The threat is coming from inside the house

A new complication

It will be an exciting few days here on our little urban farm. Three goats are due with kids this week and haven't yet given us the babies.

There are predictable stages to goat baby watch. First, there's the excitement when realizing that the buck has completed his job. It is, by the way, weird to celebrate goat sex - but here we are. I then spend most of the next five months dreaming about the ideal mix of their parent's best attributes.

As the earliest due date approaches, there's the "watched pot" portion of the program, where the more I study them, the less it seems these babies will ever come.

Earlier today, I told my husband that maybe they weren't going to have kids ever; perhaps they're all lying to me for the extra treats and are not pregnant at all. He reminded me that I say this every year. So I'm now in the "feels like a fake out" stage of baby goats. This stage can last for days or even a week before kids appear.

Another snowstorm is coming (of course it is), so I am now pulling the girls in at night and snuggling them up in a pen next to the wallaby. We're into "better safe than sorry" territory regarding kidding because we could see babies any minute.

This year our kidding season has a new complication, though. In a quick note yesterday, I mentioned that our younger son was home sick from school. This morning when he woke up, he looked like he'd just been pepper sprayed at a rally where the Broncos won the Super Bowl. It was every Mom's nightmare - he has pink eye.

So, we took the trip to the pediatrician, got the prescription, and are trying to keep our boys apart. Luckily the older one is showing no signs (PHEW.) Buuuuuuut, guess what kind of infection is both zoonotic (spread between people and animals) and to which goats are particularly susceptible, especially baby goats? YOU GUESSED IT!

Now my obsessive checking for babies is accompanied by surgical-level handwashing and fogging myself with Lysol like I'm heading into a lab in a Dean Koontz novel. I'm taking "biosecurity" to a new level. I can’t remember acting like this since the start of COVID when no one knew anything, and we were using the last of our precious antibiotic wipes to disinfect all the groceries before they came into the house.

Until the antibiotics render him no longer contagious, I must try to keep the human baby in isolation at three years old while constantly going outside to see if we have the baby goats, which he will not be able to see. It might be the correct situation for a "noble lie" if the babies do appear.

Meanwhile, I am grateful for the wifi cameras where all three girls must suffer the surveillance state, the tools of which allow me to keep tabs with fewer Lysol foggings.

For tonight, my does seem contentedly tucked into their pen, using one another as pillows in the straw, baking their baby goat belly biscuits under the warmth of the heat lamp. My eye in the sky will be waiting . . . unless they're just liars who aren't pregnant at all. Maybe they're doing it for the extra treats.