Yesterday was a crazy day that neither of us saw coming. We started the day out normal cleaning coops and the goat barns with only planning to go to the Calhan post office, being sick as a dog. It seems that bigger things were on the horizon for us and we were the last to know what was coming.
While taking care of the goats, my favorite doe "Margie" decided she wasn't pregnant AGAIN : ( going into heat for a third time. Both of us were pretty upset, frustrated thinking of throwing in the towel by how this first breeding year has been going. We then got the horse trailer ready once again and made a call to our breeder (who has been wonderful to us) and hit the road to get Margie some more man love. I made a conscious decision not to bring our digital camera not expecting anything new which I now regret, so please excuse the not so great camera phone pictures.
We always get put to work by our "goat lady" as we call her. We don't mind at all and like to help her out with all the heavy lifting plus chores that we can while were there since she has been so kind to share with us her 30 years of experiences.
While I was making the "love connection" with Margie and Odie (Were now pros at the dating game and deal with the contestants on our own) I heard some loud screams that I knew wasn't normal. It sounded like a cow yelling in trouble but the cow was on the other side of the farm. After tracking down where it was coming from I saw a goat with a baby half way hanging out. I immediately ran to Mary Sue and Diana to let her know a situation was about to go down.
Had we been an hour earlier or an hour later we would have missed out on a great learning experience while expecting baby goats of our own due any day now. And as usual just when we think we thought of everything we end up learning new things. It was a pretty nasty mess the doe made as you can imagine if you ever been in labor or witness to it. We learned to clear their nose right away so they can breathe and what tools to have on hand since you don't always have a warning. The afterbirth hung out on a long intestinal looking cord for the longest time. My first instinct was to pull it out since it was driving me nuts but being with our goat lady we learned to let it fall off naturally or you could cause the doe to bleed internally creating a problem.
The doe had two kids (a boy and a girl) The girl was all white and you can see me feeding the boy colostrum from a bottle while he was about 20 minutes old. If you try to research bottle feeding versus natural feeding to prevent CAE (Caprine arthritic encephalitis) you won't get a straight and definite answer. It seems to be fifty fifty. Mary Sue takes the babies away pasteurizing and bottle feeds all her babies but were going to go the other route letting them stay with and nurse off mom. We did have our whole herd test CAE free but your really never safe from it. (It's nothing harmful to humans) One thing we have learned is that there is no one way and many different ways of doing things and it's up to the farmer to decide what works best for them and the animals.
Everything seems to happen for a reason. While Marge is going to take longer to kid, if it wasn't for her we wouldn't have had on the job training for when our does start popping out ankle biters.
~Ken~
While taking care of the goats, my favorite doe "Margie" decided she wasn't pregnant AGAIN : ( going into heat for a third time. Both of us were pretty upset, frustrated thinking of throwing in the towel by how this first breeding year has been going. We then got the horse trailer ready once again and made a call to our breeder (who has been wonderful to us) and hit the road to get Margie some more man love. I made a conscious decision not to bring our digital camera not expecting anything new which I now regret, so please excuse the not so great camera phone pictures.
We always get put to work by our "goat lady" as we call her. We don't mind at all and like to help her out with all the heavy lifting plus chores that we can while were there since she has been so kind to share with us her 30 years of experiences.
While I was making the "love connection" with Margie and Odie (Were now pros at the dating game and deal with the contestants on our own) I heard some loud screams that I knew wasn't normal. It sounded like a cow yelling in trouble but the cow was on the other side of the farm. After tracking down where it was coming from I saw a goat with a baby half way hanging out. I immediately ran to Mary Sue and Diana to let her know a situation was about to go down.
Had we been an hour earlier or an hour later we would have missed out on a great learning experience while expecting baby goats of our own due any day now. And as usual just when we think we thought of everything we end up learning new things. It was a pretty nasty mess the doe made as you can imagine if you ever been in labor or witness to it. We learned to clear their nose right away so they can breathe and what tools to have on hand since you don't always have a warning. The afterbirth hung out on a long intestinal looking cord for the longest time. My first instinct was to pull it out since it was driving me nuts but being with our goat lady we learned to let it fall off naturally or you could cause the doe to bleed internally creating a problem.
The doe had two kids (a boy and a girl) The girl was all white and you can see me feeding the boy colostrum from a bottle while he was about 20 minutes old. If you try to research bottle feeding versus natural feeding to prevent CAE (Caprine arthritic encephalitis) you won't get a straight and definite answer. It seems to be fifty fifty. Mary Sue takes the babies away pasteurizing and bottle feeds all her babies but were going to go the other route letting them stay with and nurse off mom. We did have our whole herd test CAE free but your really never safe from it. (It's nothing harmful to humans) One thing we have learned is that there is no one way and many different ways of doing things and it's up to the farmer to decide what works best for them and the animals.
Everything seems to happen for a reason. While Marge is going to take longer to kid, if it wasn't for her we wouldn't have had on the job training for when our does start popping out ankle biters.
~Ken~
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