Many things go "Plop" on a goat farm. Some good, some not so good. Not so good is when you are walking by a goat and they go to use the bathroom and you hear a big "plop". Uh-ooo. Loose bowels. You have to do something about that, either worm or worm and give Pepto or whatever you do when your goat goes "plop". But, you have to admit, a "plop" is much better to hear then a "squirt". A goat that squirts and can hit a fly at 20 paces, that’s really bad. So, a "plop" is much better to hear then a "squirt".

Another kind of plop is you sliding in slippery mud, something that we have had in our area now for a year is mud, and then finding yourself sitting in deep oozing mud. True, if you had landed on hard ground or ice it would have been much more painful, but sitting in deep mud, you still aren’t a bit happy.

Same as the plop of tripping, sliding in mud, and dropping the full feed bucket upside down in the muddy mess. That feed bucket makes a very bad plopping sound and so does the moan you let out when you’ve just thrown away so much feed. One year I was carrying a kid and did a rather fancy step to keep from sliding and falling in the deep mud and ended up falling any way. But, though I was headed face first with the kid clutched to my chest, somehow I twisted so as not to squash the kid, and landed on my back in rather deep mud. I knew then how a turtle felt when flipped on his back, only I was suctioned to deep mud.

No, "plopping" on the farm can be a bad thing, though last week I found, for once, it to be a good thing. We were kidding out some young full blood does. Two of these girls were sisters. The one sister insisted on standing to kid. "Plop" she dropped a kid on his head. Now this may sound a bad thing, but it sure broke that sack open nice for the kid to get out and the doe whirled around to clean the kid up. The second kid to make an appearance must have seen what had happened to her brother and decided to come out rump first. She "plopped" sitting up, I’m sure quite pleased with herself.

The sister of this doe then went into labor and did the traditional thing of lying down to have her kids. She pushed out one kid, cleaned it up, let it nurse, pushed out the second kid, cleaned it up, but then a third made an appearance. I assisted in moving the third up to her so she could also work on it and I was using a kidding towel to do some of the cleaning up of the kid myself.

I stood there at the back of the doe, who was still lying there, thinking that this was a two teated doe and I just might take one of the kids to bottle feed so her udder wouldn’t take such a beating with three kids demanding milk at the same time. Usually there is a battle and eventually one is left out and you hope it makes it in line for the next feeding. I just didn’t feel like fooling with leaving all three on mom and bottle training to give "snacks" to the ones who needed it. Sometimes this "snacking" works great sometimes not. Some kids refuse to "snack" and end up a runt.

I was still debating this with myself on whether to bottle feed one and I heard a soft "plop" and it just didn’t register where this came from. Finally, something clicked in the old brain and I looked down. There, lying across my rubber boot was a kid in a sack.

What?!! I dove down and opened the sack and cleaned his little head off with the towel while he was drawing deep breaths. He gave me an accusing look like, "What took you so long?! Were you day dreaming? I could have suffocated!!"

Well, that last plop clenched my debate. I now had two bottle kids. No sense in letting this young doe try to feed four, much less three. I just wasn’t in the mood for it. The last two were mine. And, I whisked them off to the living room to be put in a big Rubbermaid tub and to bottle feed colostrum and dry off near the wood stove. The doe was highly suspicious of my actions and kept saying, "Didn’t I count 4 kids? Hmmmmm? I know I heard another plop. What have you been up to?"

So, some "plops" on a farm can be very good, like discovering a sweet baby, but I find that the rest of those "plops" can be rather nasty.