As someone who mostly stayed awake in high school and college biology, I figured I understood mammalian basics; they are covered with hair or fur, give birth to live young (except for those Aussie oddities echidnas and platypuses) and feed their young milk. Simple. The mammary glands enlarge and start producing milk when offspring are born or about to be born. This is the whole premise for breeding dairy animals. The mother has a baby and then is milked. Around here having lactating livestock is known as “milking” season …or “ fight- with- the- kids- to -get- them- to- milk- the- *&^%$ goat- right- now” season.

One of our does (Hope) was bred last winter and she will kid next month; from the size of her, we think she is having Shamu. Her udder is beginning to form so we know that she will kid in the not too distant future. All of our milking stuff is ready to go. A few days ago, one of our yearlings (Ivy), was looking like she needed to be milked more than our pregnant doe. Ivy has not been near a male goat since she was three months old. And, for the record, that boy was a wether (a neutered male). A goat who gives milk that has never had a baby? There goes all of my mammalian biology, right out the barn window.


I’ll admit we do have hay and a manger, and no room in the house, but the similarity ends there. No wise men. (Personally, I think that is an oxymoron like Jumbo Shrimp, almost pregnant, larger half, etc.). No frankincense or myrrh, nada. We have an immaculate, or in goat terms, a precocious milker… I mean, if she was precocious, I could understand how she got into this predicament. One day she’s eating hay and jumping around…the next she’s got an udder that would make Dolly Parton jealous. How ironic is it that we are milking a goat that has never been bred or been near a buck? I sure hope she hasn’t been sneaking off to see boy goats at night. Maybe the pony is in cahoots with her and is picking the latch again. She doesn’t even have a cell phone or watch tv, so how will I ground her?


Apparently, this happens occasionally in goats that come from good milking stock. Just one more strange occurrence to explain for those of us who live the in Twilight Zone of farming.


Now I have a goat to milk and I am the world’s worst milker. I think it has something to do with the fact that I nursed three children and I feel a need to apologize to the goat. And I am really S-L-O-W. My children and husband can milk an entire herd in the time it takes me to milk one. It didn’t help matters that Ivy had not once stepped up on a milking stand. She jumped up on the stand and willingly stuck her head through the stanchion to get the grain, but when I latched it closed things got interesting. You would not believe how far a goat can move and dance around with her head stuck. Her hind end spun around like a pinwheel on a windy day. Forget about Linda Blair in the Exorcist. Sure her head spun around, but Ivy’s entire body pivoted around her stationary head. I loaded up the feed bucket with enough treats to feed a herd of goats and got ready to milk. Her udder was not as large as that of a normal milking doe, making milking challenging for even experienced milkers.


If you are yelling for a kid to come milk a goat that you know you can’t and they don’t hear you how much louder do you need to yell? Try milking a goat with your thumb and index finger, while nursing a very sore throat.


She was still dancing around on the stand, voicing her complaint when I reached for the baby wipes. It is important to clean the udder and teats before milking to avoid infection. Taking a deep breath, encouraging myself to continue, I went to wipe her down. The cold wipes (really, I did try to warm them up first) and the fact that I was touching her there, made her scream as loudly as if a pack of coyotes decided to season and slow cook her before they ate her. She turned her head in the stanchion, looked at me, and turned sideways.


She kicked.


I got out more treats.


She screamed, causing the other goats to pop their heads over the side of the stall to see what the commotion was all about. They started a cacophony of sympathy yelling. Gwen the hen perched on nearby bale of straw and joined in flapping her wings and squawking a warning that would have made Paul Revere proud and kept the British from coming. I started my Lamaze breathing, Hee hee ho. Hee hee ho. I righted Ivy on the stand and began again, singing and talking to her. The noise in the barn was deafening. Maaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Maaaaaaaaaaa! Bwalk, bwalk, BWALK!  Flap, flap, kick…My singing must have alerted Ivy to the fact that I was suffering more than she was, and she seemed to quiet down a bit. Hee hee ho hee hee ho…breathe.


I grasped the teat between my thumb and forefinger. Hee hee ho.


No milk.


I tried again.


No milk.


She flicked her tail and stamped her foot. Three’s the charm, and on the third try…eureka!


A stream of rich, white milk squirted out, missed the bucket and got all over my shirt. I tried again and drenched the milking stand. Two streams of milk, none in the bucket, and Ivy was already done eating. She began the Electric Slide. I gave her more grain and went back to milking. Four buckets of grain later , I had a cup of milk in the bucket, which she had managed to put both feet in, and had drenched my hands, shirt, hair, pants, socks, shoes, goat, side of the stall and the milking stand with milk. I had had a milk bath and I didn’t even need to get in the tub. The only thing I had missed was the light fixture and that was because it was up. I had new appreciation for little boys learning to pee standing up and not missing the toilet. Bad aim? I was the queen of bad aim.


I almost needed a fork lift to get Ivy off of the stand, because I had fed her so much to keep her still. She looked like a small planet with legs. She gave me a contemptuous look as she lumbered back into the pasture with the other goats. Soaked but feeling the pride of accomplishment, I walked back to the house with my cup of milk. Tomorrow, when I milk, I’ll be wearing my raincoat.

When I went to the feed store the other day, there were all sorts of chicks for sale.
 
I drove home and talked to my husband about getting a few to enhance our flock of, um, one. Gwen-the-Hen definitely needs some avian companions, or at least a fellow bird or two to hen peck. (I suppose she'd need a rooster for that, but that is not happening anytime soon.) Well, she who hesitates is lost, and the feed store sold out of chicks before I made up my mind on which breeds we should get.

"Not to worry", quipped my husband, "Just go on line and order a few." And with the click of a button, I was in chick world. Who knew there were so many breeds of chickens? My eyes glazed over and my brain seized up; I haven't used that much cognitive ability since before I had children. There were chickens that lay colorful eggs, chickens for meat, chickens for egg laying (yes! I wanted those), colorful chickens, docile chickens, chickens for pets, chicken diapers (honestly, some people keep them in the house but I draw the line. No chickens inside...only baby goats.) 

We finally decided on Hubbard's Golden Comets (the breed we had before), Australorps (because my daughter loved the name and began chanting "Australorp! Australorp! Australorp!" repeatedly, until I just had to add them to the list to get her to be quiet), and Speckled Sussexes because they are pretty.

The breed issue decided, we had to figure out how many chicks to get. My husband thought we should get fifty, but I wisely put down twenty five. (Seriously, with the goats and the horses, who is going to take care of that many chickens?) My husband assured me that we would be able to sell or give away any chicks we didn't need, so off I went to find the credit card.

Never leave your computer unattended when there are maniacal farmer types living under your roof! By the time I returned with my wallet, my husband had upped the totals to twenty five Australorps, twenty five Golden Comets, and twenty five Speckled Sussexes (but thankfully, no partridge in a pear tree).

         If you saw the roof blow off of our house, it was probably a result of the following conversation:

"Are you crazy? What are we going to do with SEVENTY FIVE CHICKENS?!!!!"

    "They're cheaper if you buy them in bulk."

"You can't be serious. This isn't a trip to Costco! It's not like toilet paper that you get a little extra to stock the pantry! What the heck are we going to do with SEVENTY FIVE chickens? Where are we going to put them all?"

    "It isn't a problem; they'll pay for themselves. We can 
    sell the chicks we don't want and they will cover the cost 
    of the ones we'll keep. We'll get our chicks for free. It's a 
    great deal."

"Now I know where Dire Straits got their lyrics, money for nothin' and your chicks for free... Did you ever consider that maybe we won't be able to get rid of fifty chicks?"

    "We'll just sell the eggs then. Or eat a lot of chicken."

"You know I can't eat anyone I've met. So, let me do the math. Seventy five laying hens...that's roughly six dozen eggs a day! Remember when we only had ten chickens and every meal I made had to have eggs and goat cheese in it? The children will rebel. Oh, wait, they're teenagers, they already are! They will rebel more; there's a frightening thought."

    "Okay, we'll get fifty."

I gave him the look. 

    "It makes a lot of economical sense to order more."

He got the I'm-going-to-hurt-you-while-you're-sleeping look.

On May 2 and May 5 we are getting our shipment of chicks; fifteen Golden Comets, fifteen Australorps and fifteen Speckled Sussexes. Guess I'd better practice the look. Eggs, anyone?