It seems that sometimes lessons hit hard and fast, and this is one very hard lesson we have learned early in our journey... We lost baby Buttercup yesterday morning... Here's her story:
On February 21st, Billy and I traveled to a nearby city to get our very first goat. We arrived and were met by the breeder, Lynn*, and her three yapping, but friendly, puppy dogs. She led us across the lawn and we ducked low to enter the goat enclosure in the corner of a very small, urban homesteader's yard. All the goats bleated their greetings as Lynn took us into the warm space that smelled of sweet hay and a light tinge of goat musk. We recognized Buttercup straight away; a tiny, mini-Nubian doeling, she was only two weeks old, and even smaller than she looked in the pictures of her frolicking around with her two brothers annoying a flock of chickens. We thought we had already fallen in love looking at those pictures... we were wrong. Billy picked her up, and she bleated loudly. Her tiny little hoof had us wrapped right around it almost instantly. We couldn't stop smiling. She was our baby.*name changed for privacy
Being only two weeks old, we still had to bottle-feed Buttercup. Lynn suggested whole cow's milk, what she used, and following this suggestion we picked up a couple gallons of the organic variety. Billy and I were going to do everything perfect. We got home, flooded facebook with pictures of her on the couch in a sweater, laughed harder than we had in a while, and cuddled up with her in bed that night and the next. The first couple of days, we fed her every three hours by bottle... Billy bleated at her as she greedily guzzled her milk, convinced he was going to be the best nanny ever... I was convinced as well. Our hearts swelled with love for her.
By the third night, we forced ourselves to let her stay outside in her very own, very comfy five-star-resort-goat-pen. We had gotten our Nigerian Dwarf buckling Barley that day to be her companion, and he was already huddled within the 55-gallon plastic barrel we had customized for them to stay warm inside. We were nervous, but we knew it was best for her. She had to learn to be a goat... and we had to learn that not every animal on the farm can live in the house.
She did fine. It was mostly Billy who made the nightly trek in cold, wet weather to her pen to feed her in the middle of the night. She would run to the gate bleating, "MAAAaaa!" hardly able to contain herself at the sight of us. She was rotten.
This past Thursday, February 28th, just seven days after getting Buttercup, Billy found her lying unresponsive in the barrel with Barley trying to keep her warm. Only an hour previously, she had been up and running, playing and bleating. I got home from work about ten minutes later, and Billy tearfully told me the news... he thought she was dying.
I called the vet, called our neighbor (who keeps goats), and scoured the internet for advice (a big thanks here to thegoatspot.net forum and all the people who helped me that night). We had to get her warmed up, and so placed her in a plastic bag (to keep her dry) and got her in a hot bath. We alternated this with using a blow-dryer under a tented blanket and successfully raised her temperature from 96 degrees to 101.5, on the low side of normal. In a moment of glory, she nursed about an ounce of milk, but her temperature would not stabilize and soon dropped, and she would be unable to digest milk below a 100 degree body temperature. The vet thought maybe she was hyperglycemic, and I spent the next twelve hours intermittently dripping a mixture of honey, b-vitamins, and milk into her mouth while I flopped her from side to side on a heating pad to keep her temperature up.
She slept beside me in the bed that night, and Billy slept diligently on the floor beside us, refusing the guest bed. I hardly slept; every time she stirred I tried to get her to eat. She wouldn't. I was beyond worry. I couldn't even think about what might happen before I could get her to the vet the next morning. Losing her was unthinkable.
I sped to the vet, a 30-40 minute drive, and arrived just before they opened at 8am. I waited anxiously without an appointment, humming into Buttercups ears and rubbing her tiny, swaddled body. The vet performed a series of reflex tests, a frown on his face. He suspected a congenital neurological defect -- basically, Buttercup's brain had not developed properly in the womb. He said there was nothing we could have done, and nothing we could do now, but we could end her suffering. I agreed, and pet her head as he injected her. It was over in less than a moment and she slipped peacefully away. She will be buried beneath a tree in the back pasture.
We all have been stricken with the grief of her loss. I have had to find the strength to even share the news with anyone. It is like losing a child. She depended on us, and we loved one another. I miss her so very much, even though a week seems such a short time to have loved her.
Now we face the task of finding Barley a companion. It's a bitter-sweet moment of excitement and anxiety, because heartbreak is a risk every time you commit yourself to an animal like we do. We love them wholly, as a part of the family and of ourselves, and offer them every ounce of love and caring that we can.
On the bright side, we will probably get an adult doe for Barley's companion and to start our herd. This means that he won't have to be banded, and Barley can be herdsire as we originally planned. We were going to castrate him before to protect our too-young Buttercup from his forthcoming maturity, but with an adult doe, that will not be necessary. The cycle of life will continue, and we can look forward to his offspring with hope, a little nervousness, and a lot more preparedness.
Thank you for all the lessons you taught us, Buttercup. Thank you for all the love you filled us with for your short stay in our lives. You will always and forever be in our hearts.
