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.

Stupid World

Two old goats glared at each other across twelve inches of feeding space. I sat in my milking parlor the other night watching as each one in turn tried to eat a mouthful of grain from the manger. The other doe would bite her ear.

Back and forth they went, neither of them accomplishing anything more than stopping the other one from eating. A young doe, half their size, stood between the two fighters. While the old ones nipped and fought, that young doe proceeded to polish off every last piece of grain in front of them.

First she leaned one way, then the other, stretching her neck to reach, until it was all gone. The other two were so busy fighting, they didn't even notice she was devouring their prize. I couldn't help but think of our world and the mess we are in.

Our governments and countries are too busy fighting and squabbling with each other to realize the very prize they fight for, our world, is vanishing before their eyes. Heaven help us.

We are a bunch of stubborn old goats.

Summer Time!

The rivers aren't the only thing flooding here in North East Iowa as summer takes a firm hold on our lives. Reports of exploding mosquito populations are in the paper, as those needle-nosed pests find a million extra breeding grounds in our soaked earth.

I have never been more thankful for our resident Muscovy duck population. Muscovies love mosquito larvae and we rarely hear that dreaded whine thanks to their tastes!

Rainbow Gate Farm is well above the river and although we flooded with rainwater twice this spring, if the river ever reaches us, we'd better have an ark waiting!

Kidding season is over and one-hundred-and-fifty growing baby girl goats will join our milking herd next winter, boosting our numbers to 395 milkers.

Little Red Roses - A Rainbow Gate Farm Story

Little Red Roses the goat, entered the world on the coldest day of the winter last year, her fate already sealed by her mother's decision to deliver her against a stone wall next to a small hole, through which a bitter cold wind howled its thirty-degree-below-zero fury.

By the time I discovered her some ten minutes after her birth, her ears were frozen all the way to the base of her head. Snatching her up and wrapping her shivering, seven-pound body in a towel, I hurried to the milk-house where I immersed her in a sink of warm water, trying to thaw her ears and warm her. As I lowered her into the sink, I heard an odd clunking sound. I felt along her hind leg and discovered it was frozen solid.

"Oh, no, baby, this isn't good," I told her.

After fifteen minutes of attempting to thaw the frozen limb, I gave up. Once we had her dry and warm, we put her in the heated trailer with the other newborn goat kids. She could walk but dragged the useless limb behind her. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.Red Roses grew right along with the other young goats, but her left hind leg did not. It shriveled up until it looked like a gnarled old piece of deadwood attached to the otherwise healthy young doe. It was hard to watch her trying to run and play with the others, and I wished a thousand times over I had found her earlier on that morning she was born.

"What are you going to do with her?" my husband asked, ever the practical farmer. "She won't be able to stand in a milking line, even if she does actually manage to breed."

I just grinned and said; "Guess she'll be a pet then."

He shook his head. "I figured that." He smiled as he walked away.

To our surprise, Red Roses did breed, and gave birth to a fine daughter in early February this year. My poor son, Sam, who was home alone when she delivered, saw the baby standing next to Red Roses and thought a coyote had attacked her and chewed off her leg, because of the bloody nature of birth, but that's another story.

Being different from the others didn't seem to bother Red Roses. She received a lot of attention from us as a baby, and became very tame. Oh, excuse me for a moment. Someone is tapping on my shoulder. It's Red Roses! She thinks she could tell her story better than I can. I'm really short of time, so I will let her take over from here.


Hello, my illustrious two-legged readers! This is "Gimpy" here. I know Mom refers to me as "Red Roses", but everyone in the barn calls me Gimpy, and if the shoe fits. . . . Wait, I don't wear shoes, but you get my drift! So anyway, I am Janilou's favorite herd goat. Every time she comes into the barn to drive the other girls to the holding area, I follow her as she walks to the far end of the pen and shoos the slowpokes along. I love to run around her in circles, showing how pleased I am that she worked so hard to save me when I was just a kid.

Then I follow her to the entrance of the holding pen and wait while Janilou closes the sliding door on the rest of the poor suckers, ahem, excuse me, I mean the rest of the does who have to wait their turn to enter the parlor and be milked.

Janilou and I walk right into the parlor together. I run down to the far end where there is a feed manger set up at ground level for special goats like me. She lets another 19 does into the parlor and we all get milked with the special machines Janilou calls "milkers". Ten minutes later we all leave through the exit door and head back to our barn to play and eat hay.

I should explain that Janilou is not my real mother. My real mother has four legs and a fur coat. Janilou has two legs and I have three, so I am stuck somewhere between being a real goat and a real person, but I don't mind a bit. The other day, I overheard Janilou telling the tall one she calls "Paul" that she has over 160 kids in the trailers right now. Personally, I think she is nuts. Who in their right mind wants to take care of 160 babies? Give me three or four any day!

She adopts all of our babies each year, so the older does tell me. We don't mind because it frees us up to spend our time doing important things, like eating hay and grain, playing "Queen of the Manure Pile" and sleeping. Oh, and milking of course! My fellow does and I are giving almost 5000 pounds of milk every four days right now. I like to stand on top of the manure pile and call out a greeting to the milk hauler man who drives his truck down the lane every Wednesday and Sunday to collect the milk. He isn't very friendly, though, because he never bleats back or lifts his hoof in greeting.

Which brings me to my final point. Janilou talks about me being disabled, but the poor thing is in denial herself. You should see Janilou's hooves. Instead of being cloven and nicely shaped, there are five odd-looking things protruding out where the hoof should be. Such a shame.She calls them fingers. I know that because one day she started leaping around doing a funny dance while we were milking and the tall one asked her what was wrong. She held up her hoof and said, "I jammed my finger." As if that's not bad enough, you should hear her try to talk goat. It's all we can do to keep a straight face when she tries to speak our language. Some of the younger goats crack up, but the older does say "hush" and remind them where their grain comes from.

I think I hear Janilou coming back up the stairs, so I'm signing off now. Besides, I need to talk to her about that wolf she has working here. She calls it a "sheep-dog", but we all know it's a wolf in sheep-dog clothing. Besides which, we are goats, not sheep! Poor Jani. She really gets confused at times, but we still love her.

That is what I like the most about living here on Rainbow Gate Farm. We accept everyone for who they are, regardless of what deformities they might have, or how odd they might look or talk. Everyone, that is, except for that no-good, low down, goat-chasing wolf.

E-Coli And Other Bacteria I Hate

Our kidding season started two and a half weeks ago. For the first time in five years, we have been having problems with an e-coli bacterial infection that strikes our newborn baby goats. It rears it's ugly amoebic head by the time the kids are just hours old, and can kill within twelve hours.

Ah, the joys of farming.

Hail to the marvels of modern medicine. With early intervention, we have been able to save seventy five of the eighty little doe kids who have arrived so far.

The veterinary university lab is running tests to find out the exact strain and the best treatment plan.

Back to the barn I go.

A Tough Winter Day

As another winter storm looms on the darkening gray horizon, a gloomy day on Rainbow Gate Farm is almost over.

One of our aged dairy goat does delivered twins this morning, three weeks too early. The twins, both girls, were born dead. They both looked like the goat in the picture. Their sire was a La Mancha - the breed with the tiny gopher ears.

"Grandma", the doe who'd given birth, was lying in a corner of the barn, thrashing and moaning. She is an older goat, about eight years in age. Although the twins were born early, my first suspicion was "Milk Fever."

"Milk Fever" occurs when the pregnant or "fresh" (having just given birth) animal cannot compensate for the large amounts of calcium being demanded by the body to produce the milk. As the blood levels of calcium drop, the animal becomes lethargic and then begins to convulse. If the condition is not treated, death will follow within hours.

Hurrying to the milk house where we keep our animal health drugs, I ran back to her with a bottle of Calcium Carbonate, a needle and syringe.I injected twelve cc's (milliliters) of the calcium underneath her skin and then continued until I reached the maximum dose of fifty cc's.

Within a few minutes, she scrambled to her feet. We offered her warm water and grain. She ate and drank, but she will need further care, to be sure she does not relapse.

It always amazes me to see a goat recover from milk fever. They can be literally dying, and within minutes of receiving the calcium into their body, they are standing up, eating and drinking. It reminds me of how delicate the balance between good health and illness can be.

We will begin milking Grandma in the hope of encouraging her to "come into milk", but she will probably have a shortened lactation time due to her age.We are expecting the other does to begin 'kidding' (delivering their babies) in two to three weeks time.

Our old vet used to say, "If you're gonna have livestock, you're gonna have dead stock." It's a sad fact of farming.Within a few months, our entire farm will be teeming with new life, warm sunshine, and green grass. We will have baby goats, ducklings, chicks, turkey poults, kittens, and foals.

I'll try to keep that in mind as I head back outside through the snow drifts tonight and pray the next time I see baby goats in my barn, they will be standing on wobbly legs next to their mama, trying out their new lungs.

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!