Babies....finally!

After driving P crazy by giving him daily udder updates, Daisy finally had her kids. She was due on Thursday and had them the following Monday. Average gestation is 150 days (which was Thursday) but they can go 5 days either direction. So she kidded on day 154. The only sign she was getting close was that on Thursday her ligaments were loose and Sunday her udder was starting to firm up. On Monday morning when I checked her at 6:30am her ligaments were super loose and her udder was very firm. No normal signs of labor. Her vulva looked normal and not swollen. She had zero discharge. She wasn't pacing, pawing at straw, talking more than usual, arching her back. Nothing. So I figured it would be later in the day or towards the evening. P checked her at 8:30am or so when he was milking. No change except he said she was a little standoffish. Checked her at 9am. No change. I asked him to take a look around 11:40am before he left for a hair cut and I got a frantic phone call "Call the hair dresser and reschedule my appointment! Daisy had her babies!" Dang it!!!!! We missed it!

Here they are just minutes old - 2 doelings. They were still all wet and covered with goo when he found them so they had obviously just been born. But they were up and on their feet and nursing in record time. The kids and P had pretty much already named them by the time I got home. The white one is Sunny and the brown one is Windy. Because they were born on a very windy sunny day.

Personally I think they are just about the cutest babies ever born on our mini-farm. The mom is a Saanen/Boer cross and the dad is an Oberhasli who happens to be naturally polled (hornless). So they seem to have gotten all sorts of pretty coloring from the multiple breeds and I think they may be polled as well because at 3 days old I still don't feel any horn buds growing on their heads.

At 2 days old their mom already has them out in the field while she grazes. She is such a great mom! The dogs were eyeing the kids through the fence and she was making this strange thumping sound in her throat, warning the dogs to keep away.

There was much discussion about who these goats belong to. Daisy belongs to G and he was under the impression that he would get her babies if they were girls and he would give one to D since we had to sell her runty buck a few months ago. Well then E chimed in that she wanted a goat (even though she hasn't wanted one up until now). So we parents made an executive decision that D and E get the babies, with the understanding that a) the goats can be sold at any time if it is determined that they are not good milkers or they fail to thrive or have an attitude problem and b) they must spend time with their goat and take care of it or we will reconsider ownership.

As I was out in the field yesterday playing with the kids, and even later that night as I was filling water buckets in the barn, I was thinking about how much I love my life, even though it is a lot of work. When I was a kid I went over to my neighbors place every day after school for years to help her walk her herd of Nubian goats. I watched babies being born and I learned how to milk, came home with gallon jars of goat milk that no one in the house would drink except me and I generally fell in love with goats (I was probably the only 16 year old at Mariner High School that had her own goat), though at the time I thought the neighbor's horse was my best friend. I always envisioned that I would have a farm with a horse when I grew up and maybe some goats. It's funny how the goats made a bigger impression on my life. I wish Sue were still alive so that I could show her how much she influenced my life.

~T