Autumn's Wicked Lullaby

Each morning now, my old friend, Jack Frost, nips my cheeks as I step outside just before the sunrise butters the horizon. Hugging my sweatshirt, I hurry to the barn, where the goats greet me with a chorus of bleats and snorts. After filling seven buckets half-way with grain, enough for each group of twenty-one goats, I stop to feed the kittens meowing in the entryway of the parlor.

Next stop, the milk-house, to run hot water into the steel sink where the milking units lie waiting. After pouring in a dose of sanitizer, I flip the switch for the milker pump, and let it run through the pipelines and back into the sink. It needs ten minutes to kill any bacteria in the line, so I leave it running and walk outside to the holding area.

From here, the view is superb. The rolling hills are weeping leaves in the brisk wind, leaving rivers of autumn tones across the pasture. Several of our horses graze the remnants of green grass, so abundant just a few short weeks ago. If you have to shovel manure, you might as well do it with a view, and grabbing the manure scraper, I soon have the cement yard clean of mud and goat droppings.

Once that job is complete, it's time to shut the pump off and drain the sanitizing solution out of the line. I carry each milking unit out to the parlor, and plug it into the pipeline. First the tubing where the milk will flow, and then the air-hose for vacuum.

Sparky, my Australian Shepherd, waits at my feet, eyes sparkling, tongue lolling in an ever-present grin. He loves his job. "Come on, boy," I say. We enter the barn, and slide the door to the holding area open. As I open the gate, Sparky starts barking and the goats run through the door. Sparky dashes to the back of the pen, rounding up any stragglers.

When the last goat is through the door, he sits and waits, daring them to try and come back in the barn. They know better these days, and I slide the door shut without incident. Sparky looks across the barn at the goats who remain on the other side in the "Dry Pen" and whines.

"It's okay, boy," I say. "They aren't milking right now." Of our 250 adult does, half are no longer milking and are what we call "dry". They are pregnant and will be giving birth by late December. As their pregnancy progresses, their body signals a "slow down" on the milk production and they give less and less each day. When this happens, we mark these does with green ink, and milk them once a day for about a week. This gives their bodies another signal to cease making milk. Then we put them in the dry pen so they can focus on growing the new life inside of them and prepare for the next milking season.

Putting the radio on to my favorite station, Life 101.9, I let a group of goats into the parlor, and switch on the pump. It only takes an hour and all the does are milked. I carry all the milking units back into the milk-house and place them in the sink.

After washing off any mud, they are hooked back up to be washed with hot water and a special pipeline detergent. Finally a solution of milk-stone-remover and acid rinse is run through the lines and they are drained until tonight.I hose down the parlor deck where the goats stood, and head upstairs to the top of the barn where we store the sweet-smelling alfalfa hay.

After forking down two huge piles through feeding holes in the floor, I run back downstairs and spread it up and down the mangers in the dairy barn. Soon, every goat is lined up eating hay.

Then it's off to the smaller barns where over one-hundred-and-forty yearling female goats called doelings are waiting for their breakfast of hay and grain. These young does will give birth in early 2009 and join the milking herd, bumping our total number of milking does to almost four hundred next year. Most of our does will give birth to twins, with the occasional set of triplets and some singles.

Math never has been my strongest subject, but I believe this means we are expecting somewhere in the vicinity of seven or eight hundred baby goats this year, all to be born between late December, 2008 and April, 2009. Our weather man warned us this morning to expect snow flurries this Monday.

Last year, snow fell by Thanksgiving and never left until April. We keep our baby goats (kids) in two old trailer houses. They have to be cleaned out and bedded-up with fresh sawdust, which will give our three teenagers something really exciting to do this weekend.

Even though we have electric heaters and automatic feeders in the kid trailers, the biggest challenge is collecting the babies before they freeze at birth. Here in the Midwest, United States of America, our temperatures can stay below zero for weeks on end through the winter months. Add mountains of ice and regular snow storms, and I wonder once again why I ever chose to live in Iowa.

It's time to start boarding up windows and hauling the old tarp out of storage to cover up the open end of the barn. Winterizing is essential if we want livestock, not deadstock. While most does are excellent mothers and try to lick their babies dry, some plop their offspring onto the straw and walk away without so much as a backward glance.

On the coldest days, I have about five minutes to reach the soaking-wet newborns and run them back to the milk-house to be dried off and fed their mother's colostrum. If I don't get to them fast enough, their ears freeze and fall off about a week later.

It's simple enough until twenty does all decide to give birth to twins and triplets in the space of one hour. Having licked their babies dry, they walk across to someone else's kids and claim them, too. I will bring one round of babies in and go out to find fifteen more waiting for me.

The boy babies (bucklings) out of the top milk producing does and each female baby goat (doelings) are given a Velcro collar with their date of birth, future identification number and parents' names written on it with a permanent marker. The Velcro collar can be adjusted as they grow.

Once they reach eight weeks, they receive an ear tattoo with the same number.While I'm enjoying the beautiful scenery and the slow-down pace around the farm, Autumn's gentle lullaby is deceptive. Her days are mild and the scenery is superb, but we all know her husband is a foul-tempered beast and I hear his voice howling in the distance.

Let him come. We'll be ready.

Frazzled!

Having spent twenty minutes showing our guests around the farm, we paused by the goats' pasture, where all two-hundred-and-forty of our milking does grazed in the warm sunshine.

"So," the woman standing beside me said. "You don't have a job, then. You just stay here on the farm."Excuse me? my brain interjected, while my lips threatened to break out in hysterical laughter.

"No, I don't," I stammered. "I milk the goats."I milk the goats? What kind of a lame answer is that? my brain roared.

Shrugging her shoulders, our visitor climbed into her car. "Must be nice," she added.

Watching them drive away, I glanced at my grinning husband."She didn't mean it that way," he said, standing at a safe distance."Yes she did!" Yes she did! my brain and I shouted.

You had to hear the words spoken. The tone of voice, the inferring smirk. Perhaps she is right. All I do each day is crawl out of bed at six in the morning and head to the barn to set up for morning milking. I'm in the door again by, oh, about eleven to grab some breakfast, now that kidding season is over.

During kidding season, I ate my meals in the barn, where I belonged. A mere five hours of being outside enjoying life on the farm, while I milk all two-hundred-and-forty milking goats, and then feed, water and care for the one-hundred-and-fifty baby goats, twenty horses and one-hundred chickens, ducks and turkeys, give or take a rooster or two, that also live on our farm.

My husband is a self-employed electrician and contractor. I'm his secretary, book-keeper and general go-fer. In other words I 'go-fer' this and I 'go-fer' that. The sales people at Menards, Lowes and FarmTek know me by name. This task usually involves driving long distances and subsequently delivering electrical or plumbing parts to whatever job site he is working at on a given day.

But not every day. So that isn't work. Work is something you do every day. I should be ashamed of myself, really, not having a job. Five people live in this house and only three of those are children or teenagers. This week, one of those children is in swimming lessons, and one is in driver's education, both of which mean a trip to town. That is the least I can do, seeing as I don't have a job.

By mid afternoon, after squeezing in a few hours as a housewife doing laundry and dishes, I find myself back outside enjoying that country air. Waterers need filling, animals need checking, and the possibility always exists that the sneaky fence-defying pony is out in the corn field again. Gosh, look at the clock! It's almost six in the evening and time to start the evening chores.

Chores? Did I say chores? Excuse me, I meant the evening leisure time, where I get to go out and spend three to four hours milking the goats again, feeding and watering everyone and gazing at the moon as I trudge back to the house around nine or ten.I almost forgot. I'm looking after our neighbor's ninety-year-old grandma this week and have to dash down there and help her get ready for bed. It's only a five-minute drive each way. She is a wonderful lady. I hope I'm as agile as she is, if I live to be ninety. Visiting with her is the highlight of my day -- no kidding!

When I get back, I will don rubber boots once more, so I can go outside and play farmer some more.It's ridiculous. This nine to ten hours a day of lazing around the farm has to stop! I'm going to start searching the classifieds for gainful employment.

Tomorrow.

In all my spare time, yawn. . . . Zzzz.

Jingle Bell Goats - An Ice Storm Hits Our Farm

The ice storm sweeping across the entire mid-west United States yesterday, hit Rainbow Gate Farm with a vengeance we rarely see this early in the season. We awoke to the sound of ice hitting the windows like millions of tiny firecrackers exploding on the fourth of July!

Staying warm and dry wasn't exactly an option with three hundred goats, twenty-five horses and over one hundred chickens, ducks and turkeys waiting to be fed and watered, so we bundled up and faced the storm.

Our five-month-old Australian Shepherd pup, Sparky, thought it was Christmas. With his thick coat, he romped across the yard, oblivious to the sting of the driving ice, grabbing mouthfuls of frosty snow from the ground. His bright spirits made it hard not to laugh, although I took care to face away from the direction of the wind.

No more outside frolicking for the goats this year. The wind whipping through their open door sounded like a freight train, bringing nothing but arctic air as it roared through the barn. A few heavy pieces of plywood and some long screws soon took care of that. Sparky made sure all the "girls" stayed on the right side of the door while we closed up the hole. Our horses were standing inside the open end of their building, snow blankets covering their backs. They greeted us with friendly nickers and neighs, knowing our presence meant their breakfast of hay would arrive any moment. The pregnant and waddling goats on the opposite side of the barn likewise sent a chorus of bleats our way.

Some of them hurried to the gate where they would usually go to the holding area to be milked. "Sorry, girls," I told them. With only two months to go until their babies are born, we have "dried-off" the entire herd. Most of the does dried off naturally, but a few of them were still milking about six pounds a day.

In a few days we will bring all the goats through the parlor one last time and milk out the does whose bags are tight with milk. This will prevent them from developing mastitis, an painful infection in their udders, which can ruin them for milking forever.

After feeding the dairy barn, we treked across the yard to the "upper" and "lower" barns, where our younger horses, mares and foals, poultry and young goats are housed. The four girls in the photograph greeted me as I walked into their barn. With almost one hundred of them in the building, they stay warm and dry. It is hard to believe these doelings are only nine months old. They were born this spring weighing an average of six to seven pounds. Now they are pregnant with their own babies and will give birth in February and March. You might notice two of the doelings in the picture have almost no ears. No, they didn't freeze off, although it does happen. They are both "La Mancha" doelings, an American breed of dairy goat with a gene that produces tiny little ears. Some people don't like the way they look, but I think they're cute. It's actually an advantage in our climate. No ears to freeze!

The chickens, ducks and turkeys are all running together in one big room for the winter, upstairs above the doelings. The other day I spread a layer of fresh sawdust in their area and it's the first thing I smell when I open the door. One glance at their water tubs tells me it's warm enough for them because the water is not frozen, despite the outside temperature. I fill their water tubs and feeders, collect a couple of blue-green eggs laid by our Araucana hens, and head back down the steps.

In the lower barn a mare nickers from the first stall and is answered by the colt standing in the back stall. Snapping a lead rope onto her halter I take her down the alleyway and reunite her with her baby, the colt who just called out to her. He is being weaned, but we do it over a period of a week or more. We separate them into adjacent stalls, then put them together again at night. After a few more days, we move the mare further down the barn and wait twenty-four hours before putting them back together. This prevents either the mare or foal from becoming too distressed with the weaning process. The foal is nine months old and needs to be halter broken and educated. In the wild, his mother would drive him away in the spring when her new colt was born, but it isn't practical in captivity. Once the separation is complete, we will put the colt in with another colt who is already weaned. Within a few days they will become the best of buddies, and Mom will be forgotten.

Pulling my ski-mask over my face to prevent being assaulted by stinging ice, I head back toward the house. Sparky has been waiting for me and he continues to cavort in the snow and ice as we walk. Then, he stops and looks across the field beyond our home. I follow his gaze to see a huge coyote hurrying along the crest of the hill. The coyote pauses and glances over his shoulder and then across at us. He dashes a few more yards and stops again. Deer hunting season opened up today, and no doubt he's been flushed from his normal territory by hunters searching for deer. That explains both his unusual daytime appearance and his nervous behavior.Grabbing the digital camera, I aim. The camera blinks "Card Full." Scrolling through the images, I delete a couple and raise my camera once more. I get my picture but he has traveled further away and it's not going to be much of a photo.



I make sure Sparky comes into the garage with me when we reach the house. As brave as he is barking at the coyote, he is still a pup. If he follows the coyote into the field and timber, he might not make it back home and I'm not taking any chances.I come back inside and check the computer for the latest weather report. The entire state of Iowa has disappeared under the blue for snow and purple for ice color code of the Doppler radar. We spend the rest of the afternoon under a blanket watching movies. Even though our house is a warm sixty-eight degrees, it takes a bit of thawing after spending time outside in the cold and evening chores will be here too soon.A late afternoon check of the incubator in the back room reveals some suspicious peeping sounds and one egg that's rocking back and forth across the wire floor. Twenty-seven Pekin ducklings are due to hatch tomorrow and it sounds like they're right on target. I turn the light off and plug the candling light in. Shining the light into the eggs, the duckling's beaks can be seen in the top air-sac section of the egg. Breaking through this membranes to start breathing the air within the egg is the first step toward a successful hatch.Stay tuned! The 'Fluffy Yellow Christmas Ducklings' story is coming soon!