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Silence of the kids
The smell of death and despair
‘I want a flock of lady goats, to give me milk so I can make cheese’
A famous line from an awesome song, which resonated with me when I decided to take on Pandora and Martina. However in order to get that milk, I’d have to first get them bred.
This, in itself, turned out to be very easy, an hour each at the local Billy, and that was it. Five months later and Martina was about to give birth. She’d fattened up nicely, and her teats were swollen. Throughout the day, a certain malaise came over her, and then late afternoon she went back into the barn, and over an hour pushed out her kid.
Lads, lads, lads
I saw immediately it was a boy, and knowing his fate, I named him Geoff, after a goat I had previously seen slaughtered and cooked into a curry. Three weeks after that, Pandora went through the same albeit giving birth at 2am, again to a male, who I decided to call Joff, because he was blond and his fate was sealed.
Two billy goats, and unfortunately for them they only have two uses in the farming world. Become a dad, or become a meal. Since I didn’t want to keep them to breed, due to the general odour that comes with keeping a billy, I opted for the latter. I also decided that I should be the one who seals their fate…
