Today I thought I would introduce our bottle baby goats!
These two little girls were born on a VERY cold day (19° I believe.) and because their mother was a first timer, she rejected them. We just didn't have the luxury of trying to get them to bond, they were very limp, their mouths were cold inside, and they kept calling, and calling. So we wisked them inside, and held them in front of our heater, rubbing them with towels.
The little one on the left (Who we call B, the one on the right, A) was having a very hard time drinking from the bottle. We put them in this laundry basket, set in front of the heater, with a heating pad underneath. They were STILL shivering.
When they finally DID warm up, we brought them into the kitchen, and set them up here. The heating pad is still plugged in.
You may also have noticed that Bella is sitting next to them. She became their Mommy. She licked them all over, cleaned up their faces and bottoms, and protected them from Maggie. (She doesn't like Maggie. She seems to think that Maggie is out to get her. But she was fine when Chelsea came over. Dummy.)
She would lay there for HOURS, with her babies.
What topped this picture off was the fact that they were born on Valentine's Day.☺
Lily is absolutely TERRIFIED of the 3 pound baby goats.
Skipping ahead about 2 weeks, we end up here.
This is the new pen we got them. They have this whole arena, all to themselves.
What's that you say? There's THREE babies in there?? Well, yes.
The little black one is another baby we had to bring in.
You see, we have a goat named Holly.
This is Holly. Holly is our bow legged, fat, pedigree goat.
All of our other goats have babies, sisters, or mothers, that they curl up to when they sleep at night. (I know. It's so cute! Even when they are two years old, and have their own babies, they still go back and curl up with their Mommies.) Holly however, has only ever had boys. We can't keep a buck with a bunch of does, and a wether (neutered male goat) doesn't give milk, and can't get our girls pregnant. So we bred her this year, hoping that she would have girls. She had three girls, and one boy (I think she got sick of our begging). One of the girls died, (We couldn't get her to breathe, but her heart kept going for about 15 minutes.) but her three other babies were nice and strong. However, after a few days, we noticed her babies weren't growing, and were often hunched up. After a bit of investigation (feeling Holly's udder to see how full it was, bottle feeding the babies to see how hungry they were, etc.) we were able to tell that she just didn't have enough milk for them. So we took the boy away, to feed him inside, so the girls could get the milk, and they would all bond.
We're debating breeding Holly again, because the first time she had babies, one was stillborn (okay, happens with first timers), the second time, she had one stillborn, and one that died a few months later, (his name was Willow, and I will always have a soft spot in my heart for him. I'll post about him someday) and this time, of course she had a stillborn, but the first baby also had it's feet tucked back (a massive no-no) and my daughter had to reach her hand in to grab them.
In completely other news, look at these pictures I got of Maggie and Chelsea yesterday!!
Here you can clearly see Chelsea's underbite. I love this picture of her. I may have to frame it.
Thanks again for reading!
That one blog poster
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