I made a post yesterday about losing one of my yearling does. I think I mentioned on my Facebook farm page (Van-Goght LaManchas), but not here, that I have seven chocolate brown 2025 LaMancha does who are carbon copies of one another. (Six now, I guess.) They’re a little (a lot!) hard to tell apart, and because of that, I thought, yesterday, I’d lost one of Cassandra’s daughters.
Cassandra is my oldest Natalie daughter, and Natalie is one of the only two remaining does in my herd who doesn’t carry the Van-Goght herd name. She was brought in as an improvement doe, and I’ve been hoarding her daughters and granddaughters like my husband is hoarding silver in the current economic and political climate.
It turns out I didn’t lose a Cassandra daughter; I lost one of Andromeda’s daughters. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.
Andromeda gave me triplet daughters last year. I lost one shortly after birth. (Yet another chocolate brown one.) The doe I lost yesterday stood out from all the other chocolate does only because she had a white thumbprint on her side. (Of course I lost the only one with a distinguishing marking!)
If it’s any consolation (I guess it is to me), the doe I lost yesterday has joined her lost littermate sister. My brain is wired weird, and that gives me some sense of congruence and peace. I sobbed over that dead baby kid when I lost her, and I sobbed over her sister yesterday. I’m moving on today.
The surviving triplet sister is chamoisee, my favorite color. And I’d like to say, at least I can tell her apart from the rest of my goats, because she isn’t chocolate, but that isn’t exactly true either. I have an identically colored and marked chamoisee yearling doe with a completely different pedigree in the same pen. At least I can read their tattoos. 😆
The doe I lost was named Selene. Her sister is Calliope. Calliope will stay here and make her mark. Andromeda has gone on to a new herd, making these bloodlines all the more valuable here. Stay healthy, Calliope!
I said yesterday that my Dad had once told me I didn’t deserve to own animals. I imagine you’re wondering what I did, for him to say that to me. And the truth is, I don’t remember. I don’t even think it had anything to do with animals. It’s just…some people know how to find your weaknesses, and how to use them. Some people tell you things, and you believe them.
I remember the first time he said that. When I was seven, we had two goats, Nanny and Billy. They’re mentioned in one of my earliest posts. (And I do have a story to tell about Billy. I’ll get there one of these days, if I don’t abandon this entire project first.) Nanny had twins the first time she kidded, and one was stillborn. When the other was ready to wean, my parents found it a home. They didn’t tell me in advance. I had a baby goat, and then I didn’t.
I have a clear memory of laying on my stomach on my bed, sobbing, with the door closed, after my parents sold that goat. I was broken-hearted and distraught. Then my dad opened the door and yelled at me. He told me that that was a part of owning livestock, and if I couldn’t handle it, I didn’t deserve to own any. But nobody had told me at any point that they were selling the kid. I didn’t understand that was going to be the outcome. I felt betrayed. I was crushed.
Anyway, the message was–and I heard it over and over, over the years–if you cry over them, you shouldn’t have them.
I don’t know what to do with all these tears.
Quit Mansplaining Raising Dairy Goats To Me: A Blog 