Baby the goat had her babies today!
Male: 9 lbs
Male: 8.5 lbs
They are cleaned and separated from her, and walking around and bleating. :) I’ll give her another 40 minutes or so before I go out and milk her for the first time, and feed the boys.
Update!
Cream has twin doe’s Feb 27th around noon. Birth was easy and the kids cleaned up very well. They are learning to walk and I’ll get them weighed and fed in a couple of hours.
This brings the total up to 6 babies so far for 2007!
Babs’s Babies:
* Ewe (girl) - 11.5 lbs
* Ram (boy) - 15 lbs
More images if you click on the picture
Babs the sheep had her lambs late last night or early this morning! One ewe, 9 lbs. One ram, 13 lbs!? Both are doing well.
We’re going to bottle-feed the ewe and use her as a replacement for Ewenice (the sheep with an attitude).? The ram will stay in with Babs.
Pictures coming soon!
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.
I think Cream is in the very early stages of labor. I finally got the baby monitor out in the barn working this past evening. I woke up at about 3:30AM to a lot of goat noises. I think it’s mostly Cleo making noise, but I went out to check things out and Cream seems to be starting to push a little. She had a hard time standing up and didn’t stand up when I first entered the pen. When she did stand up, she very slowly walked around and it looked like she was having small contractions. The kids are moving around quite a bit inside.
I’m going to set the alarm for half an hour and go and check on her then.
EDIT (3/3/06 11:20AM) - No kids yet! It was a false alarm it appears. This morning she wasn’t showing many signs of going into labor. The only real sign I can see is pawing at the ground more than usual. I am a little surprised but it will happen when it happens. Maybe she will be gracious and wait until this evening or tomorrow, so that I can be there when it takes place.
