Tuesday 29 September 2015

The kids are here!!!!!

They're here! The kids are here!! They are both boys, which is a little sad, but they are lovely. We can't name them, because we don't want to get attached to them ( according to mum. I would very happily become very attached to these kids! ). But we are getting our Nubians this weekend. We bought collars for them today. We are also getting some amount of eating roosters from the same person. And we got four eating roosters yesterday. This place is becoming a bit like a butchers shop!




By the way, if you get a bit squeamish, you might want to duck out, because I'm going to go the whole hog!

So Gooey had been having contractions most of the afternoon. It all happened so fast! Every book I read said it would take ages. The contractions didn't even seem that bad. I went up to house to get a glass of water. I'd been there about two minutes, when mum rang the home phone. ' hello?' I said. 'It's coming!' Mum said without even saying hello. I don't blame her! If it had been me out there, I certainly wouldn't have wasted my time with cheery greetings. 'What?!' I yelled, and I hung up the phone and raced out to the dairy, as fast as my legs would take me. When I got there, it was clear that it was happening! There was the bubble. It was a clear yellowy whitish color. It had some kind of veins in it. Mum was in the birthing stall with Gooza. I went in too. It was getting dark now, around six o'clock, so dad brought us a torch. This part took a while. Gooey was hardly pushing. At first, we thought something was wrong. The bubble was a fair way out before we saw feet. But we saw them eventually, and a head too, with its little tongue sticking out. When I saw the feet, I was sure the baby was huge. His father, Sky mister ( he doesn't belong to us ) is quite a big goat. But when it came out fully, I thought it was tiny!

It was slippery and slimey, gross! But at the time I didn't really care. I just wanted to get him dry, so we could concentrate on the next baby. The next bubble was red. The afterbirth hadn't come between kids, but I wasn't worried. They can come at any time. We weren't sure what was in this bubble. We didn't think it was feet, but it was. This one came out fine, too.

I don't have any photos of them soon after the birth. We were to busy helping Gooey clean them off. Then we helped them to drink. They were clearly hungry, especially the oldest one.

Well done, Argoo!! 
After the birth, we gave her a handful of soaked barley, send some molasses in warm water, for a bit of a pick-me-up.

Here's something wonderfull. Our maremma,  Gypsy, who is supposed to gaurd the livestock, has never done a very good job. But since these kids were born, she has attached herself to the dairy. The kids can't go out for another week or so.

 The other day, a kid got out. We were at the house. Mum saw Gyps with something white in her mouth! A kid! She took it around to the tank, and put it down, as we ran over. Was she going to eat it, or look after it? We think look after it, but we can't be sure.

The goslings have hatched too. There are only four of them. We put them outside today, for the first time. I have a feeling this dog doesn't want to guard. He wants to eat. Better keep a close eye on him!

This post isn't very accurate with days and stuff, because I've written it over the period of about three weeks. Mum has to read my posts before I publish them, to make sure I haven't somehow accidentally given away our identity, or something like that. She's been really busy, as we all usually are, and hasn't had time, so it's sort of a lot of posts in one, but it doesn't matter. I think I mentioned getting the new goats further up. Well, we've got them now! There lovely! They seem to really like each other, and they aren't even related. Daisy and Argoo are mother and daughter, and they seem to hate each other.

We got a surprise this afternoon, when we got home from a trip into town. We found Winnie in Sarah's stall! We had given them a day in the stalls to get used to them, but Winnie busted through the bottom rail between her and Sarah's pens!

Isn't spring a lovely time of year? Our garden looks amazing!! Probably won't be so good soon, when we start running out of water. But for now it's beautiful! I picked some flowers earlier today. I'm not very good at arranging them, but they are still gorgeous to look at.


1 comment:

  1. I'm glad all went well. That was a close call with your dog, and lucky you guys were around to intervene before anything serious happened. I like dogs and they can be trained to do amazing things, but they're also unpredictable sometimes.

    And new goats too! It's all happening at your place. :)

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