Dead Thirsty: Pt. 1

One goat dead and one goat dead thirsty: Delores dead thirsty and the wether dead.

Now that the trauma is behind us, we’re back to appreciating life on the bright side. A mix of talk, action and where to from here did the trick.

A week last Thursday, we took the teardrop camper (‘The Little Guy’) into Holland’s Suzuki, Timaru to get new wheel bearings. That evening we went to a 3D screening of Avatar: The Way of Water, staying the night at Timaru’s Top 10 Holiday Park. Next day we had lunch in Geraldine before heading home.

“The sheep’s in the meadow, The cow’s in the corn” from the ‘Little Boy Blue’ nursery rhyme is whirring around in my head. Only this time it’s not a boy who looks after the sheep and cows fast asleep under a haystack, but a girl who looks after the does, kids, buck and wether fast asleep in a camper in Timaru.

Delores and her 4-hour old twins – a boy and a girl.

When the girl got home, Delores and her kids were in the wrong meadow and the wether that kept the buck company had no need of corn or anything else this world had to offer.

Delores’ one week old kids had squeezed through a gap in a ramshackle gate I’ve been meaning to replace for longer than I care to remember; maternal instinct on steroids, mum had jumped over to feed and protect them. The two bubs hadn’t figured out how to get back through the gate, and why would they – they had their mum with them and she’d decided she wasn’t going anywhere without them either.

The paddock didn’t have its own water supply and the gate was always left open when the goats were in there so that they could get back to the goat house for water. Over the course of the night and two swelteringly hot days that we were away, the kids were getting all they needed from mum’s milk. Not so Delores: lactating does need about 10 litres of water per day.

Once June had got them back, a dead thirsty Delores rushed over to the small goat trough attached to a wall outside the goat house and half-emptied it with every gulp, her loud sucking sounds accompanied by the noisy whoosh of water from the spout of the ballcock valve. To our great relief, Delores had fully recovered by next morning and had plenty of milk for her twin kids with a little left over for us.

Worst-case scenarios go through your head, nonetheless. What if we’d been away for even just one more night? Oh well, we all have imaginations!

All’s well with Delores and her twins, and also on the bright side, especially for June, I’ve committed myself to putting in a goat-worthy gate before they are next due to go in that area.

All was definitely not well as we gazed down on our buck’s companion, the wether June had affectionately dubbed Sonny Jim. We had to move fast on that one because we didn’t want to leave Chappie without company for any length of time. I’ll tell you how we sorted that one out next Monday.