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