Adorable baby goats

The midwife can now safely put away her rescue remedy, this calming elixir was used liberally ....for me not the goats.  The kid count for 2015 was 22; girls rule at 15. 

These are some of my favourite photos from the 2015 kidding.

Mumma said to follow my dreams, so I took a nap.

 Cover your eyez Xanthe, countz to 10 and wez hide, no peeking!

 Sooo soft, like a pillow

Wake up Prince Harry

Hey mister, you asleep?  You gots food for us?

Mumma you're not listening to me!

We worship the Egyptian Sun God Ra

Ooo just a little to the left, hmm that's the spot.

Come on just a little kiss, don't play so hard to get,

 you told me you loved me......

My kids are my everything

We fair Australian girls have to be sun safe.

  I is flying!  Redbull gived me wingz

 What do you mean I'm not a duck?

Mumma is stuck, oks on three pull.

Haz mai first kiss

It's too much, she hugs me all the time.     True but I think we should keep the human.

Did you guys grows wings?  I wants wings too!

You've got to be kidding!

An up date on baby #1. 

I am so happy to report after three days she has her sight.  With gaining her sight she began lifting her head which strengthened the neck muscles and in turn helped the hunched shoulders and straightened her sway back.  She is now romping around my kitchen as a normal kid would do. 

I must say those few days were very demanding. I carried her everywhere I went, if I didn’t she would yell the place down needing to know where I was. We were doing the four hourly feeds, I didn’t need to set my alarm to get up and feed her, her yelling woke the entire farm. Now I am sure any new mother would be green with envy to learn she is 4 days old and last night slept 10 hours straight!  

So I will have to find a name for her.  Sometimes a name will come to me straight away other times I have to ruminate on it.  Well she was sitting in my lap a few minutes ago and the name ‘Xanthe’ popped into my head, so Xanthe it is.  I can just imagine my family rolling their eyes at that one. Ah well, with animals we can get away with naming them something a little unusual.

Xanthe

I remember now what it is like being a new mother.  Dishes stacked in the sink, bed unmade, and the house desperately needs a vacuum, hair un-brushed; did I remember to brush my teeth this morning? Same clothes on for the past...hmm is it three days, they are covered in some interesting stains.  So damned tired I can hardly think straight.

It is not just having a new baby to care for but all the other demands on the farm which snowball all at once.  My quad decided to die in the driveway so to move things around for the goats I don’t have the quad trailer; I now have to push a wheelbarrow over all terrain.  Yesterday afternoon a silly doe decided to jump into it as I was moving hay for them, she broke the legs on the barrow. I can still wheel it but not put it down as everything in it topples out.

Otis has Urinary calculi again, there is a lot of blood in his urine, I am extremely concerned for my gorgeous boy, anti-inflammatory, steroids and anitbiotics don’t appear to be helping much this time. 

I have to keep checking a doe is feeding her babies, I think she would prefer I do it for her so she can go off shopping all day.

Jasmine’s little girl has a turned lower eyelid which I treat twice a day; another kid’s eye needs looking at as well.  They do insist on playing in the dirt.

I am still waiting on this last doe to kid.  The other night at 9pm she was breathing strangely, a little like panting, I thought she may have been in the early stages of labour. I checked her at 11pm, 1am; 3am; 5am; 7am.  No, she just wanted to keep me up all night!

Never in ten years have I had such a trying kidding season.  It is full on with hardly a break before I am needed for the next birth. 

Did my Does not read the Boer Goat Manual?  Quote” Normally kidding is a hands off situation with no need for assistance. Rarely do Boer goats give birth at night” unquote.

So far I have had to assist 7 of the 15 pregnant does due to abnormal kid positions. Front feet first babies, Please!!!  Or the amniotic sac has not broken by itself therefore if I do not break it baby would drown after being born in what kept it safe inside. If I had been aware of 2 other does being in labour I may have 3 more live babies.  

Assisting means going in with my hand – Oh Yes – the mothers love that and are so co operative – Not. While my girls are generally quiet in nature they become untrusting she devils in labour.

This is the scene from the first delivery this year.  Keep in mind I only had to assist twice before in ten years of kidding at our place and never at night.

My doe has been in labour too long, straining for at least two hours.  It is 9.30pm. I have to grab her by a horn, use the other hand to get a dog collar and lead on her all while she is pulling and twisting to get away from me. Then I literally drag her to a tree to secure her to. Ever tried to drag a 50kg + goat someplace they don’t want to go?  This one had me skidding on my bum! 

Now I can go exploring gently up her ‘whatsit’ to my wrist to figure out baby’s position.  I have a head lamp on, another torch illuminating the puffy end.  In I go.   Is that a head? Where the hell are the legs? What is that squishy thing I am feeling?   I need to find legs to gentle draw them forward so baby can be born with ease.   No Legs, now I am panicking, how do I help this doe?

Thankfully my good friend is a far more experienced goat midwife than I am.  She is on speed dial.  Mobile phone on loud speaker and for once actually in a spot it can pick up reception here in “Black spot for all technology land’.  It is now 10pm. I wail to her I have no idea what I am feeling; I simply can’t make it out.  My friend talks me through what I am feeling.  She makes me laugh, she tells me she is miming what she is telling me to do while on the other end of the line.  I have to try to find shoulders then ease my hand around them until I find a foot.  Well finally young “Prince Harry” was born.  Yeah I know, I shouldn’t name the boys but this little guy just reminds me of Prince Harry.   His sister is born five minutes later with no help from me, phew!

Prince Harry

Warning:  Explicit photos of a goat giving birth follow.

This is my beautiful Missy, She was thoughtful enough to need help with her babies during daylight hours and as you can see from the last photo quite thankful.

The first baby has both legs backwards

You have a son Missy

Second one on the way

A girl this time

 Aren't I clever?  Yes Missy very clever.

I was normal three goats ago

I saw a T-shirt on Pinterest with the slogan, ‘I was normal three goats ago’.  I have never seen anything so apt for myself.  It is no secret I shamelessly love my goats. My hubby begs me not tell people that. He reckons it makes me look loopy; too bad, it is far too late to save my reputation, everyone has already formed that opinion of me. 

This love didn’t happen straight away. Goats are just goats, right? A herd animal that hangs out in the paddock. My son describes them as meat walking on legs. I tried to think of them that way until after we picked up our first 20 pregnant goats.  I then observed how intelligent, social and trusting they were and how each had such a distinct personality.  I found myself secretly naming some of them. Black Betty was bossy and brash, Woolly because of her long coat, Cleopatra walked like an Egyptian, Muriel...well she looked like a Muriel! 

I was told from the beginning not to name my herd goats, certainly not the males, who on anyone else’s property would have a short destiny.  A name forms an attachment.  Well, I am sorry, it doesn’t matter if my horned ones have a name or a herd number I still become emotionally connected with them. They all have their unique personalities which I know like the back of my hand.

My boys with no names - ha!  Number 1 Son, Big Boy, Cheeky, Diesel, et al.

Traits are passed on to their kids, I will be doing husbandry on a goat and comment to him or her (yes I talk to my goats too) how their hooves or personality is just like their mum’s or even their grandmother’s.  My hubby looks at me strangely asking how I could possibly know who their mother is from our large herd. I look oddly back at him and state ‘how could I not know!’, then reel off mum’s herd number. Sure enough when he checks the back of the ear tag for their mother’s number I am always correct. 

The true passion for my goats began with the fist kidding on our property when I hand raised three kids. I was now to discover not only could a goat be intelligent, trusting, packed with personality, curious, at times infuriating and strong willed but also how loving they can be.

Coffee, Victor and Rose were all born the same day.  Coffee and Victor’s mother birthed quads. She had decided she could not raise four babies so she was tossing the smallest two through the air trying to kill them. 

The gentleman we bought the does from had advised me not to interfere with the whole kidding process.  I watched doe '# 3' trying to rid herself of these two and thought "Surely he doesn’t mean for me to simply allow her to kill them?" Coffee was the runt but oh so determined.  Each time he was tossed away he went back to her trying to get milk.  So I marched in there and rescued them. Stuff not interfering! 

Another doe had also given birth to two kids not far from this scene of potential murder. I observed she was not bonding with one of the kids. Rose was curled up under a bush, not cleaned up after birth, totally abandoned by her mother. No matter how many times I took her over to her mother the mum would move her other baby away leaving Rose alone. 

Rosie not long after birth

Rose is sometimes in a world of her own.  I believe Rose was mis-mothered because she had a tough birth, lacking oxygen for a short time and did not move straight after being born. A goat mother will perceive this as something seriously wrong with the kid, abandoning it for the stronger of her babies. 

I rang my husband to tell him we had three new additions to the family.  The old cubby house in our suburban backyard had a temporary fence erected around it and saw renewed life as their weekday manor house.

Then eight weeks later Otis joined the lucky ones.

Yes I was normal three goats (+1) ago.

Goat woman evicts TV star from caravan

Those who thought they knew me laughed when they saw the ramshackle state of the farm house and the fact it is off grid, singing the theme from the late 1960’s TV sitcom “Green Acres” to me.  If you aren’t aware of what I’m referring to, do yourself a favour, Google “Green Acres” or YouTube the opening theme, it sums up the story rather well. I can certainly see the correlation to the condition of the house and I can only assume I was being likened somewhat to the Eva Gabor character.... OK so my go to shoe is a high heel, I will not leave the house without my makeup on and just maybe I sometimes over dress for the occasion, but none of that means I am a total princess and nobody knew of my secret desire to be a country girl.

Well, this Eva Gabor has chucked aside high heels (temporarily, one can’t totally abandon high heels) for steel capped boots and goat poo but never, ever her makeup! I conceded the hairdryer would have to be retired at least while living in our palatial tin can on wheels aka ancient caravan and while we didn't have a huge amount of solar power.  

The caravan was our home for 3 years while we slowly fixed up the vandalised house.

I can tell you that caravan was like an icebox in winter, to the point we would sleep with beanies to warm our heads and a couple of pairs of socks to stop the feet falling off with the cold.   A ceramic mug in the cupboard had to be warmed in the oven before pouring out a cup of tea or coffee otherwise the beverage would be cold by the first sip.   

For awhile living in the caravan had its dangers.  We were often visited in the dead of the night by shooters, spotlighting from the front gate across the paddock, bullets flying at whatever moved.  There was even a bullet hole through the ridge capping of the house!!! Obviously these would be hunters were dreadful at aiming.  As soon as we heard a slow moving car or saw lights dancing around the paddock my husband jumped out of the caravan with a torch, waving it around to alert would be gun toters we were there.  I thought it may have been interesting to shoot back,.... No, no, I did mean shoot into the air.

While on a shopping trip at the rural supply store in town I met hubby at the counter with my arms stacked with bright yellow fence signs “Private Property, No Shooting",  hopefully they yelled “Hey! Peops now live here. Rack off!”.   The perimeter fences were liberally draped with these lovely new decorations.

We did eventually learn of a lady who ran a bed and breakfast in town had been advising the weekend hunters to come out our way as no one lived there.  Hellooooo, endangerment much, thank you lady!

To finish up

two of my babies, just because I can and just because everyone loves baby goats! Aren't they the cutest kids you have ever seen?