12 and Counting

I took some time out for pictures during a nice, quiet afternoon this week...

This is Pleasure--Momma number one this year. 

Well we're about one third of the way through the kidding season now. 6 goats have had their babies and we have 13 or 14 more to go! The count right now is 12 babies, 8 girls and 4 boys. What a week! Chips (an all white goat) kidded on Tuesday and had a single black and tan girl. Prudence kidded on Thursday with two brown boys. Thursday night I got up to check on Amelia a couple times overnight. She finally kidded after quite a lot of pacing, laying down, standing up, more pacing...  She also struggled quite a bit; it was a tense atmosphere in the barn. Her second baby came out backwards which can be problematic because they can get stuck. Thankfully everything went alright and both kids are happy and healthy. 

After the morning excitement, we checked in on all the ladies and decided it looked like we wouldn't have any more births before Saturday and probably not until Sunday. So we all got busy and ran errands and went back to work on other projects... Until...

Nate and I ran errands and got home for chores right at 5. When Nate took hay down to the ladies barn, he spotted Mystic with a kid half way out! By the time he got my attention and had her separated out from the rest of the herd, she was pretty tense. Scott and Jen were about an hour away and didn't pick up when we called the cell phone.  So we tried to calm ourselves down and focus on Mystic. She followed Amelia's example of laying down and getting up and pacing. Finally, she settled down enough to focus and push. 

After the morning's lesson on kids coming out backwards, I noticed the feet that were coming out were the back hooves. I panicked a bit, but continued to help Mystic by rubbing her and talking to her while she pushed and I pulled. After the hips came, it was mostly a matter of helping to pull out the rest of the gooey, slippery mess that is a baby goat. The second kid came very soon after. Thankfully, she came out correct with two front hooves and the head first. Finally, I was hoping we were done...but no. A third baby came. Backwards again! And this one was much bigger than the first. By this time Mystic didn't have much trouble pushing. I prayed there wasn't a fourth and hooray! No fourth goat came! We were all done and Mystic was actually interested in her babies this year. (I've heard that in the past she hasn't wanted much to do with them.) All three are girls. The first one was smaller and will probably live, but she's had a rough start so far. We're giving her extra attention right now.  

What an adrenaline rush! I don't think I calmed down till after 10 last night, when we finally sat down to some pizza around a camp fire. Ahhhh. I was in bed, nice and exhausted by midnight. 

All to wake up again at 6:30 this morning. Chores took about 2 and a half hours to milk and get everyone fed. Shortly afterwards Sunny decided she'd like to have a baby too! Hers was a relatively simple and straight-forward birth, except she decided she wanted to do it standing up. Whew! One good sized girl and she looks just like her momma!  

That's it for this week. If I have some time in a day or two I will post more photos of babies!