Just kidding!

Yesterday was both an exciting and dramatic day. My dad noticed in the morning at 4 AM that one of our yearling does was acting like it might kid. But, Sugar, the doe, looked around….saw how many people there were on the farm and promptly decided that 4 in the morning was too convenient for kidding.

At 7ish, Mom checked again one last time before going to work. Sugar said no. Still too convenient. Then at 2 when I got home from work, I looked out in the pasture. Sugar was out there grazing looking unconcerned. Now, I barrel race in state finals in less than 2 weeks so I’ve been trying to ride a lot the last few weeks. So, since Sugar looked like it was a false alarm, I went and caught up my horse. After I had him and had gathered all his equipment together to go ride, I glanced over at Sugar again.

I swear she shot me a side ways glance, smirked and headed to the barn! Riding today? Not likely! Looks like an inconvenient enough time to have this kid! When I arrived at the barn, it was obvious that Sugar was really in labor this round. So, I had to run to the house, change into grungy clothes, grab some towels and go turn the horse into the round pen.

When I got back, my dad arrived from work and came straight out to the barn. He brought the video camera so that we could work on an instructional video for our website. Sugar was still at it 30 minutes later and the only thing that appeared was legs and the nose. She wasn’t making any further progress. After a while, when I realized that the kid was stuck like a cork in a bottle, I grabbed legs and started pulling. It was such a tight fit that even with my tiny ladies hands, I couldn’t get in there for a feel. I was just hoping and praying that the legs indeed belonged to one kid as they appeared to and not to two separate kids. When I started pulling, Sugar got up and began trying to push it out. When I gently pulled, she kept taking off around the pen in the barn. It was turning into a regular rodeo event!

Thankfully, after less than 15 minutes of my assisting, the kid finally got it’s head out, and I was able to grab it’s neck. It came easily after that. We have a beautiful little coffee coloured doeling who is fine and is doing well. Her momma also came through all right and she is doing well now as well. That was one of the roughest kidding that I’ve had to assist with in 10 years of goats. The only one rougher than that was another Sanaan cross doe whose baby was an 11 pound buckling being born breech. Thankfully, most of the time, the births go off without a hitch and no help from humans is necessary.

Being born was rough! Time for a nap!

 

Surprise of the livestock guardian dogs

It’s been a very busy last month. We’ve had several surprises in the last month.

When I got home  from work , I was greeted by some ecstatic Anatolians and one ecstatic Pyrenees/Kommondor cross. They didn’t let me go to house with my bag like I normally do. They made it clear that they had something they wanted to show me. They danced ahead toward the barn and when they thought they’d lost me, they danced back my direction. Especially our white girl Llana. She looked like she was floating on air!

As I got to the barn, I looked inside. All the goats seemed quiet enough. It had been a rainy day here so they had all gone into the barn. All of a sudden, it dawned on me that one of the does had an umbilical cord hanging from her rear. There had been a birth. She was standing quite contentedly eating hay, not at all concerned about having had a kid. When I saw it, I wasn’t sure if it was alive. It curled up in a pile of hay, and it was breathing so shallowly. But, when the dogs and I went to it, it lifted it’s head and bleated. The little brown goat kid was alive! First kid of the year!

 

I took it to the house to get it a bottle of colostrum and deal with the umbilical cord. It turned out to be a buck. The dogs were so excited that they had a baby to look after. My dad told me that the colostrum was still frozen that was left over from last year. Drat! That meant that before I could feed the buckling, I had to go milk the doe. So back out I went.

As I walked back into the pen with mamma, I noticed something that caught me off guard. She had acted done with labor and her baby had been dry when I found him, but now, I was seeing 8 legs. Another one! I swooped in and took this one to the house too.

I texted my dad and let him know that Consentida had two kids. A very buckish looking buck, and a very refined baby.

I was so busy getting colostrum ready that I didn’t stop to check. I told dad we had a buck and a doe. Our babies are bottle fed, so  I had to prepare their bottles of colostrum. Later, I noticed after I fed the babies that the “doe” peed from the center of it’s belly. Uh oh! I took a look and sure enough! My refined “doe” is the proud owner of a pair of testicles! How embarrassing! Before the day was over, we had a total of 5 babies from 2 does. We have 2 doe kids and 3 buck kids.

They are about a month old now, and started to explore the great outdoors.