Zowie & Columbia, the picked-on goats. These two are so close. There are goats who tolerate each other, but these two seem to love each other more than I’ve ever seen happen. I dread the day either one of them passes away. I’m sure the other would follow soon after, from a broken heart.

Ramona & Beatrice during setup Friday night. The poor things seemed really stressed this year. I remember them doing much better last year. I think we had a lot of apples for them last year.

Mohair on the hoof

Columbia, looking a bit bovine without a bit of fleece on her.

Honestly the betting pool’s 50/50 as to who will leave this earth first, Janet or Columbia. Both are 11 and both are acting pretty feeble lately.

And last weekend was the High Holydays. Beatrice and Ramona were perfect specimens of goathood.

My “baby” Ramona.

Everyone shorn! May be the earliest we’ve ever finished all the spring chores.

Like Pete Townshend/Roger Daltry: Who’s Left

Columbia, Zowie, Ramona, Beatrice, & Janet, from left to right

Like they’re posing for an album cover.

We got Florestan as a kid in 2011 from Grandview Farm in Washington, VT. They were getting out of angora goats; they’ve since become very successful with Gotland sheep. They had two buck kids for sale. His brother, I recall, had some more reasonable name, like Fern. For whatever reason, we chose Florey.

He grew into a behemoth, as you can see. Sara used to refer to him as “Buster.” He got mean. I blame Xopher for the way he socializes buck kids. 2 out of 3 times we had a long-term buck, twice they turned out mean, and those were times we got the buck as a kid. X “plays” with them and I think he teaches them to challenge us.

So it was just the way he was raised. He was mean, and he hurt us from time to time, but he was only being himself. He wasn’t a bad goat. Just smelly and ugly and mean. And I MISS him, dammit.

4/11/2015 – 12/31/2021

From the day he was born (not the night, but the day)

He was trouble (not Monopoly, but Trouble)

He was the thorn (not the rose, but the thorn)

In his owners’ side (not the back, but the side)

They tried in vain (not in artery, but in vein)

But it never caused him nothing but pain

They weren’t home the day he died

This is a song lyric only lightly edited; don’t think I’m trying to be poetic on my own. Eddie seemed a little slow even from birth. He was double-inbred. We were soon to discover he had problematic hooves. We tried all sorts of things but could not do anything to remedy the situation or make his walking less painful. The following year his sister Zowie was born with the same condition, so we stopped all inbreeding immediately.

He adopted an unusual gait and a habit of going down on his front knees, which gave him arthritis. He was also prone to wounds that wouldn’t heal and becoming disgustingly dirty even for a goat. His problem hooves had to be cared for twice as often as those of normal goats.

In short you can see we had here a child with a disability. It is so hard to know when to end an animal’s suffering. Last winter Eddie developed some problems getting up on his own, and I started voting to put him down; but it was a winter thing, and he went on to have a good summer. Unfortunately, it didn’t take very many cold winter days this year before he had had enough. And unfortunately, the going-down-and-not-getting up came on suddenly, severely, and while we were away. Keep goats long enough and eventually everything happens, including the worst – having your goat-sitter need to be the officiant over an end of life. I’m afraid we’ve permanently traumatized Penny.

My husband deserves to be very proud for how he cared for Eddie all these years. Every three weeks trimming and sanding those hooves, clipping disgusting hair, coming up with ingenious ways to keep bandages on wounds. Troubles are over for both of them.