Well it seems I have taken the summer off from blogging! It wasn’t my intention, but it happened and I do apologize. I am not sure where the summer went. I have been incredibly busy, but yet haven’t gotten done near what I had intended. This has been an interesting summer to say the least.
First we ended up with 3 pregnant does, which were very unplanned pregnancies. We do not aggressively breed our goats, only when we need milk. However, we had a buck from a delivery last Oct that stay with us until Jan and he decided to have a little fun before leaving. Little did we know. We didn’t think he was capable of getting anyone actually pregnant at that time, but he was!
So in June we had 7 babies to 3 moms within 6 days. We were not ready for such an onslaught of new kids, but being experienced goatkeepers, we had the necessary supplies and readied ourselves in short order. Roxy, had a prolapse we I was extremely anxious while awaiting her delivery date. I didn’t know what would happen or how the birth would go. It turns out that it was a vaginal prolapse and the pressure of the kids in the birth canal pushed it up and in, which is where it needed to be. She then proceed to deliver QUADRUPLETS! Good grief. Plus she had a congested udder on the right side and so we knew she couldn’t fee 4 babies on one teat and half an udder, so we got to bottle feed them. That took an awful lot of time from their deliver in June through August when they left. Then Laci kidded the next day with one very large, but very beautiful black and white buck kid with gorgeous blue eyes. He was a sweetheart. Then 5 days later, Madeline went into labor and in her usual style popped out two kids that look exactly like her. They were two buck kids and looked almost identical to each other.
All the moms were healthy and the kids were all great. Most of them, including Roxy, went to live at the Orange County Zoo. Two of them went to our neighbors to live with their horses. So we had 13 goats and are now down to 5. What a relief! While we miss the babies a lot, they all got great life time homes and we are so happy for that.
Roxy and her new quadruplets!
Madeline and her twin boys.
Laci and her big blue eyed boy.
Wow, what fun the baby goats must have been! Although, very time consuming, I’m sure. Glad all the mothers were healthy and the babies too!
Yes it was a lot of fun but very time consuming. I guess this is where most of my summer went! I am getting to be a fairly good midwife, but I still get nervous each and every kidding season.