How Things Are Supposed to Be

Let me tell you the tale of the past weekend. Starting on Friday morning, Stella, one of my sister's very special goats, started baa-ing incessantly. Oh no... It was time for Stella to go into labor.

After last year's horrible experience with kiddings, we were not looking forward to breeding any of our goats (Read here and here). In fact, we procrastinated in 'taking care of things' because we still were grappling with the emotional roller coaster it had been the previous year. But the bucks got out anyway (three separate times) and made the decision for us. :sigh: Billy goats...

So this would be Stella's first kidding. Ever. Her mom had never truly bonded with her, so we were wondering how she would do in bringing her own minions into the world. We anxiously counted the days and watched for the signs. And that day had come.

The little girl

Emily had already cleaned out the kidding stall, but we didn't want to isolate poor Stella until we absolutely had to. We checked on her frequently all day Friday (actually, it was Mom and Emily because I was at work). Still nothing. We wrapped up chores that evening, checked on her again, and went to bed.

The little boy

The next morning, I headed out to the barn to get started on chores, and what did I hear coming from the far corner? A baby squeak! Excitement was surging as I peaked my head around the stall door to behold a sweet little one standing there, and she was already dry. This is how things are supposed to go. Mama takes care of everything, and we just get to bask in the cuteness of the little ones. Since there was a placenta (eww...) in a different corner, I thought that maybe Stella only had one baby. That's fine by me. Perfect for a first time mama. I ran into the house to tell Emily that her goat had a surprise for us that morning. She came rushing out to revel in the blessing, and then she ran back into the house to wake Mom up. The two of them standing there was quite entertaining - pj's, muck boots, and bed hair. I handed Mom the little one so that she could wake everyone else up with the sweetie. As she turned to leave the barn, I heard another little squeak coming from a different corner with all the tools in it. TWINS! The other was a little boy that looked just like his daddy, Sam, before he got bleached by the sun. So mom took the little girl into the house, and everyone groggily noted 'baby goat' except for Jacob, who without his glasses thought that it was a squirrel. (???)

The truly funny thing in all of this is how Stella's mom was behaving. From what we could tell, she helped to clean up the little girl and was standing protectively by her when I first came into the barn. At first, it was all, "Aww! She's helping her daughter with the grand kids!" That song quickly changed when we realized that grandma goat was trying to steal the little girl for herself while completely pushing away the little boy. "Dis one. It looks like me. I'm keeping it." She was trying to nudge the baby girl closer to her (and away from her real mom) and attempting to get her to nurse. Whaaat?! Stop that. Bad grandma. She's not yours. So we had to separate the babies and their real mom from the rest of the herd until Genievive chills out a little bit and the babies bond with Stella. Stella isn't too fond of the isolation, but what she doesn't realize is that it's for the better. ;)

Now... To figure out names for these two.

Until next time!
SG

Sweet Susie

The summer days go on, and our little Susie is getting bigger every day. 

Little trouble-maker knows where the good stuff is.

My little garden buddy. Just need to make sure that she doesn't eat the marionberry and wisteria. ;) 

A June Morning

And a way to update you as to what we've been up to. :) Be prepared for a wordy and picture-heavy post.

Remember Suzie 'Snicklefritz' Derkins, our house goat? 

Well, these are her brothers 

And we thought that we had our hands full with three new babies. 

As Suzie became stronger and more sure of herself, she became too much for the house. She was practically jumping off the walls and onto the furniture. And she needed to either be potty trained or wear a diaper. We decided that it was time for the goober to join the herd. Once she adjusted to life out in the barn, she found that she wouldn't get into trouble for doing goat things. ;)  

Then, to finish off our horrid kidding season, Jill had quadruplets. o.O 

We were keeping an eye on her all day Thursday since she had been baa-ing incessantly (one of the labor signs to watch for). We figured that since she was acting just fine that she was a ways off from actually kidding. Lo-and-behold, we went out to do chores and there was a baby. From that point on, it happened fast. Emi ran into the house to grab more towels. There were only two kids then. By the time she got back with the rags, there were two more. :P When all was said and done, there were two boys and two girls. All were healthy and ready to greet the world. 

I love this girl's floppy ears! I have no idea where that came from. 

Another one of the quads

And then the other two. 

Like I said, we thought our hands were full with three kids. Now we have seven. :P 

In other non-goat related news, the swallows have built their nest in the barn, lined it with all sorts of soft down feathers and warm undercoats, and have successfully hatched their brood as of :counts fingers: yesterday. 

They're rather sassy little birds

Sleepy Calvin and Hobbes. It's the only time I can get a picture of those two; they're in constant motion!

We're not going to have baby geese this year... Taffy started laying her clutch in January, right in the middle of a really deep freeze. As time wore on, she laid her eggs, but never showed any interest in them. Now we need to find a good place to get rid of the rotten eggs. 

Suzy truly believes that she is a human. She'll follow us, hang out with us, garden with us, cling to us... You get the picture. ;) She's quite the sweetheart though. 

Now, these three boys...  

Loki, Thor, and Samwise. They could be renamed to Casanova, Romeo, and Fabio. :P Since they're still intact bucks, they have reached the age where they can no longer be with the girls, if you catch my drift. So they've been relocated to a different pasture. As we were pulling in from a concert last night, we saw that two of them were standing on a chicken tractor. But where was Loki? Maybe he just couldn't jump up onto the mobile poultry house? Nope. He had figured out how to escape and get back to the barn. Of course it would be Loki that figured that out. :P 

Anyways... That's it for now!

Until next time!

SG

Another Long Weekend

Hello all! We're wrapping up another very loooooooong weekend which circulated around goats. 

But first, it's time to recap all that's happened since I last posted.

- We lost ANOTHER goat during labor. Ebony succumbed to ketosis after being in sorta labor for 6 hours. Hind sight is 20/20 right? We could have given her calcium to help. No guarantees that it would have worked, but you never know. 

- With all the goat loss this spring, we're at wit's end. We took one of the still living, still pregnant goats to the vet to get their opinion on things and get some tests done. They've been great to work with all along, but they're also stumped as to what might be going on. We're still waiting on results.

- In the meantime, the goat gal at the farm store was talking with us, and she said that this kidding seasons has been really hard for many goat owners. It's nice to know that we're not the only ones. 

- See if we EVER let the bucks escape again. As if the other times were intentional... :P The back-to-back-to-back kiddings is whooping us.

Speaking of kidding... Mazy had her babies on Friday morning. Mom and I stayed up with her all Thursday night, but the first baby was stucker than stuck. Poor Mazy was tired and hurting, but there is only so much you can do without doing anything overly drastic (read: pulling the babies out or c-section). We gave Miss Mazy calcium, warm molasses water (which she guzzled), nutridrench, etc, etc, etc. We threw just about everything we had at the poor girl. I don't think we had it in us to dig another 6-foot deep hole at the back of the property. That thought was proven the next morning when Dad made the executive decision that we needed to get that goat to the vet to let them take care of things. So we did, thinking that at least we could save the mother and have her to milk another day. 

The call from the vet surprised us:

We had triplets. 

...

I can honestly tell you that we weren't expecting that. 

But there was a catch to the sudden excitement - it had been a harried c-section. The vet techs even commented on how much it was a close call. You see, when they made the incision, Mazy's uterus ruptured, and she lost a lot of blood. The vet practically threw the babies to the techs so that he could quickly suture her up. They gave her IV fluids and iron, stitched her up as best they could (both inside and outside), and hoped for the best.

The two baby boys were the picture of health. Their sister on the other hand... well, we weren't supposed to hold our breath and hope that she made it. She was a text-book case of a selenium-deficiency: her front legs wouldn't stay straight, lack of muscle strength, and the difficult delivery are all symptoms of a selenium deficiency. 

I think that she was the first baby that 'clogged up the works' so to speak since her brothers were perfectly fine. I know that we'd be in a very different place if we hadn't had the c-section. We went through with the decision hoping that we'd have an intact milk goat at the end of things even if the babies didn't make it. What we got instead was a dairy goat that should never get pregnant again and three babies.

For Friday through Saturday, we had to bottle-feed the babies about every one to two hours since poor Mazy was not feeling good at all and wouldn't let the babies nurse. You can imagine the sigh of relief when we saw those little boys nursing. That just left the little miss.

Since she was in the condition she was in, we kept her in the house. Keeping her warm, stretching out her front legs, and the 'round the clock feedings that her brothers were getting. Sadly, though, Mazy has rejected her. We tried to bring the baby back to Mazy, but she wouldn't have her baby and pushed her over. 

So now we have a house goat. 

She cruises around the house, follows us, naps in corners, dances in the living room, and curls up and watches TV with us in the evenings. I've been joking that we need to tie a helium balloon to her so that we know where she is. I just might have to do that. ;) The funny thing in all of this is how much it's like having a baby in the house again. It's been :counts fingers: over nine years since we had a baby in the house.

Eli has dubbed the triplets Susie Derkins, Calvin, and Hobbes. I rather like it.

Until next time!

SG

It's a Sun-shiny Day

Lizzy and her babies made their debut to the herd. I took the opportunity to get better pictures of them. ;) 

Samwise. He looks like he has leg warmers. Mom calls him 'Seventies Sam'

Cutie bug

Rosie

So curious. 

Lizzy is such a good mama

Those little lips! 

Outside play time!

Stella has gotten exceedingly jealous of all the attention that the babies are getting and she's not getting as much loving on as she used to. :P 

Heeeeere's Rita!

I caught you, little stinker. No more nibbling on my pants while I'm trying to get pictures. 

The Weekend The Never Ended

I guess you could say that our weekend started on Thursday when we cleaned and organized the front area of the barn (the feed storage, milking area, etc) and tried to figure out how to set things up to mix our own chicken feed. Friday afternoon became 'goat health day', so, once again, we found ourselves working in the barn. That's when we noticed one of our goats, Dreamer, in a corner breathing rapidly. Our first thought was, 'Here comes more baby goats!' It wasn't long before we realized that things weren't right. By Friday evening, we decided to take her to the vet since things were not progressing as they should have been. They gave Dreamer some shots to get things moving along and sent us home. We set her up in the barn for the night fully expecting to have a dead goat by morning.

Saturday morning, Dad headed out to check on things, and Dreamer was standing up. We let her be for the moment to load up the old layer hens to cart them off to the butcher. Dad and Oma headed off to the butcher, we finished morning chores, and Mom and I gloved up for the grim task at hand - we needed to get those breach babies out to try to save the mom. At this point, Dreamer's water had been long broken, and the babies had died in-utero. All morning long, Mom and I kept trying to work the babies out. I'll spare you the details to keep this rated PG, but it was gruesome to say the least. Mom kept saying that my hands were perfect for pulling those babies out since my 'hands are strong'. I look at the rope burns on my hands, and I wonder how much worse they would be if I hadn't been wearing the vinyl doctor gloves. After much blood, sweat, and tears, we got two babies out. We declared a tearful victory. 

While all this was going on in one corner of the goat stall, in another corner, Emma, one of our other goats, was going into labor in the opposite corner. Things didn't seem to be moving forward for her either, but since it was her first time, we gave her some space to just let things happen. 

Saturday afternoon, it was pouring rain. We went back out to check on Dreamer, and she was still having contractions. It shouldn't take that long to pass the placenta, so we gloved up to go in again. There was a third. Triplets? Really, Dreamer? We braced ourselves to have a repeat of the morning, but we could not get that baby out. No amount of anything would get that baby to budge. It was stucker than stuck. Dreamer was showing signs of being done. She was wanting this whole thing to just be over. After much deliberating, we made the hard call - it was time to put her down. We had tried everything to save her, but it wasn't enough. You hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. The worst had come. 

Emma, the other goat in labor, had stopped. No more contractions, no nothing. She had progressed to a certain point, and the birthing process ceased. We set her up in the kidding stall, hoping to have babies in the morning, and then, emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausted, we all collapsed in bed. 

Sunday morning. No babies, just a really bad smell. It wasn't a smell of life either. Well, life in the bacteria/infection sort of way, certainly not the smell of life you want. Mom sent us all off to church while she began work on the goat. The report when we got back? The goat hadn't dilated at all and was starting to exhibit signs of being sick, the baby would slip back in, and Mom couldn't get her hand in to try to pull that baby out. We gave the goat shots and medicines that she would need to try to make it, but then we took her temperature. We should have started with that. She had sepsis. We were too late. You hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. The worst had come again. 

Since we were thinking that Emma had an infection, we had to clean and bleach her stall to try to prevent the other goats from getting whatever she might have had. Since Dreamer had been in the main stall, we cleaned that out too.

Sunday evening, you could tell that the herd was upset too. They are such social creatures and they notice everything that goes on. They're more perceptive than you realize. Rita, Dreamer's only baby to ever survive, was standing at the back door, bleating the direction that she last saw her mom go. Lizzy, was baa-ing incessantly and insisted that she stick right by our side. Our goats which are normally very happy goats, went into mourning.We were looking forward to Monday. Just being done with everything and moving on. You get to this point of just being emotionally numb. We had reached that point. 

Monday morning, and we groaned when we saw that Lizzy was in labor. Not again. At least the sun was shining. Made things a little easier. I guess all that baa-ing and clingy-ness the night before was an early sign that it was time to have her babies. Once again, Mom spent the day in the barn. Everyone else had homework due the next day, so I was put on maintaining the home front. Lizzy didn't seem to be progressing at all. Deja vu, anyone? Believe me when I say that we were on the phone with the vet all weekend. By Monday afternoon, we were at the point of just taking her to the vet to let them work their magic since we seemed have such an amazing track record going. The vet said to not move her; the stress could be too much for her. Keep an eye on her all the time, they said, so Mom pulled things together to set up camp out there. I had left to take my sisters to one of their classes, and Eli wandered out to find Lizzy. He found a baby. He bolted back to the house to let Mom know. They started cleaning the little one up, as another baby was on its way. It was a little boy and a little girl. Both healthy. The mama was such a rock star, especially since it was her first time. Although, she turned around and started freaking out, 'Did I just do that?! Where did that come from?' And she had a bit of difficulty figuring out the whole nursing thing, but that is all normal for a first time mom. We helped her and the babies along, and now all is fine and dandy. We're thinking of naming them Samwise and Rosie. 

We're very thankful for our Monday blessings after a weekend of trials. Thank you all for praying for us through it. 

Until next time!

SG

Spring has Sprung!

'Tis a stereotypical spring day in the Pacific Northwest. The rain showers come and go with their usual drama (which includes hail and rainbows). 

The daffodils are in full bloom.

My crazy Weeping Santa Rosa plum tree is open. Maybe I'll get some fruit from it this year.  

The grape hyacinth are reaching into the sky as high as they can (but they're still dwarfed by the daffodils) 

The other flowering trees are about to explode in blooms. 

The cat gives you a weird look... 

And there are new baby goats in the barn. ^_^

Yesterday, I posted about not knowing when our goats were going to kid since we didn't know when they were bred (all thanks to escapee bucks).  

Well, we've been keeping a close eye on the mamas that we figured were due soon. Mom peeked in the barn while on her way to do some other work, and there was no sign of impending excitement from anyone. They all just stood around chewing their cud and staring at the two legged food-giver. 

Hardly an hour later, there were babies. Two of them, to be precise. Twin boys. They were pretty much dry by the time we found them and had been nursing. 

We're still debating what to name them. We've been keeping a list of things we would name the kids if we had twin boys. Now that we have them, we don't know which names to pick! Lol! Should it be Thor and Loki? Sherlock and Mycroft? Merry and Pippin? Kirk and Spock? Calvin and Hobbes? We're not sure which ones to pick!  

All that was running through our minds was, 'This is how kidding is supposed to go.' Whenever you talk to other dairymen (or women), you hear all the birthing horror stories. Then you start to freak out. Oh please, Lord, don't let that happen! Thankfully, we didn't have to worry about anything with these two. :) 

I turned around after taking pictures of the babies, and there's Rita standing on a log wanting attention.

She almost looked like she was asking for her picture to be taken. 

I'm still just as cute as those two whiny things that you're holding in there! 

See? I can pose; they can't. I look like a statue. 

The babies were born on Sunday afternoon. On Monday morning (today), the first batch of meat chicks came in. When it rains, it pours. Everything happens at the same time. ;) 

Here we go!

Until next time!

SG