Friday, October 15, 2010
Fall Babies
After weeks of waiting the babies are finally starting to arrive! Two little 100% boys a couple of days ago and just a few minutes ago we welcomed the first two little girls of the season. They were out of one of our very favorite percentage does, Vanna T. She is a Savanna and they are out of our paint buck Renegade so we have one very Savanna looking girl and one paint girl. :)
What more could a person ask for on their fall break!
We have 29 does with very visible bags, whoops! Make that 28 does now; so I expect that we will see about 57 to 60 more babies in the next 6 weeks or so.
Sigh! Wish we could have had more during this break when we were home to welcome them properly, but to be honest the moms do just fine without us.
The other part of this large Fall kidding is that we really won't have very many Spring kids. I know the 4H kids will be sad but with the new job I just couldn't deal with Winter babies. We will probably have about 10-15 does kid out in the spring. Gee I may even get a vacation this summer...
What more could a person ask for on their fall break!
We have 29 does with very visible bags, whoops! Make that 28 does now; so I expect that we will see about 57 to 60 more babies in the next 6 weeks or so.
Sigh! Wish we could have had more during this break when we were home to welcome them properly, but to be honest the moms do just fine without us.
The other part of this large Fall kidding is that we really won't have very many Spring kids. I know the 4H kids will be sad but with the new job I just couldn't deal with Winter babies. We will probably have about 10-15 does kid out in the spring. Gee I may even get a vacation this summer...
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Valentine's presents...
Okay, I know that I frequently insinuate that a person might be psychologically disordered if they try to keep a 100 grown goats plus babies and work two other jobs...but this time I really mean it!!!
What were we thinking!!! We have had 50 babies in 2 1/2 weeks and we have at least 20 does to go!!! That translates to close to another 40 babies and with the rash of triplets we've had this season...maybe more! The big barn is full, maternity barns are full, and even the small shelters are overflowing! Oh wait! And I forgot to mention that we have 5 bottle babies in the house!
We are so sleep deprived we are stumbling around like zombies. I'm pretty sure it is impossible to hit REM sleep with kids crying and mamas complaining through the always-on baby monitor. However, it sure is nice to be able to hear when the mamas need help rather than going down to the barn on an hourly basis and still finding popsicle kids!
At this rate we will be begging for people to buy the Nov 2009 kids as soon as they are weaned!
I remember when we first got goats; reading an article by a woman who talked about keeping her bottle babies in the house in playpens and another article about a woman who had been known to tuck a sick baby right up in bed with her! I shook my head at the folly of "some people".
Yes, I confess I have become the "people". Now, my bed is mostly off limits but I have had a sick one on it wrapped in towels and old blankets..didn't find that it did anything special for the baby goat...but at least I was able to doze and still keep a hand on it to make sure it was still breathing. Oh, and the playpen! Well just check back for photos of the babies correlled in their playpen, too bad they don't make the big ones anymore!!! The playpen was Richard's Valentine Day's present and he couldn't have been more excited if it had been gold!
What were we thinking!!! We have had 50 babies in 2 1/2 weeks and we have at least 20 does to go!!! That translates to close to another 40 babies and with the rash of triplets we've had this season...maybe more! The big barn is full, maternity barns are full, and even the small shelters are overflowing! Oh wait! And I forgot to mention that we have 5 bottle babies in the house!
We are so sleep deprived we are stumbling around like zombies. I'm pretty sure it is impossible to hit REM sleep with kids crying and mamas complaining through the always-on baby monitor. However, it sure is nice to be able to hear when the mamas need help rather than going down to the barn on an hourly basis and still finding popsicle kids!
At this rate we will be begging for people to buy the Nov 2009 kids as soon as they are weaned!
I remember when we first got goats; reading an article by a woman who talked about keeping her bottle babies in the house in playpens and another article about a woman who had been known to tuck a sick baby right up in bed with her! I shook my head at the folly of "some people".
Yes, I confess I have become the "people". Now, my bed is mostly off limits but I have had a sick one on it wrapped in towels and old blankets..didn't find that it did anything special for the baby goat...but at least I was able to doze and still keep a hand on it to make sure it was still breathing. Oh, and the playpen! Well just check back for photos of the babies correlled in their playpen, too bad they don't make the big ones anymore!!! The playpen was Richard's Valentine Day's present and he couldn't have been more excited if it had been gold!
Valentine Presents!
Okay, I know that I frequently insinuate that a person might be psychologically disordered if they try to keep a 100 grown goats plus babies and work two other jobs...but this time I really mean it!!!
What were we thinking!!! We have had 48 babies in 2 1/2 weeks and we have at least 20 does to go!!! That translates to close to another 40 babies and with the rash of triplets we've had this season...maybe more! The big barn is full, maternity barns are full, and even the small shelters are overflowing! Oh wait! And I forgot to mention that we have 5 bottle babies in the house!
We are so sleep deprived we are stumbling around like zombies. I'm pretty sure it is impossible to hit REM sleep with kids crying and mamas complaining through the always-on baby monitor. However, it sure is nice to be able to hear when the mamas need help rather than going down to the barn on an hourly basis and still finding popsicle kids!
At this rate we will be begging for people to buy the Nov 2009 kids as soon as they are weaned!
I remember when we first got goats; reading an article by a woman who talked about keeping her bottle babies in the house in playpens and another article about a woman who had been known to tuck a sick baby right up in bed with her! I shook my head at the folly of "some people".
Yes, I confess I have become the "people". Now, my bed is mostly off limits but I have had a sick one on it wrapped in towels and old blankets..didn't find that it did anything special for the baby goat...but at least I was able to doze and still keep a hand on it to make sure it was still breathing. Oh, and the playpen! Well just check back for photos of the babies correlled in their playpen, too bad they don't make the big ones anymore!!! The playpen was Richard's Valentine Day's present and he couldn't have been more excited if it had been gold!
What were we thinking!!! We have had 48 babies in 2 1/2 weeks and we have at least 20 does to go!!! That translates to close to another 40 babies and with the rash of triplets we've had this season...maybe more! The big barn is full, maternity barns are full, and even the small shelters are overflowing! Oh wait! And I forgot to mention that we have 5 bottle babies in the house!
We are so sleep deprived we are stumbling around like zombies. I'm pretty sure it is impossible to hit REM sleep with kids crying and mamas complaining through the always-on baby monitor. However, it sure is nice to be able to hear when the mamas need help rather than going down to the barn on an hourly basis and still finding popsicle kids!
At this rate we will be begging for people to buy the Nov 2009 kids as soon as they are weaned!
I remember when we first got goats; reading an article by a woman who talked about keeping her bottle babies in the house in playpens and another article about a woman who had been known to tuck a sick baby right up in bed with her! I shook my head at the folly of "some people".
Yes, I confess I have become the "people". Now, my bed is mostly off limits but I have had a sick one on it wrapped in towels and old blankets..didn't find that it did anything special for the baby goat...but at least I was able to doze and still keep a hand on it to make sure it was still breathing. Oh, and the playpen! Well just check back for photos of the babies correlled in their playpen, too bad they don't make the big ones anymore!!! The playpen was Richard's Valentine Day's present and he couldn't have been more excited if it had been gold!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Ultimate FIghting Championship Match!
So it's that time again....Kidding season is just around the corner and we've moved 23 does to maternity again and have 25 more that I keep telling Richard need to be moved...he just shakes his head because our maternity pen was designed back when having 8 to 10 goats kidding was a major kidding season and a fourth of the space is pretty useless because it is equipped with three dog kennels that cost $200 apiece and lasted intact for one whole kidding season. Now there are huge holes where fighting mamas have torn that fancy chainlink off the posts. We still have them in there because I plan to replace the chainlink with goat panels "someday".
Anyway, back to the championship round. Everybody thinks bucks are the mean ones but I swear they are just like their human counterparts. If little boys are going to fight they just jump right in there kicking and punching and generally not caring who sees what they are doing while girls are much more sneaky and so it is with goats. Now the month before kidding season is filled with all kinds of chores to get ready and one of them is the dreaded CD&T shots! These are the only shots our goats get unless they are sick so you would think we were doing major surgery on them. They fight, and we wrestle, get boxed, butted and kicked as a matter of course. If we aren't sporting a few bruises we get worried that they might be sick. But it never fails that it is the smaller ones that do you in every time. Now who would have guessed that Debi Taunte would be the ultimate fighting champion. She is very much like her name. Smaller than most of our other young does she has a very feminine build and gets beat up on a regular basis. So I wasn't prepared for the fight on my hands when I grabbed her. That girl fought and bucked, and wrestled her way nearly out of my clutches. Not going to be bested by a little young doe, I grabbed for a hind leg as I went down but she wasn't going to stand for that nonsense, a well-placed kick while I was down, and she was the victor! I could hear the judge counting me out as I spit dirt and well...whatever out of my mouth and tried to catch my breath for the next match.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
The things that strike fear in a person's heart!
It's amazing the things that can strike fear in a grown woman's heart!! Tonight while we were feeding goats I was participating in my daily ritual for this time of year. Copping a feel to see which does were starting to bag up. Last week I told Richard with some excitment that I thought when we moved does to maternity this week we would probably have at least 15 to move. I was pretty happy and excited about that since these Jan/Feb kids will be the prime candidates for show kids for 4-H and FFA. Tonight though...as I walked around checking for bags and calling out names as I felt that small pooch that meant their time was coming...I started to feel a small stab of anxiety that rose to outright terror as the list continued to grow. I soon realized that the list of does that needed to move to maternity pretty much included all of them!!! As the number grew I begin to feel outright terror...my heavens what are we going to do with 40 does kidding within 6 weeks! I'm sure all those fat girls were laughing at my quivering voice as I called out their names, I just hope they are still laughing when there are babies babies everywhere and not a kidding pen free!
If anybody wants to see a sea of fat little babies they should come see me in Feb!
Maybe I'll have quit trembling by then.
If anybody wants to see a sea of fat little babies they should come see me in Feb!
Maybe I'll have quit trembling by then.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Kidding time is here again...
We all have one…that goat we just can’t seem to sell even though we know we should. Of course they always kids at night and when it is below freezing. This year we were determined it wouldn’t be so cold so we bred her for Nov. …this year November has been the coldest for several years. Ours problem doe is aptly named Alley. Her udder is around her ankles by the time she kids and so full she literally has to run bowlegged. She looks like Forest Gump in that scene where the braces come off except she’s working around the udder instead of braces. You just want to yell, “run, Forrest, run!”
The deal is even though we’ve had a couple of bottle babies that just COULDN’T find the teat no matter how much she tried to point them in the right direction, not even with our dedicated attempts to help she always raises some of the best kids on the place and so far none of them have inherited her udder.
This time we were determined she would feed both kids, I mean when a doe has a gallon jug of milk hanging down on both sides it is just a shame to be bottle feeding the baby. So we put Alley in a kidding pen the minute those babies were born so we could ensure that both kids had plenty of time to find those elusive teats. Of course it was the coldest day we had experienced since last winter but we were excited and motivated to help her and her two beautiful 10 pounders, one paint, and one traditional. Both boys were born ready to eat and within 30 minutes were up and hunting vigilantly for that milk…of course they were everywhere from her chest in front of her legs to all the way past the back legs but that long low udder just wasn’t a place they had hit anywhere close to yet.
Richard and I decided we were going to make sure they tasted that sweet ambrosia in hopes it would motivate them to keep searching so he held her (Have you ever noticed that problem does are never tame!) and I made sure the colostrum was flowing and then tried to hold each of the kids on the teat. The traditional boy got a squirt of milk in his mouth and even though he lost the teat when I let it go and it dropped six inches he was dedicated to finding it again and immediately resumed the search. The Paint refused to open his mouth when I put him on the teat and each time I would reach up to help by squirting the milk in his mouth the little corker would turn his head away..so he had milk everywhere on his face EXCEPT his mouth. I finally gave up and called for the bowl to milk a little colostrum out and fed both babies a bit with a syringe and then smeared a bit on her teats in hopes they would stumble on it and make the connection…and sure enough within a few minutes the traditional buck had. Not that paint though. I asked Richard if she was standing up when he was born. I thought maybe landing on his head could explain his apparent slowness.
The next day after several attempts at syringe feeding and trying to hold that mama and put him on the teat I decided I might as well fix a bottle and resign myself to another bottle baby. It took both of us to force that bottle in his little mouth and we basically were force feeding him. He was fighting and turning his head from side to side. We got a couple of ounces down him and decided maybe we were wrong and his mama was feeding him when we weren’t looking; either way we figured that would be enough to keep him from starving and maybe he would be more interested in a couple of hours. That little boy jumped right down and rushed to his mother’s front leg, yep still confused, Mom took one sniff and pushed him away and said the equivalent in goat talk of “go to bed boy, you aren’t gonna come over here and try to suck”.
I decided I didn’t care how cold it got I was going to sit there and watch them until I saw him eat or until 4 hours had passed and feed him again.
Two hours later Ally woke up the other kid and fed him then tucked him back down with the paint but didn’t wake him up to feed him.
Sometime after that when I was so cold I couldn’t feel feet or hands stinky the skunk came slinking within two feet of me --all I could do was hold in a scream and hope she kept walking because my feet were way too numb to allow me to run away. Lucky for me Stinky just gave me a dirty look, lifted her head and tail and marched on by, a woman on a mission.
Richard came in when it was time for the next feeding and I told him of my adventures and what a sorry mother Ally was for not feeding that baby when she fed his brother. We got the bottle out and tried to feed him again but he was getting stronger and we couldn’t feed him unless we were willing to tube him so we gave up and decided to wait in hopes he would be hungrier later. I was almost in tears that the silly boy wouldn’t eat and would probably starve to death when I gave up and with a last pat and kiss, set him on the ground back in the pen with Mom….He made a beeline for her and this time it wasn’t to the front leg! That boy ran straight to that teat and fell on his knees, and with the ease of someone who had been there before…latched on to that teat and proceeded to suck, all the while telling his mother about all the indignities we forced him to endure. Mom just gave a snort of disgust and I took my chastised self back to the house to thaw out. Obviously Mom had it under control and didn’t need my inept help.
Oh yeah, …that must be why we keep her in spite of that bag.
The deal is even though we’ve had a couple of bottle babies that just COULDN’T find the teat no matter how much she tried to point them in the right direction, not even with our dedicated attempts to help she always raises some of the best kids on the place and so far none of them have inherited her udder.
This time we were determined she would feed both kids, I mean when a doe has a gallon jug of milk hanging down on both sides it is just a shame to be bottle feeding the baby. So we put Alley in a kidding pen the minute those babies were born so we could ensure that both kids had plenty of time to find those elusive teats. Of course it was the coldest day we had experienced since last winter but we were excited and motivated to help her and her two beautiful 10 pounders, one paint, and one traditional. Both boys were born ready to eat and within 30 minutes were up and hunting vigilantly for that milk…of course they were everywhere from her chest in front of her legs to all the way past the back legs but that long low udder just wasn’t a place they had hit anywhere close to yet.
Richard and I decided we were going to make sure they tasted that sweet ambrosia in hopes it would motivate them to keep searching so he held her (Have you ever noticed that problem does are never tame!) and I made sure the colostrum was flowing and then tried to hold each of the kids on the teat. The traditional boy got a squirt of milk in his mouth and even though he lost the teat when I let it go and it dropped six inches he was dedicated to finding it again and immediately resumed the search. The Paint refused to open his mouth when I put him on the teat and each time I would reach up to help by squirting the milk in his mouth the little corker would turn his head away..so he had milk everywhere on his face EXCEPT his mouth. I finally gave up and called for the bowl to milk a little colostrum out and fed both babies a bit with a syringe and then smeared a bit on her teats in hopes they would stumble on it and make the connection…and sure enough within a few minutes the traditional buck had. Not that paint though. I asked Richard if she was standing up when he was born. I thought maybe landing on his head could explain his apparent slowness.
The next day after several attempts at syringe feeding and trying to hold that mama and put him on the teat I decided I might as well fix a bottle and resign myself to another bottle baby. It took both of us to force that bottle in his little mouth and we basically were force feeding him. He was fighting and turning his head from side to side. We got a couple of ounces down him and decided maybe we were wrong and his mama was feeding him when we weren’t looking; either way we figured that would be enough to keep him from starving and maybe he would be more interested in a couple of hours. That little boy jumped right down and rushed to his mother’s front leg, yep still confused, Mom took one sniff and pushed him away and said the equivalent in goat talk of “go to bed boy, you aren’t gonna come over here and try to suck”.
I decided I didn’t care how cold it got I was going to sit there and watch them until I saw him eat or until 4 hours had passed and feed him again.
Two hours later Ally woke up the other kid and fed him then tucked him back down with the paint but didn’t wake him up to feed him.
Sometime after that when I was so cold I couldn’t feel feet or hands stinky the skunk came slinking within two feet of me --all I could do was hold in a scream and hope she kept walking because my feet were way too numb to allow me to run away. Lucky for me Stinky just gave me a dirty look, lifted her head and tail and marched on by, a woman on a mission.
Richard came in when it was time for the next feeding and I told him of my adventures and what a sorry mother Ally was for not feeding that baby when she fed his brother. We got the bottle out and tried to feed him again but he was getting stronger and we couldn’t feed him unless we were willing to tube him so we gave up and decided to wait in hopes he would be hungrier later. I was almost in tears that the silly boy wouldn’t eat and would probably starve to death when I gave up and with a last pat and kiss, set him on the ground back in the pen with Mom….He made a beeline for her and this time it wasn’t to the front leg! That boy ran straight to that teat and fell on his knees, and with the ease of someone who had been there before…latched on to that teat and proceeded to suck, all the while telling his mother about all the indignities we forced him to endure. Mom just gave a snort of disgust and I took my chastised self back to the house to thaw out. Obviously Mom had it under control and didn’t need my inept help.
Oh yeah, …that must be why we keep her in spite of that bag.
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