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Posts Tagged ‘Kidding’

Goat Kids On The Farm

Posted in Goat Care (and General Farm), tagged , on March 7, 2009| 4 Comments »

For those that said they want to come back for more kid goat pics, here are a few for you today.

Apparently one of my nubian bucks (Emery) visited the boer pen last fall. One day last week we had 3 kids born that look much like their sire. This doeling is a beauty! To the right is Sarah. Sarah was a bottle kid, born on a -5 degree morning. She was very spoiled, gave birth last week, and was interested in us, not her newborn. We are having to bottle raise her buckling.

Today they had fun on the stumps that my husband dumped into the lot a few weeks ago.

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Busy Day In The Goat Barn

Posted in Goat Care (and General Farm), tagged , on February 27, 2009| 8 Comments »

Each kidding season is different, but it seems when there are a plephora of does heavy with kids there is normally at least one day when they let loose at once. Today has been one of those days!

I keep two white boards in the barn. One contains my normal feeding rations, just in case someone should have to take over. The second board is where I draw up a chart that lists the births. One thing extremely important when birthing in numbers is to keep the kidding board up to date.

I just woke from a restoring power nap a short bit ago. The first thing I realized is that the kidding board is not quite up to snuff today. It was perfect at 10:00 A.M., not so perfect from that time forward. Are you giggling with me?

We had to take 2 kids away to bottle feed this morning. From time to time something goes awry. We had strong storms roll through in the early morning hours. One of the does gave birth. She kept up with her twin doeling, but seemed to not realize the buckling was hers. Another first time mother today, Sarah, is oblivious that she gave birth, even though I assisted the birth (the only one so far this year). As soon as I pulled the kid, she wanted our human attention. She was a bottle baby herself years ago. When a dam wants to ignore a kid(s) I try all sorts of tricks, from taking a drop of colostrum and rubbing it on the kid’s mouth (so the doe can smell herself on the kid), to trying to graft a kid to a different dam. Sometimes, due to the urgency of getting the first colostrum into the kid, you have to give in to the bottle.

So…it has been an eventful day. And it just might remain that way!

This morning I packed up soap for shipments. The funny thing is, each time I was almost ready to print shipping labels, something in the barn broke loose. As soon as Bob heard Sarah’s straining on the intercom, for example, we threw on boots and coats. Sarah is a special doe to the both of us.

I finally got my clothes changed, teeth brushed, hair brushed, and made it to town to get a few necessities, and a stop at the post office (since I missed the mail run this morning).

Ahhh…life on a farm. And yes, I still love it.

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Loving On Those Goat Kids

Posted in Goat Care (and General Farm), tagged , on February 26, 2009| 9 Comments »

For those of you that have heard this before, you are about to hear it again, I did not sleep last night, not hardly a wink. No, barn activity did not keep me awake, I enjoyed the quiet and couldn’t sleep after the first few hours. Hilarious!

We had a few goat kids born around 8:00 yesterday evening. This is Sunday’s 4th kidding. I could see Sunday gearing up as soon as the other does started kidding a few days ago. Good for Sunday, she had a buck and a doe and she is elated. The new buckling runs after her so quickly that he flops over, he is all legs just yet. We like Sunday for various reasons, she is a large boer goat, but we especially love her voice, she bellows with a loud, “Mooowwwww!!!” Her new buckling has a set of lungs too. I like loud lungs, it usually translates to a kid born healthy.

When I fed about an hour ago I did a head count. I kept coming up with one newborn kid missing. I spent a good 20 minutes looking, counting. The kid appeared finally, but I never did figure out where she had been. I did find a tiny gap in the fence. A farmer quickly learns to keep all sorts of materials on hand such as baling wire and pieces of leftover lumber. Needless to say, nobody will be escaping from that gap again any time soon.

I enjoy picking up newborn kids, watching their stubborn little faces, hearing them (sometimes) squawk at the human that picks them up. By golly, they have a mission, and I disturb that well thought out plan. They have playing time mapped out!

After arriving back up to the house (and yes, my back and legs hurt from the many treks down the hill this week), I went out to the shop and cut the soap that I batched yesterday. I love the subtle blue and red marbling in the soap on the left!

The rest of my day is going to be intense office work and listening to the monitor. I have plenty enough to do right here. I am too tired to do anything else, so the focus will be on that!

I hear the frogs on the pond this morning, always a grand sound to hear. They have their own spring announcement to make! They remind me of tiny birds in the early spring. They do not sound like bullfrogs this early in the season. The pair of geese are back this morning as well. I heard the honking of their arrival while I was working in the barn.

I love farm life.

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Newborn Goat Kids

Posted in Goat Care (and General Farm), tagged , on February 25, 2009| 12 Comments »

It is difficult to get good pics of newborn goat kids.

We are up to 4 kids now, the latest born a bit after 8:00 yesterday evening.

This is our favorite buckling so far this season. He and his twin brother were sleeping outside this morning, beginning to hop at 2 days old.

Newborn kids at this age get pretty active. Hilarious when they first start hopping. They leap without letting go of the ground, and then begins the tiny bunny hops, and at a blink of an eye, so it seems, they pick up a lot of speed!

The twin brother…

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Goat Kidding Has Officially Started

Posted in Goat Care (and General Farm), tagged , on February 23, 2009| 7 Comments »

No, that many girls did not break lose and have kids today, but one did. She had a pair of bucklings.

This is a picture from a few years ago. It was a cold morning (notice the snow on the ground to the far right). Some of the kids were huddled inside the door of the barn, in the early morning sunlight. They sure were fat little kids!

I promise to try to avoid zombiehood. If I say something weird, write something odd, just let me know. I sometimes go with a total lack of sleep when kidding season starts.

We are running very late this year with the meat goats. The earliest they could have started was 12/9/08! We knew they were pregnant, but because we field bred (did not breed individually), we did not have exact due dates.

Just a farm announcement. 🙂

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Does Ready To Kid

Posted in Goat Care (and General Farm), tagged , on January 29, 2009| 14 Comments »

Ouchie…the shoulders, knees and ankles hurt from walking and slipping in the snow/ice/snow mixture. I do not live on a mountain, by any means, but the only flat piece of land I have is right at the house. The tiniest flat yard surrounds my house, that is it. I am ready for spring!

I checked the boer girls tonight. Some are growing closer towards the big kidding event. I am seeing milk beginning to come in. I didn’t see the taught udders that come with imminent labor, but they are growing closer.

This is a picture from a prior kidding season. Annie always has some handsome kids.

I was lost for things to write about today, but I just remembered a phone call that I received this morning. I knew I had to share bits and pieces with you.

My friend has her milk house filled with bottle kids, all 37 of them, rescued from freezing in the recent cold snap. At one point all of the kids were in the house! This is the part of our conversation that began to make me giggle. I began spurting, to be honest. As my laughter began, I said to her, “It is not funny.” She replied, “No, it is not, but the story is.” She and her husband had so may Rubbermaid tubs of kids in the house they began to divide them between rooms. For those of you that have never had bottle kids in the house. Let me tell you, they can be noisy. My maximum number has been 19. I cannot imagine 37! And there are always a couple of screamers. Kids that scream can sound similar to newborn human babies. She said that she and her husband where so tired they slept on the floor several times, for several nights, they were simply exhausted. They are my age. 🙂

So, they made their feeding rounds from room to room. Bedroom kids fed this hour, living room kids fed next hour, laundry room kids next. At one point she said there was one kid that just would not be quiet, including right after he had been fed. So she put him away, in a nice cozy warm room for a while. She just had to had silence. Her husband came into the house, headed straight to the bathroom, and then all she could hear was, “Helen!!!! Why is there a kid in the bathroom????” Ha ha ha…not funny, right???

The things we do!

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