I have never believed in miracles. But now I am convinced that there is such a thing as a miracle.

Our other goats, once they went down, they stayed down. And numerous people told us that once goats go down, they stay down. This has become routine. We’ve been having to lift Ranger onto his feet in the mornings and sometimes in the evenings. Pete’s been taking the back end and I’ve been taking the front end. Heave ho, Ranger is up, tottering, ready for his chow.

Ranger and Rover

This morning he got up on his own when I showed him his slurpee bucket. And in seconds, he was consuming his morning ration. He’s been getting three rations a day. I then opened all the gates and let all three goats out. Ranger followed Sassy and Swampy down the driveway, to the horse pen. And there the three stood, outside the hay shed, eating hay.

The miracle part: It’s that Ranger, a supposedly very old goat, is doing so well. The non-miracle part: I think that his diet was deficient. He’s been getting fourth cutting hay, which has no nutrients to speak of. I figured this out (maybe this is the miracle), and I have since been giving him packer pellets (his favorite), vitamin E, lysine, biotin, zinc, copper, flax, salt, California Trace, and nutrient goat drench. The slurpee part is the addition of water.

I did not do this for the other goats, and I should have.

I do not know how much longer Ranger will be around. It’s gotten cold again; temperatures are now in the single digits. However, I consider every day that he’s with us to be the gift of time.

Remember – this is the goat who when he was very young, had a broken leg. We took him to North Star veterinary clinic, and they did a wonderful job in putting a supportive cast on his leg. He recovered just fine. Then, after we took the cast off, he broke his other leg. I took the old plastic cast and I bandaged the leg up the way they did at the veterinary clinic. It too healed.

I had some detractors who blasted me when this happened, saying that Ranger was perhaps inbred. I think it might have been that he was being given milk replacer and it didn’t have enough calcium in it.

He is now a long lived goat. He’s outlived three of his companions. He sired a beautiful doe, and I wish I could have again bred him to Peaches.

I used to take him for walks (along with Rover and Peaches) around the neighborhood loop, but I stopped doing this when neighbors got dogs, neighbors who still don’t believe in confining their dogs to their yards.

I thought that I was born in the year of the sheep, but I recently discovered that I was born in the year of the goat. This explains a lot. Greatest of all Time – Ranger seems to make the goat acronym most fitting.

Next: 338. 12/9/22: Where the Wind Don’t Blow so Strange