We waited for an hour for the buyer to show up. The four goats already loaded in the trailer. They called for their mamas for a little while and gave up calling when we gave them their food. We penned the wether lambs up the day before so they’d be easy to catch. There is nothing to do to prepare them for this permanent separation. We can not warn them, we have to trick them, distract them with some food, grab their back leg, drag them out and away from their herd, their mama, the life they’ve known.
The buyer came. She was a nice woman, with a nice husband and two daughters. They have a bunch of goats north of here. They keep them like we do, for milk, for meat, for the small profit at the end of season. Yes, they were also interested in our doelings for sale. We had about 9 more goats we had to cull out. After the negotiation we decided on seven goats, and off went Helen and her baby, Cookie Cutter’s little baby, Cookie Brown’s baby, and Plank.
Plank was born in Washington. It was a bad season, the corral was over crowded, the wetness persisted threatening hoof rot. The babies that spring all had worms and diarrhea. We nursed them all back to health, but they seemed permanently stunted. Plank was so named because when we loaded her in the trailer to go clear brush she was as tiny as a plank of wood you would lift over your head.
As her peers grew, she remained small, escaping from the corral every chance she got. She’d wander over to us unloading hay, or sitting by the fire. We’d hold her and cradle her. She was family.
I promised her a place in our herd forever last spring when we took her ailing mother to the butcher. Her mother, her protector, her ally. She was alone then in a herd where you have to defend your position in the pecking order. You have to bully for your food. She was small, tough, but not prone to fighting.
She loaded up last night without protest. She has loaded in trailers her whole life. She stood in the trailer without panic, looking around, wondering.
The mothers will call for their babies today. Scarlett will wonder where her son is. Cookie Brown will call for her daughter and her daughter’s daughter. In a few days they’ll settle down, readjust. Will they forget? Or just let it go? Do they remember this culling year after year?
I don’t walk out to the goat corral anymore, going in and playing with them like I used to. Petting them, feeding them, holding their babies. The goats that remain call up the goats we have gotten rid of, I think of Alphabet, Pippi, Earling, Peaches, the Monkeys, Plank. These goats’ sisters and mothers and grandmothers lay around the coral in their family groups. Smaller groups now. Much smaller.