The Horrors of Hoof Hacking - a How-(not)-To

My hands are shaking, my back is killing me, and I am bruised all over - just another ordinary evening as a goatherd...Tonight's fun activity: hoof trimming. Basically, goats were designed to live somewhere in the wilds of Tibet, where their hooves are kept naturally worn down by running and jumping on rocky outcrops. Domesticated goats, however, lack this advantage and require monthly hoof trimming by their owners. (I did try running them up and down the driveway hundreds of times to simulate Tibetan terrain, but all that I gained was a lot of exercise myself chasing them away from the road.)

With a cooperative goat, years of experience and just the right tools, this might be an easy task. For us, it was a nightmare. We took advantage of the rainy day (if you trim on a dry day you are supposed to "soak" the hooves first by having the goat stand in a basin of water - ours won't even walk on wet grass so that was never an option.) Stations, everyone - I am the trimmer, Emily is the goat-holder, and Megan is the feeder-of-animal-crackers. We started with Elliot. First problem - the goat will not hold still. (Imagine trying to do this to your dog.) Second, I have no idea what I am doing. I've read the books and watched a dozen you-tube videos, but nothing prepares you for taking razor sharp trimmers and chopping off chunks of animal feet. One book advised us to shave off thin pieces a little bit at a time, but I also saw a video where a woman literally sat on her goat and hacked off pieces roughly the size of my thumb (incidentally, what I was really hoping not to do - most documented "owner injuries" occur during hoof trimming; wonder why...) We tried singing to Elliot to calm him. No offense to "Sleeping Beauty" (that song always soothed my own infants!) but that was about as helpful as politely requesting his cooperation. Only when his eyes glazed over in a catatonic sugar-high from about a pound of animal crackers was I able to get anything accomplished.

With their "cloven hooves," each goat actually has 8 hooves you need to trim. (And "trimming" is not an accurate term, either - you trim toenails or cat claws - this is more like slicing off hunks of the foot.) The sides are carefully snipped until you see white (after white apparently comes spurting red blood, if you go too deep) while the back of the hoof is rubbery and very difficult to grip with the trimmers, like the sole of a sneaker. There is no gentle snipping here - this is where I finally got brave and started hacking away. Luckily - no bleeding (at least not from the goat...)

End result after 2 goats, 16 cloven hooves, about an hour and a small fortune in snacks: the goat boys' feet look nothing like the "after" photos in my favorite goat manual, but at least I see some improvement. Maybe next time will be better. However, I have also contacted a real estate agent in Tibet, in case we never get the hang of this...

Embarrassing Shopping Anecdote...

When you are getting goats, there is so much to learn...I got several how-to manuals from the local library, taking random notes on scraps of paper and then keeping them in a file. We started out with just fencing, grain and hay, but I quickly realized I needed to make a major excursion to the local feed store for all the other "goat necessities" which apparently no responsible goat owner would ever be without - hoof trimming tools, Blu-kote, BloodStop, pine tar, cornstarch, spare vaccines and antibiotics, mineral licks, vitamin B1 supplements, 14.6% feed - the list was extensive (and going to also be quite expensive, I feared). I found most of the things scrawled on my paper, but could not locate one item, which I had written next to the mineral supplements - nannyberries. I figured this was probably a chewable supplement (like you give your children) but wasn't sure if it was just for nanny (female) goats or if my bucklings needed them too. Maybe it would say on the bottle, if only I could find them on the shelves...

Perhaps I am not getting enough sleep lately, but apparently "nannyberries" are not actually a vitamin supplement - but rather a delicate euphemism for the berry-shaped droppings my goat boys excrete in large quantities - in other words, goat poop. Why can't these authors just say what they mean??

And if you are wondering whether I actually asked the store clerk where I could purchase a bottle of nannyberries, well, I'm going to have to plead the fifth on that one!

Best . Day . Ever. (by Elliot)

We had the best best day today (right, Emerson?) The peoples, all four of them, played with us in our yard the whole day long. There was no big yellow bus taking them away, no time we had to be all alone and cry for them to come back. They were just there! All day!! They even brought toys to play with, big metal sticks and this very fun thing for us to jump in and out of...

They must have finally realized Emerson and I don't like grass all that much, so they made a big hole for us, and we ate all the delicious tiny roots that were in the hole. So much better than regular old weeds! We made sure to stay right close by them the whole time. Only one time they left, and they sat on the deck (without taking us!) and we smelled yummy people food smells, so we cried loudly the whole time in case they forgot about us. I hope we do this every day!

Goats: Running the Numbers

Number of goats Emily has: 2
Number of years in the average goat's lifespan: 12
Number of years until Emily leaves for college: 2
Number of colleges I have found (on vast online searches) which allow BYOG (Bring Your Own Goat): 0

(I'm not a math whiz, but is anyone else seeing a problem here?)

Number of years a goat can live if it is especially well cared for: 20 (hmmm...makes you think)

Number of days we have had goats: 79
Number of days in 12 years: 4383
Number of days left: 4304 (unless we pamper them, then up to 7226)

Number of chapters in most goat manuals devoted to raising goats for profit: 4
Number of chapters devoted to having goats as pets: 0-1

Number of plants poisonous to goats: 68
Number of these plants growing on our property: 12
Number of these plants our goats have definitely eaten: 4 (yikes, and we just noticed avocado is on the list!)

Number of times a day our goats are fed: 2
Number of times a day we sweep, scoop or shovel up goat poop: immeasurable (it would probably be  easier to count the minutes we are not doing this)

Number of times a day I ask myself, "Why didn't we just get a kitten?": also immeasurable

                                Physical, emotional, and financial cost of 2 pet "goat boys": Priceless

Bungees, and "bucklings no more"

First, if you are squeamish or of delicate sensibilities, stop reading now. this is not the post for you.

Ok, non-squeamish friends of my goats, here's last night's tale...I arrived home from work at midnight, but unfortunately I forgot to douse my headlights at the end of the driveway so the goats woke up and knew I was home. (Usually we pull in very quietly, no talking, wait for passing traffic to mask the closing of the car door...) Since it was raining, I decided to coax them away from the gate and back to their warm and dry Tupperware House in the yard. Reaching down to pet Elliot, I discovered he had a bungee cord wrapped around his back. Where this came from I have no idea. When I left for work earlier in the day, the girls had the goats on their collars and leashes eating weeds in the lower fields, but how the bungee cord came into play will remain one of those unsolved mysteries of life. He was very glad to be relieved of it, however.

In the dim moonlight, I could see that the goats had been in their shelter most of the evening as it was quite full of droppings, so I grabbed a handy dustpan and brush (GOAT TIP: Have these everywhere), knelt down, and swept out the house. Toward the back I saw what appeared to be rock of some sort (how on earth did that get in here?) so I reached in to remove it. Lo and behold, it was not a large stone, as I surmised, but rather the answer to a question which has plagued our family for a month or so:

When you take your bucklings to be "banded" (neutered) and a very tight rubber band is stretched around their little-boy sacs, how long does it take for the sac to completely shrivel up and fall off? Well, in Ellie's case, we know know the answer - 43 days, and one night. (Emerson lost his last weekend.) So there I was at midnight, in the dark, in the rain, in my work clothes, holding a dry and shrivelled, fluorescent blue (that's a topic for another day) and finally detached sac of goat testicles.

You know that moment when your child loses their first tooth and you want to save it forever in a little memory box? Yeah, this was not one of those moments.

Do cats and goats get along?

When there's only one lap available for two goats and one cat, you just need to share. (The secret is getting them in the right order - small, medium, large!)

The Goat Boys: Up Close and Personal

As a mother of twins, I know the importance of acknowledging each child's unique and different characteristics...so here is a glimpse into the personalities of "the goaties."

Meet Elliot, or as we call him, Ellie, Leelee, or AG (Annoying Goat) One. The larger of the two by some ten pounds,  he is Steinbeck's Lenny to his smaller brother 's George. Loveable and trusting but not the brightest buckling, he is a follower, rarely straying far from his brother or his "peoples." His favorite place to be is on your lap - adorable when we first brought him home but somewhat daunting now as, at thirty pounds, he lunges onto the lap of anyone sitting in his vicinity. (For a short while I worried I had a blood clotting disorder until I realized that the plethora of semi-circular bruises on my thighs were the same shape as Ellie's hooves!) A snuggler, he loves kisses and watches us always with those huge blue eyes. Ellie is a big scaredy-cat, terrified of rain and storms (when he finds refuge on the windowsill overlooking our kitchen sink, shaking until the weather calms). All of our family members have taken turns sitting with Ellie in the Tupperware House during storms (including my husband, during a recent tornado watch, which I found out later.) El is also very attached to his security sweatshirt, which he sleeps with every night.

Then we have Emerson (yes, as in Ralph Waldo), Emmie, AG Two, or as we often call him in frustration, Demon Spawn. (I am not proud of this, but if you lived with the rascal...) Em was the runt of the litter (his mother had four kids), but what he lacks in size he makes up for in pure energy. He is like DC Comics' "The Flash," and when he takes off running no one can catch him. A month ago he ate an entire holly bush in our yard (before we saw it on the "poisonous plants for goats" list) - and we attributed his behavior to the main side effect of holly ingestion, which is hyperactivity. However, the holly has long cleared his system and he is now working his way through the lilacs (a goat-safe shrub, though I really wish he'd eat a weed once in a while!) and still as crazy as ever. He can shred an entire Sunday newspaper into tiny pieces in about ten minutes. Em is fearless, plays outside heedless of thunder and lightning, and will only be a lap goat when his endless leaping, running and wild antics have driven him to complete exhaustion. Somewhat scrawny and a bit skunk-like in his appearance, he is a showoff and will eagerly do tricks just to impress us (though he'd never turn down an animal cracker either!) Gotta love you both, Goat Boys!