Saturday, February 12, 2011

BABY GOATS

Well the anticipated day finally arrived! We have baby goats. Wow.. I got myself so worked up for the blessed day by reading everything I could about goats having babies. What amazed me was that depending on who the author is, the procedure can be anything from Hands off, to VERY HANDS ON! To vaccinate or not, bottle feeding, kid care.. My head began to spin and I became very nervous that I would not be ready for the day there were born.  My husband, the seasoned farmer in the family was so patient to put up with all my questions, all my nervousness and worry. In the end, I did worry a lot over nothing. When the day arrived, and I checked EVERY day for 4 days straight before she was REALLY ready to have her babies, I was not even home! I went to the feed store to get some straw, since I was pretty confident that today was going to be THE DAY!. My phone rang, and my daughter says,"We have 2 babies!".... I was only 10 minutes away and I missed it!
In the end the mama did everything she needed to do. We helped clean up, and offered her some greatly appreciated nurishment once the kidding was all over. Our WILD doe became very gentle and allowed us to get the pen cleaned up, and help dry off her babies. A week later, she is back to her old self and decided that she only wanted one of the 2 babies. We are bottle feeding the rejected one in the house and learning how cute baby goats can be!
Our hopes were to end up with a Nigerian/Pygmy doe, but we ended up with 2 bucks.

As I look back over this past week, I still shake my head at all the information out there in books and on the internet that tell you THEIR WAY IS BEST. So far we are navigating though and doing just fine. 

The good news is that one buck is already sold, and we have had interest in the other.  I am not sure if the human kids in our family will be ready for the bitter sweet parting of selling the little guys. We do not have room to keep every baby born on EmToCa farm, so go they must.
Here are some pictures: