You guys are going to think I'm the world's worst farmer, but this is the only place I can go to unload my thoughts, so I'm going to tell you the latest in the saga at Mountainport Farms. As most of you know, I had a baby goat born much earlier than expected because a lack of pen space kept me from separating my bucklings early enough last year. The little gal, Mary, is doing great, but just yesterday I discovered one of my "retirees" was also bred early. Ruby is an older doe I retired because she had a horrible case of mastitis last year. Well, she was looking huge and after the unexpected arrival of Mary, I checked Ruby, but thought she was just fat...that happens when they're not bred but fed the same as a bred doe.
Anyway, a couple of days ago, I thought I heard a baby's voice coming from the pen where Ruby is, but this is also where all the yearlings are and I convinced myself it was just one of the smaller ones calling for breakfast. Yesterday, I saw some goop on Ruby's tail and checked her shed. Two dead kids.
This has got to be some kind of gigantic cosmic joke, because Ruby is the ONLY doe on the property who would not be able to look after kids, due to the chronic mastitis. Our weather has been darn cold, but with proper access to milk, the kids probably would have been okay.
Why, why, why didn't I trust my instincts and walk the blasted 50 feet to her pen to check when I heard that baby voice!?!? The guilt is tearing me apart and I can't get the imagine of her dead little doe kid out of my head. Last year, Ruby had a single buck kid whom I bottle fed and later lost. I had resigned myself to the fact that I would never have another baby from Ruby, but really wished I could have just one more doe kid. I even contemplated breeding her despite the mastitis and bottle raising the kid, but decided against it because of how hard it would be on her to go through mastitis again. I've also been wishing for another bottle baby to keep Mary company. Because I was too darned lazy, too busy, too...whatever...I missed out on the chance for both.
All the feelings I wrote about when I lost the puppies have come rushing back, just as I was starting to regain my balance. Every time something like this happens, I'm overwhelmed with a feeling of inadequacy. I know I could have saved those kids if I had checked when I heard the baby voice, but at the time, convinced myself I was over-reacting because of what I went through with Mary. I'm second-guessing everything I do and then second-guessing the second-guessing!
This has been such a long, hard winter and with everything I have to attend to (work, school, looking after DH, doing all the chores, etc.) I feel like I'm just hanging in survival mode, waiting for the eventual end to the cold and the snow that makes doing anything just that much harder. I am bound and determined to get my ducks in a row this spring and do the necessary renovations and other work around here to ensure I have the proper set-up to handle the unexpected. Thanks to Ellie and her pups occupying the nursery area in my barn, I don't even have a place to put bottle babies right now, even if it was warm enough to have them outside.
My life is so out of control right now and there doesn't seem to be a dog-gone thing I can do about it. And since I know someone is going to suggest it, I'll say right up front, there is no one I can call on to help. There are no neighbors close by and certainly none that are interested in helping out the "newbies" to this tightly-knit, closely related community. Our respective siblings all live in other provinces and aren't farm types anyway.
The one friend I have that does live close by is at least partly to blame for all of this. I let her use one of my pens to raise a pig last year and, despite her assurances that it would be gone before I needed the pen, she didn't follow through. That blasted pig was in the pen where I usually put my bucklings when they're weaned, so I had nohwere to put them and that's why these does were bred at the wrong time. I'm not self-centered enough to blame it all on her and pretend none of it is my fault, but it was the root of the problem.
Anyway, I just had to unload all of this. Thanks for listening.
