About Me

Twenty years ago I asked a Tarot card reader what would I be doing when I was 50. She replied, “I see you doing something so wildly creative, it defies a job title.” Only recently did I realize that was a slick way of saying, “I have no idea of what you’ll be doing.” But that prediction kept me charging ahead to the fifties with zeal and anticipation. Now that the future is today, I’m ready for anything!

The Story of a Little Goat with
a Black Coat and a White Spot

We're taking an elite crew of three goats with us when we move. Over the years we've stopped breeding goats because we realize we're not farmers. Real farmers don't say, "We can't get rid of the bottle babies. They're bottle babies." Or, "We can't split them apart. They're a family." Or, "We have to keep the littlest ones. They need us."

So we're taking three goats: Cupcake the bottle baby, Molly the runt, and our first goat ever, Molly's mother Baby Girl.

These photos from several years ago depict how Cupcake became a bottle baby.


Our dairy goat, Buttercup, had only thrown (or given birth to)
single kids with white coats.



Like Bluebonnet, who had been thrown the spring before.




The next spring Buttercup threw two kids, one with a white coat
and a smaller one with a black coat.


To Twinkie: "You may enter." To Cupcake: "Not so fast." 



Cupcake is busted!


We could keep the subterfuge up only for so long. Mike brought Cupcake into the house, where we bottle fed her for three weeks. Her hooves clickety-clacking on the wooden stairs earned her the nickname "Cupcake the Tap-Dancing Goat."


We call her Cupcake because of her black coat and the white spot in the middle of her belly: just where the cream filling of a Hostess Cupcake would be.




Today, she's a happy and healthy outdoor goat
but is a housegoat at heart.


Related Posts:

2 comments:

  1. Awwww... If I were a farmer I would be "not real farmer" too! I like your kind of farming! Your goats are adorable! :) ~Suerae

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Suerae! We ended up bartering Bluebonnet and Twinkie to a couple on a communal farm. We asked if they'd also take Buttercup, she's old but she's their mother. They said absolutely -- they couldn't split the family apart. The funny thing is, Buttercup threw nothing but triplets! She died peacefully in her sleep, we hear, the matriarch of a large goat family. Susan

    P.S. Thanks for allowing the link to your post!

    ReplyDelete

Real Time Web Analytics