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<\/a><\/p>\nTwo doelings and one buckling.<\/p>\n
I wasn’t even late for work.<\/p>\n Which made me feel like we might just have a new Queen Bee.\u00a0 A new Captain.\u00a0 A new General.\u00a0 A gold medal winner.<\/p>\n Vixen was the next to kid.\u00a0 I put her in the tack room since Carmen was still in the kidding barn.\u00a0 She kidded one night after I left for work.\u00a0 Pretty stayed up until midnight, waiting for all the kids to be born.\u00a0 Except there was only one.<\/p>\n Making this the second year that Vixen only had one kid.<\/p>\n And although the baby was an impressive glossy solid black….<\/p>\n ….he was a buckling.<\/p>\n But it gets worse.\u00a0 On his second day of life, I found him in the barn covered in his own feces.\u00a0 A good doe keeps her babies clean, especially in their first days.\u00a0 By licking her kids’ rectums she stimulates the passing of the meconium and then the sticky yellow poop that kids get when they are nursing.\u00a0 Carmen took her cleaning responsibilities seriously.<\/p>\n So Carmen’s kids were adorable, huggable, and lovable.\u00a0 More importantly, they were clean and healthy.<\/p>\n Vixen’s baby was so caked in poop….<\/p>\n ….that he had to be carried out of the barn, bathed and dried, and carried back out to the barn each morning.\u00a0 Meaning we had extra barn chores every day.\u00a0 Extra poopy barn chores.<\/p>\n Julia kidded next.\u00a0 She also had two doelings and one buckling.\u00a0 All with blue eyes.<\/p>\n Plus, she had the decency to have her kids on a late Sunday morning without any complications.<\/p>\n Except her kids were only nursing off one teat.\u00a0 Leaving her with an uneven udder and at risk for mastitis.<\/p>\n So (after cleaning Vixen’s baby) I had to put her on the stand each morning and express some milk to keep that side of her udder from getting engorged and keep the teat soft and malleable to encourage nursing.<\/p>\n With the kidding barn at maximum capacity, some doe had to be moved.\u00a0 I set up a makeshift stall in the big barn in the milk room.\u00a0 Then I moved Carmen and her kids into that space.<\/p>\n I was nervous because it was much more open to the elements.\u00a0 And there were a lot of barn supplies and equipment to get into in that area.\u00a0 But Carmen kept her babies tucked neatly under the heat lamp….<\/p>\n ….and she didn’t trample eggs in nest boxes, topple food cans, or tear the place apart. Score for Carmen!<\/p>\n Now that we had extra room in the kidding barn, Vanilla went into pre-labor confinement.\u00a0 And we waited for her to kid.<\/p>\n And waited.\u00a0 And waited.\u00a0 And waited.\u00a0 On day 149 (goats are “supposed” to kid no later than 150 days of gestation) when we had a 6″ of snow and freezing rain, Vanilla finally went into labor.<\/p>\n Pretty and I huddled in the barn, with frozen toes and dripping noses, from 10:30pm until Vanilla finally pushed out her kids at 1am.<\/p>\n They had striking colors and blue eyes.\u00a0 You’d say they were the cutest mini-Toggenburgs that you’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n Too bad both of them were bucklings.<\/p>\n As it turns out we didn’t need any head butting to decide who would be the new Queen Bee.\u00a0 It’s pretty clear that the gold goes to Carmen.\u00a0 Congratulations to the Nigerian Dwarf with the calm temperament, nice udder, and clean babies.<\/p>\n Carmen, it’s an honor to have you lead our farm into the future.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n