Driveway date for a goat
"Phew!" I thought to myself Friday as I walked home in the gloaming. My family and I had spent another long day feasting and walking and canoeing,
then I'd cleaned up the community house and lugged home two gallons of
turkey stock. I was ready to get back to my usual routine.
But Artemesia was yelling her head off even though she should have been
sound asleep. And when I pulled out the buck rag Saturday morning, she
wagged her tail like crazy. It was time for our grand adventure.
Luckily, I'd chatted with
a local goatkeeper named Tonya three weeks ago and had an open
invitation to bring my doeling to visit one of her three bucks. For the
sake of herd sanitation, she insisted upon a driveway date, but she also
promised me a do-over if the first time failed. So Mark spread the tarp
across the back seat of the car, Artemesia jumped gamely inside, then
we wound down country roads for an hour and fifteen minutes until we
reached Tonya's house.
Tonya raises Nigerian
dwarf goats and she recommended her largest stud, Monte, to do the deed.
He's got the best milking lines of the three choices, and he also
turned out to be a gentleman, willing to romance Artemesia until she got
in the mood.
It didn't take long. Our
doeling was pretty much in the mood from the get-go. We watched as he
licked at her pee, licked at her back, licked at his own pee, then got
to work.
He did the deed a couple
of times, but Tonya wasn't 100% convinced. Despite seeing semen, she
would have liked to also see Artemesia tuck the lower half of her body
down as Monte climaxed.
But after a couple of
go-rounds, Artemesia was getting bored with the whole thing. "Been
there, done that," she told us. So we took her home, knowing we'd get
another chance for our $75 if she comes back into heat in December.
All told, Artemesia's
date went much more smoothly than I'd expected. She was a sweetheart in
the car, Abigail didn't have a fit while her herdmate was gone, and we
all got home by mid afternoon. And, hopefully, I can start calling
Artemesia a first freshener after this instead of a doeling.
Now maybe we can have a restful Sunday with no family or goat dates to pull me off the farm.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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