June 6, 2010
Belinda and I met the midnight plane from Seattle Friday night. Well, okay, it isn’t actually the midnight flight, but it does arrive at 11:30pm, so it might as well be the midnight flight. Though a bit late for us, Frannie had left from New Orleans earlier in the day, which meant according to her time schedule she arrived at 1:30am! Frannie had just finished a weeklong training with Disciples Volunteers and would be spending the summer interning at the Yakama Mission. After a week of instruction and learning how to work with volunteers and all that goes with it, she was surely more wore out than us as we headed back from the airport.
Come morning, everyone had a good but short night’s sleep. Frannie is staying at the farm until next Friday when the Mission’s next intern arrives. To fill in time between now and then, what better to do than worm goats?
Belinda and Frannie ran goats down to the holding area where hooves were trimmed last week.
Then with syringes filled with wormer, they caught each goat, place the syringe in their mouth, plunged the plunger, and then let them out of the holding area. Doesn’t sound like much, but get a bunch of goats together who really (really!) do not like the taste of wormer and you have a little goat rodeo! With a break for lunch, and not too many bruises, early afternoon arrived and we had a small heard of wormed goats.
© David B. Bell 2010
Chewing the Cud 
If you think goats are bad you should try worming
ponies & horses… They also hate the wormer taste and they
are so smart they will hold the dose in their mouth and then
spit it out when you let their heads go! Of course to thwart
their plans I hold their heads up their mouths closed until
I see them swallow… What a circus. I usually end up with
as much wormer on me as they do in them! Of course the wise
old ponies see you worming the others and then there is no
way they will allow themselves to be caught.
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Well, yes…horses are another question all together! We figure the nice thing about goats is you can put them between your legs for more control. I guess you can put horses between your legs as well, but maybe worming from the back of a horse is a little awkward!
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