Bouncin' Baby Goat

What are we up to lately? Oh, just spending goodness knows how much time playing and cuddling with the baby goat. She's a little love. ;) It also helps that she has now qualified for the 'bottle fed baby' category. Her mama's milk didn't really come in until a couple days ago. We all sighed a HUGE sigh of relief when we didn't have to feed baby round the clock. Although, snuggling with a 2-lb baby goat isn't all that demanding. 

Sorry for the grainy quality... We don't have a video camera (well, we do, it's just from the age when home videos were on those tiny VHS tapes ;) ). So I just used the video on my camera. It looks like I'll need to figure out how to work that setting. 

Out enjoying the sunshine

Estrella

Back on Thursday afternoon, I left you hanging with a goat in labor. That wasn't very nice of me since she had the baby on Thursday evening. ;) 

So, I'd like to introduce you to Estrella. 

She's an only child. 

Black with a white poll and a white moon spot on her left side. 

Oliver (her daddy) seems to throw black kids. So far, they've all been black with moon spots. 

 And she has blue eyes. ^_^

Preceding the birth, her mom,  Genevieve, wasn't bagging up at all (for you non-dairy folks out there, that means that she hadn't started producing milk yet). That was a bit of a concern for us since we had issues trying to keep her kids from last year from nursing - they wouldn't wean. She could be dubbed the star milker of our herd. Trying to get her to dry up was a problem as well... she wouldn't stop producing until just a few short weeks before she was supposed to kid. Then she wasn't bagging up when 'she was supposed to.' :face palm:

And she hadn't gotten her milk production up and running after Estrella was born. So... no milk for baby. We had never heard of that before. Having a baby = milk and colostrum. I can do that math. But the it wasn't adding up this time.  We had a hungry baby on our hands, and her mom didn't have any milk for her. So we raided our precious stash of milk in the fridge. The stash that wasn't meeting our consumption rate. We warmed it up and syringed it to the little girl. We also looked up on Fiasco Farm of some other things we could do in the meantime since our star milker wasn't producing. That statement seems loaded with irony. Apparently, some goats won't start producing milk until two days after they birth. That blows my mind - how is the baby supposed to survive without milk?! :/  

So we've been bottle-feeding her 'round the clock. She's probably going to be the sweetest thing since we are. Speaking of which, I think I need to get scootin'. She's probably getting hungry. Goats eat like Hobbits. ;) Thankfully, her mom's milk is finally starting to come in. Hopefully we won't have to do this for much longer, although, it's a really tough gig feeding an adorable 2lb baby goat. It's time to get my goat snuggling time in. ^_^

They're so tiny!

Waiting Game

Genevieve's 'official' due date was last Saturday. Today, she's finally starting to show signs of going into labor soon. Now, it just a waiting game until we begin fall's kidding season. Anyone want to take a guess at how many kids there will be? How many boys/girls?

Seasonal Red Neck Water Feature

Whenever we dig in and work on a project on the to-do list, we seem to create more jobs for that list. Especially if the job involves a tractor of any kind. This time 'round, we hit the gutter while using an excavator to dig out the area for the front walk way. The force was so great that it shook the house, cut all the way through the gutter, and popped the gutter out of the brackets that were holding it up on the roof. Of course, the main break is smack dab in the middle of the entry way. ;) And we got goodness knows how many inches of rain this last weekend, and the duct tape patch job didn't hold up to the weather. The entire front of the house became a waterfall. It was quite entertaining to try to use that entrance during the storm since you were running through a wall of water. This is the when you call in the professionals. We've no experience in roofing.