Alrighty then. Breeding goats is going to be a little more challenging than I thought. You know, it's nature and you just let nature take it's course right? Well, um, no.

Doesn't Russ look happy? That's because it's our second 1 hour round trip excursion to take one of the girls to see their "boyfriend," Stormy, who lives a few towns away via back roads. We don't keep a buck at our place because bucks are rowdy, stinky, and otherwise obnoxious. Boaz, our male goat is a wether, meaning he'd wether not participate in that business, thank you, because he's been fixed. That means bringing the girls to where the action is.

Ruth and Naomi are cousins, but they really couldn't be more different. Ruth is petite and pretty. She's quiet and reserved, not very vocal. Naomi is big boned and hearty. She represents her Nubian breed well by being quite vocal, more so when she's randy, and she demands attention from her people. She loves her love. We missed Naomi's window a few weeks ago because I'm a clueless first time goat owner so I've been keeping a close eye on Ruth, figuring she'd be next.

Kind of like human beings, the mystery of fertility is not an exact science.  First of all, you gotta watch the doe's, you know, girlie bits to see if it looks like a green light. I'm NOT going to go into detail on that part. Buy your own damn goat book. But mainly you have to watch her behavior. Does in season tend to wag their tails alot, bellow, want a lot of attention, go off their feed, and possibly mount other goats. Ruth, however, has no "behavior" other than being sweet and quiet. She's like this Victorian lady goat who learns French and the piano and never does anything impolite or inappropriate. She just stands around looking cute with her goatie eyes and inquisitive head tilt. But according to this:

I should be seeing a wagging tail. "Extra" vocalization. Mounting other goats or allowing other goats to mount her. I have never seen that with Ruth.

Now Naomi, on the other hand, is a more boisterious goat. If Ruth is our Elinor Dashwood then Naomi is Marianne, so I figured she'd be easier to breed. This is proving not to be true. Both of the gals have made the ride out to Stormy, and while both reacted predictably (Ruth was terrified and practically leapt over the gate to get away from her amorous host while Naomi was curious about what was going on but was rather put off by Stormy's earthy attempts to impress her with his big, bad buckness) neither on of them seemed to be ready to do the deed. I'm assured that it's never easy with first time fresheners, which is goat talk for virgins.

We left Stormy sans brand new embryos but we did get a "buck rag," which is a cloth that has been wiped all over the stinky buck and will be hung on our fence as way to watch our does to see when they show interest in Stormy's eau de bucklogne.