Kids!

Cream went into labor today while I was at the grocery store, somewhere between 11 and noon. I got back around a quarter after noon, and 3 kids had been born! While I dried them, sexed them, weighed them, and swabbed their belly buttons with iodine, she had a fourth!

Andrew tells me it’s really unusual for a dairy goat to have quadruplets, but Cream has done it for the second year in a row!

Here are the weights, and then the pictures.

Doe: 6 lb 12 oz
Buck: 8 lb 8 oz
Buck: 6 lb 10 oz
Buck: 10 lb 10 oz(!)

I weighed that second buck again, and got the same weight. He’s a little chunk!

They have all taken at least some colostrum. Three of them really latched on and got quite a bit, but one of them hasn’t quite figured it out yet, and only could manage a couple sips. The bottle was cooling down, so I will feed them some more during the evening chores.

They are under a heat lamp within sight of Cream, and she is staring at them and talking to them. She has not passed the afterbirth yet, but I went ahead and milked her. I got 1 lb 8 oz of colostrum in the first milking.

Edit to add: Cream has passed the afterbirth. I’ve fed the kids again, and they almost finished the entire bottle! The 10lb buck was the last one born and seems a little slower to catch on than the others. They have already been sucking my fingers like crazy, but he’s not too interested yet. He got a few more swallows and that’s it.

For more pics go to the gallery.