Color Me Sexy

Ah crayons, the innocent crayola colors associated with the pastimes of school children. From aquamarine to atomic tangerine and even fuzzy wuzzy these crayon colors will bring a pleasant smile to your face in even the grumpiest of moods. Well, my innocent vision of crayons was dashed as we approached breeding season here at the goat dairy. You may well remember Pierre and the "Love Shack." It all seemed well and good right? All the ladies get to spend the night with Pierre and you don't have to watch anything dirty; easy peasy. Wrong! I got to be one of two people setting up for breeding season and I had no idea what was in store for me. First things first, my coworker pulls out the most awesome crayons you have ever seen. Giant square blues, greens, yellows and reds. They made you want to take a giant bubble bath and scribble all over the tub walls. I must say I now regret imagining myself in the bubbly tub playing with these special crayons for reasons you will soon discover. My coworker then pulls out the most kinky looking harnesses you have ever seen. There was no way to avoid blushing at the mere sight of these things as they looked like something purchased at one of those special female bonding experience naughty toy parties. Ladies, you know what I am talking about because I know each and every one of you has had a girlfriend invite you to these awkward tupperware parties gone wrong throughout which the goal of the evening is to avoid eye contact with all living species in the room. But I digress. To add insult to injury she then instructs me to hook a different colored crayon on to each of the harnesses. Oh geez, we all know what's coming next. Well next are the scariest instructions ever. "Ok, I need you to hold down this massive stinky buck while I strap this harness to him. But mind yourself because they know it's breeding season and they will try to hump anything that moves." Ummm, huh? So I grab onto Pierre as my coworker attempts to untangle the crazy crayola harness and strap it to Mr. Buck. You can just imagine how fun it was to hold down an extremely stinky and insanely riled up 300 lb goat while he attempts to eh-hem court me, and all while a sex harness is being strapped on to him. But why oh why does a harness con crayon have to be involved? Apparently, they are mixing up the gene pool using five, count them, five different bucks. Pierre, Teak, Kong, Sting, and Kazim. And in order to track said gene pool we have to know who is whose baby daddy. So each buck is represented by a certain crayola color like balls-out-blue, or raucous red, or go-for-it green and then we watch to see which bucks have "colored on" which girlie goats. Ok, who has made it this far through the blog without blushing? I should have stuck with a cooking blog. Anyhow, we let the girls and boys co-mingle and next we wait to see all the pretty colors. Later that evening I bring out the clipboard to start taking notes in one of the pens and it is like goat hiney christmas decorations running amuck. "Those little hussies," I exclaimed. So much for trying to figure out who the baby daddy will be. The buck named Sting was adorned with red and good ole Pierre was adorned with green and each girl in the pen was striped red and green like naughty zebras. There is definitely a reason goats are associated with sexuality and fertility. Girlie goats are so peaceful and loving when they are in their society of all women. But put them together and what have you got...bippity -bobbity- oh dear me. Needless to say I walked around the farm with blinders on for the next couple of weeks to avoid all the color me sexy going on everywhere. P.S. Have any of you heard a goat mating call? No? Ok, put your tongue against the back of your throat and yell ghaaaa as loud as you can without letting your tongue come off the back of your throat. Multiply that by 150 and there you go. Now you can imagine what the farm sounded like as well as what it looked like :)

Hermaphrodites Wanted. Chlamydia...Not So Much.

There are two conversations that I definitely wasn't planning on having at a goat creamery. One is a conversation about the benefits of having hermaphrodites around and the other is a conversation about getting checked regularly for stds. I guess I should explain further. Every so often the farms' mobile vet comes around to check on the goats. This past week he showed up to ultrasound all of the potentially pregnant ladies to confirm pregnancies. I could have saved him a trip though and confirmed 100% pregnancy success after one night of feeding the pregnant pasture. I was warned before the feeding that pregnant goats get a little peckish at night and that you shouldn't dawdle with the feed bucket. So, after absorbing said advice, I grab a bucket of grain and enter pregnant pasture at what I would call a brisk walk. As soon as my feet hit the inside of the pasture the previously peaceful pregnant ladies turned into a stampeding, foaming at the mouth, crazy eyed group of ravenous beasts. I was suddenly immobilized as the swarming mass of goats surrounded me and nearly crushed my legs to get a chance at head-butting the hand that feeds them and grab a mouthful of grain. I left the pasture battered and bruised with a better understanding of the phrase "never get in between a pregnant lady and her food." Needless to say, the veterinarian passed his ultrasound wand over bloated bellies to confirm that not only are they all pregnant but that many are actually carrying at least two kids. It's no wonder that grain bucket is so popular! But I digress...back to hermaphrodites and chlamydia. The herd manager wanted the vet to check out one of the teenage goats who was looking a little manly. Her top not (the patch of hair on top of the head) was raised in a coif that could easily be a throwback to Elvis, and her female parts were looking less and less female every day. The vet confirmed the suspicions that little Tala is a hermaphrodite. At first the diagnosis was met with gloom because the little goat that would once have lived a life as a milking lady was now looking increasingly like dinner. However, the vet lifted the sad atmosphere by remarking that hermaphrodites are actually priceless on a farm! Hooray, little Tala will actually have the best life of all the animals on the farm. Because.... well first a little background I think.

• Humans drink milk because milk and butter and cheese and cream are excellent.
• To get milk, dairy animals have to be milked twice a day. Without being milked twice a day, the animals have painfully full udders and will most likely dry up.
• To produce milk, dairy animals have to get pregnant and have babies about once a year. Awesome producers keep on producing milk for longer than a year after having kids and don't have to be bred as often. Unless of course you'd like their awesome genes to be copied into future dairy animals.
• To get pregnant and have babies...hold on to your seats...dairy animals have to be bred. At Toluma Farms this means each girly gets to spend a night with Pierre in the love shack...a little ol place where they can get together, the love shack baby yeah :)
• To successfully breed each lady you have to know when they are in heat and ready for some lovin. There are signs that are visible to the naked eye of course. These include increased vocalization (calls to man-goats), tail flagging/wagging, aggression towards other goats, etc... However, you have to be pretty experienced in the first place to notice these signs because they are all only an increase in what is normal behavior. And here is where Tala comes in handy.

How do I put this? Unlike eh-hem humans, goat lovin does not occur all the time. Breeding occurs only when the females are in heat (usually in the fall when the daylight is decreasing which leads to babies born in Spring when it is warm and the vegetation lush). If a male tries to get frisky at other times, he will get his goatee handed to him by a very unhappy girlie goat. I'd like to think this is the reason girl goats get to have horns as well as the males ;) So, to make this long story shorter, when the girls are in heat we will notice Tala "mating" with them (without unwanted pregnancies of course) and will be able to book the girls a night in the love shack pronto. Hence, Tala lives a long and happy life as the head of the herd instead of being served up as Cabrito al Pastor (broiled kid). P.S. You could really scare your children with that dinner menu!

So where does Chlamydia enter the equation you ask? Chlamydia enters the equation during the babies born part. Chlamydia not only runs rampant in human society, it runs rampant in herds of animals as well. Whoops, I should clarify a point before I am ousted from all good human society. As you all know, Chlamydia is an STD and we all know what the means in terms of disease transmission. However, while birthing goats you are often drenched in birthing fluids and if that birthing fluid is infected with Chlamydia there is a potential for you to catch the disease (bacteria to be exact). Our ladies are vaccinated for Chlamydia before being bred but the potential still exists to catch something not so nice. So, annual trips to the down there doctor are once again necessary for someone whose been faithfully married for three years. Can't you just see farmer John's wife coming through the door after getting a certain diagnosis. How well do you think farmer John does, explaining to his wife not to worry because he probably just got Chlamydia from his dairy goats?!?

Udderly Ticklish - Day One at the Creamery

Milking goats- no problem right? Just stick the sucky things on the teats and away you go? Everybody has seen Farmer John on TV, sitting on his stool and milking his happy cow into his silver steel bucket. Many of us have even milked the fake cow udder at UC Davis' annual picnic day. So, on my first day at the creamery I walked into the milk parlor thinking that those caprine cuties would practically milk themselves. That is not what happened. At first I watched the milking process as Laura, the current herd manager, invited 12 goat ladies at a time onto the milking stand and gracefully dipped, wiped, and milked 24 (give or take a uni-udder) teats without a single hiccup. Ok got it, looks pretty easy. It was my turn to step up and take charge of two out of the twelve goats being milked each time. First, pre-dip to clean the udders. Dip, dip...kick. Kick? They kick? Apparently those lacking udder handling confidence tickle the teats too much and annoy the goats' milky bits. Hence cloven hoofs a flyin. Now what? Apparently if you have an onry goat you have to grab the kicky leg as you go about the process. Ok, got it. Dip, kick, grab, hang on for dear life, dip as you wrestle goat leg. Now go back and wipe the pre-cleaning solution off each teat. Duck and swipe, swerve and swipe. Whew, we have clean teats. Now you hand milk a little bit to rid the udder of any bacteria and make sure a healthy milk supply is a flowin. You'd think you just pull down on the dangly bits but once again, that is not how it goes. Bump up on the udder, roll the teat a little then pull down on the dangly bit and hope that milk comes out. Then miss the hand milk cup, spray milk in your eye and all over the equipment. No problem you think, I'll just make up for it with my awesome machine milking skills...I mean how hard can it be to put a sucky thing on a teat? Grab the two sucky things in both hands but realize you need one hand to turn on the sucky things. Put the two sucky things in one hand but they are difficult to hold in one hand and keep flopping around. Turn on the suck function and try to get the sucky things on the teats as the goat is prancing around. The udders kind of point forward so use one hand to manuever the teat. Suck glove into sucky things, have to turn off the suck function. Turn the suck function back on and get kicked at because you are being annoying. Grab crazy goat leg and get the sucky things on the udders, only to realize that the sucky things are now twisted. Repeat process and at last success! Meanwhile, Laura has finished her ten goats. Geez. Last but not least, you annoy the goats once more to make sure the udders stay healthy by dipping each teat into lanolin and iodine solution. So, once again, swerve and dip, duck and dip. All right mission accomplished, done. Then you realize that you have only milked one out of 9 groups of 12. Repeat entire above process 8 more times. I quickly learned that you have to be udderly (you will see this play on utterly a lot so I would just accept it) assertive in order to milk goats, as teat tickling is unacceptable in the dairy goats' world. I'd like to give a shout out to bluebell for standing spread eagle still as I tickled your teats mercillessly. However, Alice, we're gonna need to work on our relationship. So, milking goats is no easy task but overall is was a wonderful experience and getting to play with the goats before and after milking is a joy. They want to be in your face, nibbling your clothes, and interacting with you at all times. What other livestock animals can you say as much for? One last note, pants with buttons, shirts with zippers, and shoes with laces are highly unadvisable for one who will be spending a great deal of time surrounded by goats :) You are basically a walking play thing, especially if you are wearing all of the above at one time.