Grace On the Mountain: Annual Nanny Baths

NANNY BATHS

So we decided to give the nannies their yearly baths, but I must give a back story here before we continue about the baths.

At the beginning of September, our last batch of calves turned 2 months and were old enough to wean. We decided that it was a good time to slowly start the drying up process, which means we cut back on their feed- mainly by taking the grain away at milking time. This did not go down well. The nannies had tantrums.

Sugar started throwing a total tantrum. She is somewhat wild anyways, and will only allow Kryssalee or myself (mom) to catch her or come up to her at all. If she suspects we are up to something she will run from even us. She was dam raised in White Salmon on a large acreage where they let them run totally wild. We had to literally chase her down as a 4 month old doeling and tackle her to catch her when we bought her. Then, because we did not want to bring the horse trailer for two small doelings (Ginger and Sugar), we brought our mini-van and hog tied them in the back on a tarp. Well- I felt totally bad about this so about 5 miles from their homestead I crawled back there and untied them. They rode well but they peed and pooped all over the mini-van. The pee ran into the wells of the floor where the last back bench seat attached and filled up with pee. I had to take our shop vac and vacuum it out- (disgusting)- and the van never did stop smelling like goat pee.

When we got them home, we had no fenced pasture. We decided to put dog collars on them and tie them to trees with buckets of water. Well, this didn't go well with wild goats. They would run from us on the dog chains and choke themselves out. We think this actually damaged Sugar's trachea because she will cough if she jerks on the leash.

Once, they escaped and ran down the road quite a ways with all 4 of us chasing them. They got so far down the road we turned back home to get the mini-van. My husband was not very happy about doing this. He raced up past them, turned around, and honked and herded them back zig zagging down the middle of the road. Once to our driveway, we were able to chase them back into their little pen which was a chainlink dog kennel.

Even though the kids and I went out several times a day to gentle them, Sugar did not quite ever gentle, but Ginger did. Ginger is very leery about men and strangers but she is not as wild as Sugar.

When Sugar was pregnant as a 2 yr old doe, she was an escape artist. She was always jumping our fences or climbing on things parked close to our fence and jumping over. She would go straight for the barrel of pig feed. She figured out how to flip the metal lid off and she gorged herself on pig feed. I don't know how Minty is not retarded from all this improper feeding while momma Sugar was pregs. One day, we found that she had escaped and climbed through the chicken coop door and was eating all their food while on her knees.

Sugar is very protective of us though. One time during her escapes, Kryssalee was trying to catch her to put her back. The dogs came up, but totally were not doing anything but standing there by Kryssalee. Well, Sugar did not want them dogs by Kryssalee and attacked them. She got so caught up in attacking them, that even though the dogs ran up on the front porch to get away from her, Sugar flew up there and kept at it. The porch had a 4 ft railing all around it and she actually jumped over that to get to the dogs!

The funniest story of Sugar was when we had sheep. We had decided to get Katahdin sheep and had a ewe (Annie Oakley) and a ram (Buffalo Bill). Annie Oakley lambed a ewe lamb that we named Neferteri that Annie Oakley dam raised. They were very attached to each other having never been separated. Annie was old and died the following year when Neferteri was a yearling. She died out in the pasture. Before my husband could load her dead body into the truck to haul it off, we had decided to put the goats back out to pasture because Neferteri was by herself. Neferteri wouldn't leave Annie's side, she stood there bleating. Well- here comes the goats- and of course they see her and Annie and they are curious. As soon as Sugar locked her eyes upon Neferteri, she started charging for her. She chased Neferteri away from Annie's dead body, and as soon as Sugar turned her back, Neferteri would come running back to Annie's side. Pretty soon Sugar was chasing her all over the pasture, chasing her and chasing her. Neferteri was scared for her life. Pretty soon the rest of the nannies joined in a pack chasing Neferteri round and round the pasture with Sugar in the lead. Neferteri desperately wanted back by her dead mother's side. We had to finally take the goats out and left Neferteri by herself. We laughed and laughed. Yes, goats are hostile to sheep.

Anyways, we took their grain away and the massive thrashing tantrum begun. Sugar mule kicked and rocked back and forth trying to get her head out of the head yoke. Dock had to sit in a chair at the back of the stanchion and hold her legs while we milked. She glared the whole time.

Minty started getting nasty as well. She started thinking she would "side horn" us as we led her back and forth from the pasture to the stanchion. This went on a week even though I had slapped her a few times in the face and told her "no". Well that didn't really work she was dominating us. So Kryssalee decided to take one of the sopping, wet, soapy rags that we washed udders with and hid it in her opposite hand. When Minty went to side horn us, she had that nasty rag smeared right in her face and after 3 times of that the side hooking stopped.

Puddins of course never did anything nasty and is a doll.

Ginger kicked a little and started doing what we labeled the "Ober twist". We would get her almost back to the pasture gate after milking and she would pin her ears back, turn around quickly, twist right out of our grip on her collar and dart off down the driveway to go pick at weeds. We then had to chase her to catch her. We had to slightly manhandle her to get her to realize that she couldn't do this anymore and so far she has stopped.

Even though they were still being milked twice a day, they had decided that milking wasn't important anymore and would proceed to run off away from the stanchion making us chase them down. Usually they fight who gets out first to be milked and they bee line for the stanchion.

As a family, we had decided to not breed anybody for next year and take a break. We went to town one morning and when we came back- FROSTY WAS IN THE PASTURE WITH THEM! He was so happy about this. He had head-butted a piece of plywood down in his pen, escaped, jumped the fence, and got in with the nannies. Needless to say they are all bred.

Frosty is totally disgusting and can't even be loved on anymore. All sweet little bucklings grow up to be nasty billies. He is peeing on himself and smelling terrible. The nannies were just covered with his cologne, so that's why the nanny baths took place. The whole time we were bathing the goats Frosty was standing there forcing us to hold our breath.

Because I knew it would be challenging to bathe them I decided to give them a treat of grain. Ginger was first. She was so greedy about the grain that within 2 minutes of me getting her suds-upped, she started choking on the grain. There she was, choking and covered with soapy water.

After rinsing her and taking her back. Puddins was next and yes, she choked too.

And then Minty- and yes, she choked.

And then Sugar. And of course Sugar did not choke. She had choked 2 days before for 10 minutes on some blackberry canes that we threw over the fence. GOATS ARE GREEDY.

Their slobbery puke was flinging all over us, the hose, and the soapy water bucket.

After nanny baths, they were put in a private pasture away from Frosty.

THEN.....

Afterwards, because of the grain, and because they were in the new pasture foraging, they bloated.

Ok, so the day I have to give them baking soda and mineral oil- I'm all out of oil. No oil of any kind except for this tub of tasty italian green olives that were in an olive oil brine in the fridge. So I used that. It had herbs and all sorts of stuff mixed in it.