Sweet Pea Gets Her Goat — Times Five

MOUNT AUBURN - For now they're known as A, B, C, D, and E or 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, but if you've got a better idea, Brooke Gardner would entertain nominations to name her five kids.

Yep, five kids. As in goats. Because Brooke's longtime female goat, Sweet Pea, recently gave birth to a litter of five. (Normal is one to three kids at a time.)

"It is so exciting," says Brooke, as the kids jostle for position around a bottle of milk replacer. There's no way mom could keep up.

Around noon on March 10, Brooke's husband, Chris, called out to her as he went out on their acreage north of Mount Vernon to check his small heard of Dexter cattle. He heard bleating in the goat barn and shouted, "Booke, I think you've got babies.

So Brooke grabbed their 16-month-old son, Ethan, to investigate, knowing two of her goats were expecting. She found Sweet Pea cuddled up with a new litter.

"They were still wet," Brooke says. "She was cleaning them off.

"I counted them and there were five. No way were there five, so I counted them again."

Mmmm. Maybe it's a result of this weird, unusual and early spring. Because, the same day, the other goat gave birth to two kids and the next day a cow had a calf. Or, maybe, it was just time for Sweet Pea to break her own record of four.

Sweet Pea was one of the first goats Brooke and Chris, both 29, got in 2004. The couple married earlier that year and moved to 9 1/2 acres because to be in the country. He's plant manager at Farm Services in La Porte City and she's a special education associate with the Center Point-Urbana schools.

"His first thing was, you can't live in the country without having chickens," Brooke says.

From baby chicks, they soon added a pair of pygmy goats, a couple of horses (now gone) and the cattle which, which Chris breeds and sells.

"We found out pygmies jump," Brooke says. "We'd have friends over and they'd jumped on people's cars. They weren't too happy."

Since everybody liked Sweet Pea, and she'd gained enough weight not to jump too high, she got a reprieve. Cinnamon was sold. Then Brooke discovered fainting goats.

"I like fainters a lot more," she says. "You don't have to worry about them."

The neighbors also enjoyed the fainters, honking their car horns to watch the goats keel over from fright as their defense mechanism.

Soon, with a fainting Billy goat, Brooke was breeding and selling a dozen or so goats a year at $50 to $100 each. With five-month gestation periods, the females give birth twice a year.

"I usually don't name the babies," Brooke says. "People who buy them want to name them.

But, in this case, since there are five - two males and three females - Brooke agreed it would be fun to name them.

How about Billy Bob and Billy Joe; Betty Jo, Bobbie Jo and Billie Jo (from Petty Coat Junction fame.)

OK. If you've got a better idea - I'm sure you do - let me know.