About two weeks ago, I heard a loud bleating coming from the home pasture. This was nothing new. The four-month-old goat kid likes to squeeze under the gate into Pippin’s pen and eat the hay that falls from his feeder. Apparently she’s better at getting in than getting out, because she stands there and yells until someone opens the gate for Pippin’s evening feeding.
Then I saw that goat kid standing, not in Pippin’s pen but in the goat pen where she belongs, minding her own business and not yelling at all.
I followed the noise to the goat shed, which years ago started out as a tool shed until the goats took it over, and found a newborn kid lying on her side, bleating and bleating. Goat kids can usually stand up right away, so something was wrong.
The new baby had white muscle disease, caused by a deficiency of selenium and/or Vitamin E. In itself, it’s fully reversible. But if a goat kid can’t stand, it can’t eat. The outlook for a kid born with the condition is not good.
I brought the little goat inside, cleaned her off, and warmed her with a heating pad. We got some supplemental selenium and Vitamin E in her, along with some colostrum, then formula, fed to her through a tiny bottle. She couldn’t even hold her head up, so bottle-feeding her was a challenge. I really didn’t expect her to live longer than a day or two.
But she did.
I was reading a novel by Georgette Heyer at the time, so I named the kid Georgette. I figured the woman who singlehandedly invented the historical fiction genre was worthy of having a plucky little goat named after her.
Slowly, Georgette got stronger. Soon she could lift her head a bit and brace her front legs against me while taking her bottle. I propped her on a rolled towel so she could be in a sternal position instead of on her side. She seemed to like it. Then one day, she scratched her face with a back hoof.
Soon she was eating so much that I had to get a bigger bottle. The feed store sold individual nipples that threaded perfectly onto a plastic Coke bottle.
At first Georgette lived in a laundry hamper lined with towels, then with puppy training pads. Then I got a big, high-sided plastic bin and covered the bottom with wood shavings. Now she had moisture-absorbing bedding and enough room to walk around. I keep the bin in my writing room since that’s where I am most of the day.
Baby Bird and I took her outside to feel the sunshine and see the grass. She loved it! It was then that I noticed Diego didn’t like for other animals to get close to Georgette. He would run off the cats, and dogs bigger than himself, when they came near. He’d been around her a lot from the start and I guess he thought he needed to protect her.
One day, Georgette stood, just for a second. Then she stood for longer. Then she started walking.
She’s now two weeks old and walking well. She isn’t ready to live outside, but she’s made amazing progress in a short time. Today she spent a lot of time outside in the chicken yard while I weeded the tomatoes and the sweet potatoes. She’s back in her bin now. While I was writing this, she stood in the corner and nibbled the strings of my cut-offs. And from the way she eyes me from over the top edge of the bin, I’m pretty sure she’ll be able to jump out before long.
Her horns are starting to come in. Soon she’ll be big enough to live outside and forage for herself like the big goats. I hope she’ll still remember me then, and that she and Diego will still be friends. And you can be sure that at some point, one of my books is going to feature a bottle-fed goat and a protective little black-and-tan dog.
