Goat Vigil: Day Six
November 1st, 2013 · 2 Comments · Posted in farming
It’s been almost a week since the goat buckling we brought home bolted and disappeared through the perimeter fence and I’ve just been too depressed to write about it.
“You keep losing stuff, Ed!!!” commented longtime reader and friend Celia from Great Britain. Or, as my wife preferred to put it, “Let’s just admit we don’t know what we’re doing.”
By that she means the six sheep that died while we were trying to graze our out-of-control pastures over the summer and the 15 Guinea fowl that upped and disappeared. And now the seven-month-old boy goat that was supposed be our breeding sire, MIA before he’d spend even 10 minutes on the property.
Well, it’s not like we don’t know anything, exactly. There were years of reading and boning up prior to starting our farm venture, and countless conversations with other farmers and so-called experts since we moved up here. But, yes, we are neophytes and we’ve made plenty of beginner’s errors. One recent quote I ran across struck home: Farming is about taking risks.
I’ve tried to take well-calculated risks, but the devil is always in the details. Losing the goat was so agonizing because I originally had planned to put him temporarilly in our permanent paddock, a large area surrounded by virtually impregnable woven wire fencing. In theory, that would have given him time to acclimate to his new surroundings before moving him to a permanent home in the goat enclosure, an area surrounded on three sides by portable electric netting and on one side by the permanent electric perimeter fence. But at the last minute, I thought the eventual move to the goat enclosure might prove too difficult: He was obviously a wild child who didn’t like to be handled by humans. It just never occurred to me that he would be able to slip under the bottom wire of the high-tensile perimeter fence. Later, inspecting the permanent paddock, we found places under the gates where he might have escaped as well. Our preparations obviously were just not thorough enough.
We moved our two female goats–so tame, they’re almost like pets–off the pasture they were grazing and back into the goat enclosure in hopes they would lure the young buck out of the woods. But we have not seen or heard from him since he disappeared.
Lesson learned.
Okay, so we’ve taken some lumps. But I must say, our remaining animals seem to be doing just fine. Our five Friesian ewes are grazing green pastures alongside Emily, our Jersey heifer. I visit them at least twice a day, delivering a ration of high-protein grain to the young cow and moving the portable fencing to fresh grass as needed. Until they were so rudely interrupted, the goats were having a blast grazing with the sheep and cow. I’ll move them back this weekend. The laying hens, meanwhile, have started laying. We’ve collected more than a dozen eggs. And the 24 Freedom Ranger broilers get moved in their tractor to fresh grass twice a day. They’re eating tons of food to ward off the fall chill and should be ready for slaughter in about three weeks.
The new wood stove keeps us toasty warm inside our little house. Except for the hole in our hearts where a boy goat should be, all seems right with the world of Spy Dog Farm. Now we just need to make sure we’re ready for winter.
It happens Ed. Things like this happen to all of us. I was reading one of my favorite farming blogs the other day. The farmer was putting up new fencing and a herd of his cattle got out. He said that it took him 2 hours to get them back in and by the time he was able to get out ahead of them they’re were 1/2 mile into the neighbor’s field. And this from a farmer with years of experience under his belt.
So don’t feel too bad. Learn from the mistakes and grow from there. Hope your buckling comes home.
Thanks, Joanne. I’ve been trying to explain to my wife that I wanted to purchase the buckling now so that we could be breeding next fall. Our next opportunity to purchase a buckling is in next spring, which means we won’t see baby goats till spring 2015, or find someone who has a Kiko buck in the vicinity and will perform stud service.