"It's a Shame, but not a Tragedy"

Star

Katherine was late to school the other day because her goat, Star, finally went into labor.  The doe had been threatening to burst for a week, with her udders getting impossibly larger by the day. Star is closing in on 6-years-old and last kidded nineteen months ago. Katherine had written her off as an “old lady,” so the prospect of more babies was a happy surprise.  Then it all went bad. 

Star "listening to her baby"

First, let’s focus on the positive.  It was 9:00 am—not 2:00 am. Usually “tricky kiddings” go wrong in the wee hours of the morning when the vet does NOT want to get out of bed.  But at 9:00 am, he’s already up and about.  Score! 

The other “Murphy’s Law” about bad kiddings is that the weather must be miserable—too hot, too cold, pouring rain, hail.  You name it, awful.  But Star went into labor on a pleasant autumn morning.  It was 75 degrees—not 105, not -15 degrees. 

Katherine let Star wander around the pen for a while to help labor progress (like people).  Star would paw, lie down, stand up, walk, stop, listen. Repeat. Over and over again. 

Finally, Star kicked into high gear--active labor—and Katherine went to work. In our attempts to breed the “perfect Pygmy Goat,” we humans have radically interfered with the goat’s ability to push out its babies.  For example, for years judges have favored goats with shorter torsos and flatter toplines, which gives them a much “cobbier” appearance.  But this shape limits the amount of space for the babies, who get all balled up in there; it also creates a smaller pelvic opening, which makes for a whole different set of problems.

Normal Presentation

Anyways, Katherine called the vet (Pete) after about an hour because the baby was really wedged into Star’s pelvis.  In an ideal situation, the baby presents with one leg and a nose. In Star’s case, the baby was presenting “sunny side up” and head first. 

"Sunny Side Up"

Katherine has long, strong fingers and has experienced a wide variety of goat birth presentations:  breech, crown down, shoulder, “super man” (both feet and a nose).  She’s not afraid to reach up into a goat and reposition the baby or even pull it out.  But this time the baby was really and truly stuck.

I fluttered around the barn, with nothing to do.  I still worry every time.  So I mucked the pen and cleaned the barn to distract myself.  If the vet was coming, I didn’t want him to think we had a dirty barn, right?  Katherine sat on her tool box and read her book (I refer you back to “Birth Plan” for the visuals…) 

Pete finally arrived about an hour later.  Every time he pulls in the driveway, it feels like the cavalry has arrived.  We all heave a sigh of relief.

Pete has been coaching Katherine on goat kidding and medicine for about 4 years now and has even taken her to work with him on his rounds.  We are incredibly lucky to have a vet that understands Pygmy Goats; many (most?) large animal vets don’t understand Pygmy Goats and really don’t care to learn because the little buggers are so tricky.  Thank you, thank you, thank you, Pete.

So, I stood off in the corner and watched Pete and Katherine work. (Beware, the next couple pictures are graphic…)  

They took turns trying to reposition and/or pull the baby, all the while discussing which parts were where.  Is that a foot or a jaw? Is that an ear or a tail?  I watched as they both got very quiet while they closed their eyes and visualized what they were feeling. 

It reminds me of the “Tactile Dome” at the Exploratorium in San Francisco: “Take an interactive excursion through total darkness in our Tactile Dome. Crawl, slide, and bump your way through the pitch-dark Dome using your sense of touch as your only guide through its chambers and mazes.”

Tactile Dome

Meanwhile, I pulled the cat out of Pete’s truck multiple times… and another goat, “Ruby,” kept poking her head into the barn to see what was happening.  Beware, honey, this could be you…

Just as I broached the topic of a Cesarean section for Star, Pete got the “pig puller” hooked around the baby’s shoulders and tugged it out.  Pete and Katherine rushed around clearing the baby’s airways with the “snot sucker” and rubbing it vigorously to stimulate the heart and lungs.  All to no avail. It had died in utero.

Ruby

I’m sorry to say this is not the first baby goat we have lost (and it probably won’t be the last). Our survival rate on these little goats averages about 67%, which is a huge improvement over years past. There are a thousand reasons why they die, and I’ll save that topic for another day. It’s still sad every time. 

This baby was a singleton (meaning just one baby in the uterus) and was quite large, weighing in at about 4 pounds.(They average 2.5-3 pounds). Since there were no other babies to compete with, she got all the resources and grew extra large. If she had presented in a “normal” position (nose and foot first, belly down), we might have been able to pull her out in time.  We will never know.

Pete packed up his bag and washed up, while I wrote him a check and made sure my cat was not still hiding in his truck. Katherine weighed the baby and cleaned up the barn.

Zazzy

Walking back to the house, Katherine said to me, “That was a shame, but not a tragedy.” Even though the baby died, the mother survived and could be rebred to have more babies. On the surface, it might seem callous; but in the goat world it isn’t.  It’s simply the way it is. 

But more than that, Katherine’s statement struck me as profound. 

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a shame is something that is “disappointing or not satisfactory.”  A tragedy is “an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe.”  The death of this little goat was a shame; the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 was a tragedy.

When the first boy breaks Katherine’s heart or she gets into her first fender bender, I will remind her: “It’s a shame, but not a tragedy.”  It’s all about perspective.  And don’t you forget it.