From Six to Fourteen

Goats that is.

Four days after having my own baby, the first doe had her own.  And in the last three days we added seven more kids (that’s what goat babies are:  kids).  As my husband says, it’s not our own baby keeping us up at night.  It’s the goats!  But I will say how grateful I am that every one of these mamas had their babies during daylight hours.

Dancer gave us a buckling and a doeling.

…and then while we waited for her placenta to come out, she surprised us all and pushed out a wee little doeling.  And I do mean “wee”; she was only 1lb 12oz.  She is still getting tubed for feed because she isn’t strong enough to suck on a bottle.  My daughter has become her mama, even waking during the wee hours to keep the little one nourished.  I admit I gave up on this one within the first five minutes of her birth, but a friend of mine diligently worked on her and prayed for her and she is still alive; and now my 14 year old is becoming quite the goatherdess!  I’ve just been teaching her what I know in addition to having her learn from that friend of mine (thank you!), and she is all of the sudden interested in reading books and materials on goats.  I am glad for it.

The very next day, Maisey gave us two bucklings.  My daughter here is encouraging one buckling to find the right place to get that good colostrum.

And then on the third day (today), Smores gave us a buckling and a doeling.

As an aside (speaking of new births) we’ve been finding bird nests with their own babies tucked in.  These are chickadees on our porch.  The robins have a nest on our playground swing set of all places.  And I don’t have a picture to prove it but we’ve got two dozen chicks and turkeys that showed up during this time as well.

At the end of it all, this is all I wanted to do.  And I did enjoy it, even if it did take me almost two hours to finally get into it because I was at that point taking care of my own little baby.

And of course now I am t.i.r.e.d. after three straight days of goat craziness.  And did I mention I have a new three week baby, too?  If it gets a little quiet around here on this site, you’ll know why.

Gratefully,