More Baby Goats

Abby's doe Moeeka gave birth on Saturday, February 12, to two beautiful kids. A doeling and a buckling. These are our first babies sired by California Lord Kelvin. His dam recently placed first in Oberhasli milk production testing! So we have great hopes for these little ones! Abby named them for Croatian cheeses: the doe is Paski sir and the buck is Koca sir. Koca is up for sale.

Hannah's Alpine, Venezuela, kidded on Sunday, February 13th. It took her a long time to progress and when she had been pushing for over 30 minutes with no progress, we knew something wasn't right. I gloved and lubed up and after much feeling around, was able to determine that we had at least two kids, in a breech position with their rear legs intertwined and one of them was also upside-down. I was able to get two hocks that belonged to the same kid lined up, but my hand was to large to get the kid out. Abby, having smaller hands, was able to take over and get the legs out and then rotate the baby to an upright position and deliver her. Hannah named her Swamp Maple Bokmakiri, a cheese from Africa. (Hannah's heart's desire is to minister to the children in Angola)

Abby then repositioned the next breech baby and she pulled him out. A larger buck, who Hannah named Swamp Maple Kwaito, another cheese from Africa. While we had suspected she had triplets, I was really hoping that was it, but the small-ish size of the two kids had me asking Abby to examine Venezuela for another. Sure enough, another kid! This one thankfully was face first and face up! Knowing that baby was in a good position we let the doe rest while we attended to the first two and got some colostrum into them.

After the first two were settled in warm towels and on the laps of Rachel and Samantha, we went to work on retrieving the last kid. At first Abby had just one hoof and the head, but every time she tried to get the second hoof the head would slip out of position. So she tried to just get the one hoof and the head into position, but due to the spaciousness of the now nearly empty doe, the first hoof kept slipping out of position. We finally decided to simply get the baby out head first. Hannah was thrilled for another doeling which she named Swamp Maple Barcelona, a city in Venezuela that starts with a "B" (the tattoo letter for 2011).

Barcelona being the littlest is in the house being bottle fed, while the other two are out in the barn. Hannah intends to keep both does, but use 'Lona as her showmanship doe when Venezuela is retired at the end of this year.

I'll get pictures up of these cute babies ASAP!

So far all of the does have kidded either on their due date or within an hour of their due date. Kroquet is due today, so maybe she'll keep the trend going?