Raising livestock is not for the faint of heart. Farmers have to have to be tough and tender- tough enough to withstand a whole lot of pressure and heartbreak, and tender enough to know how to mend a goat’s broken heart. Our animals rely on us and we rely on them. I raise dairy goats, chickens and beef cattle here on my farm. Kidding season this year started and ended with some really, really tough moments. I always try to be the best steward of my animals- that involves doing a ton of research and always trying to be prepared for the worst- but sometimes all the preparation in the world can't really prepare us for what actually happens.

Though I've been raising goats for over five years now, I've never had more than two does in milk at one time, but because of the pandemic and food scarcity issues, I wanted to do whatever I could to produce a little extra for those around me this year. So, I bred six my Nigerian dwarf does (female goats) in hopes of producing extra milk, cheese, yogurt, etc for our local community. Just like any other animal, goats need to be bred and give birth to produce milk for their babies. I generally breed my goats once a year, both to maintain their health (goats are like many other animals and it’s best for their health to keep them in a regular breeding program that mimics what would happen in the wild) and to keep the goat milk flowing. The babies get all the milk they need, but the mom’s produce lots of extra milk while the babies are nursing, so it’s up to us to milk off the excess and keep the mamas healthy, and after the babies stop nursing, I continue milking the moms for a few months, then dry them off to prepare for next year’s babies.

Goat labor usually goes pretty quickly. A goat pushing for more than 20-30 minutes without results is usually a pretty good sign that there's something wrong. I’d had breech goat babies before, but never anything like what ended up happening. After Aretha had been laboring for a while, it became very clear that something was very, VERY wrong. I gloved and lubed up, reached in and checked the baby position, and realized, to my dismay, that the baby was not only ENORMOUS, but he was also being born breech, or tushie first, rather than hoof first.

Between contractions, I tried to reposition him by pushing him back in and rotating him around, but try as I might, I couldn’t, so instead I wiggled his two little back legs out so we had a little leverage. Aretha and I worked so hard together to get him out. As she continued to push, I realized at that point it was either Aretha’s life or the baby’s, so I had to choose in that moment. Ultimately, it came to the point that I had to pull on the baby's body every time Aretha had a contraction. Aretha and I worked so hard together, I was crying the whole time, and we eventually got him out, but he was not going to make it, and that was very clear. As hard as the labor was on us both, what sucked so much more was showing Aretha her dead baby. My heart absolutely broke when she tried to care for her baby but realized he was gone. It’s impossible not to impart human emotion on a situation like that, a mom who had carried a baby to full term, worked SO hard to deliver him, and then to experience the heartbreak of not getting a baby out of the deal.

She stood in her stall stoically all night. I kept checking in on her on the on the barn cameras my heart broke a little more every hour watching her just stand there, alone in her stall. But then 12 hours later, Dolly Parton, one of my other goats went into labor and she delivered one healthy kid after another with zero assistance needed. Halfway through her birth I was like, “Oh my gosh, what if I were to just take one of the babies straight from Dolly's womb?” So that’s exactly what I did. The next goat kid to pop out, I took wet from the womb and showed it to Aretha. She immediately got to work licking the baby and cleaning it and obsessing over it. I helped her dry it off and get it standing. A few minutes later, the baby started nursing on her newly adopted mom.

After such a difficult labor, and spending her first night alone without her baby, I like to think Aretha understood how precious this second chance was. I named Aretha's adopted baby Tanya Tucker, because she's a fighter just like her mom. And I think because it's 2020, everyone really needed some good news. I shared the story of Aretha Franklin and her baby Tanya Tucker on social media and the story reached far and wide. In fact, it got all the way to the real 10 Tanya Tucker, who sent us a video, saying she loved her new namesake and the story that went with it.

This adoption was best possible ending to Aretha’s heartbreak. She got her baby, a precious little brown girl and they're both healthy, which is all I could ask for after the whole ordeal. Dolly Parton had three other healthy kids of her own. She didn’t even know that the grand switch happened, but it’s honestly so much healthier for her to have one less mouth to feed anyway, I almost wish now that I’d taken two instead of just one so she could get a BREAK once in a while! The funniest thing about the whole situation has been watching the “sibling” relationships happen within the herd. The four siblings play together all the time, but Dolly Parton has no interest in Tanya Tucker and Aretha Franklin won’t let any of the other adult goats NEAR her precious baby. The relationship that I've seen the two of them develop is unbelievable. It's probably one of the most heart heartwarming things I've ever seen. She dotes on and watches over her constantly. She follows her around and makes sure that she’s safe and they cuddle all the time. She shows her baby infinite patience and I can’t help but think, every time I catch her eye in the field, that she understands everything that happened and that we are the only two who are in on this big, wonderful secret. Stories like this make a farmer’s tender heart sing. We are there for the hard, impossible moments and we cry along with our animals when they suffer, but those tears make sweet stories like this one SO much sweeter.

Mending a Goat's Broken Heart in the Most Unexpected Way!