The agony and the beauty

Birth and death in the paddock

It’s a short walk up the curve of the driveway to get from my house to the goat paddock. I can’t count how many times I’ve walked it these past weeks. The normal twice a day to feed; that’s easy enough to calculate. The countless times have been to check Nutmeg as she approached the birth of her kids. Every few hours, and sometimes more frequently, during the day. Late at night before bed. During the night, initially under bright moonlight, with the karri bark shining silver in moonlight. Then in complete darkness, with just the circle of light thrown by my torch to keep me on the familiar path. I would remind myself to turn my torch off and look up on dark nights. Some nights the stars were like glitter across the blackness, the Milky Way a smudge. On others, just clouds. Or rain. 

Every time I went to check Nutmeg, I hoped that I would simply find a couple of kids standing beside her, the miracle of birth done and dusted. Yes, I would be secretly disappointed that I hadn’t witnessed it, but the relief of it being over would compensate. 

I’ve never been in charge of a birthing mammal before. In the lead-up, I’m excited and daunted. I read everything I can get my hands on. Listen to hours of podcasts. Re-read what seem to be useful articles and books. I quiz my vet friend Lisa until I am sure it is only her generosity and politeness that has her continue to answer me. Even I am sick of my questions.

Oh, I’ve looked after baby mammals before - puppies, kittens, lambs - and hatched and raised ducklings and chicks. I’ve been close at hand with the raising of calves, piglets and foals. I’ve interviewed researchers, farmers and vets and written thousands of words about animal pregnancy, birth and lactation. But I’ve never held the responsibility for mammalian birth, except of course for the two babies I birthed and mothered. Somehow that was different.

So I read and check and watch and wait. I stare at my goat. I feel the ligaments near her tail, which I know will soften before birth. I watch for signs of imminent labour.

Twice, I get it wrong. I am sure she is having contractions. One afternoon, as the rain pours, I sit with her. I watch rolls of movement inside her belly. She grinds her teeth and pants in the shelter. The shelter is small. I sit in the doorway, the rain running down the back of my raincoat. I wish for rain pants. Instead I have wet trousers. I cancel a meeting I am meant to be going to and sit with Nutmeg instead. Eventually I realise nothing is happening. She is just sheltering from the rain and chewing her cud. I go inside to get warm and dry.

It’s a week after that when I am finally sure that something really is happening. Those ligaments near Nutmeg’s tail turn to jelly. She is 12 days past her official due date, but her breeders told me she went over last time too. “It will happen when it’s ready to happen,” they told me when I rang them. Nutmeg’s belly is humungous by this stage, yet she in herself has remained skinny. All the food I try to pour into her has gone to babies and milk. Her udder is so huge she can hardly walk. I have been rubbing lubricant on it and the inside of her legs for days to prevent chafing, waiting for the kids to come out and drink the colostrum, the first milk.

I check Nutmeg late that night. She is lying in the shelter, chewing her cud. She looks at me with big eyes. Bleats softly. I give her a rub and wish her well. She seems so peaceful and contented. I decide I won’t get up in the middle of the night. She has always been a little disturbed by my nighttime checks and I have felt they are more for me than her. All the books say that 95 per cent of goat births are completely straightforward and require no assistance.

It is 5.30am when I walk the familiar path up to the goat paddock. As I open the gate I can see Nutmeg standing in the doorway of the shelter, a vacant look on her face. There is something black in the hay beside her. When I get there, I can’t make out what I am looking at. The pre-dawn light is not sufficient to illuminate the gloom inside the shelter. But then I realise. It is a kid. A dead kid, hideously deformed. I hear a garbled cry. It is from me. Then I see the second kid. Huge and perfectly formed, lying on the hay. Also dead. I groan, sobbing now. I put my arms around Nutmeg. Then I notice that there is something poking out of her vulva. At first I think it must be the placenta and then I don’t know. So I do what all normal people don’t do in such a situation. I panic. I race back to the house sobbing and yelling for Rob. “There are two dead kids,” I scream as I open the door. “Help me!” I run back to the paddock. I’m a mess. Rob is right behind me. He is calm. Sensible. He strokes Nutmeg’s head and speaks soothingly to her. “You aren’t helping her,” he says to me, calmly. Not berating me. Just stating a fact. Something in that gets through to me and I look carefully at Nutmeg’s rear end. The bit sticking out is a kid, or at least a kid’s head. Nutmeg is done. Her energy spent. (‘Why oh why didn’t I get up three hours ago?’ a voice screams inside me.) But I didn’t. I thought it all looked okay. And now we are here early on a Saturday morning and I know the vet is away for the day and I know I have to do this. I grab at the head. My hand slips. The birth sack is intact and slimy. I break it so I can get a grip around the head. I pull. I’m sure I am damaging something but this kid has to come out. I pull more. I hear grisly grinding sounds. I pull more. Tears are wet on my face. Rob strokes Nutmeg, talking to her. I realise it is just the head presenting. There should be feet. I reach in and find a knee, hook two fingers around it, pull the foot forward. Now I have a leg and a head to grab. I pull both. The other front leg comes out. I grab it. Pull both legs. Then I can get around the kid’s body, behind its shoulders. I pull. It comes out, slippery and slithering and seemingly lifeless. I pull the membranes from around its nose and lay it on the straw near Nutmeg’s head. I am sure it is dead.

And then it coughs.

“It’s alive!” I cry.

Nutmeg bleats gently at it. Then begins licking. Slowly the tiny kid comes to life, lifts his head, makes a little mewing sound. It’s a boy, a little buck kid, and he is just fine. He is small, but he is fine. Nutmeg licks and licks and licks. There is more blood and gunk and stuff and none of it bothers me.

I am distraught and relieved and happy and sad. And exhausted. This is life. The tenuous beginnings of life.

I take the deformed kid away. Nutmeg licks the other one, the dead one, until its dark fur fluffs up. She bleats to it. Nudges it. Finally she gives up. I take it away. I bury the two in the orchard, together, under the apricot tree.

I clean out the messed up bedding from the shelter and lay fresh. The little kid is up on his feet now, looking for milk. Nutmeg is so engorged that he can’t latch on. Her teats hang almost to the ground. He can’t find them. I milk a litre or so from her and help him find the teat. He sucks weakly for a bit then gives up. Nutmeg licks him in encouragement. 

Cinnamon, our other goat, a young female who has never had kids, watches from a distance. She is curious but uncertain.

I give Nutmeg a bucket of muesli and some oaten hay, gather branches from her favourite browse trees, give her water with molasses mixed in, and a dollop of honey that she takes so enthusiastically it is all I can do to stop her wrenching the spoon from my hand. I leave them be.

Later, when I go back, the little buckling is still unable to find the teat and latch on. I get into a rhythm of milking a cup out every couple of hours to ease the pressure then helping him find it. Holding the teat while he sucks. Nutmeg is weak, struggling to stand, but she does so, on wobbly legs, as I fuss around and the kid sucks. She has enough milk for three, more than enough milk for three, and all she has is this one little boy. We call him Ashcroft, because I wanted a name starting with A (and next year, any kids will be B, and the year after C, and so on, and maybe when I am very old there will be a Zack or a Zelda). So this year, the first year of having kids, it had to be A and my son is an avid supporter of the AFL (Australian Football League) Brisbane Lions team. They won the grand final last week and the best and fairest on the oval during that game was a young guy called Will Ashcroft. So Ashcroft it is - Karribridge Ashcroft.

Our little Ashcroft doesn’t have the legs to run for hours. He spends most of his time lying near his mum. Every few hours, I go and help him have some milk.

That night, the Saturday night, I get up at 1am and go out.  Nutmeg is in her favoured place near the doorway of the shelter. Her eyes shine green as they pick up my torchlight. Cinnamon is asleep in the back corner of the shelter. At first I can’t find Ashcroft, but there he is, tucked up against the outside wall of the shelter. I tell him he’s a silly boy for being outside. Help him get a drink. He is uncooperative, so I milk a bit into a cup, put it in a syringe and squirt it down his throat. He shakes his head in disgust and shows me just how strong he really is by wriggling and protesting. I put him down next to Nutmeg and go back to bed.

In the morning, Nutmeg and Ashcroft are up and out of the shelter. I breathe a sigh of relief. Twenty four hours in and things look okay. Rob has a go at milking and we discover he is a natural. None of the common fruitless attempts for him. He quickly milks two litres of frothy milk. We try giving Ashcroft a bottle of his mother’s milk but he again shows how strong he is when asked to do something he doesn’t particularly want to do. We opt for helping him find the teat. It’s still not plain sailing, but things seem to be improving. I, meanwhile, am exhausted.

It is early afternoon when Nutmeg takes a turn for the worse. I only half notice it but when our friends Suzi and Tim drop over they are obviously concerned about her. They have more experience than us with birthing livestock. 

When they go I message Lisa, the vet, and ask her if she will come out, even though it is Sunday and I hate to ask her. She arrives within the hour. She does a pelvic exam to make sure there is nothing left inside that needs to come out. All is good. But Nutmeg has a mild fever. Lisa injects her with qntibiotics and anti-inflammatories and administers a dose of a glucose/calcium mixture subcutaneously. She suggests warm water as it is easier to drink. Nutmeg gulps down half a bucketful.

The afternoon falls to evening. Nutmeg is still eating okay and drinking. She can stand if we help her get up. She licks Ashcroft when we help him feed and bleats to him softly. All is well when Rob and I check them late that night. I figure everyone, including me, needs a decent sleep, so I leave them to it overnight.

The next morning, Nutmeg has deteriorated. I help her get up but she can’t stand. Rob comes out and the two of us manage to get her standing for long enough for Ashcroft to have a drink. He is into it, sucking voraciously now, bunting with his head to stimulate his mother to let her milk down for him. She stares vacantly ahead.

I bring her breakfast but she won’t eat. I offer a selection of her favourite treats. She nibbles half a bit of carrot and a handful of hay. Rob offers her warm water but she doesn’t drink. I offer her honey but she turns her head away.

I contact Lisa. She says to give Nutmeg honey NOW and to get hold of some Vytrate, a mixture of glucose and minerals, and begin administering it immediately. She will come as soon as she can but is caught up with other things for the next few hours.

I try again with the honey. Nutmeg won’t take it. I can’t believe how quickly her condition has deteriorated. I know she needs something to raise her blood sugar. I force her lips apart and smear her gums with honey. Reluctantly, she licks at it. I mix molasses into warm water but she won’t drink it. I ring Suzi and Tim to see if they have something I can give her, but it is still early and they don’t answer. I will have to wait for the Co-op in town to open. But then I realise that I have Vytrate in the shed, left over from when Chilli lamb was here. Rob and I force it down Nutmeg’s throat. 

Nutmeg can’t stand up now, but I manage to help Ashcroft find a teat where Nutmeg’s udder is bulging out from under her. He sucks enthusiastically. 

An hour or so later, Nutmeg eats a little oaten hay.

A few hours after that we pour more Vytrate down her throat.

Lisa arrives and injects Nutmeg with more antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and pain relief. She gives me a grim look, leaves us with some syringes filled with antibiotics and instructions to give two a day “until you can’t catch her to jab the next one in.”

“What did I do wrong?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she says. “It’s just bad luck. She had a very traumatic birth.”

“I should have been there earlier.”

“You couldn’t have done anything else.”

We talk about the deformed kid - schistosomus reflexus, or an inside-out kid. It’s very rare in goats. More common in cattle but still rare. A congenital abnormality that is always fatal. The chances of having that on the first kidding I ever had to deal with are so remote that I probably should go and buy a lottery ticket. The odds of winning would be higher than the odds of having an inside-out kid on my first delivery. It’s even more unusual for the doe to actually manage to push the deformed kid out, such is the stiffness and awkwardness of the presentation. But Nutmeg did that, and another big buck kid as well, all on her own before I got there to help get Ashcroft out.

“Stay in touch,” Lisa says as she drives away. We both know I will and we both know that I perhaps won’t need all those antibiotic syringes and it won’t be because I can’t catch Nutmeg.

I feel deflated. Flat. 

Rob sits with Nutmeg for ages, holding a small bucket of warm water for her, encouraging her to drink. He gets her to nibble a bit of oaten hay. I rub more honey onto her gums. I clean the mucky bedding from around her and lay fresh stuff. Ashcroft explores around the place, nibbling at things but not actually eating. I hold Nutmeg’s teat for him and he sucks. She has little interest in him now; moans softly as he drinks. 

The sun is shining and the bush glistens all around. The splendid wrens display their spring blue. The cuckoo shrills in the trees. Life. All around. Precious. Tenuous. I go back to the house. Make tea and write. I have written very little for weeks, months really. Burnt out. But somehow the raw emotion of these past few days has pulled the words from me, or filled me up with them, whichever way you choose to view it. So I write, in between walking up the curve in the driveway to the goat paddock to tend to Ashcroft and nurse Nutmeg. Cinnamon is perplexed by the whole situation, so I take her treats and give her scratches. I notice how much she has grown lately - she’s just turned two years old - and how healthy she looks. I wonder if I can bear the idea of getting her in kid next year. That was the intention when I got her, but now it all seems so fraught. Of course, now is not the time to answer that question. Not the time to make that decision. For now, I am in this moment, doing the next thing that needs to be done. Remembering to look up at the sky. To breathe in the trees. To listen to birdsong and embrace all that life offers.

On Tuesday morning, a long 72 hours after the birth, Nutmeg is miraculously still alive but very poorly. i have injected her with the antibiotics and pain relief. Poured more Vytrate down her throat. Lisa comes again and administers IV fluids. “It’s a long shot,” she says, “But worth a try.”

Nutmeg never gets up again. She slowly fades away and dies that afternoon as Ashcroft bounces around her.

We leave her there as we (okay, mainly Rob) dig a hole for her up beyond the sheds, near where my horse Dante was buried a year ago. Cinnamon and Ashcroft sniff at Nutmeg’s body. As we take her from the paddock, they follow us to the gate. A funeral procession. 

I spend a long time sitting on the ground with Ashcroft trying to get him to take the bottle. I am glad of the milk we took from Nutmeg on Saturday and Sunday. It will give this little kid a good start, if only I can get it into him. He sucks at my shirt and my hand but not the bottle. He fights me, kicking and squirming. I give up. 

Later, when he is hungrier and I am calmer and less distraught, I eventually get him to suck the bottle. It’s a small victory, but a victory none-the-less. I walk back to the house carrying the empty bottle like a trophy. I glance across to the veggie patch, neglected these recent days and weeks. The sacred kingfishers are back for the spring and one is sitting atop a trellis, resplendent in his azure and burnt orange plumage. The season has turned. Life happens, in all its agony and beauty.

See you outside,

Jill

Inside

I have an event coming up in Perth, a Sunday afternoon conversation with Barb Howard from Living Earth Projects. We’ll be talking about What’s for Dinner? and related things to do with food, farming and environment. It’s on at the State Library of WA on Sunday 3 November and will run from 2-4pm (including afternoon tea). Tickets available through Humantix.