that luxury.

According to the calendar, I have three goats due to give birth in the next three weeks. Spring is definitely here. That means I can no longer leave the puppies in the stalls at night with the goats. Normally Briar has the run of the barnyard and the boys are locked inside the goat pens, but since they aren't quite ready "birthin' babies" it's time for them to go out on patrol. The rookies are off field training and headed to night shift.

I worried about them. There are a lot of 'things' around here at night. They could tangle with copperheads, rattlesnakes, oppossums, raccoons, skunks, bobcats, coyotes, or heaven forbid, the cougar. They could get off the property and run into feral hogs.

I don't think they slept at all last night. With my window open, I heard their bells jangling off in the distance as they barked and galloped into the night. I didn't get much sleep either. I checked them often. Each time I crept out with my gun and flashlight, they trotted up to me like giant warhorses, puffed with pride. The one person who did sleep last night was Briar. She reminded me of an old seasoned night shift officer who finally had a new crop of rookies on the street. She just curled up in the sand and let them run the 'calls for service.'

Outside my bedroom window the glow of the moon made a grin. The grinning moon smiled down on my rookies as they ran calls for service all night long.

On most mornings I rise to do the changing of the guard and let the Night Shift Border Collies inside, lock Briar up, and let the Day Shift dogs out to play. I brought the Rookies inside for a bit, took off their bells, and let them settle down in the house while I played on the computer. They looked pretty much the same to me, a little tired but otherwise they were the fine. Still, there was something I couldn't quite put my finger on.

And then they spied the cats on the window sill and erupted into barking so savage that it scared me and the cats. They were still hyperalert from their shift. Ahhhh... been there, done that myself. I showed them the cats and reminded them that these cats were the same cats they see every day, both inside and outside. They seemed a bit embarrassed. No worries. Been there myself too.

I turned them back outside and expected they would trot off with Mesa to play, but this morning they were different. There was no play, no symphony of bells as the three friends ran and wrestled with the rising sun. Instead with a self-important, businesslike trot, they patrolled the fence again. Mesa was puzzled. She went a ways with them, but then came back to the house. Cops are no fun.

Last night the boys grew up. They have graduated from the police academy, passed their field training program, and hit the streets.

I'm on several Livestock Guardian Dog lists and a question I see regularly is this:

"Will a LGD protect my chickens from hawks?"

Yes! Yes! Yes!  When Briar was just a year old, my mother witnessed her saving chickens from two separate hawk attacks. How many others did she save when no one was looking?

Livestock Guardian Dogs are just that, guard dogs. Briar was not imprinted on chickens, she was there to protect the sheep, but a dog knows what does and does not belong in the barnyard. Hawks don't belong. Once a Livestock Guardian Dog knows what 'normal' is, then he can defend against the abnormal, and they do look high and low when they patrol.

I shot these pictures yesterday as The Boyz were on duty. Note how they put themselves above the flock to supervise.

I would not even have noticed the vultures if not for the dogs.  Several were perched in a tree at the end of the driveway. One circled above.

  Judge checks out the ones in the tree while Jury watches the one in the air.

No one is lambing or kidding now, so I'm not too worried about the vultures at the moments. We haven't had a problem with our birds, but in other parts of Texas and across the country, black vultures are becoming notorious for killing calves, lambs, and kids during birth. They descend upon the birthing mother and kill the baby immediately or peck its eyes out. Ranchers have found calves with no eyes staggering around the pasture. A friend of ours  in central Texas lost a calf to vultures last year, so like Jury, we keep a wary eye on them.

But on this day the bird was just cruising the friendly skies. Without the dogs I would worry about the lambs. They're still little and while some of them are small enough to be taken by a predatory bird, they are more likely to be pinched by an opportunistic coyote or bobcat. For that reason, I always turn the boys out to patrol prior to releasing the lambs.

After all, a free meal isn't really free around here.

We turned the newest babies out with the flock.

This was the first time the Anatolian puppies have had a chance to interact with them without a fence as a barrier because bouncing erratic lambs mixed with giant puppies can be a recipe for disaster. There was a lot of sniffing at first.

The dogs were quite curious and from time to time the bouncing lambs tickled them so much they wanted to playbow and boogey with them. This led to me screaming,

"STOP THAT! They are NOT TOYS!!!"

The lambs were not only curious about the dogs, but the whole world was new to them. They got so absorbed in investigating things that they'd lose track of their mothers. This led to much freaking out, and screaming, and racing around like Chicken Little in search of the mothers who had already tired of answering them 50 times already.

A few times the babies rushed up to one of the Anatolians for comfort, well, because they are large and white, and look kinda like a sheep, (as opposed to a tractor).

This confused but delighted the pups and it wasn't long before Judge had adopted a little tyke that I have temporarily named Loud Mouth because he spent most of yesterday lost and thus screaming for his mother.

Judge appointed himself as Bodyguard to Loud Mouth.

He slowly escorted Loud Mouth around until they located his mother. Then Loud Mouth dropped him like a hot potato and raced off to join his mom without a backwards glance or a thank you.

Both boys did really well but Judge showed me another angle that I like to see. Dillon came out for a potty break, discovered the lambs and couldn't resist bowling through the flock like a bull in a china shop. No aggression, just too much curiosity going too fast.

Then Judge surprised me by politely by angling in and squeezing Dillon away from the lambs. He bumped his shoulder and gave him a firm,

"Stop that! They're NOT TOYS!"

Dillon just puttered off to pee on trees, pick up a stick, and go about his D-Dog Day. No harm, no foul.

Judge stayed with the lambs and then did an inventory.

I was really, really pleased with the way these 8 month old pups behaved. Briar gave them little or no guidance. She casually sniffed the lambs herself, but otherwise just sat back and watched the boys amble around with them.

Loud Mouth got her attention a few times because he's, uhhmm - a loud mouth! He called every predator in three counties. Fortunately out of three Livestock Guardian Dogs, someone would assume the role of bodyguard to walk with him until he found his mother.  Once again I'll say this, if you have a farm and don't have a Livestock Guardian Dog, what are you waiting for?

Moonlight reflected off the frost on the cactus as a wisp of steam rose from the little foot peeking out of the back end of the cow. Her mournful bawl rolled out across the pasture. This was gonna be a long night.

As soon as I had stepped out of the truck I heard a cow bawling. Her cries pierced the night as the moon shone down on the frosty ground.

"Did you check Poppy before we left?"

Other Half assured me that he had checked the cow but that was hours ago and from the sounds in the pasture below, Poppy had gone into labor and was having trouble delivering a monster truck sized calf. Although I don't like to breed first time mothers to large breed bulls, we had the opportunity to use a nice young bull that would add some genetics we wanted, so we bred four first time heifers and one proven producer to him. Because we anticipated there might be issues, we had locked all the birthing mothers into the pasture below the house until this bunch of calves was safely on the ground. Poppy was the last one. None of the other cows had any trouble in delivery. And then there was Poppy.

She was on the dirt road at the very bottom of the pasture, as far away from the other cows and the house as she could get. Although I appreciated her need for privacy, around here, privacy will get your calf eaten. Not two days earlier I had seen three coyotes passing through in broad daylight along the very spot she had chosen to give birth.

And so, here we were, staring at a warm foot trying not to be born on a cold night. We had tossed a bale of hay to the other cows to keep them out of our way while we tried to figure out what we had. From the looks of her, Poppy had been in hard labor for a while. She was not a happy cow. Other Half slipped on some rubber gloves and pushed his hand up inside the cow. The calf was in the proper position, it was just big, so he slipped the straps of the calf pullers around the calf's front ankles and commenced to pulling along with Poppy's contractions. Soon a gigantic white head appeared. The calf's swollen tongue protruded grossly from its mouth, but it was still alive. Coyotes began to yip in the forest below us. A few more heaves and a large sloppy calf plopped into the dirt.

Poppy didn't even turn around. We gave her a minute, but the cow wasn't interested in the calf. Steam rose as we hustled to clear the calf's face ourselves. We struggled to get the slippery calf upside down to clear her lungs, then we placed her beside Poppy's head. The cow startled.

"Where did THAT come from?!!"

She stared at the calf with wide eyes, gave it a few half-hearted licks, and then decided that she really wasn't interested in this new addition to the party. Oh... shit.

The calf began to shiver violently. It was cold and the temperature was dropping. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth as she tried to process this new world she had been pulled into. We gave Poppy more time to acknowledge her baby. Nada. Nothing. So we started towelling the kid dry ourselves while Poppy watched with mild interest. She gave a few more licks, but nothing about the baby really started her engine. Other Half was concerned that she had a pinched nerve from the difficult birth. He'd seen this before and even after days of help, the cow never recovered and had to be euthanized. Poppy didn't look paralyzed to me, she looked overwhelmed. Often cows in this frame of mind just sull up. They plop on the ground and refuse to move. That's what Poppy looked like to me, but regardless of the cause, we had a cold, wet baby lying in the frost, and a mother who couldn't, or wouldn't, help it.

At this point I had already mentally taken the baby to the barn to bottle feed it, and taken Poppy to the sale barn. Other Half is much more forgiving about these things than I am. He passed it off as her being a first time mother. I pointed out that the other girls were first time mothers and they all delivered calves with no help and were immediately attentive to their calves. I reminded him that last year we had a cow actually get cast while giving birth and by the time I found her, the calf was dry and wandering around the herd trying to nurse off other cows. As soon as that cow, Delta the Flying Cow, was assisted in getting upright, that first- time mother rushed over, claimed her calf, and became fiercely protective of it. I was not buying what Other Half was selling. We may have been able to coddle cattle at the other ranch, but here, if a cow doesn't take the initiative to care for her baby, something in the woods will make a meal out of it. And then we're out a calf, a year of time, and at least $1000.

He tried to get Poppy up, but she was having none of it. The baby continued to shiver and stare at us with wild eyes. Her tongue was still so swollen she couldn't get it back in her mouth. I started calling her 'Miley Cyrus,' because of the tongue thing. Clearly Other Half had no idea who Miley Cyrus was, and because he is half deaf, he thought I was calling her 'Molly,' so he started calling her Molly. Since it looked like the calf would live, and no calf should be named after an 'almost porn' singer, I opted to call her Molly too.

I left Other Half in the pasture with Molly and drove back to the house for a calf bottle and a blanket.  Since we had just returned home from a Crime Watch meeting, and weren't dressed for pulling calves, I grabbed a pair of Carhartt coveralls for each of us, and fresh flashlights. There is an upside and a downside to semi-tame cattle. The upside is that they are easier to handle, and their calves are easier to handle. The downside to semi-tame cattle is they follow the mule like children following an ice cream truck. They had already polished off the bale of hay we'd given them when we went to check Poppy and so now they were following the mule like I was the Pied Piper. So much for Poppy's privacy. We now had an audience.

The other mothers were quite concerned about Poppy's lack of attention to the calf. Several tried to come forward to lick it. Poppy showed a tad of interest in keeping her calf away from them, but not enough to actually get off the ground. By this time, Molly was shaking uncontrollably so we bundle her up in a blanket and placed her on Poppy's side. Other Half milked out the half of her udder that he could see and we fed Molly her first meal. She eagerly took her bottle and soon began to struggle to her feet. Molly was doing everything right on her end. She staggered around a bit, and nursed some more. Poppy showed a little interest, but still nothing to indicate that she knew she was supposed to be caring for this baby. Clearly Poppy was missing the hormone that gave her this little Newsflash.

We decided that if Poppy would just get up, perhaps Mother Nature, would advise her, so Other Half did something I had never seen him do before - he smothered her. Yes! He held her mouth shut and covered her nose so she couldn't breath. I watched in disbelief. When he finally released the cow's head, she gave a shake, hauled herself to her feet, and walked away on unsteady feet. But she walked. No pinched nerve. She stopped under a nearby mesquite tree. We got Molly up and slowwalked her over there. Poppy acknowledge her with a few licks but that was it. With warm milk in her belly, Molly had a renewed lease on life, and she was determined to find that nipple and nurse. Poppy just walked away. I mentally walked her ass right to the sale barn.

Other Half insisted on not judging her yet. Give her more time. I pointed at all the other first time mothers staring at Poppy as she refused to let her calf nurse. But the argument wasn't getting us any closer to a solution. We still had to figure out what to do with Molly for the night. If we could get her to the corral behind the house, we could lock Poppy inside with her. She'd be safe from coyotes and if Poppy wouldn't let her nurse, we could just milk her out in the stocks, and bottle feed the baby there. It could work. The hitch was getting Molly and Poppy to the corral. Here's where the screaming started. We stood in the dark and argued about what to do.

"Ninety percent of all farm divorces are a result of sorting cattle."

I read this Facebook meme last week and fell over laughing because it's true, but I want to add that this could be true with any major decision regarding uncooperative cattle. I'm sure the coyotes in the dark had a good laugh listening to us yell at each other.

Poppy had started to show a little interest in the baby. Other Half felt that if we loaded Molly in the mule and drove off with her, Poppy would follow. I didn't see that happening. And it didn't. There was a lot of fighting about the next course of action. So Other Half decided that he would hop out and push Poppy up the pasture while I drove the mule and hoped that Molly didn't flop out of the back. We wrapped her quilt around her like a straightjacket and headed uphill. The entire herd followed me. Other Half and Poppy trailed behind us.

Once inside the corral, I stayed with Molly while he pushed everyone out but Poppy. God smiled at us under the moonlight because Poppy separated herself, making the task of pushing everyone else out easy. By now Poppy was a little more interested in her baby. Molly was released from her straightjacket and toddled off to her mother. She tried to nurse again. Poppy was a bit more accomodating this time. Apparently her trot up the hill had turned on some hormones. We made sure she nursed a little before we left. At least Molly was safe for the night. At 2 AM we drove out of the pasture and closed the gate behind us, leaving Poppy to decide what she wanted to do with her new bundle of joy. As soon as we closed the gate and started for the house, the mule ran out of gas and sputtered to a stop. Perfect timing. We gathered our toys and walked back to the house.

The next morning the sun rose to find little Molly with a milk mustache.

Although she won't win any Mother Of The Year awards, Poppy is allowing Molly to nurse and Molly is a determined little fighter. Yesterday when Poppy wouldn't stand still for her, I watched Molly nursing from Delta, one of the other Braford cows who is a particularly good mother.

Molly is the second strange calf that has been caught nursing from this cow, so with the addition of her own calf, that makes three calves nursing from poor Delta the Flying Cow. Clearly she has the kind of maternal instinct we want to preserve. Delta has earned her place on the ranch. It looks like as far as nutrition is concerned, Molly is gonna be just fine.

Molly is a fine looking calf, from two really nice looking parents, but in order to survive the predators around here, she will need an attentive, protective mother. Either that, or she needs to stay pretty close to Delta the Flying Cow.

"Normal people don't live like this!" Other Half growled as he wiped amniotic fluid off the top of his head.

I continued to scrub amniotic goo off the top of his house shoe as he propped it on the hay wagon. Living in a barn has its advantages. Lambing in your house shoes is one of them. Checking on pregnant ewes is as simple as walking across the barn aisle, so it was no surprise when Other Half barged into the bedroom at 2 am last night and announced that Flower Pot was finally in labor.

This ewe has been holding on to her babies. Each time I've been convinced she was going into labor, an hour later she has smiled at me, while chewing her cud, and said, "Sorry, false alarm. Just gas."

But last night was it. I'd been watching her carefully because last year was her first lambing and she lost a twin. She had apparently become so enamored with Baby #1 that when Baby #2 came along, she failed to get the sack off its nose and it smothered while she was doting on Baby #1. I kicked myself for not checking her that night.

She did not repeat the same mistake. This year she is older and wiser and doing a fine job. Flower Pot popped out a little girl while we were still getting dressed. We've had a month to put doors on these stalls so lambs can't wander out into the runs behind the stalls. We've known Flower Pot was about to pop for two weeks. Have we put a door on that stall?  No. At 2 am we were cutting up cattle panels for a makeshift door. Such is life. It got done. Just like Flower Pot, we take procrastination to a whole new level. But hey, the babies are here and the door is up so all is well.

The little girl was up and going like a champ. This kid was with the program.

Her brother? Not so much. As his mother was pushing him out, the wind changed outside and a cold front blew in. A really cold front. Little Brother was wet and was not happy about being pushed out of his nice warm bed to land in this Cold New World. He didn't want to nurse. He wanted to curl up and shiver while his mom licked him. Fearing he was putting too many calories into shivering, we hefted out a hairdryer. Because well, you know, we live in a barn, so the bathroom isn't far away. I named him Cold Front.

A few minutes later he was dry and thinking about nursing. At 4 am he had nursed, so we opted to head for bed. At 7:30 am I found him shivering in the middle of the stall again. Sigh. So I went back into the house across the hallway, and dug out a knit cap. A few snips here and there, and Cold Front was modeling the latest in Carhartt fashion. His mother approved.

Apparently the fashionistas in the audience approved too.

I guess Other Half is right, normal people don't live this way. But that's not always a bad thing. Normal people are missing out on a lot. I mean, really, who wants to be normal when you can have a lamb wearing a Carhartt hat?