This time of year, as the does get ready to kid, I begin playing all sorts of weird scenarios in my head.
This year a fellow goat lovin' friend sent me an e-mail from one of HIS friends who had a doe in labor. The doe couldn't pass the baby, the owner went in and tried to see if she couldn't pull the kid... something just was not right. She took her doe to the vet and the vet performed a C-section.
The doe had a TWO-HEADED kid in there! It had a perfectly formed body and head with a fully formed 2nd head coming out of it's neck. They immediately put it down.
Add that to my list of things to worry about with goat birthin'. Two headed kids.
The other things I worry about?
What if with all the breeding issues I had with Spot this year that she has 2 sets of kids in there?
What if she did take the first time and then when we gave her the shot for her cystic ovary a month later and bred her a 2nd time... she took again?
What if one of them aborts and something goes awry and I'm at work and I come home to a dead doe and little malformed, unfinished kids?
What if I have to go in to sort out kids - untangle them - and I tear the doe's uterus or something?
.
What if I pull the leg off a kid trying to pull it out? (not completely rational but it does go thru my head!)
What if the doe gives birth to a mutant?
With super powers?
Who is evil incarnate and it destroys the world as we know it?
Aren't you glad you don't live in MY head?
7 comments:
OK...OK...LAUGHING UNCONTROLLABLY!! ...that is just hysterical nonsense you know...but just the nonsense that is completely inevitably understandable! But seriously..you had me laughing so hard I had tears. Now my coworkers think I have completely lost it! I know how you feel, but truly, you can handle it. I don't know about the pullin off the leg business, but fishing around inside, Now that just happened to me this year and I need to be a little more gentle and not do the freaking and fumbling I managed to do. Course now, reading all those horror stories was what I needed, since I had to push the head back in and fish for a leg. I would never of known, had I not been studying up. Seems my common sense does leave me in a moment of hysteria and all I could remember was bits and pieces of someones recount of the same drama. In a small way those scarey scenarios have got to help!! :) Hurry up SPOT!! I wish you had a goat cam..I am sending my son your way!
DebH - glad you are laughing!! See? You have the advantage with numbers - you are more used to what happens.
I'm not stressing AS MUCH this year with 5 other years under my belt... I've had to go in to fish out/untangle kids three times... I know I can do it but I really DON'T like it.. freaks me out! And I feel SO sorry for the poor doe! It has to be like the WORST pelvic exam ever...
I did have a friend who's buck passed on very strange mutant babies.. the University of WA wanted the buck to do testing and paid for transport of him. That friend DID pull a leg off the kid pulling it... but it was NOT at all a normal kid.
I listen to waaayy too many stories and incorporate them into my active imagination!!!
Boy am I glad I am close to done on kidding now..that pullin off the leg business..would make me quit doing this stuff. I still have 2 fainters left to kid, but they are a breeze. Wait...what am I saying..they are my favorites and what if they start pushing the minute I go to bed and I don't go check for hours...and they are trying to come two at a time annd...Great...now here I go!!
Yikes! I'd be anxious too if I knew there was just the slightest possibility I might have to put my hand up some animal's behind!
They really had to put the two headed kid down? Couldn't they just remove the extra head? and were they both...er...alive and blinking?
A goat with super powers would be super neat! As long as he/she used it for good that is, as in helping it's human mommy do the chores, etc...
You forgot the worst scenario of all... What if the doe is born with ease and is perfectly normal and healthy and ends up being the best goat you ever have? Then how will you justify your paranoia to the world? How will you live knowing that everyone no longer believes you're sane. Everyone will be prepared to dismiss your claims of the sky falling, your evil clone trying to replace you, and aliens coming to abduct us. When the sky does start to fall, and your evil clone does come to replace you, and aliens do start abducting people, who will believe you? Nobody. And then the world as we know it will come to an end because you didn't know when to keep all of your paranoia inside of you instead of sharing it to the world. So thanks a lot. You've doomed us all. I'm going to hide under a rock and hope I'm safe from the sky, aliens, and your evil clone. You better hope one of your above mentioned doe birth scenarios comes true, for our sake.
Dang, when it's time for my does to kid, and they're getting close, they just squirt their babies out. I do have one this year that looks like she might have five of them. Last year she did something really strange. You're going to think I'm nuts, but when my does were kidding it got stressful since we also had bum lambs. I was feeling overwhelmed one morning and I yelled, "We have too many goats!" Hanna, the above mentioned doe, was getting close to kidding, full bag, body changes, etc. Well, she never had the babies. I seriously believe she absorbed them after my outburst.
DebH - oh, don't let MY madness get to you!!
Cheryl - oooo - a goat that could help with chores? That WOULD be cool! Yeah, I'm not sure 2 headed animals are all that healthy??? I don't know... but yeah, both heads alive and blinking! Freaky!
Yousef - I can NEVER justify my paranoia! grin. I can only hope that when the aliens arrive someone will believe me...
Susan - Yeah, I think goats are generally stress free, it's ME. Oh, I believe your story... so many crazy things happen! Did you milk the doe and take her thru a lactation or did she dry up? Interesting! (and SO thoughtful of her...)
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