SheriM - Too Stubborn to Stop Dreamin' - SURPRISE!!!

[SheriM]

It looks like poor little Mary is going to lose at least the tips of her ears, if not more. They were frozen when I first brought her in and have been swollen for days. Last night, the tips broke open and started to drain. I used a needle to help drain the fluid out and slathered the open areas with a healing salve I make to help ward off infection, but if the tissue is dead, there's no hope for saving the ends of the ears.

Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be bothering her all that much. Sure hasn't put a damper on her appetite, that's for sure!

 

[lorihadams]

Awww poor thing...she'll just be unique, that's all!

 

[SheriM]

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.

 

[dragonshiner]

I am so sorry to hear about your goat kids. But form the way you explained it sounds as if you had no reason whatsoever to believe that there were kids in that pen. Don't beat yourself up too much. I hope you feel better.

 

[Dace]

Sheri...you need to realize that all of these things are lessons, they are happening in order to make you a better farmer. This is your hands on education!
Hang in there you will be fine....one day at a time my friend

 

[lorihadams]

Oh, honey...you gotta stop beating yourself up. It will be alright. It happens sometimes...you could have lost those babies anyway, you never know. If you keep on worrying about what could've happened you're just gonna stress yourself out.

 

[SheriM]

Oh, I know these are lessons. I've given a lot of thought over the past few years about the path God has chosen for me and the lessons He wants me to learn along the way. Lately, though, I've been feeling like a particularly dull student. I normally pride myself in rarely making the same mistake twice but I just don't seem to be getting it these days. It seems like God keeps hammering home the same lesson over and over with greater and greater consequences in the hopes that someday that silly gal in Saskatchewan will catch on.

I haven't told the whole story of of this winter, or the given the total tally so far. We bought a couple of does at a sale back in October. They were very young, less than a year since they didn't have any adult teeth yet. Turned out they were bred before we bought them and I went out one day to find a dead kid in their shed. Found what I think are the remains of another one later. So, that's two kids. Then the puppies arrived. In total, I lost 7 out of 20. Then Mary came along. Saved her, but found the remains of another...a sibling, I hope, otherwise there's another now-open doe out there. Now Ruby's two. That's 5 dead kids and 7 dead puppies...all in the past couple of months.

The thing is, before we moved here to Saskatchewan, we lived in British Columbia. I had goats there too and, after a really steep learning curve my first year, I NEVER lost kids due to weather and never, ever had does bred at the wrong time. Since moving here, I've lost more animals than I owned the first 40 years of my life.

I am still adjusting to the increasing lack of help around here. DH's condition is degenerative, and as he gets worse, I have to take on more and more. Again, I'm not trying to pass the blame here. What's happening to him is not his fault. I'm just being pulled in so many directions and, at the moment, it's the outside animals that seem to be slipping through the cracks when it comes to proper care.

I keep feeling like I'm being lazy. I should get up earlier so I can get at the chores with enough time to do all the extra stuff, like checking all the does to see if they're bred, etc. but I need my sleep so badly now. I underwent chemotherapy in 2007 and ever since then, I just don't have the stamina I used to. I was up at 5:30 Sat. and Sun. to do chores before work and after just two days of that, I'm beat. I know all kinds of people who are up at that hour every day of the week and never bat an eyelash.

Anyway, I'm whining here, so I'm going to shut up now.

 

[TanksHill]

 

[Dace]

Sheri, you sound like you just need a break!

You have a lot on your plate. Could it be time to re-examine things? Is there anything that you can take off your plate? A few of the animals perhaps? This is probably not what you want to hear, but it is the first thing that comes to mind.

I am sorry that you feel so overloaded, wish I were closer, I would love to come play with some little goats!

 

[SheriM]

I wish you were closer too, 'cuz playing with the baby goats is a whole lotta the reason I won't give up.

And yes, I have considered downsizing. I've already downsized three times in the past couple of years, but I've approached a friend of mine about buying some of the bred does. He's also interested in some of the yearlings, so if that works out, it would help.