The REST Of The Story

I now have visual proof that Sparta is not jumping the fence.

And there still is not a breach in the fencing.

Came home and found Sparta in the chicken coop, and MOON IN THE DOE  YARD!!!!!!!!

Dare you to try to remove a 200andsomething pound buck in full rut from a yard full of does.
It is a test of strength and wills.

But i prevailed.  To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke, "Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and Raging Hormones."

After closing the gate on the buck pen (Moon was panting like he had just run a marathon,) i went to go retrieve Sparta from the coop yard.  The Big Boyz tried to help, we all got tangled up, and in the process, Sparta got away from me and flew like a shot to the doe gate.  As i was walking over there, i noticed that the water spigot was dripping and bent down to give it a crank.  My back was turned for like three seconds....CERTAINLY less than five.  When i turned back around, Sparta was in the middle of the doe pen doing the buck dance.

The buck dance is a male goatie version of the hoochie dance that drives the girl goaties wild.  Two legged girls think it looks rather stupid--comical, even--but then, it is not important what we think.  The buck dance involves a stiff front leg pawing repeatedly at the ground, tongue lolling out of the mouth, and a hard to describe sort of garbled moose call--sort of a mulll-ulllll-uuulll.  I am not going to tell you about the part where they pee on their faces first.  Ellie May does a very good impression of the buck dance (but not the peeing part.)  You should ask her to do it for you some time.

I dragged Sparta out of the doe pen, and closed the gate.  He was still totally focused on the does, so i slyly turned my back on him, but kept my Mamavision turned on (you know, Mamavision--the eyes in the back of our heads that women develop during the third trimester of their first pregnancy.)  Sparta whipped around the corner of the kid pen and i followed just in time to see him climbing....actually, it was more of a clambering over the fence.  Two front legs were over the fence, two back legs in the chain links, neck outstretched doing a serpentine thing like he was willing his body to snake on over the fence.

Next thing he knew, he was on his back, four hooves (or eight, in the case of goats) in the air.  I jerked him off that fence so fast he didn't know what hit him. 

And promptly removed him from the premises.

Not that i have any delusions about controlling the outcome of this year's breeding anymore.  At this point, i am looking at it this way...if kids are born March 11th they are Sparta's, if they are born on March 12th, they are Moon's.

I really only planned to breed two does this year, and neither one to Sparta.  But that was just a Happy Thought.